Friday, May 24, 2013

DID THE US SHARE DATA WITH THE BRITISH?


Additional facts that have been discovered make it clear that an in depth study of each of the personages involved in an onsite review (let us use a genteel word) of the Katyn Massacre opens up further and earlier paths of knowledge by the Western Allies.


Thus, persistent research on Dr. Piga, who although a member of the International Medical Commission, never made it to Katyn and has therefore generally been omitted from the list of IMC members, and review of the previously mentioned Goebbels letter of July 1943, questioning Dr. Piga’s sudden Berlin illness, led to two even more damaging possibilities – with both conclusions based on the 1952 interview with Dr. Piga at the US Embassy in Madrid –

  • firstly, (and as mentioned earlier) that the US was so firmly convinced of Soviet guilt in April of 1943, that it wanted to ensure that a lesser number of credible IMC forensic specialists was present, and therefore that it pressured the Spanish Foreign Ministry, and that therefore there must exist additional still unknown State Department documents confirming this action, and that
  • Secondly, there may have been further attempts by the State Department, perhaps in Denmark, Finland or Switzerland to try to keep their specialists from going to Katyn. 
Certainly, if attempts had been made to keep Drs. Naville and Tramsen from going, it might explain some of the post-war attacks on their good names.


This timeline concerning reports and knowledge of the facts is very significant in that it interfaces with the US President’s Special Emissary to the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, Archbishop Spellman’s report on a meeting with FDR.  For, based on the Archbishop’s aide de memoire, Roosevelt was clear in his decision about the post-war fate of Central and Eastern Europe no later than the summer of 1943 and announced it to the Archbishop on September 2, 1943, well before the Yalta Conference, and several months prior to Teheran.

Although the President had returned from Montreal with Churchill and the three had dinner together on September 1, it was not until the morning of the following day, when Churchill had departed, that FDR discussed these matters.  It would appear that FDR’s desire to accommodate Stalin at any cost, included satiating his desires for expansion of the Soviet empire, without advising Churchill in a timely fashion.


The various occurrences in the timeline under review will also clarify the reasoning behind FDR’s response to George Earle’s efforts to present the truth about Katyn.


As time progresses, various of these newly raised issues will be addressed in detail as will the ongoing efforts of the Polish Underground to document the facts as best they could.


There will also be a discussion of the troubling role of the Orthodox prelate, Metropolitan Nikolai, who abetted international Soviet propaganda efforts starting in 1941 and continued by serving on both Soviet Extraordinary Commissions, as well as the wartime and postwar actions of the various Western journalists in Moscow at the time of these commissions.
 

Finally, there will be a review of what can now be determined to be unfounded postwar allegations against General Bissell.


But let us remember that as all the progressed, in Paris, the theatres were open, the galleries mounted shows – all approved by the German censors – and Cocteau, Picasso and others saw no issue in presenting their work in venues attended by the Wehrmacht.  In France, as has been written – the show went on.

 

© Krystyna Piórkowska