Burdenko Commission

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The Burdenko Commission , full official name: Special Commission for the detection and investigation of the circumstances surrounding the shooting of prisoners of war Polish officers by the German-fascist invaders in Katyn Forest (Специальная Комиссия по установлению и расследованию обстоятельств расстрела немецко -фашистскими захватчиками в Катынском лесу военнопленных польских офицеров, Spezijalnaja Komissija po ustanowleniu i rassledowaniu obstojatelstw rasstrela nemezko-faschistskimi sachwattschikami w Katynskom lessu wojennoplennych polskich ofizerow ), was an appointed in the autumn of 1943 by the political leadership in Moscow committee, which under the direction of chief surgeon of the Red army , Nikolai Burdenko the German Had to testify to perpetrators in the Katyn massacre . The report she presented in 1944 was the official Soviet version until 1990.

prehistory

Reaction to the German campaign

The discovery of the mass graves in the forest of Katyn near Smolensk by soldiers of the Wehrmacht in February 1943 used Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as an opportunity for a propaganda campaign aimed at driving a wedge between the Western Allies and their Soviet allies. As part of this campaign, the Foreign Office in Berlin invited a group of coroners from several European countries to Katyn. This International Medical Commission on the Katyn Massacre came to the conclusion that the crime had been committed in the spring of 1940. Thus only a Soviet perpetrator came into consideration, but this version was rejected by the leadership in Moscow. In June 1943, the Foreign Office published documentation that also contained the report of the medical commission.

Even before the Smolensk region was retaken by the Red Army in September 1943, the leadership in Moscow decided to convene its own commission of inquiry, which was supposed to thwart the “official material” of Berlin. The draft for the decree on the special commission was approved by the head of the secret police NKVD Lavrenti Beria , Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his first deputy Andrei Vyshinsky , the former Attorney General of the USSR. It was determined that the new commission of the “ Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German-Fascist Invaders and their accomplices, and the damage they inflicted on the citizens, collective farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR should have ”, which was brought into being in 1942 by decree by Mikhail Kalinin , the chairman of the Supreme Soviet .

Preparation of the site

Immediately after the region was recaptured on September 25, 1943, NKVD units cordoned off the village of Katyn and guarded the nearby forest with mass graves. Beria commissioned his former deputy, Vsevolod Merkulov , to prepare witnesses among the inhabitants of the region , who had recently headed the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB), which was spun off from the NKVD, and was responsible for espionage and counter-espionage. Merkulow had already supervised the preparations for the murder of the Poles in 1940.

NKVD specialists produced or obtained documents with dates between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1941. They were supposed to prove that the Polish prisoners of war were still alive during this period. Merkulov arrived in Katyn at the end of September 1943 at the head of a larger group of experts from the ranks of the NKVD, the NKGB and the Smersch military intelligence service . The mass graves were opened with the help of excavators and bulldozers, and the documents were added to some of the bodies. Likewise, a notebook of the mayor, Boris Menschagin , who was appointed by the German occupiers, was forged, in which he accused the Germans of mass murder. Menschagin had joined the Wehrmacht when they withdrew from the region.

The NKVD prepared a total of 95 witnesses who were supposed to confirm the perpetrators of the Germans. Among them were 17 residents of the region whose statements cited the "official material" of the Germans or who were involved in the exhumation work on behalf of the Wehrmacht. They were threatened with death if they did not testify to the German perpetrators. Several of them did not survive the interrogation. Merkulov personally conducted the interrogation of the astronomy professor Boris Basilewski , who was imprisoned for three months and who the Germans had appointed as Vice Mayor of Smolensk. During the German occupation, Basilewski had denounced the Bolsheviks as perpetrators at public meetings.

Members

Postage stamp of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Burdenko, 1976 (Michel № 4471, Scott № 4438)

Foreign experts were not invited. Merkulow had initially proposed several Poles living in exile in Moscow, including the Stalinist Wanda Wasilewska and the socialist Bolesław Drobner , who had only been released from the Gulag four years later . But Stalin refused to accept Poland into the commission.

activity

Investigations

Burdenko was under a group of 75 medical staff, including five professors. Under the direction of Professor Prosorowski, they exhumed corpses from the mass graves between January 13 and 24, 1944. Allegedly 925 bodies were autopsied, but historians consider this size to be completely exaggerated, especially since no individual protocols were made.

According to the files, the commission met only once, on January 24, 1944. Merkulov attended the meeting even though he was not a member of the commission. At the meeting, Burdenko commented on contradictions in the alleged eyewitness report of a resident of the region, which had already been quoted in detail in the German “Official Material”. Merkulov then promised a psychological report on this witness.

The TASS press agency also distributed a report on January 24, 1944 about the successful completion of the work of the special commission.

Final report

Burdenko submitted the final report to the special commission on January 24, and the party organ “ Pravda ” published it in full two days later . According to the report, in the spring of 1940 the Polish officers were taken to three camps 1-ON, 2-ON, 3-ON in the Smolensk region. After the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, it was not possible to evacuate these three camps in time, the Poles got into the hands of the advancing Germans and were shot by the Wehrmacht's construction battalion 537 in August and September 1941. However, the authors of the report correctly stated that the dead wore winter clothing.

When the front again approached Smolensk from the east in the spring of 1943, the Germans opened the mass graves in order to blame the Soviet side in a large-scale propaganda campaign. During these manipulations, however, several letters, postcards and other documents from the period between November 12, 1940 and June 20, 1941 were overlooked. 500 Soviet prisoners of war who were used by the Germans were then shot by them. The report said the total number of deaths was 11,000.

Journalist program

The Soviet authorities invited foreign correspondents accredited in Moscow to a press conference of the Burdenko Commission in Katyn, mostly US-Americans and British. A group of 19 traveled to Smolensk in a former saloon car of the tsarist family, and the journalists were treated to caviar and Crimean champagne . Among them were Jerome Davis (" Toronto Star "), who was previously a sociology professor at Yale , Richard Lauterbach (" Time Magazine "), William H. Lawrence (" New York Times "), Homer Smith ( Associated Negro Press ), the only African American correspondent on the Eastern Front , Edmund Stevens (" The Christian Science Monitor ") and Alexander Werth ( BBC and " London Sunday Times "). The group also included Kathleen Harriman , the daughter of the US Ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman , who officially traveled as the representative of the Office of War Information (OWI), and as an observer John Melby, Third Secretary of the US Embassy. There were a total of thirteen US citizens, five British and one French. When the train arrived in Smolensk, cameramen from the Soviet newsreel were waiting, they also accompanied the delegation to Katyn. The group was joined by the Polish journalist Jerzy Borejsza , who was in the rank of captain of one of the Politruks of the Berling Army , the Polish armed forces under Soviet command.

After visiting the burial ground, the journalists were taken to a heated military tent. Using tissue samples, Professor Viktor Prosorowski explained to them that the time of death was to be set as late summer 1941. Then alleged eyewitnesses reported the alleged shooting of the Poles by the Germans. The former Smolensk Deputy Mayor Basilewski also burdened the Germans heavily. However, the correspondents were only allowed to ask questions to the members of the commission and not to the witnesses. The US Embassy Secretary John Melby wrote in his report on the Katyn trip that some of the correspondents had been angry about it and that the mood had become increasingly tense.

As became known only in the 1990s , the NKVD arrested some of the alleged eyewitnesses shortly after the press conference. Most were not released until the first wave of amnesties in 1956, three years after Stalin's death. Several, however, disappeared without a trace. The former NKVD general Dmitri Tokarjew , who was involved in the mass execution of Poles in Kalinin , reported to a Russian public prosecutor in 1991 that an order had been issued from Moscow in 1944 not to let any of the witnesses live (не оставлять в живых ни одного свидетеля) .

consequences

Press reports

The Briton Alexander Werth found in his reports: " The technique of those murders was German, rather than Russian." Professor Jerome Davis also saw the German guilt as proven. Likewise, “Time” correspondent Richard Lauterbach stated that he, like the majority of the group, came to the conclusion: “ The Germans had slaughtered the Poles. ” (The Germans had slaughtered the Poles.) In the same way, his compatriot Edmund Stevens left no distance to recognize the version of the Burdenko commission. The two Americans were secretly members of the CPSU , as it became known in the mid-1990s through the release of documents from the VENONA project , according to which Stevens was also an informant for the Soviet secret services. A brochure of the Association of Polish Patriots , founded in Moscow , which propagated the version of the Burdenko Commission, also contained the Katyn reports by Davis, Stevens and Werth.

The other Western correspondents stuck to the line agreed on during the return trip, not to make any assessment themselves. According to reports from an American priest and the journalist and publisher William Lindsay White , who both spoke to some of the participants in the correspondents' trip to Katyn in the summer of 1944, they consistently expressed doubts about the Soviet account. Some of them came to the conclusion that the Soviet side had staged a show for them in Katyn. However, their doubts did not flow into the reporting, as the correspondent's reports from Moscow were subject to prior censorship at the time. Most American and British newspapers presented the Burdenko Commission's version as guaranteed.

Homer Smith only described his impressions in his memoir "Black Man in Red Russia", published 20 years after the trip. During the visit he was convinced that it was a question of Soviet manipulation. But a decade earlier he had reported privately about it to a journalist from the Polish exile newspaper “Wiadomości”, which appeared in London , according to his testimony.

Reactions from governments

The Secretary Melby wrote in his report to the State Department that, despite some gaps in the reasoning, the Russian version "convincing" (convincing) was. The ambassador's daughter, Kathleen Harriman, also attested in her report to the Burdenko commission that she had done a correct job and saw that the German perpetrators were proven. Ambassador Harriman took over this account and telegraphed President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the participants in the journalists' trip had come to the conclusion "that in all probability the massacre was perpetrated by the Germans ."

In London, the British ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile, Owen O'Malley , pointed out numerous inconsistencies in the report in an analysis. He also saw it as an indirect admission of guilt that Moscow had not invited any foreign specialists to Katyn. Part of the experts of the Foreign Office, however kept the the Burdenko Commission Report for compelling as from the historian Rohan D'Olier Butler written memorandum about the attitude of the British government to Causa Katyn ( Butler memorandum stating). British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered silence on the case in view of the conflicting opinions of the experts. O'Malley's analysis envelope was sealed and archived; instead, the English translation of the Burdenko report sent by the Soviet embassy in London was reprinted and circulated by the authorities.

The Polish government in exile had a report with the title “The mass murder of the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn” compiled and it was also sent in English to the Foreign Office, where it was officially ignored. The report, which identified the Soviet perpetrators as proven by a wealth of evidence, was only published in 1990. An even more comprehensive analysis of the Burdenko Commission's report with the same result was contained in the “White Paper” on Katyn published in 1948 by General Władysław Anders on behalf of the government-in-exile. It was u. a. it was proven that the three alleged camps 1-ON, 2-ON and 3-ON never existed.

The Polish newspapers controlled by the German occupiers and published in the Generalgouvernement of Poland published a statement by former Prime Minister Leon Kozłowski , who lived in Berlin , in which he stated that the Burdenko Commission's work was reminiscent of “a very bad film”.

The propaganda ministry in Berlin tried to initiate a campaign against the report of the Burdenko commission. The German embassy in Helsinki was supposed to persuade the military doctor Arno Saxén , a member of the international medical commission in Katyn, to refute the report. But Saxén refused. After all, the German diplomats came across Finnish expertise, according to which the type of execution established in Katyn was typical of the NKVD. The Hitler opponent Hans Bernd von Haeften was responsible for sending this report to the foreign press and to the diplomatic corps in Berlin .

Work-up

Reports of Burdenko's doubts

In 1950 the anti-Soviet magazine " Sozialistitscheski Westnik " published in Paris published a letter to the editor from a Russian exile named Boris Olschanski, who described himself as a friend of the Burdenko family. Olschanski visited Burdenko in Moscow in 1945. He said that during the investigation of the mass graves in Katyn he came to the conclusion that they had been laid out in 1940, and that the Soviets were the perpetrators. But had "Stalin personally" ordered that his expertise must prove the guilt of the Germans.

After analyzing the NKVD files on the commission in the 1990s, Russian historians expressed the view that Burdenko was not involved in Merkulov's manipulations and should not have learned about it. A former NKVD functionary who was involved in the preparation of the mass graves stated that, in his opinion, Burdenko had seen through the manipulation, but had remained silent for fear of reprisals.

Nuremberg Trials

During the preparations for the Nuremberg Trials , the representatives of the victorious powers agreed on a provision that should shorten the proceedings: the final reports of war crimes already investigated by the victorious powers should be admitted as evidence. For this reason, the Soviet authorities held half a dozen show trials for German war crimes. At the Leningrad trial (December 1945 / January 1946) Katyn was one of the charges.

At the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , the Soviet main prosecutor Roman Rudenko put the Katyn mass murder on the list of German war crimes. As evidence, he presented the report of the Burdenko Commission under file number USSR-54 and the judgments in the Leningrad trial under file number USSR-90 and USSR-91, but the grounds for the Katyn charge were missing. In the British delegation of lawyers, however, contrary to the official line of London, doubts arose as to the correctness of the Soviet representation, as Telford Taylor , the assistant to the US chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson , described in his memoir on the Nuremberg trials. Jackson himself was convinced at a meeting by his advisor William J. Donovan , the former head of the US secret service OSS , and the German resistance fighter Fabian von Schlabrendorff , who was stationed in Smolensk in 1943 and was well informed about the examinations of the medical commission at the time, that the evidence of USSR-54 could not be factual. The US delegation in Nuremberg also received the analysis of the Polish government-in-exile from 1946. In the course of the proceedings, the representatives of the victorious powers agreed not to mention the Katyn charge again; however, no reason was given for this.

Madden Commission

In 1951/52 a committee of the US Congress , named after its chairman Ray J. Madden by the media Madden Commission , investigated whether the US government under Roosevelt had suppressed reports of evidence of Soviet perpetrators in Katyn. During the hearings, specialists and witnesses were also asked about the Burdenko Commission's report. Former Moscow ambassador W. Averell Harriman had to let the commission accuse him of having naively fallen for Soviet propaganda by confirming the report of the Burdenko commission. His daughter Kathleen had to admit that on the trip to Katyn in 1944 she was completely lacking the competence to assess the presentation of the Burdenko Commission. The former secretary of the embassy, ​​John Melby, had no answer to the question of why he had underlined the German perpetrators in the balance sheet of his 1944 report, although the report itself consisted of "95 percent" arguments in favor of Soviet guilt. The Russian mathematics professor Boris Olschanski, who fled to the West, confirmed the content of his interview with Burdenko, in which Burdenko admitted that he was convinced of the Soviet perpetrators.

On behalf of the Commission, Madden sent a questionnaire on Katyn to the USSR State Department in Moscow, and in response the Soviet embassy in Washington sent the Burdenko Commission's report. The final report of the Madden Commission pointed to many inconsistencies in the statements of the Burdenko Commission and concluded that the answer to the question about the Katyn killers could only be provided by the NKVD archives.

In the People's Republic of Poland , the party organ Trybuna Ludu published the full report of the Burdenko Commission on three full pages as part of a press campaign against the Madden Commission on March 4, 1952. The press, controlled by the communist leadership, published numerous articles presenting this report as correct and placing Katyn on a par with the German crimes of Auschwitz and Majdanek .

Polish-Russian Historians' Commission

In 1987, the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and the Polish state and party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski agreed to set up a "Joint Commission of Party Historians" to deal with "blank spots" in the common history. In 1988 the Polish commission members presented an expertise in which they agreed on every basis for the results of the Burdenko commission. But the Soviet side rejected the expertise. It was published in Poland in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991, a year after Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD was responsible.

Military Prosecutor's Office in Moscow

From 1990 to 1994 the military prosecutor in Moscow analyzed files relating to the Burdenko Commission and questioned witnesses. It found that the Commission's report was based on forged documents and that some of its members were involved in the forgeries. The Russian Chief Military Prosecutor commissioned a group of experts to prepare a legal opinion on the Burdenko Commission's report. The report presented on August 2, 1993 stated: “The commission forged evidence, testimony and documents. Their approach did not correspond to scientific criteria, their results not the truth. "

The results of the Military Prosecutor's Office have been questioned by the Russian Communist Party , which has defended the Burdenko Commission's report as being true. A number of authors did this too, including the hobby historian Yuri Muchin , the most prominent exponent of the “anti-Katyn” literature, in which Gorbachev's 1990 admission is presented as the result of his viability and Western blackmail.

literature

  • Władysław Anders (Ed.): Zbrodnia Katyńska w świetle dokumentów. Gryf, London 1948, pp. 319-350.
  • Adam Basak: Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia Katyńska przed Trybunalem Norymberskim. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Breslau 1993, ISBN 83-229-0885-7 .
  • Natalia S. Lebiediewa, Komisja Specjalna i jej przewodniczący Burdenko, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008) , pp. 56-101.
  • Krystyna Piórkowska: English-speaking Witnesses to Katyn / Angielskojęzyczni świadkowie Katynia. Warsaw 2012 ISBN 978-83-904932-3-7 , pp. 94-108.
  • George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet massacre of 1940: Truth, justice and memory. Routledge, London 2005, ISBN 0-415-33873-5 , pp. 136-140.
  • Thomas Urban : Katyn 1940. History of a crime. Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-67366-5 , pp. 124-136.
  • Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86854-286-8 , pp. 265-272.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 15.
  2. ↑ John P. Fox, The Katyn Case and the Nazi Propaganda, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 3 (1982), p. 464 ( PDF ).
  3. ↑ Official material on the Katyn mass murder. Berlin 1943, pp. 114-117.
  4. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 70-72.
  5. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 74 f.
  6. ↑ Władimir Abarinow: Oprawcy for Katynia. Krakow 2007, pp. 272-276.
  7. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 58-61.
  8. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 65-69.
  9. ↑ Inessa Jažborovskaja, Anatolij Jablokov, Valentina Parsadanova: Katynskij sindrom w sovetsko-polskich otnošenijach. Moscow 2009, pp. 368–374.
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  11. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 62–63.
  12. ↑ Vladimir Pozdnjakov, Novoe o Katyni, in: Novyj žurnal , 104 (1971), p. 276.
  13. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), p. 59.
  14. ^ Benedikt Sarnov: Stalin i pisateli. Kniga Vtoraja. Moscow 2008, pp. 10-15, 216-217.
  15. ^ Wojciech Materski: Murder Katyński. Siedemdziesiąt lat drogi do prawdy. Warsaw 2010. p. 35.
  16. ↑ OV Kornilova, O probleme izučenija katynskoj tragedii, in: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala , 3.2004, p. 9.
  17. ↑ a b Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 76-78.
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  20. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), p. 65.
  21. ↑ Jacek Trznadel, Katyń a źródła as well asckie, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie, 1 (1990), p. 117.
  22. ↑ WH Lawrence, Soviets Blames Foe in Killing Poles, in: New York Times , January 27, 1944 p. 3
  23. ^ Edmund Stevens, A Visit to the Notorious Katyn Forest, in: The Argus, June 9, 1945, p. 16.
  24. ↑ Jerome Davis: Behind Soviet Power , West Haven, Conn. 1949, p. 99.
  25. ↑ a b Homer Smith: Black Man in Red Russia. A memoir. New York 1964, p. 162.
  26. ↑ Krystyna Piórkowska: English-Speaking Witnesses to Katyn. Recent Research. Warsaw 2012, pp. 96–97.
  27. ↑ Katyn '1940-2000. Documenty. Red. NS Lebedeva. Moscow 2001, pp. 433-437.
  28. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: “To co wiedziałem przekracza swą grozą najśmielsze fantazje”. Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 128.
  29. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 80, 85-86.
  30. ↑ a b Moscow Despatch No. 207 with Enclosure Regarding the Investigation of Soviet Authorities of the Massacre of Polish Soldiers in the Katyn Forest, Near Smolensk, 02/23/1944 , images 3-8.
  31. ↑ Jacek Trznadel, Rosyjscy świadkowie Katynia (1943-1946-1991), in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 2 (1992), pp. 113-114.
  32. ↑ Inessa Jažborovskaja, Anatolij Jablokov, Valentina Parsadanova: Katynskij sindrom w sovetsko-polskich otnošenijach. Moscow 2009, p. 357.
  33. ↑ Alexander Werth: Russia at War 1941-45. London 1964, pp. 662-663.
  34. ↑ Victoria Teresa Plewak: Katyn 60 Years on. Uncovering a Stalinist Massacre. Edmonton / Alberta 2000, p. 29.
  35. ^ Richard Lauterbach, Day in the Forest, in: Time , February 7, 1944, p. 30.
  36. ↑ Fałszerze mają głos ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Pamiętam. Katyń 1940. Narodowy Centrum Kultury, accessed on March 2, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pamietamkatyn1940.pl
  37. ^ John Earl Haynes / Harvey Klehr: Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven, Conn. 1999, p. 237.
  38. ^ Harvey Klehr / John Earl Haynes / Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov: The secrete world of American Communism. New Haven / London: Yale University Press. 1995, p. 299.
  39. ↑ Pravda o Katyniu. Nakładem Związku Patrjotów Polskich w ZSSR. Moscow 1944.
  40. ↑ Krystyna Piórkowska: English-speaking Witnesses to Katyn / Angielskojęzyczni świadkowie Katynia. Warsaw 2012, pp. 103-104.
  41. ↑ Katyn '1940-2000. Documenty. Red. NS Lebedeva. Moscow 2001, p. 432.
  42. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, vol. VII, pp. 2142-2144.
  43. ↑ Desinformacija o Katyni v zapadnoj presse , katynfiles.com , May 9, 2011.
  44. ↑ Homer Smith, Byłem w Lesie Katyńskim, in: Wiadomości , November 28, 1976, p. 1.
  45. ↑ Averell Harriman / Elie Abel: Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941-1946. New York 1975, pp. 301-302.
  46. ↑ Moscow Telegram No. 247 from W. Averell Harriman Regarding Trip to Smolensk and Examination of Evidence, 01/25/1944 , File Unit 74.00116
  47. ↑ Katyn: despatches of Sir Owen O'Malley to the British Government. Introd. by L. FitzGibbon. London 1972, p. 8.
  48. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, pp. 168-176.
  49. ↑ Laurence Rees: World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West. New York 2010, p. 246.
  50. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, p. 180.
  51. ↑ Masowe morderstwo polskich jeńców wojennych w Katyniu, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 1 (1990), pp. 161-183.
  52. ↑ Zbrodnia katyńska w świetle dokumentów. Z przedmową Władysława Andersa. London 1948, pp. 319-350.
  53. ^ Goniec Krakowski , February 5, 1944, p. 1.
  54. ↑ Prof. Arno Saxén w sprawie polskiej, in: Contact. Pismo Zjednoczenia Polskiego w Helsingforsie, 4.2008, p. 6.
  55. ^ Eugenia Maresch: Katyń 1940th Dowody zdrady Zachodu. Documentation brytyjskich archiwów. Warsaw 2014, p. 221.
  56. ↑ B. Ol'šanskij, Katyn '(Pis'mo v redakciju), in: Socialističeskij Vestnik , 6.1950, p. 114.
  57. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa: Komisja Specjalna i jej Przewodniczący Burdenko . In: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp. 59–60, 73–74.
  58. ↑ Oleg Zakirov: Obcy element. Dramatyczne losy oficera KGB w walce o wyjaśnienie zbrodni katyńskiej. Poznań 2010, p. 224.
  59. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, pp. 298–299.
  60. ↑ Katyn w Norymberdze , Gazeta Wyborcza , supplement "Ale Historia", April 4, 2015, p. 7.
  61. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, pp. 299, 337.
  62. ^ Telford Taylor: The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials. A personal memoir. London 1993, p. 467.
  63. ^ How the Katyn massacre disappeared from the prosecution , sueddeutsche.de, May 14, 2015.
  64. ↑ Adam Basak: Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia Katyńska przed Trybunalem Norymberskim. Breslau 1993, p. 111.
  65. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 353.
  66. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. VII, p. 2127.
  67. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. VII, pp. 2134-2147.
  68. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. VII, p. 2152.
  69. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. VII, pp 1940-1941.
  70. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. III, p. 225.
  71. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre . US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, Vol. VI, pp. 1799-1802.
  72. ↑ Witold Wasilewski: Propaganda kłamstwa counterproductive "Komisja Katyńska" Izby Reprezentantów USA, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), pp 112-115.
  73. ^ Tadeusz Kisielewski: Katyń. Zbrodnia i kłamstwo. Poznań 2012, pp. 212-213.
  74. ↑ Jarema Maciszewski, Document po katynskomu delu, in: Katynskaja drama: Kozel'sk, Starobel'sk, Ostaškov. Sud'ba internirovannych polskich vojennoslužaščich. Moscow 1991, pp. 179-201.
  75. ↑ Władimir Abarinow: Oprawcy for Katynia. Krakow 2007, p. 317.
  76. ↑ Kwalifikacja prawna zbrodni katyńskiej. Orzeczenie Komisji Ekspertów (fragmenty), in: Zeszty Katynskie , 20 (2005), p. 181.
  77. ↑ Katynskoe delo po Gebbel'su kprf.ru, September 18, 2009.
  78. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, p. 204.
  79. ↑ Tadeusz Rawski, Muchinowska wizja Polski i zbrodni katyńskiej, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 22 (2007), p. 69.