Butler Memorandum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Butler Memorandum (actually: The Katyn Massacre and the Reactions in the Foreign Office. Memorandum by the Historical Adviser ) is a secret report at the time about the attitude of the British government to the Katyn massacre , which the historian Rohan D'Olier wrote on their behalf Butler wrote in 1973. The 44-page report analyzes the statements of experts from the Foreign Office on the question of the perpetrator and the time (Soviet secret service NKVD in spring 1940 or German occupiers in late summer 1941) and recommends that you continue to take no public position.

prehistory

In February 1943, soldiers of the Wehrmacht discovered a mass grave with the bodies of Polish officers buried in uniform in a forest not far from the Russian village of Katyn near Smolensk . On April 11, 1943 , the English-language press agency Transocean, controlled by the Reich Propaganda Ministry in Berlin, sent a first report on it. Historians agree that Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wanted to drive a wedge between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union with the Katyn campaign, which the Soviet secret police accused of being responsible .

The UK government found itself in a dilemma with the international press coverage. Because it was the protecting power of the Polish government in exile in London. The reports on Katyn meant that one of her allies had murdered officers from another ally. The British ambassador to the government-in-exile, Owen O'Malley , after evaluating all reports on Katyn available to him, came to the conclusion that the NKVD had indeed murdered the Poles. In contrast, other Foreign Office experts saw more evidence of German perpetrators. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Secretary of State Anthony Eden decided not to make a public statement based on the conflicting reviews. But Eden castigated Goebbels' propaganda campaign in appearances in front of the House of Commons and thus gave the impression that he accepted the Soviet version, according to which the Germans murdered the Poles. The overwhelming majority of British newspapers adopted the version of the German perpetrators propagated by Moscow.

When, at the beginning of the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals in November 1945, the Soviet main prosecutor Roman Rudenko put the Katyn massacre on the list of German war crimes to be negotiated, the British government instructed its delegation to leave this field to the Soviet side without objection. However, the American delegation managed to have Katyn removed from the indictment.

London also did not support the work of the Madden Commission , a committee of inquiry of the House of Representatives in Washington , which was supposed to investigate in 1951/52 whether the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt suppressed documents about the Katyn massacre between 1943 and 1945.

In the early 1970s , Polish emigre associations approached the authorities in London because they wanted to erect a memorial to the Katyn victims on a square in the central Chelsea district . The year 1940 should be given, which would brand the NKVD as the perpetrator. The initiative was supported by Conservative MPs including Winston Spencer Churchill , a grandson of the former Prime Minister, and Nicholas Bethell , a prominent publicist and historian. However, the conservative government under Edward Heath rejected the initiative because Moscow protested against it and therefore feared disadvantages for British companies operating in the Soviet Union. But it sparked a political controversy. Former British ambassador to the government-in-exile, Owen O'Malley , accused the government and previous cabinets of serious misconduct, negligence and ignorance.

Contents of the memorandum

In 1971, faced with public pressure, the government hired historian Rohan D'Olier Butler, officially advisor to the State Department, to prepare an internal dossier on London's stance on Katyn. The Butler Memorandum states that the Foreign Office officials and the diplomats directly concerned with Katyn had no doubts about the Soviet perpetrators. The author describes how the experts assessed the Katyn documentation, including the reports of the International Medical Commission convened by the German occupiers , the Soviet Burdenko Commission , the American Madden Commission , the Polish Red Cross, written by Kazimierz Skarżyński , and the Expert opinion by the Polish forensic doctor Marian Wodziński , the collection of material compiled by the writer Józef Mackiewicz on behalf of the government-in-exile and the eyewitness report by the economics professor Stanisław Swianiewicz . The memorandum also listed the Leningrad Trial of 1946, in which the German soldier Arno Dürre was sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp for alleged involvement in the Katyn mass murder.

Butler explained that there had been "some uncertainties" at the management level of the Foreign Office, primarily because of the strong international response to the report of the investigative commission set up by Moscow (Burdenko Commission), which attributes the perpetrators to the Germans. He made the recommendation: " We see no advantage in breaking the silence that we have preserved for nearly 30 years. "

The memorandum went to print in 1973 in small numbers; it was only intended for official use and not for the public.

Consequences

The British government stuck to the line recommended by Butler until 1990, when the Soviet party leader Mikhail Gorbachev confirmed the NKVD's perpetration.

The Butler Memorandum was only published in 2003 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the mass graves in Katyn Forest.

The controversial memorial was not erected in the Chelsea neighborhood, but in 1976 in the Gunnersbury cemetery on the outskirts. The writing on the obelisk reads: Katyn 1940 .

literature

  • George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, pp. 168-176.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 15.
  2. ↑ Katyn. Despatches of Sir Owen O'Malley to the British Government. Introd. L. FitzGibbon. London 1972, pp. 22-29.
  3. ^ Philip MH Bell: John Bull and the Bear. British Public Opinion, Foreign Policy and the Soviet Union 1941-1945. London / New York / Melbourne / Auckland 1990, pp. 120-125.
  4. ^ George Sandford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940. Truth, justice and memory. London / New York 2005, pp. 175–177.
  5. ↑ Thomas Urban , How the Katyn Massacre Disappeared from the Prosecution , sueddeutsche.de , May 14, 2015.
  6. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, pp. 178-179.
  7. ^ Eugenia Maresch: Katyń 1940th Dowody zdrady Zachodu. Documentation brytyjskich archiwów. Warsaw 2014, p. 347.
  8. ↑ Lord Nicholas Bethell, Britain stays silent on Stalin's massacre, in: Sunday Times Magazine , May 28, 1972, p. 5.
  9. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, p. 185.
  10. ↑ Katyn: Despatches of Sir Owen O'Malley to the British Government. Introd. L. FitzGibbon. London 1972, pp. 8-18.
  11. ^ The Butler Memorandum: Note on the Author
  12. ^ The Butler Memorandum, p. 44.
  13. ^ The Butler Memorandum : Note on the Author
  14. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 393.
  15. ^ George Sanford: Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. London 2005, p. 168.
  16. ^ Louis FitzGibbon: Katyn Memorial. Hove / Sussex 1976, p. 15.