The Pointlessness of European Political Life: a Case Study in Dessicated Old Commies

1992: A defensive/ passive aggressive statement titles ”News” from Katyn in Roter Morgen (Red Morning), the house Organ of the Communist Party of Germany tries to mock the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940.

Imagine that, the whole Politbureau leadership had signed! What a "find"! However: "Political observers in Poland expected that Warsaw nevertheless would not decide to appear as accuser of the CPSU" (FR). Perhaps Lech Walesa is a secret Stalinist?

This cheap melodrama shows clearly what is to be made of the whole propaganda cry about the alleged "proofs" of Soviet responsibility for Katyn. For decades even in the West it was assumed that the Hitler-fascists were the criminals at Katyn. And then all of a sudden things were turned upside-down. Without a single document being presented. Simply because it was politically convenient.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation

2001: Facts still aren’t good enough.

Yuri Zhukov, senior scholar at the History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims that documents proving Stalin’s security service (NKVD) murdered over 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn massacres are “counterfeit”.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation.

Zhukov is taking issue with documents made public last April which show that on 5 March, 1940, the Soviet politburo decided to kill several thousands of Polish prisoners, who they claimed were, “nationalists and counter-revolutionaries”.

On their release, President Medvedev said of the documents, signed by Stalin: “'Let people see it, let them know who made the decision to kill the Polish officers. It's all there in the documents. All signatures are there, all the faces are known.”

Same old, same old. A Red Army smokescreen with fakes supporting evidence were even presented in an attempt to use the proceeds at Nuremburg as a Soviet-style post-revolutionary show trial. No matter: when you only know one chord, repeat it over and over and play it as loudly as possible. What you’re left with is a European leftist.

This Report is superbly characteristic of Nuremberg evidence. The ‘testimony’ consists of ‘written statements’ signed by ‘eye-witnesses’ but which only appeared in a report written at Stalin’s behest and read aloud (in excerpt form) by a Soviet prosecutor. The ‘statements’ were not attached to the report, the ‘witnesses’’ did not appear in court and the original documents were not available.

Most Nuremberg evidence was considerably less substantial than this document. The ‘forensic report’ reproduced here was the only forensic report ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg.

In April 1943 4,500 bodies were discovered buried in the Katyn Forest. At first the Russians claimed it to be an archeological find but shortly afterwards the British, American and Russian Allies laid the crime at the door of the Nazi enemy. Another 10,000 Polish officers remained unaccounted for.

Following numerous Russian excuses and pretended searches, the British and American authorities both knew of Soviet responsibility by the time the Nuremberg Tribunals were held. The charges of German guilt brought at the IMT placed the British Government and the Tribunal in an intensely difficult position. Relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile were strained and to have acquitted Göring and the other twenty IMT defendants of the crime would have implied that the Russians were guilty, and they shared the bench. When judgement was eventually delivered by Lord Justice Lawrence on 1 November 1946 the charges relating to the Katyn massacre were simply passed over, as if they had never been brought at all.