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Operation Keelhaul
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Operation Keelhaul was a programme carried out in Northern Italy by British and American forces to repatriate Russian captives to the Soviet Union between August 14, 1946 and May 9, 1947. The term has been later applied - specifically after the publication of Epstein's eponymous book - to other Allied acts of often forced repatriation of Russians after the ending of World War II that decided the fate of up to two million post-war refugees fleeing eastern Europe.
of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the Allies would return all Soviet citizens that found themselves in the Allied zone to the Soviet Union.
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Encyclopedia
Operation Keelhaul was a programme carried out in Northern Italy by British and American forces to repatriate Russian captives to the Soviet Union between August 14, 1946 and May 9, 1947. The term has been later applied - specifically after the publication of Epstein's eponymous book - to other Allied acts of often forced repatriation of Russians after the ending of World War II that decided the fate of up to two million post-war refugees fleeing eastern Europe.
Yalta Conference
One of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the Allies would return all Soviet citizens that found themselves in the Allied zone to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected the Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Allies, but was also extended to all Eastern European refugees.
On March 31, 1945, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded the final form of their plans in a secret codicil to the agreement. Outlining the plan to forcibly return the refugees to the Soviet Union, this codicil was kept secret from the American and British people for over fifty years.
Name
The name of the operation comes from the practice of torture, keelhauling. In his book Operation Keelhaul, Julius Epstein states: "That our Armed Forces should have adopted this term as its code name for deporting by brutal force to concentration camp, firing squad, or hangman's noose millions who were already in the lands of freedom, shows how little the high brass thought of their longing to be free."
Treatment of refugees
The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied eastern Europe numbered millions of people. They included many anti-communists of several categories, assorted civilians, both from the Soviet Union and from Yugoslavia, and fascist collaborationists from eastern Slavic and other countries.
In particular, Russian Cossacks of XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps of Waffen-SS with their relatives and Ustaše from Yugoslavia were forcibly repatriated from Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria and Germany and to Yugoslavia (Slovenia) respectively.
Most of the refugees were summarily executed by receiving Communist authorities, sometimes within earshot of the British. One of the killings at the hand of the Yugoslav Partisans is known as the Bleiburg massacre. The majority were not killed in this incident, however, but were instead sent to prison camps, and actually avoided the gulags.
Among those handed over were White emigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens, but who had fought for Nazi Germany against the Soviets during the war, including General Andrei Shkuro and the Ataman of the Don Cossack host Pyotr Krasnov. This was done despite the official statement of the British Foreign Office policy after the Yalta Conference that only Soviet citizens, who had been such after September 1, 1939, were to be compelled to return to the Soviet Union or handed over to Soviet officials in other locations. See Betrayal of the Cossacks for example.
The actual "Operation Keelhaul" was the last forced repatriation and involved the selection and subsequent transfer of about a thousand "Russians" from the camps of Bagnoli, Aversa, Pisa, and Riccione. Applying the "NcNarney-Clark Directive" subjects that had served in the German Army were selected for shipment starting August 14, 1946. It was obvious to all that prisoners were send to a fate of execution, torture, and slave labor. The transfer part was codenamed "East Wind" and took place at St. Valentin in Austria on May 8 and 9, 1947. This operation marked the end of forced repatriations of Russians after WW II. Paradoxically it ran parallel to Operation Fling that helped Soviet defectors to escape from the Soviet Union.
Critics
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II." He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Nikolai Tolstoy, who was charged with libel in a 1989 case brought up by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case.
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Russians:
In 1957 a Polish anti-communist writer Józef Mackiewicz published Kontra, a narrative account of this event.
Some critics addressing the subject have claimed that Operation Keelhaul, if it happened today, would currently be classified a crime of war punishable under international law, because of the summary executions which took place as the consequences of turning over military prisoners, and also because of the alleged murder and rape of refugee women and children from anti-communist eastern European, Russian and Cossack families.
See also
Further reading
- Tolstoy, Nikolai. Victims of Yalta, originally published in London, 1977. Revised edition 1979. ISBN 0-552-11030-2
- Epstein, Julius. Operation Keelhaul, Devin-Adair, 1973. ISBN-13: 978-0815964070
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