Operation Keelhaul

Template:Short description Template:Infobox event Operation Keelhaul was a forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and members of the Soviet Army in the West to the Soviet Union (although it often included former soldiers of the Russian Empire or Russian Republic, who did not have Soviet citizenship) after World War II. While forced repatriation was mainly of Soviet Armed Forces POWs of Germany and Russian Liberation Army members, it included many other people under Allied control. Refoulement, the forced repatriation of people in danger of persecution, is a human rights violation and breach of international law.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In addition many such POWs did not wish to return to the Soviet Union however they were forced to do so by various Allied soldiers, often at gun point or have been otherwise tricked into doing so. Thus Operation Keelhaul qualified as a war crime under Article 2 and 3 of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and qualified as a breach especially regarding the many civilians forced into Soviet work camps, many of whom had never been Soviet citizens having fled Russia before the end of the Russian Civil War.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The operation was carried out in Northern Italy and Germany by British and American forces between 14 August 1946 and 9 May 1947.<ref name="Tolstoy">Template:Cite book</ref> Anti-communist Yugoslavs and Hungarians, including members of the fascist Ustaše regime that ran the Jasenovac concentration camp,<ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> were also forcibly repatriated to their respective territories of origin.<ref name="Hummel">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Three volumes of records, entitled "Forcible Repatriation of Displaced Soviet Citizens—Operation Keelhaul", were classified Top Secret by the U.S. Army on September 18, 1948, and bear the secret file number 383.7-14.1.<ref name="Hummel" />

Yalta Conference

At the Yalta Conference it was agreed that the western Allies would return all Soviet citizens who found themselves in their zones to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected the liberated Soviet prisoners of war,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> but also extended to all Soviet citizens, irrespective of their wishes. In exchange, the Soviet government agreed to hand over several thousand western Allied prisoners of war whom they had liberated from German prisoner of war camps.<ref name="Sanders, James D. 1992">Template:Cite book</ref>

Treatment of prisoners and refugees

The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied parts of Europe included anti-communists, civilians, and Nazi collaborators from eastern European countries. They added to the mass of 'displaced persons' from the Soviet Union already in Western Europe, the vast majority of whom were Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers (Template:Lang).

Soviet subjects who had volunteered for the German Army Template:Lang and/or Template:Lang units were forcibly repatriated. These included Russian Cossacks of the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps with their relatives, who were transported from the Western occupation zones of Allied-occupied Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria and Allied-occupied Germany. Among those handed over were White émigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens. Some of them 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 1 September 1939 were to be compelled to return to the Soviet Union or handed over to Soviet officials in other locations (see Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II).

The actual "Operation Keelhaul" was the last forced repatriation and involved the selection and subsequent transfer of approximately one thousand "Russians" from the camps of Bagnoli, Aversa, Pisa, and Riccione.<ref name=Tolstoy/> Applying the "McNarney-Clark Directive", subjects who had served in the German Army were selected for shipment, starting on 14 August 1946. The transfer was codenamed "East Wind" and took place at St. Valentin in Austria on 8 and 9 May 1947.<ref name=Tolstoy/> This operation marked the end of forced repatriations to the Soviet Union after World War II, and ran parallel to Operation Fling that helped Soviet defectors to escape from the Soviet Union.<ref name=Tolstoy/>

On the other side of the exchange, the Soviet leadership found out that despite the demands set forth by Stalin, British intelligence was retaining a number of anti-Communist prisoners under orders from Churchill, with the intention of reviving "anti-Soviet operations".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, recruited from Ukrainians in Galicia, was not repatriated, ostensibly because Galicia had belonged to Poland prior to September 1939, but in reality because MI6 wished to use the prisoners in future operations.Template:Sfn The officer in charge of screening the 14th Division for war criminals, Fitzroy Maclean, admitted in an interview in 1989 that it was "fairly clear that there was every probability that there were war criminals amongst them", but argued that in the context of the Cold War, such men were needed to fight against the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn On 23 March 1947, the United Kingdom granted asylum to the entire 14th Division, whose men were subsequently settled in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.Template:Sfn The Soviet government protested against this decision, stating that most of the men in the division had previously served in German police units in Galicia and were deeply involved in perpetrating war crimes, but using a brief written by Pavlo Shandruk, an officer in the division as its basis, the Foreign Office issued a statement denying the 14th division had been involved in war crimes.Template:Sfn

Critics

British historian Nikolai Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after delivering a shipment of people to the Soviet authorities: "The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Notably, his accounts have been widely disputed by historians,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> who pointed out his reliance on three partial eyewitness accounts 40 years afterwards.<ref>Booker, 1997, Chapter 12. 2. "Bleiburg: The Massacre That Never Was", p. 188.</ref>

Nigel Nicolson, a former British Army captain, was Tolstoy's chief witness in the libel action brought by Lord Aldington. In 1995, he wrote:

Ghinghis Guirey, an American on one of the repatriation screening teams, reported:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Tolstoy, who was sued for libel in a 1989 case brought by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case in the British courts. He initially avoided paying damages by declaring bankruptcy, but was forced to pay £57,000 to Aldington's estate in 2000.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• Bleiburg repatriations
• Collaboration during World War II
• Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II
• Russian Liberation Army
• Soviet repressions against former prisoners of war
• Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers
• Western betrayal
• XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps

References

Books

• Template:Cite book

Further reading

• Tolstoy, Nikolai. Victims of Yalta, originally published in London, 1977. Revised edition 1979. Template:ISBN
• Epstein, Julius. Operation Keelhaul, Devin-Adair, 1973. Template:ISBN

External links

• Return to the scene of the crime Template:Webarchive Rutland Herald Online.