This week in the War, 12–18 April 1943: Murder in Katyn forest

This week in the war, on 13 April 1943, Radio Berlin announced a grisly discovery in Katyn forest, close to Smolensk. Upwards of 3,000 Polish officers were found buried in layers in a number of mass graves. The officers had been captured by the Soviets during their invasion of Poland in 1939. (One of the German officers who made the discovery was an army intelligence officer named Colonel von Gersdorff—the same man who, a few weeks earlier, had attempted to blow up Hitler.)

The Germans were quick to blame the Soviets for the massacre and invited international observers and forensic experts to inspect the site. The Soviets were equally quick to blame the Nazis. Britain and the USA, being unwilling to offend their Soviet allies, concurred with the Soviet view. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt was willing to accept evidence to the contrary.

Letters, postcards, newspaper clippings and other items found on the bodies in the Katyn forest confirmed that the murders took place in the spring of 1940, well before the German army had arrived in the region.

Over 20,000 Polish military officers, police officers and intellectuals were murdered in 1940 at camps and prisons in Russia.

It was not until 2010 that the Russian Dumas (parliament) officially admitted that the Stalinist regime was to blame and that Stalin had personally ordered the executions.