49’000 German officers

James G

Gone Fishin'
At the 1943 Tehran Conference between the WW2 Allies, Stalin talked of executing 50’000 German military officers at the end of the war.
Apparently Roosevelt took it as a joke and suggested a figure of 49’000 whereas Churchill strongly objected to this saying that such men were only fighting for their country and weren’t to be blamed for what Hitler and the Nazis were doing.
A year later, at Yalta, it was again mentioned between the three men.
Let’s just say that Stalin does this at the end of the war: repeats the Katyn Forest incident and shoots tens of thousands of German officers without cause.
Even without consent from Roosevelt and Churchill – or Truman and Atlee in-charge by Potsdam – does Stalin’s hypothetical actions cause history to look very differently at the Western leaders of the time?
It could be argued that they didn’t know Stalin was serious – it was suggested that it was all in jest by Stalin – and they later had nothing to do with it happening.
But if they knew, especially in advance, and didn’t object how would history view Roosevelt and Churchill now?
 

Deleted member 1487

Didn't over 1 million German PoWs never come home from Siberia IOTL? I think that basically happened IOTL via other means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II#German_Prisoners_of_War
The fates of German prisoners of war have been a concern in post war Germany. By 1950 the Soviets reported that they had repatriated all German prisoners of war except a small number of convicted war criminals. During the cold war in West Germany there were claims that one million German prisoners of war were held in secret by the USSR. The West German government set up the Maschke Commission to investigate the fate of German POW in the war; in its report of 1974 the Maschke Commission found that about 1.2 million German military personnel reported as missing more than likely died as POWs, including 1.1 million in the USSR.[45] Based on his research, Rüdiger Overmans believes that the deaths of 459,000 dead POWs can confirmed be in the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt)(including 363,000 in the USSR). Overmans estimates the actual death toll of German POWs is about 1.1 million men (including 1.0 million in the USSR); he maintains that among those reported as missing were men who actually died as prisoners.[46]
 
Let’s just say that Stalin does this at the end of the war: repeats the Katyn Forest incident and shoots tens of thousands of German officers without cause.
Even without consent from Roosevelt and Churchill – or Truman and Atlee in-charge by Potsdam – does Stalin’s hypothetical actions cause history to look very differently at the Western leaders of the time?

No. As noted, a huge number of German PoWs died in Soviet custody during and after the war; nobody got excited about it. Probably close to 50,000 officers were among them.

This may have been due to the much larger number of Soviet PoWs who died in German custody during the war. And of course the immense number of Soviet civilians who died.

"Payback's a bitch", and all that. And it wasn't as though US and UK could do much of anything about Soviet treatment of German PoWs.
 

Deleted member 1487

Several thousand Allied PoW were liberated by the Red Army. There was difficulty in getting many of those back.
Got a source on that? I was just reading about that and AFAIK there was no problem getting Americans, French, or Brits back.
 

Fenlander

Banned
Got a source on that? I was just reading about that and AFAIK there was no problem getting Americans, French, or Brits back.
Well there's this.
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Soldiers_of_misfortune.html?id=JCR1Z3f-LTUC&redir_esc=y

A secret covenant of the 1945 Yalta agreement provided that the U.S. and Britain would return Soviet citizens residing in the West. In exchange, Stalin promised to return Western soldiers who had been liberated by the Red Army. After the war, American and British authorities breached that agreement by secretly permitting Soviets to remain in the West. Stalin learned about the deception and retaliated by holding 23,500 American and 30,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers captive in the vast Soviet gulag system.
 

Deleted member 1487


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Americans
There were stories during the Cold War to the effect that 23,000 Americans who had been held in German POW camps were seized by the Soviets and never repatriated. This myth had been perpetuated after the release of people like John H. Noble. Careful scholarly studies have demonstrated this is a myth based on a misinterpretation of a telegram that was talking about Soviet prisoners held in Italy.[75]
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2006/MR351.2.pdf
 
Got a source on that? I was just reading about that and AFAIK there was no problem getting Americans, French, or Brits back.

Vast majority of Americans liberated by the Red Army (in excess of 23,000) were returned. Allegations that the Soviets withheld another 23,000 Americans after the war are rank conspiracy nonsense. Of Americans (over 90,000) held by the Germans, perhaps a thousand died, with about 200 whose final fate is unknown, and therefore unaccounted for. The rest of them came home. Some Americans of the period certainly did end up in the Gulag, but we probably talking a few dozen rather than tens of thousands. Which is still a crime of course, but it likely did not occur as the result of a systematic policy. Doctor Paul Cole of the Rand Institute did an excellent study of the issue which should still be available online for any interested party to read.

Edit_ I see the Cole study has been alluded to. Excellent.

About ten thousand Frenchmen in service with Hitler's army are thought to have died in Soviet hands. I don't know anything really, about the British side of things.
 
Vast majority of Americans liberated by the Red Army (in excess of 23,000) were returned. Allegations that the Soviets withheld another 23,000 Americans after the war are rank conspiracy nonsense. ...

Thats the core of it.

The myth started with negotiations and threats surrounding the lack of swift repatriation of former PoW. Understandably a lot of former Red Army soldiers did not want to return and sympathetic Allied commanders were slow to send them back. It was a low priority to them anyway. The Soviets threatened to stall repatriation of former Allied PoW in their custody. Sending them back was not a high priority for the transportation dept, & the Allied soldiers who spent weeks or months sitting in camps run by the NKVD or Red Army were anoyed a bit by the delays. Their stories were easily misinterpreted into years in a Gulag.
 
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