Yep, no secrets for Roosevelt.
"Roosevelt understood that keeping people largely in the dark during wartime actually hindered the prosecution of the war and
undermined the principles for which we fought. "
"
Part of the Yalta Agreement between the Big Three — Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill — involved the
repatriation of Russians and Americans to their respective homelands. Keep in mind that the German POW
camps contained American prisoners, British prisoners, and Russian prisoners. The Big Three agreed that as
the Russians liberated Germany POW camps, American and British POWs would be turned over to the
American and British forces. As the Americans and British liberated German POW camps, Russian POWs
would be returned to Russia.
There was one big problem with this agreement — a problem that each of the Big Three was well aware of.
American and British POWs wanted to return to their own forces. Russian POWs did not want to return
to Russian forces because they knew the fate that awaited them.
Stalin wanted revenge. The Russian prisoners were traitors to communism. They deserved to die.
And Roosevelt and Churchill felt the exact same way. Russia was "our friend." Stalin was "Uncle Joe" to the
American people. Any Russian who had defied Uncle Joe — any Russian who had opposed our communist
friends and allies — deserved to be executed.
The revenge and ensuing holocaust had to be kept secret from the world. The American and British people
had to continue maintaining their illusion that this was a war of good versus evil — that only the Nazis
engaged in cold-blooded murder — that the Allies epitomized all the goodness of mankind.
Therefore, the Big Three spelled out their plans not just in the official Yalta agreement but, also, in a March
31, 1945, secret codicil to the agreement. As James Sanders, Mark Sauter, and R. Cort Kirkwood point out
in their shocking book, Soldiers of Misfortune (1992), the codicil was kept secret from the American and
British people for fifty years . The codicil outlined the secret plan by which the Russians POWs would be
forcibly returned to Stalin's clutches.
Only a couple million were murdered or ended up in the gulags. |
