By W.H. Lamb
Category: W.H. Lamb

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” -  Mark Twain

Robert Weich, Jr.'s powerful analysis of Dwight Eisenhower's rise to power. Originally published in 1963.
Robert Weich, Jr.'s powerful analysis of Dwight Eisenhower's rise to power. Originally published in 1963.

In part 1 of this article I mentioned the fact that as early as December, 1954, an ex-candy manufacturer from Boston, Robert Welch, Jr., at the request of several friends with whom he had been discussing the background of General, and by then—President Dwight Eisenhower, had a discussion with some friends and business associates that turned into a letter that in 1963 became a self-published book titled, THE POLITICIAN.  One of the chapters of that letter-turned-into-a-book was called, “Operation Keelhaul”.  Except for those unfortunates who had survived that dastardly “crime against humanity” which occurred from just before the end of WW11 through early 1947, very little information regarding this horror was available to the American public without extensive research.  Robert Welch was, to my knowledge, virtually the first writer who had done that research and was determined to inform a few of his friends and later, thousands of people, about one of the worst atrocities  that had ever been perpetrated against large numbers of innocent people, atrocities that had been committed  by people who should have known better—the American and British military, at the direction of top ranked American generals. 

A few brave authors wrote about the forced repatriation of Russian refugees at the end of WW11 several years after Robert Welch’s seminal book, The Politician, was distributed in 1963One of the early studies of this atrocity was Peter Huxley-Blythe’s book, The East Came West (Caxton Printers, 1964).  Also the late Julius Epstein, working for the Hoover Institution, went to court twice  in his efforts to obtain records about Operation Keelhaul.  His work appeared in 1973 when Devin-Adair Publishers released, Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present”.  In 1974, Nicholas Bethell’s book, The Last Secret:  Forcible Repatriation to Russia 1944-1947 (Basic Books) was published both in Britain and the U.S. 

In 1980, the Institute For Historical Review’s Charles Lutton reviewed a book by Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant relative of the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in the U.S. in 1978.  Tolstoy’s U.S. version was titled The Secret Betrayal, of which Lutton wrote:

“The forced repatriation of Russians at the end of WW11 has been dealt

with in several books that appeared before Count Tolstoy’s book was published in Britain in 1977 under the title of ‘Victims of Yalta’(But Robert Welch’s book, The Politician, was self-published in 1963, and 100,000 copies were widely distributed soon thereafter—WL).   With the invasion of Western Europe in June of 1944, thousands of Russian prisoners fell into the hands of the Allies.  Many were forced laborers who had been working on the Atlantic Wall for the (Nazi) Todt Organization.  Others were simply refugees.  However, the Western Allies were surprised to discover that thousands (of Russians) had willingly joined the WEHRMACHT (the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945—WL).  Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov asserted in May 1944 that the number of Russians serving in the German Armed Forces was “insignificant.”  Actually, approximately one million of Stalin’s subjects had joined the other side” (That is. a million Russians had VOLUNTARILY joined and fought with or assisted the German Army, with the goal of overthrowing the Soviet Russian Communist government, which they all despised, and with the understanding that they would NOT fight against the Allies).  It was these Russians that Stalin hated and called traitors to communism, and whom he wanted to get back into his tyrannous and murderous hands.  And thanks to General Dwight Eisenhower and General George Marshall, they were all turned over to Stalin (except those who killed themselves before they could be repatriated to that communist butcher).

Some historical review is needed at this point.  As soon as the hostilities between the Allies and Germany ceased in the Spring of 1945, the vast Russian Red Army began to invade Hungary and other Eastern European countries whose governments had collapsed during the Nazi occupation, or soon after the Nazis evacuated.  The Red Army became a despotic force as it plundered, tortured, and raped the virtually helpless Hungarian people as it raced toward Budapest, the Hungarian capital. Thousands of patriotic and desperate Hungarians made a brave, last ditch resistance against the invading communist army.  When the Hungarian patriots could hold out no longer they retreated out of their capital and surrendered to American troops who were nearby.  As they always did, the invading and conquering Russian communists set up a

“puppet regime” that they called a “provisional government”.  Immediately this puppet government demanded that the Americans return ALL of these freedom fighters who had resisted the Russian communist invasion of Hungary.  Since there were NO “war criminals” (Nazi collaborators) among the Hungarian patriots who had resisted the communists’ takeover of their country, the American Legal Team, located in conquered Germany, initially refused to allow the Hungarians to be sent back to Hungary.  That should have been the end of the matter, but to our everlasting shame, it wasn’t.

Mrs. Laszlo Endre, the wife of one of these Hungarian freedom fighters, became concerned over the fate of her husband and his fellow patriots.  On August 15, 1945 she had a meeting with Hungarian Cardinal Rohracher, and urged him to use his power to prevent the Americans from sending those freedom fighters back to the communist government in Budapest.  The Cardinal assured her that he had already discussed the matter with American General Mark Clark, Commander of the 15th Army Group, who opined that the Hungarians, who were by now prisoners of the American forces, would not be handed over to the communist puppet government.  But Mrs. Endre still harbored a premonition of danger regarding her husband and his compatriots.  She sought out Countess Lili Alberti, an old school friend who was, at that time, working for the Allies.  After explaining to her friend that she was trying to assure herself of the future safety of her husband and his fellow anti-communist fighters, she was shocked to be told the truth, of which apparently neither Cardinal Rohracher or General Mark Clark had been aware.

The grim truth, explained the Countess, was that there was no longer any hope, as she explained to her friend  that all of the Hungarian patriots, as well as ALL members of anti-communist governments everywhere (in occupied Eastern Europe) WOULD BE DELIVERED TO THE COUNTRIES OF THEIR ORIGIN, which meant returning these Hungarians and untold numbers of other anti-communist refugees to their former countries, all of which by this time had been overrun by the Red Army and in which hostile puppet communist governments had been established.  When Mrs. Endre protested that she had been informed that General Clark had said that this wouldn’t happen, Countess Alberti replied: “I HAVE SEEN THE ORDER.  IT IS SIGNED BY DWIGHT EISENHOWER!”  Her information was, sadly, correct, and shortly thereafter all of those brave Hungarian patriots, who had tried valiantly to prevent the Red Army from overrunning their country, were extradited back to the Communist puppet government in Hungary, although the U.S. Army’s Legal Department in Germany never approved the extraditions that General Eisenhower had ordered. But Eisenhower was The Supreme Commander of American Forces, and his boss, Five Star General of the Army George Marshall, supported Eisenhower’s orders. Most of these patriots were publically executed or died in communist gulags.

This atrocity, however, was only “the tip of the iceberg” regarding many instances of forced repatriations of people back to their countries of origin, and almost certain death, torture, and/or imprisonment.  As Robert Welch wrote, in The Politician:  This, and many other incidents such as this, “are simply…illustrations of a heartrending program, carried out on a massive scale, over a long period of time.  Stalin had made up his mind to use the chaos of the war’s end, the reach of his armies into countries which had harbored refugees from Communism, and the help of Dwight Eisenhower, to drag back to Russia for liquidation or slave labor everybody who had escaped his country since 1939, and who was still in Central Europe, regardless of what they had been doing since.  This exercise of memory and vengeance, as a warning to others who might wish to run out from under the Communist tyranny, was to apply to men, women, and children; to civilians, and soldiers; to those who had fought in German uniform against the Allies, and alike to those who had fought the Germans, as volunteers WITH the Americans and other allies, on many fronts.  There were somewhere from two to five million victims involved.  And Eisenhower saw to it that every one of them who could be found was returned, despite whatever cruelty and force were needed—and despite the fact that to do so he had to violate not only international law, and the laws of humanity, but the actual laws of his own country as well.” 

Next time in Part 3, we’ll discover that Generals Eisenhower and Marshall used the 1945 “Yalta Agreement” to justify their barbaric treatment of anti-communist refugees, and how Eisenhower turned a “blind eye” to the betrayal of anti-communist Russian General Andrei Vlasov and his entire army.  And we’ll discuss what Eisenhower’s hidden motives regarding his support of this inhumanity might have been!

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