| Part of theaftermath of World War II | |
| Date | 14 August 1946 – 9 May 1947 (1946-08-14 –1947-05-09) |
|---|---|
| Motive |
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| Perpetrator | United Kingdom, United States |
Operation Keelhaul was a forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and members of the Soviet Army in the West to theSoviet Union (although it often included former soldiers of theRussian Empire orRussian Republic, who did not have Soviet citizenship) after World War II. While forced repatriation was mainly ofSoviet Armed ForcesPOWs ofGermany andRussian 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.[1] In addition many suchPOWs did not wish to return to theSoviet Union; however, they were forced to do so by variousAllied soldiers, often at gun point, or were otherwise tricked into doing so. Thus Operation Keelhaul qualified as awar crime under Article 2 and 3 of theGeneva Convention on Prisoners of War and qualified as a breach especially regarding the many civilians forced intoSoviet work camps, many of whom had never been Soviet citizens, having fled Russia before the end of theRussian Civil War.[2]
The operation was carried out inNorthern Italy andGermany byBritish andAmerican forces between 14 August 1946 and 9 May 1947.[3] Anti-communist Yugoslavs and Hungarians, including members of the fascistUstaše regime that ran theJasenovac concentration camp,[4] were also forcibly repatriated to their respective territories of origin.[5]
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.[5]
At theYalta Conference it was agreed that the westernAllies would return all Soviet citizens who found themselves in their zones to theSoviet Union. This immediately affected the liberatedSoviet prisoners of war,[6] but also extended to all Soviet citizens, irrespective of their wishes. In exchange, the Soviet government agreed to hand over several thousandwestern Allied prisoners of war whom they had liberated from German prisoner of war camps.[7]
The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied parts of Europe includedanti-communists, civilians, andNazi collaborators from eastern European countries. They added to the mass of 'displaced persons' from the Soviet Union already inWestern Europe, the vast majority of whom were Soviet prisoners of war andforced laborers (Ostarbeiter).
Soviet subjects who had volunteered for the German ArmyOstlegionen and/orWaffen-SS units were forcibly repatriated. These included RussianCossacks of theXVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps with their relatives, who were transported from the Western occupation zones ofAllied-occupied Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria andAllied-occupied Germany. Among those handed over wereWhite émigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens. Some of them had fought for Nazi Germany against the Soviets during the war, including GeneralAndrei Shkuro and theAtaman of theDon Cossack hostPyotr 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 (seeRepatriation 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 ofBagnoli,Aversa,Pisa, andRiccione.[3] 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 atSt. Valentin inAustria on 8 and 9 May 1947.[3] This operation marked the end of forced repatriations to the Soviet Union after World War II, and ran parallel toOperation Fling that helped Soviet defectors to escape from the Soviet Union.[3]
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-Communistprisoners under orders from Churchill, with the intention of reviving "anti-Soviet operations".[8]
British historianNikolai Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to theinternment camp after delivering a shipment of people to the Soviet authorities: "The Americans returned toPlattling 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."[9] Notably, his accounts have been widely disputed by historians,[10][11] who pointed out his reliance on three partial eyewitness accounts 40 years afterwards.[12]
Nigel Nicolson, a former British Army captain, was Tolstoy's chief witness in the libel action brought byLord Aldington. In 1995, he wrote:
Fifty years ago I was a captain in the British Army, and with others I supervised the Jugoslav (Yugoslav) 'repatriation', as it was euphemistically called. We were told not to use force, and forbidden to inform them of their true destination. When they asked us where they were going, we replied that we were transferring them to another British camp in Italy, and they mounted the trains without suspicion. As soon as the sliding doors of the cattle-trucks were padlocked, our soldiers withdrew and Tito's partisans emerged from the station building where they had been hiding, and took over command of the train.
The prisoners and refugees could see them through cracks in the boarding, and began hammering on the insides of the wagons, shouting abuse at us for having betrayed them, lied to them, and sentenced at least the men among them to a grotesque death. There is now no doubt about their hideous fate, and to those of us on the spot there was little doubt then. Shortly after the first trainloads had been despatched, we heard the stories of the few survivors who escaped back to Austria, and thousands of manacled skeletons have since been disinterred in Slovenian pits.[13]
Ghinghis Guirey, an American on one of the repatriation screening teams, reported:
The most unpleasant aspect of this unpleasant business was the fear these people displayed. Involuntarily one began to look over one's shoulder. I heard so many threats to commit suicide from people who feared repatriation that it became almost commonplace. And they were not fooling.[5]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret ofWorld War II".[14] He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Tolstoy, who was sued forlibel in a 1989 case brought byLord Aldington overwar 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.[15]
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