An important part of the information war is making sure enough Americans are familiar with the facts of history. Here’s one chapter few know about — this is Benjamin Wetmore writing at The Federalist:
At this moment of reflection upon the problems in the resolution to the Second World War, there are victims who are politically palatable, and others who are conveniently forgotten.
While President Obama hugged the survivors of Hiroshima on the quiet but assumed apology for President Truman’s decision to end the fighting against Japan by destroying two cities, other victims of that war who suffered more greatly have never been popularly acknowledged.
As German soldiers were being hung at Nuremberg for forced deportations of civilians to the concentration camp system, American soldiers were corralling up to 3 million Russian refugees of the 1917 Russian Revolution and sending them back to their certain death. This was known as “Operation Keelhaul,” and to the extent it’s referenced at all, it’s mentioned on obscure Web sites and a lonely Wikipedia page. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called this the “last secret” of the Second World War, and it has remained so due to the negligence of professional politicized academics who find fault with an American victory that obviously saved lives. What is odd is that subsequent Allied actions that saved no lives and cost the lives of many more go ignored and forgotten.
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Operation Keelhaul was the forced repatriation of millions of civilians after the end of conflict in Europe. These civilians were in Britain, France, and across Europe. When Czarist Russia fell into chaos, millions fled the impending bloodthirstyness of the Soviets. Vladimir Lenin believed in revolutionary terror to cement political control, taking lessons from the French Revolution. Many families, some elite, some merely middle class, fled with their families. They went to “safe” countries to restart their lives. Twenty-eight years later, to appease post-war Soviet demands for the return of “their” people, our occupation soldiers rounded up these families. Some of those returned were shot and massacred in front of Allied troops.
Read more: The Federalist
