
Napa Sentinel 
April 7, 1992 
By Harry V. Martin 
Sixth in a Series

MILITARY RECORDS SHOW SOVIETS HELD 20,000 U.S. POWS

A classified government document, declassified and released
under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that in 1955
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles admits the United
States is aware that American POWs from World War Two were
still being held in Soviet captivity - 10 years after World
War Two had ended.

The document marked "secret" was declassified on July 30,
1991.  It reads;

July 18, 1955.  Memorandum for the President.  Subject:
Americans Detained in the Soviet Union.

The American people share with other peoples of the world a
real concern about the imprisonment of some of their
countrymen in the Soviet Union. Most of these persons have
been held since World War II.  It is time to liquidate
problems rising out of that War so that we may proceed with
greater mutual trust to the solution of major issues facing
the world today.

Of greatest concern to American people are reports reaching
the United States about Americans still being held in Soviet
prison camps.  The American Embassy in Moscow has made many
representations on this subject. While we appreciate the
recent release of several Americans, others still remain in
Soviet custody.  On July 16 the American Embassy in Moscow
gave the Foreign Office a list of eight American citizens
about whose detention in the Soviet Union we have
information from returning prisoners of war. Any action you
would take to bring about the early release of these
particular persons would held relations between our
countries.

"We have also received a number of reports from returning
European prisoners of war that members of the crew of the
U.S. Navy Privateer, shot down over the Baltic Sea on April
18, 1950, are alive and in Soviet prison camps.  We are
asking for their repatriation and that of other American
citizens being held in the Soviet Union not only because of
general humanitarian principles, but also because such
action is called for under the Livinov-Roosevelt Agreement
of 1933."

The tragedy of World War One duplicated itself again after
World War Two - only 10 fold.  The United States Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, in its report, An
Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs, states,
"However, despite the total victory in Europe by Allies
forces, thousands and thousands of U.S. soldiers - perhaps
as many as 20,000 - were never repatriated from POW camps,
prisons and forced labor and concentration camps."  U.S.
Major General R.W. Baker was the Allied Chief Negotiator for
repatriation of Allied POWs under the Soviet Army control.
On May 23, 1945, Baker wrote a report to the Chief of Staff
of the Supreme Allied Headquarters.  He states, "...the
Supreme Headquarters of the Allied European Forces
representatives came to the firm conviction that British and
American prisoners of war were, in effect, being held
hostage by the Russians and deemed expedient by them to
permit their release."  The Soviets had requested $6 billion
in credits from the United States - equivalent to $59.8
billion in 1991 dollars - in exchange for American POWs held
by them. Today the Russians are seeking $20 billion in aid,
while American POWs from at least Korea and Vietnam are
reported still in Siberia - and perhaps some survivors from
World War Two.

"The problem of accounting for POW/MIAs was complicated by
the fact that the Soviets were just as uncooperative in the
repatriation of the millions of displaced civilians," the
Senate report states.  "In Europe, as well as the Far East,
the Soviets guarded a sea of prisoners - human capital and
slave labor in their view - who were not only Allied and
Axis POWs, but also hundreds of thousands of displaced
Western European citizens, as well as Eastern European
citizens, who desperately wanted to flee from Red Army
occupied countries territory.  Nationalists of smaller
countries of Western Europe, like Dutch and Belgians, as
will as formerly Nazi occupied countries like France,
tragically, had little military, political or diplomatic
leverage with the Soviet government to secure the
repatriation of their citizens at the end of the War. As a
result, tens of thousands of Dutch and Belgians, and
hundreds of thousands of French were never repatriated by
the Soviets."

On May 31, 1945, the Allied Command determined that what the
Soviets claimed they were holding and those displaced
persons and POWs known to be in the hands, differed by over
1 million souls.  The Allies stated in a cable to the
Soviets on June 25, 1945, that 850,000 French citizens still
were not repatriated from Red Army occupied territory and
that 116,250 Dutch citizens suffered the same fate.

U.S. Intelligence reports, examined by the U.S. Senate
Committee, stated that in Tambov, a Soviet concentration
camp, there were well over 20,000 German, French, American,
British, Dutch and Belgian prisoners.  "All prisoners were
forced to work, and the food they were given was very bad
and monotonous. They were housed not in huts, but in
dug-outs."  The report continues, "The monotonous food
caused some strange disease which made the legs and arms
swell.  After a time men afflicted with the disease died.
More than 23,000 Italians, 2500 French, and 10,000 Romanians
and Hungarian prisoners died."

On February 11, 1945, the Western Allies and Soviets agreed
at the Yalta Conference to provisions which would expedite
repatriation.  Less than a month after the signing of the
Yalta agreement, in an Urgent Top Secret personal message to
the President, U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman cabled
from Moscow, "Since the Yalta Conference General Deane and I
have been making constant efforts to get the Soviets to
carry out this agreement in full.  We have been baffled by
promises which have not been fulfilled." Harriman further
stated, "I am outraged that the Soviet Government has
declined to carry out the agreement signed at Yalta in its
other aspects, namely, that our contract officers be
permitted to go immediately to points were our prisoners are
first collected, to evaluate our prisoners, particularly the
sick, in our own airplanes, or to send out supplies to
points other than Odessa, which is 1000 miles from point of
liberation, where they are urgently needed.  There appear to
be hundreds of our prisoners wandering about Poland trying
to locate American contact officers for protection.  I am
told that our men don't like the idea of getting into a
Russian camp.  The Polish people and the Polish Red Cross
are being extremely hospitable, whereas food and living
conditions in Russian camps are poor."

Harriman cabled Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius,
Jr., stating, "I feel the Soviet Government is trying to use
our liberated prisoners of war as a club to induce us to
give increased prestige to the Provisional Polish
Government."  Harriman even suggested in the March 14, 1945
cable that the U.S. Military consider some "retaliatory
measures we can immediately apply". Harriman proposed that
the American troops being repatriated by allowed to speak to
the media and report on the poor Russian conditions.  He
also felt that the United States could hold Lend Lease
agreements hostage.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a personal and secret
cable on March 18, 1945, to Marshal Josef Stalin.  "I have
information that I consider positive and reliable that there
are still a considerable number of sick and injured
Americans in hospitals in Poland and also that there have
been, certainly up to the last few days and possible still
are, large numbers of other liberated American prisoners
either at Soviet assembly points or wandering about in small
groups not in contact with Soviet authorities looking for
American contact officers.  I cannot, in all frankness,
understand your reluctance to permit American contact
officers, with the necessary means, to assist their own
people in this matter.   This government has done everything
to meet each of your requests."  Stalin replied to Roosevelt
stating, "I must say that the information is inaccurate."
Roosevelt accepted Stalin's explanation.  He ordered all
stories and criticism about the Russian treatment to be
censored.

"This new policy of censoring all stories of Russian
mistreatment of U.S. POWs effectively ensured that the
public perception of the Soviet Union was that the Soviet
Union was a stout ally of the United States," the U.S.
Senate Committee report states. The report reveals a Secret
OSS report dated June 18, 1945.  "American POWs freed by the
Red Army were in the main treated very shabbily and came to
hate the Russians.  Many of them were robbed of watches,
rings and other personal possessions which they had managed
to retain even after extended periods of captivity under the
Germans.  Their food at Odessa was very poor, consisting
mainly of soup with cucumbers in it and sour black bread.
The Russians generally tended to throw obstacles in the way
of repatriation, frequently calling off shipments at the
last minute and insisting always upon clearance from Moscow
for every prisoner released. American POWs at Odessa were
guarded by Russian soldiers carrying loaded rifles with
fixed bayonets, and Russian security was more stringent
there than German security had been in the various Stalags
and Oflags.  A number of American officers who went to
Poland at various times to coordinate the hunt for liberated
POWs were ordered out very quickly at Russian insistence."

The Soviets also refused the British contact teams access to
their prisoners in Red Army controlled territory.  Acting
British Secretary of State Sir Orme Sargent, cabled Lord
Halifax, the British Ambassador to the United States, on
April 20, 1945, stating, "It is clear that Soviet Government
will not allow our contact team into Poland.  The Russians
deny the existence of any British prisoners of war in
Poland, but we have evidence that there are prisoners of war
concentrated at Cracow and Czestochow and in hospitals.
This is a clear breach of the Yalta agreement."

Despite the Soviet tactics, the Allies under the Yalta
agreement, repatriated Soviet citizens regardless of whether
they wanted to be returned to the Soviet Union - they were
forcibly sent back and hundreds of thousands of them were
either shot or sent to forced labor camps, according to a
State Department memorandum of April 19, 1945.  U.S.
Government documents describing how these Soviet citizens
reacted to repatriation.  The Allies tried to repatriate 399
former Russian soldiers.  "All of these men refused to
entrain.  They begged to be shot.  They resisted entrainment
by taking off their clothing and refusing to leave their
quarters.  It was necessary to use tear gas and some force
to drive them out.  Tear gas forced them out of the building
into the snow where those who had cut themselves fell
exhausted and bleeding in the snow.  Nine men hanged
themselves and one had stabbed himself to death and one
other who had stabbed himself subsequently died; while 20
other are in the hospital for self inflicted wounds.  The
entrainment was finally effected of 368 men who were sent
off accompanied by a Russian liaison officer on a train
carrying American guards.  Six men escaped enroute. A number
of men in the group claimed they were not Russian."

Five days after V-E Day, the Associated Press reported,
"Nearly half of the estimated 200,000 British and 76,000
American prisoners of war still in Germany are believed to
be within the Russian zone of occupation."  General Baker's
report, according to the U.S. Senate Committee, was the
"first high level report that openly suggested that the
Soviets may not repatriate all of the Allied POWs in Red
Army occupied territory.  "There is every indications that
the Russians intend to make a big show of rapid
repatriation of our men, although I am of the opinion that
we may find a reluctance to return them all, for an
appreciable time to come, since those men constitute a
valuable bargaining point."  On May 19, 1945, General
Eisenhower signed a cable which stated, "Numbers of U.S.
prisoners estimated in Russian control 25,000."  A Top
Secret letter dated May 31, 1945, from Major General John R.
Deane, stated, "I had a cable from General Marshall in
which he states he has received information which indicates
that 15,597 United States liberated prisoners of war are now
under control of Marshal Tolbukhin."

At the end of the war in Europe, the Soviets still had
50,000 Belgian POWs and 115,000 displaced Belgian citizens;
4,000 Dutch POWs and 140,000 displaced citizens; 20,000
British POWs, 20,000 American POWs, and 250,000 French POW
and 850,000 displaced French citizens.

The real shocker is the public image created by American
military commanders. On May 30, 1945, General Kenner
reported to General Eisenhower that 20,000 American POWs
were still being held by the Russians.  Two days later, on
June 1, 1945, Eisenhower signed a cable, which stated. "It
is now estimated that only small numbers of U.S. prisoners
of war still remain in Russian hands.  These no doubt are
scattered singly and in small groups as no information is
available of any large numbers in specific camps.
Everything possible is being done to recover U.S. personnel
and to render accurate and prompt reports thereon to the War
Department."  In 1921, the War Department decided that
thousands of World War One soldiers trapped behind Russian
lines were dead - killed in action on the day they were
missing.  Twenty-four years later, 20,000 American POWs were
just written off - with no explanation of what happened to
them, despite official intelligence reports to the contrary.
 Eisenhower's cable contradicts General Kenner's report and
General Deane's separate report.  The U.S. Senate report
states boldly, "The Eisenhower cable of June 1 appears to be
an attempt to gloss over a serious problem.  At any rate,
the Eisenhower cable was merely following the official U.S.
news propaganda line.  The major news media - as usual
bought it hook, line and sinker.  On the same days as
Eisenhower's cable, the New York Times reported, "...
substantially all of the American soldiers taken prisoner in
Europe are accounted for, Under Secretary Robert P.
Patterson said.  "This means that it is not expected that
many of those who are still being carried as missing in
action will appear later as having been prisoner of war."
The 1991 Senate report comments, "In other words, on June 1,
1945, the U.S. government's public position was that most
American GIs taken prisoner have come home and been
repatriated even though the classified cable traffic for the
previous fornight was reporting between 15,000 and 20,000
still held."

The U.S. Senate report states, "The bureaucratic precedents
created in World War One in the cases of 'presumed dead'
among these missing from the American Expeditionary force
were once again followed.  Thousands of U.S. personnel who
were known to be POWs held by the Germans in World War Two,
but were not repatriated once the territory they were being
held in was occupied by Red Army, and were legally
determined to be dead."

After the end of the war in the Pacific, Mercy Teams were
sent to former prisoner of war camps in China and Manchuria.
 The Japanese troop commanders cooperated with the Trams,
but the Chinese Communists and the Soviets refused and
denied the Trams access to camps holding U.S. POWs.

The Senate report defines the reasons why the Soviets kept
American POWs and other Western European citizens;

* For economic concessions.

* To satisfy the Soviet view that it "was dangerous" merely
to disarm an adversary (or in the case of the U.S., any ally
who may be a future adversary), but it was also necessary to
"make them work".

* A source of slave labor to rebuild the Soviet industrial
base.

* To satisfy the Soviet "inclination to blackmail us into
dealing with Warsaw authorities" and for other political
concessions.

* To ensure that the Allies forcibly repatriated Russian and
other eastern European citizens who did not wish to return
to their countries under Soviet Control.

Like the sighting reports of American POWs after the Vietnam
war, hundreds of reports from people who had been released
or escaped from Soviet camps reported American POWs from
World War Two captive in Russia.  The U.S. Senate reports
states, "The daughter of one such U.S. Army officer - Major
Wirt Thompson - was never told that in 1955 a German POW
repatriated from the Soviet concentration camp system
reported to the United States government that while he was
in prison, he met her father.  The German repatriate told
American officials that Thompson told him that he had been
imprisoned at Budenskaya prison near Moscow, and also in the
Tayshet labor camp after World War Two.  Not only was
Thompson's daughter 'overwhelmed' when she found out early
in 1991 that this information existed, but she wondered how
her family could have been told by the United States
government in 1944 that Major Thompson had been killed in
action, body not recovered."



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