
by Allen Paul
In April 1943, the Germans announced some grisly news: near Smolensk they had discovered the corpses of thousands of Polish army officers whose last known custodians had been Soviet guards as a result of the partition of Poland in 1939. The pots called the kettles black, though there was little doubt then--and none now that the Soviets recently apologized for the crime--that Stalin authorized the mass murder. Why he did remains conjectural, but the odium attached to his German accuser furnished him the pretext to impose his preferred government and borders on postwar Poland. Although Paul alludes to these pivotal diplomatic consequences of the incident, his book mainly concentrates on proving the forensic case that the N.K.V.D., not the Gestapo, was indeed responsible. He further etches the human impact of the crime by interviewing relatives of the victims, and evenhandedly discusses the hands-off British and American reaction to their ally's discomfiture. Soaking up these details takes perseverance and a strong stomach, but here's another sordid memorial to Stalin's rule. Fascinating and heartrending history of the USSR's mass murder of over a million Poles during World War II. Stalin carried out a deadly deportation of an estimated 1.2 million middle class Poles from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, targeting teachers lawyers, shopkeepers, doctors (including several hundred thousand Jews) and shipped them in boxcars to Siberia. Only a fraction survived the journey and subsequent exposure, forced labor, and starvation. In addition, the Soviets slaughtered over 15,000 Polis…
1939
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