Without Hitler, would the Germans have still lost WW2?

[CruelDwarf]

Sorry, but this is another example how historical discussions transformed from scientific to political. You start discuss my political preferences, some sort of revisionism in Russia, all things, but not the point - evidiences of the russian trace in Katyn massacre.

denial of something that your own leaders have publicly admitted

Russian former leaders admitted all kind of things, just because they too weak and too dependant on western support. I don't think that Boris Yeltsin or his administration were competent enough to make judgements about what happened in Katyn. This matter is politized and exploited by various forces both in Russia and world and no REAL SCIENTIFIC research of the Katyn was made till this time.
And time to real history of the Katyn may be written only when it not be used as some sort of political weapon.

Until that changes, Russia is doomed to go through its mistakes all over again. I am sorry for you.

You know - no country is perfect. We have our mistakes, but others also heve them. So no point to do some sad face and pretend that you are Еnlightened by Great Civilization human and I'm is some sort of barbarian from Darkest Times of the Earth. This is silly.

 

[Sharwood]

Russian former leaders admitted things because they were weak? Molotov, Stalin's heir apparent, was weak? Gorbachev was weak? Hell, even Brezhnev admitted that the USSR had killed Poles, even if he fudged the numbers by about 225,000. You are not ignorant, therefore you are intentionally lying to others, and probably yourself. You are nothing but a Russian apologist, and no different from a Holocaust denier.

 

[Agent327]

The Katyn massacre is well known and clearly evidenced. Just try googling it. (O no, wait, Google is just another anti-Russian propaganda search machine...)

And ofcourse the Russian invasion of Georgia is a case of self-defense...

Also, but I'm sure you haven't heard it, Russia has no free press. (But you can't know that, because, well, Russia has no free press. O no, wait: ofcourse Russia has a free press, it's all an anti-Russian plot...etc, etc.)

I'm sorry, but anybody who doesn't know facts from fiction cannot expect to be taken seriously.

 

[red_elk]

I wonder, guys, do you have some real arguments, except "everybody knows that russians are evil"? You are constantly referring to some evidences, but nobody has given any yet. Nobody here is denying possible Soviet involvement, but we'd like to see proofs from independent sources.

And I agree that this question is very politicized, this can obstruct proper investigation of the crime.

 

[Sharwood]

Russians aren't evil. Russian leaders who massacred Polish officers, after invading the country without a declaration of war, were evil. Someone provided a link to a page dealing with the Katyn Massacre.

 

[Yeekim]

I wonder, guys, do you have some real arguments, except "everybody knows that russians are evil"? You are constantly referring to some evidences, but nobody has given any yet. Nobody here is denying possible Soviet involvement, but we'd like to see proofs from independent sources.

And I agree that this question is very politicized, this can obstruct proper investigation of the crime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_Massacre

Bottom of the page has authenticated copies of Soviet documents related to the Katyn massacre (second paper is an execution order signed by Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich).

More questions?

 

[CruelDwarf]

Russian former leaders admitted things because they were weak? Molotov, Stalin's heir apparent, was weak?

When he admitted it - indeed. Because he lost in political struggle and after Stalin's death Molotov hadn't any political power in USSR. And I never heard about any his statements about Katyn.

Gorbachev was weak?

Without any doubts.

You are nothing but a Russian apologist, and no different from a Holocaust denier.

Again. When people had't any viable arguments they start using political labels. All of this is nothing more than clear evidience of "bad-ass evil russians syndrome".

Ever try to imagine that all discussions about USA history were about Hiroshima bombing, genocide of american natives and slave trade?

The Katyn massacre is well known and clearly evidenced.

What evidiences:
We had:
1. Grave with 1.5-2 thousands dead bodies in Katyn forest and some lesser graves in radius of 10-20 km.
2. Several hundreds of this bodies were indentified as polish army officers, that surrendered to Red Army during occupation of eastern Poland by Red Army.
3. We had soviet documents about POW camp for polish prisoners in Katyn.
4. Archeological digs and forensics showed that most of the victims were shot by 9 mm Parabellum rounds. Both USSR and Germany had weapons using such ammo.
5. We know that first who "discovered" site of massacre was german troops. And Katyn was used by german propaganda in Europe and USA to show them "true face of USSR".

All other things we had are political speculations.

And ofcourse the Russian invasion of Georgia is a case of self-defense...

If you want to kill the thread with modern politics I may answer on this question.

Also, but I'm sure you haven't heard it, Russia has no free press.

Press free from who? From state? We had some such press. Press free from large money-bags? No one had such press.

Russians aren't evil. Russian leaders who massacred Polish officers, after invading the country without a declaration of war, were evil.

Try too google about soviet prisoners of war after Soviet-polish war in early 20s. Polish leaders also evil.

About scan from wiki:
This is the copy that polish government "lost" some months ago?

 

[Yeekim]

CruelDwarf, you are amazing. The only reason I put of with you is that you so superbly demonstrate much what everyone needs to know about today's Russia .

1. Grave with 1.5-2 thousands dead bodies in Katyn forest and some lesser graves in radius of 10-20 km.
2. Several hundreds of this bodies were indentified as polish army officers, that surrendered to Red Army during occupation of eastern Poland by Red Army.
3. We had soviet documents about POW camp for polish prisoners in Katyn.

May I ask, what kind of further evidence are you looking for? You have found the victims. You have identified them. You have established who held them prisoner. Forensic evidence about method of their killing does not contradict this in any way. Gorbachev has admitted the responsibility of USSR and handed over execution orders signed by Stalin. What other proof should be there so you would stop giving your crap about "political speculations"? You are waiting for the victims to rise from the dead and tell who shot them? Oh, wait, you'd say that "memory does wonderful things" or smth like this...

This is the copy that polish government "lost" some months ago?

According to whom is it lost? "Nezavisimaya" Gazeta?

 

[Agent327]

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass execution of Polish military officers, policemen and civilian prisoners of war ordered by Soviet authorities on March 5, 1940.[1][2] The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, with the most commonly cited number of 21,768.[3] The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest in Russia, the Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere.[4] About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials."[3] Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer,[5] the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian[6] and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.

Originally, "Katyn massacre" referred to the massacre at Katyn Forest, near the villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (ca. 19 km west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers in the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. It now is applied to the simultaneous executions of POWs from geographically distant Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps,[7] and the executions of political prisoners from West Belarus and West Ukraine,[8] shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD (Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, the Soviet secret police) headquarters in Smolensk, at a Smolensk slaughterhouse,[1] and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkiv, Moscow, and other Soviet cities.[3]

Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943. The revelation led to the break up of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the London-based Polish government-in-exile. The Soviet Union continued to deny the massacres until 1990, when it finally acknowledged the massacre by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up.[3][9] The Russian government admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres, yet does not classify this action as a war crime or as an act of genocide. This acknowledgement would have necessitated the prosecution of surviving perpetrators, which is what the Polish government had requested.[3][10] In addition the Russian government also does not classify the dead as victims of Stalinist repression, which bars formal posthumous rehabilitation.

Prelude

On 17 September 1939, in violation of the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the Red Army invaded the territory of Poland from the east. This invasion took place while Poland had already sustained serious defeats in the wake of the German attack on the country that started on 1 September, 1939. Meanwhile, Great Britain and France, pledged by the Polish-British Common Defence Pact and Franco-Polish Military Alliance to attack Germany in the case of such an invasion, did not take any military action. This is referred to as the Western betrayal; thus the Red Army moved to safeguard Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.[11] In the wake of the Red Army's quick advance, which met little resistance, between 250,000[12] and 454,700[13] Polish soldiers had become prisoners and were interned by the Soviets. About 250,000 were set free by the army almost on the spot, while 125,000 were delivered to the internal security services (the NKVD). The NKVD, in turn, quickly released 42,400 soldiers. The approximately 170,000 released were mostly soldiers of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity serving in the Polish army. The 43,000 soldiers born in West Poland, now under German control, were transferred to the Germans. By November 19, NKVD had about 40,000 Polish POWs: about 8,500 officers and warrant officers, 6,500 police officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs who were still being held as POWs.[14]

As early as September 19, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and First Rank Commissar of State Security, Lavrenty Beria, ordered the NKVD to create the Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees to manage Polish prisoners. The NKVD took custody of Polish prisoners from the Red Army, and proceeded to organize a network of reception centers and transit camps and arrange rail transport to prisoner-of-war camps in the western USSR. The camps were at Jukhnovo (Babynino rail station), Yuzhe (Talitsy), Kozelsk, Kozelshchyna, Oranki, Ostashkov (Stolbnyi Island on Seliger Lake near Ostashkov), Tyotkino rail station (56 mi/90 km from Putyvl), Starobielsk, Vologda (Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets.[15]

Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scouts, gendarmes, police officers and prison officers. Prisoners at these camps were not exclusively military officers or members of the other groups mentioned but also included Polish intelligentsia. The approximate distribution of men throughout the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570; and Starobelsk, 4,000. They totaled 15,570 men.[7]

Once at the camps, from October 1939 to February 1940, the Poles were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation by NKVD officers such as Vasily Zarubin. The Poles were encouraged to believe they would be released,[16] but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die.[1] According to NKVD reports, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt a pro-Soviet attitude.[7] They were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority."[1]

On 5 March 1940, pursuant to a note to Joseph Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo — Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov and Anastas Mikoyan; signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.[8] The reason for the massacre, according to historian Gerhard Weinberg, is that Stalin wanted to deprive a potential future Polish military of a large portion of its military talent: It has been suggested that the motive for this terrible step [the Katyn massacre] was to reassure the Germans as to the reality of Soviet anti-Polish policy. This explanation is completely unconvincing in view of the care with which the Soviet regime kept the massacre secret from the very German government it was supposed to impress... A more likely explanation is that... [the massacre] should be seen as looking forward to a future in which there might again be a Poland on the Soviet Union's western border. Since he intended to keep the eastern portion of the country in any case, Stalin could be certain that any revived Poland would be unfriendly. Under those circumstances, depriving it of a large proportion of its military and technical elite would make it weaker."[17]

Executions

After 3 April, 1940, at least 22,436 POWs and prisoners were executed: 15,131 POWs (most or all of them from the three camps)[18] and at least 7,305 prisoners in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine.[19] A 1956 memo from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev contains incomplete information about the personal files of 21,857 murdered POWs and prisoners. Of them 4,421 were from Kozielsk, 3,820 from Starobielsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov, and 7,305 from Belarusian and Ukrainian prisons. Shelepin's data for prisons should be considered a minimum, because his data for POWs is incomplete (he mentions 14,552 personal files for POWs, while at least 15,131 POWs "sent to NKVD" are mentioned in contemporary documents).

Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also among the dead were 20 university professors (including Stefan Kaczmarz); 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots. In all, the NKVD executed almost half the Polish officer corps.[1] Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish generals:[20] Leon Billewicz (ret.), Bronisław Bohatyrewicz (ret.), Xawery Czernicki (admiral), Stanisław Haller (ret.), Aleksander Kowalewski (ret.), Henryk Minkiewicz (ret.), Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski, Konstanty Plisowski (ret.), Rudolf Prich (murdered in Lviv), Franciszek Sikorski (ret.), Leonard Skierski (ret.), Piotr Skuratowicz, Mieczysław Smorawiński and Alojzy Wir-Konas (promoted posthumously). A mere 395 prisoners were saved from the slaughter,[3] among them Stanisław Swianiewicz and Józef Czapski.[1] They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then down to Gryazovets. They were the only ones who escaped death.

Up to 99% of the remaining prisoners were subsequently murdered. People from Kozelsk were murdered in the usual mass murder site of Smolensk country, called Katyn forest; people from Starobilsk were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kharkiv and the bodies were buried near Piatykhatky; and police officers from Ostashkov were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and buried in Miednoje (Mednoye). Detailed information on the executions in the Kalinin NKVD prison was given during the hearing by Dmitrii S. Tokarev, former head of the Board of the District NKVD in Kalinin. According to Tokarev, the shooting started in the evening and ended at dawn. The first transport on 4 April 1940, carried 390 people, and the executioners had a hard time killing so many people during one night. The following transports were no greater than 250 people. The executions were usually performed with German-made Walther PPK pistols supplied by Moscow, but Nagant M1895 revolvers were also used.[21][22]

The killings were methodical. After the condemned's personal information was checked, he was handcuffed and led to a cell insulated with a felt-lined door. The sounds of the murders were also masked by the operation of loud machines (perhaps fans) throughout the night. After being taken into the cell, the victim was immediately shot in the back of the head. His body was then taken out through the opposite door and laid in one of the five or six waiting trucks, whereupon the next condemned was taken inside. The procedure went on every night, except for the May Day holiday.[23] Near Smolensk, the Poles, with their hands tied behind their backs, were led to the graves and shot in the neck.

After the executions, there were still more than 22,000 former Polish soldiers in NKVD labor camps. According to Beria's report, by 2 November 1940 his department had two generals, 39 lieutenant-colonels and colonels, 222 captains and majors, 691 lieutenants, 4022 warrant officers and NCOs and 13,321 enlisted men captured during the Polish campaign. Additional 3,300 Polish soldiers were captured during the annexation of Lithuania, where they were kept interned since September 1939.[24]

Some 3,000 to 4,000 Polish inmates of Ukrainian prisons and the ones from Belarus prisons in Kurapaty, were probably buried in Bykivnia.[25] Porucznik Janina Lewandowska, daughter of Gen. Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, was the only woman executed during the massacre at Katyn.[23][26][27]

Discovery

The fate of the Polish prisoners was raised soon after the Nazi Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, when the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet government signed the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement to fight Nazi Germany and form a Polish army on Soviet territory. When the Polish general Władysław Anders began organising this army, he requested information about Polish officers. During a personal meeting, Stalin assured him and Władysław Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister, that all the Poles were freed, and that not all could be accounted because the Soviets "lost track" of them in Manchuria.[28][29][30]

In 1942, Polish railroad workers found a mass grave at Katyn, and reported it to the Polish Secret State; the news was ignored; people refused to believe the mass graves contained so many dead.[31] The fate of the missing prisoners remained unknown until April 1943 when the German Wehrmacht (actually Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff) discovered the mass grave of 4,243 Polish military reserve officers in the forest on Goat Hill near Katyn.[32] Joseph Goebbels saw this discovery as an excellent tool to drive a wedge between Poland, Western Allies, and the Soviet Union. On 13 April, Berlin Radio broadcast to the world that German military forces in the Katyn forest near Smolensk had uncovered "a ditch ... 28 metres long and 16 metres wide [92 ft by 52 ft], in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers."[33] The broadcast went on to charge the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940.

The Germans assembled and brought in a European commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staffs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary. After the war, all of the experts, save for a Bulgarian and a Czech, reaffirmed their 1943 finding of Soviet guilt.[34] The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which used it to discredit the Soviet Union. Goebbels wrote in his diary on 14 April 1943: "We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Fuehrer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple weeks."[35] The Germans had succeeded in discrediting the Soviet Government in the eyes of the world and briefly raised the spectre of a communist monster rampaging across the territories of Western civilization; moreover, General Sikorski's unease threatened to unravel the alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government immediately denied the German charges and claimed that the Polish prisoners of war had been engaged in construction work west of Smolensk and consequently were captured and executed by invading German units in August 1941. The Soviet response on 15 April to the German initial broadcast of 13 April, prepared by the Soviet Information Bureau, stated that "[...]Polish prisoners-of-war who in 1941 were engaged in country construction work west of Smolensk and who [...] fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen [...]."[7]

The Allies were aware that the Nazis had found a mass grave as the discovery transpired, via radio transmissions intercepted and decrypted by Bletchley Park. Germans and the international commission, which was invited by Germany, investigated the Katyn corpses and soon produced physical evidence that the massacre took place in early 1940, at a time when the area was still under Soviet control.[36]

In April 1943, when the Polish government-in-exile insisted on bringing the matter to the negotiation table with the Soviets and on an investigation by the International Red Cross,[37][36] Stalin accused the Polish government in exile of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke diplomatic relations with it,[38] and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska.[39] Sikorski, whose uncompromising stance on that issue was beginning to create a rift between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, died suddenly two months later. The cause of his death is still disputed.[40][41]

Soviet actions

When, in September 1943, Goebbels was informed that the German Army had to withdraw from the Katyn area, he entered a prediction in his diary. His entry for 29 September 1943 reads: "Unfortunately we have had to give up Katyn. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot 12,000 Polish officers. That episode is one that is going to cause us quite a little trouble in the future. The Soviets are undoubtedly going to make it their business to discover as many mass graves as possible and then blame it on us."[35]

Indeed, having retaken the Katyn area almost immediately after the Red Army had recaptured Smolensk, the Soviet Union, led by the NKVD, began a cover-up. A cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build was destroyed and other evidence removed.[1] In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prisoners of War by German-Fascist Invaders in Katyn Forest," (U.S.S.R. Spetsial'naya Kommissiya po Ustanovleniyu i Rassledovaniyu Obstoyatel'stv Rasstrela Nemetsko-Fashistskimi Zakhvatchikami v Katynskom Lesu)[7] led (at least nominally) by Alexey Tolstoy to investigate the incidents again. The so-called "Burdenko Commission", headed by Nikolai Burdenko, the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, exhumed the bodies again and reached the conclusion that the shooting was done in 1941, when the Katyn area was under German occupation. No foreign personnel, even the Polish communists, were allowed to join the Burdenko Commission,[1][7] whereas the Nazi German investigation had allowed wider access to both international press and organizations (like the Red Cross, with experts from Finland, Denmark, Slovakia etc) and even used Polish workers, like Józef Mackiewicz and Allied POWs.[42] Thus, the 'medico-legal experts,' as they were called, 'found out' that all the shootings were done by the 'German-Fascist' invaders. The conclusions of the commission list a number of things, from gold watches to briefs and icons allegedly found attached to the dead bodies, and the items were said to have dates from November 1940 to June 1941, thus 'rebutting' the 'Fascist lies' of the Poles being shot by the Soviets. The report can be found in pro-Soviet publication Supplement to Russia at war weekly (1944); it is also printed in Dr.Joachim Hoffmann's book Stalin's Annihilation War 1941–1945 (original: Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1945)

Western response

The Western Allies had an implicit, if unwilling, hand in the cover-up in their endeavour not to antagonise a then-ally, the Soviet Union. The resulting Polish-Soviet crisis was beginning to threaten the vital alliance with the Soviet Union at a time when the Poles' importance to the Allies, essential in the first years of the war, was beginning to fade, due to the entry into the conflict of the military and industrial giants, the Soviet Union and the United States. In retrospective review of records, it is clear that both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt were increasingly torn between their commitments to their Polish ally, the uncompromising stance of Sikorski and the demands by Stalin and his diplomats.

In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out by the Soviets. According to the notes taken by Count Raczyński, Churchill admitted on 15 April 1943 during a conversation with General Sikorski: "Alas, the German revelations are probably true. The Bolsheviks can be very cruel."[43] However, at the same time, on 24 April 1943 Churchill assured the Soviets: "We shall certainly oppose vigorously any 'investigation' by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority. Such investigation would be a fraud and its conclusions reached by terrorism."[44] Unofficial or classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was a "near certainty", but the alliance with the Soviets was deemed to be more important than moral issues, thus the official version supported the Soviet version, up to censoring the contradictory accounts.[36] Churchill's own post-war account of the Katyn affair is laconic. In his memoirs, he quotes the 1944 Soviet inquiry into the massacre, which predictably found that the Germans had committed the crime, and adds, "belief seems an act of faith."[45] In 1943 the Katyn Manifesto blaming the Soviet Union was published in London (in English) by the eccentric poet Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, who was arrested by the Special Branch and imprisoned.[46]

In the United States, a similar line was taken, notwithstanding that two official intelligence reports into the Katyn massacre were produced that contradicted the official position. In 1944 Roosevelt assigned his special emissary to the Balkans, Navy Lieutenant Commander George Earle, to compile information on Katyn, which he did using contacts in Bulgaria and Romania. Earle concluded that the massacre was committed by the Soviet Union. Having consulted with Elmer Davis, the director of the Office of War Information, Roosevelt rejected the conclusion, declared that he was convinced of Nazi Germany's responsibility, and ordered that Earle's report be suppressed. When Earle formally requested permission to publish his findings, the President issued a written order to desist. Earle was reassigned and spent the rest of the war in American Samoa.[1]

A further report in 1945, supporting the same conclusion, was produced and stifled. In 1943, two US POWs – Lt. Col. Donald B. Stewart and Col. John H. Van Vliet – had been taken by Germans to Katyn in 1943 for an international news conference.[47] Later, in 1945, Van Vliet wrote a report concluding that the Soviets, not the Germans, were responsible. He gave the report to Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, Gen. George Marshall's assistant chief of staff for intelligence, who destroyed it.[48] During the 1951–1952 investigation, Bissell defended his action before Congress, contending that it was not in the US interest to embarrass an ally whose forces were still needed to defeat Japan.[1]

Katyn in judicial proceedings

From 28 December 1945 to 4 January 1946, seven servicemen of the German Wehrmacht were tried by a Soviet military court in Leningrad. One of them, Arno Diere, was charged with helping to dig the Katyn graves during the execution. Diere, who was accused of murder using machine-guns in Soviet villages, "confessed" to having taken part in burial (though not the execution) of 15-20 thousand Polish POWs in Katyn. For this he was spared the execution and was given 15 years of hard labor. His confession was full of absurdities, and thus he was not used as a Soviet prosecution witness during the Nuremberg trial. In a November 29, 1954 note he recanted his confession, claiming that he was forced to confess by the investigators. Contrary to claims on several "revisionist" sites,[49] of all the accused during the Leningrad Trial, only Diere was accused to have had a connection to the Katyn massacre. [50]

In 1946, the chief Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Roman A. Rudenko, attempted to indict Germany for the Katyn killings, reasoning that "one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of war shot in the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders",[51] but dropped the matter after the United States and United Kingdom refused to support it and German lawyers mounted an embarrassing defense.[1][52] Also, it was not the purpose of the court to determine whether Germany or the Soviet Union was responsible for the crime, but rather to attribute the crime to at least one of the defendants, which the court was unable to do.[53]

Cold War views

In 1951–52, in the background of the Korean War, a U.S. Congressional investigation chaired by Rep. Ray J. Madden and known as the Madden Committee investigated the Katyn massacre. It charged that the Poles had been killed by the Soviets[1] and recommended that the Soviets be tried before the International Court of Justice. The committee was however less conclusive on the issue of alleged American cover up.[47] The question of responsibility remained controversial in the West as well as behind the Iron Curtain. In the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, plans for a memorial to the victims bearing the date 1940 (rather than 1941) were condemned as provocative in the political climate of the Cold War. It has been sometimes speculated that the choice made in 1969 for the location of the BSSR's war memorial at the former Belarusian village named Khatyn, a site of a 1943 Nazi massacre in which the entire village with its whole population was burned, have been made to cause confusion with Katyn.[54][55] The two names are similar or identical in many languages, and were in fact often confused[1][56]

In Poland Communist authorities covered up the matter in concord with Soviet propaganda, deliberately censoring any sources that might shed some light on the Soviet crime. Katyn was a forbidden topic in postwar Poland. Not only did government censorship suppress all references to it, but even mentioning the atrocity was dangerous. Katyn became erased from Poland's official history, but it could not be erased from historical memory. In 1981, Polish trade union Solidarity erected a memorial with the simple inscription "Katyn, 1940" but it was confiscated by the police, to be replaced with an official monument "To the Polish soldiers – victims of Hitlerite fascism – reposing in the soil of Katyn". Nevertheless, every year on Zaduszki, similar memorial crosses were erected at Powązki cemetery and numerous other places in Poland, only to be dismantled by the police overnight. Katyn remained a political taboo in Poland until the fall of the Eastern bloc in 1989.[1]

 

[Agent327]

Revelations

From the late 1980s, pressure was put not only on the Polish government, but on the Soviet one as well. Polish academics tried to include Katyn in the agenda of the 1987 joint Polish-Soviet commission to investigate censored episodes of the Polish-Russian history.[1] In 1989 Soviet scholars revealed that Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the massacre, and in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD had executed the Poles[57] and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyn: Mednoye and Piatykhatky.
Monument to Katyn victims, Katowice, Poland. Inscription: "Katyn, Kharkіv, Miednoye and other places of murder in the former USSR in 1940."
Monument to Katyn victims, Katowice, Poland. Inscription: "Katyn, Kharkіv, Miednoye and other places of murder in the former USSR in 1940."

On 30 October 1989, Gorbachev allowed a delegation of several hundred Poles, organized by a Polish association named Families of Katyń Victims, to visit the Katyn memorial. This group included former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. A Mass was held and banners hailing the Solidarity movement were laid. One mourner affixed a sign reading "NKVD" on the memorial, covering the word "Nazis" in the inscription such that it read "In memory of Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in 1941." Several visitors scaled the fence of a nearby KGB compound and left burning candles on the grounds.[58] Brzezinski commented that:

"It isn't a personal pain which has brought me here, as is the case in the majority of these people, but rather recognition of the symbolic nature of Katyń. Russians and Poles, tortured to death, lie here together. It seems very important to me that the truth should be spoken about what took place, for only with the truth can the new Soviet leadership distance itself from the crimes of Stalin and the NKVD. Only the truth can serve as the basis of true friendship between the Soviet and the Polish peoples. The truth will make a path for itself. I am convinced of this by the very fact that I was able to travel here."[59]

Brzezinski further stated that "The fact that the Soviet government has enabled me to be here – and the Soviets know my views – is symbolic of the breach with Stalinism that perestroika represents."[60] His remarks were given extensive coverage on Soviet television. At the ceremony he placed a bouquet of red roses bearing a handwritten message penned in both Polish and English: "For the victims of Stalin and the NKVD. Zbigniew Brzezinski."[61]

On 13 April 1990, the forty-seventh anniversary of the discovery of the mass graves, the USSR formally expressed "profound regret" and admitted Soviet secret police responsibility.[62] That day is also an International Day of Katyn Victims Memorial (Światowy Dzień Pamięci Ofiar Katynia).

After Poles and Americans discovered further evidence in 1991 and 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin released and transferred to the new Polish president, former Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa, top-secret documents from the sealed package no. 1.[63][1] Among the documents included Lavrenty Beria's March 1940 proposal[64] to shoot 25,700 Poles from Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobels camps, and from certain prisons of Western Ukraine and Belarus with the signature of Stalin (among others); an excerpt from the Politburo shooting order[8] of 5 March 1940; and Aleksandr Shelepin's 3 March 1959 note[65] to Nikita Khrushchev, with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal to destroy their personal files.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin visits Powązki Cemetery monument to Katyn victims, Warsaw, 1993.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin visits Powązki Cemetery monument to Katyn victims, Warsaw, 1993.[66]

Following the war, at the Nuremberg war crime tribunals, the issue of Katyn was originally included on the list of crimes attributed to the Germans. The Soviet prosecutors provided falsified evidence to indict the Germans. However, the issue was dropped, probably because any revelations on the issue would embarrass the Soviets. Also today some deny all Soviet guilt, call the released documents fakes, and try to prove that Poles were shot by Germans in 1941.[67][68]

On the opposing sides there are allegations that the massacre was part of wider action coordinated by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, or that the Germans at least knew of Katyn beforehand.[citation needed] The reason for these allegations is that Soviet Union and Nazi Germany added on 28 September, a secret supplementary protocol[69] to the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, in which is stated

"Both parties will tolerate in their territories no Polish agitation which affects the territories of the other party. They will suppress in their territories all beginnings of such agitation and inform each other concerning suitable measures for this purpose"

after which in 1939–1940 a series of conferences by NKVD and the Gestapo were organised in the town of Zakopane.[original research?] The aim of these conferences was to coordinate the killing and the deportation policy[70] and exchange experience. Writing in Commentary magazine in 1981, George Watson, a Fellow in English at St. John's College, Cambridge wrote that the fate of Polish prisoners may have been discussed at the April 1940 conference.[71] This theory surfaces in Polish media,[72][unreliable source?] where it is also pointed out that similar massacre of Polish elites (German AB-Aktion operation in Poland) were taking place in the exact time and with similar methods in German occupied Poland.

In June 1998, Yeltsin and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski agreed to construct memorial complexes at Katyn and Mednoye, the two NKVD execution sites on Russian soil. However, in September of that year the Russians also raised the issue of Soviet POW deaths in the Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919-1924). About 16,000 to 20,000 POWs died in those camps due to communicable diseases;[73][74] however, some Russian officials argued that it was 'a genocide comparable to Katyń'.[1] A similar claim was raised in 1994; such attempts are seen by some, particularly in Poland, as a highly provocative Russian attempt to create an 'anti-Katyn' and 'balance the historical equation'.[75]

During Kwaśniewski's visit to Russia in September 2004, Russian officials announced that they are willing to transfer all the information on the Katyn Massacre to the Polish authorities as soon as it is declassified.[76] In March 2005 Russian authorities ended the decade-long investigation with no one charged. Russian Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov claimed that out of 14,542 Polish citizens from three Soviet camps who had been sentenced to death, only the deaths of 1,803 were confirmed absolutely.[77] He did not address the fate of about 7,000 victims who had been not in POW camps, but in prisons. Savenkov declared that the massacre was not a genocide, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, but a military crime for which the 50-year term of limitation has expired and that consequently there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms.[10][57] Despite earlier declarations, President Vladimir Putin's government refused to allow Polish investigators to travel to Moscow in late 2004[78], and 116 out of 183 volumes of files gathered during the Russian investigation, as well as the decision to put an end to it, were made classified.[10][79][80]

In late 2007 and early 2008, several Russian newspapers, including Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Nezavisimaya Gazeta printed stories that implicated the Nazis for the crime, spurning concern that this was done with the tacit approval of the Kremlin.[81] As a result, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance decided to open its own investigation.[3][57][10] Prosecution team head Leon Kieres said they would try to identify those involved in ordering and carrying out the killings. In addition, on 22 March 2005 the Polish Sejm unanimously passed an act, requesting the Russian archives to be declassified.[82] The Sejm also requested Russia to classify the Katyn massacre as the crime of genocide: "On the 65th anniversary of the Katyn murder the Senate pays tribute to the murdered, best sons of the homeland and those who fought for the truth about the murder to come to light, also the Russians who fought for the truth, despite harassment and persecution" – the resolution said. The resolution stressed that the authorities of Russia "seek to diminish the burden of this crime by refusing to acknowledge it was genocide and refuse to give access to the records of the investigation into the issue, making it difficult to determine the whole truth about the murder and its perpetrators."[83]
Ceremony of military upgrading of Katyn massacre victims, Piłsudski Square, Warsaw, 10 November 2007
Ceremony of military upgrading of Katyn massacre victims, Piłsudski Square, Warsaw, 10 November 2007

Russia and Poland remained divided on the legal qualification of the Katyn crime, with the Poles considering it a case of genocide and demanding further investigations, as well as complete disclosure of Soviet documents.[84][83] In 2008, Polish Foreign Ministry decided to ask Russia's government about alleged movie documentation from the massacre made by NKVD during the killings. The possible document as well as further documents showing cooperation of Soviets with Gestapo during the operations are believed to be the reason for Russia's decision to classify most of documents about the massacre.[85]

In June 2008, there were signs of change, as Russian courts considered to hear a case about the declassification of documents about Katyn and the judicial rehabilitation of the victims, and Putin in an interview with Polish newspaper called Katyn a "political crime."[86]

References

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4. ^ Data combined from Shelepin's letter to Khrushchev and Soviet data from 03.12.1941 UPVI note in Katyn. 1940–2000, Moscow, "Ves' mir", 2001, pp. 384, 385)
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32. ^ Assembly of Captive European Nations, First Session, September 20, 1954–February 11, 1955, Organization, Resolutions, Reports, Debate; p118
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36. ^ a b c Davies, Norman. "Europe: A History". HarperCollins, 1998. ISBN 0-06-097468-0.
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38. ^ Soviet Note of 25 April 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
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43. ^ David Carlton, "Churchill and the Soviet Union", Manchester University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7190-4107-4Google Books page online
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47. ^ a b National Archives and Records Administration, documents related to Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre (1951–52) online, last accessed on 23 December 2005. Also, Select Committee of the US Congress final report: "The Katyn Forest Massacre," House Report No. 2505, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session (22 December. 1952) online pdf, unofficial reproduction of the relevant parts.
48. ^ Van Vliet Report (reconstructed and discussion of), last accessed on 19 December 2005
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53. ^ As precisely described by Iona Nikitchenko, one of the judges and a military magistrate having been involved in Stalin's show trials, "the fact that the Nazis chiefs are criminals was already established [by the declarations and agreements of the Allies]. The role of this court is thus limited to determine the precise culpability of each one [charged]". in: Nuremberg Trials, Leo Kahn, Bellantine, N.Y., 1972, p.26.
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[edit] Further reading

* Books about the Katyn Forest Massacre
* Allen Paul (1996). Katyń: Stalin's massacre and the seeds of Polish Resurrection. Annapolis, Md., Naval Institute Press, 402. ISBN 1-55750-670-1.
* Allen Paul (1991). Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin's Polish Massacre. New York, Scribner Book Company. ISBN 0-684-19215-2.
* (1993) in Wojciech Materski: Katyn: documents of genocide; documents and materials from the Soviet archives turned over to Poland on 14 October 1992, Janusz Kazimierz Zawodny, Jan Kolbowski and Mark Canning, Warsaw, Institute of Political Studies Polish Academy of Sciences, 105. ISBN 83-85479-50-3.
* Anna M. Cienciala (Editor), Natalia S. Lebedeva (Editor), Wojciech Materski (Editor),. Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment (Annals of Communism Series). Yale University Press, January 28, 2008. ISBN 0300108516
* Adam Moszyński, Lista katyńska. Jeńcy obozów Kozielsk–Ostaszków–Starobielsk zaginieni w Rosji Sowieckiej (Katyń list: Prisoners of Kozelsk–Ostaszków–Starobielsk camps who disappeared in Soviet Russia), Londyn 1949;
* George Sanford, "The Katyn Massacre and Polish-Soviet relations 1941–1943," Journal of Contemporary History 41(1):95–111 online
* Stanisław Swianiewicz, W cieniu Katynia (In the shadow of Katyn), Paryż 1976. English edition by Borealis Pub, 2000, as In the Shadow of Katyn: Stalin's Terror, ISBN 1-894255-16-X
* Jerzy Łojek (Leopold Jerzewski), Dzieje sprawy Katynia (History of the Katyn affair), Warszawa 1980;
* Janusz K. Zawodny, Katyń, Lublin 1989;
* A. Basak, Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia katyńska przed Trybunałem Norymberskim (History of certain mistification: Katyn crime before the Nuremberg Trials) ISSN 0137-1126 in Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi: XXI, Wrocław 1993, ISBN 83-229-1816-X Table of contents online
* Komorowski, Eugenjusz Andrei, and Gilmore, Joseph L. (1974). Night Never Ending. Avon Books. Largely discredited book purporting to be the eyewitness story of the sole survivor of the massacre.
* Large list of Katyn related books at Polish Wikipedia article.

[edit] External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
NKVD Order № 00794/B
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Katyn massacre

* Official site of the Memorial of Katyn
* Original of Katyn order
* (Russian) A set of copies of Katyn-related documents which were provided to Lech Walesa on 14 Oct. 1992
* (Russian)Facsimile of the Soviet Izvestia newspaper with Burdenko Commission's report
* (Russian) Photos by Alexey Pamyatnykh from exhumations at Mednoe in August 1991
* (Russian) Two fragments from the videotaped interrogation of P.K.Soprunenko (former chief of USSR NKVD Board for Prisoners of War and Internees) about the Katyn massacre, 29.04.1991
* (Russian) Burdenko Commission witness Mikhail Krivozertsev interviewed in 1990, explains how testimonies were fabricated (Russian with Polish subtitles)
* Katyn massacre victim list
* Polish deaths at Soviet hands – website about Katyn forest massacre
* Pictures taken during the 1943 exhumation
* British reactions to the Katyn Massacre, 1943–2003 by Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane
* The Katyn Massacre: A Special Operations Executive perspective
* Katyn in Nuremberg
* Historians Have Yet to Face Up to the Implications of the Katyn Massacre by Adam Scrupski, History News Network, 5-17-04
* 10Nov94 H-Diplo posting by Louis R. Coatney, "Argument for Katyn as start & end of Cold War"
* Katyn Forest Massacre: Articles and links
* The Lies of Katyn by Jamie Glazov, FrontPage Magazine, August 8, 2000
* Stalin's Killing Field by Benjamin B. Fischer
* (Polish) Ferdynand Goetel w Katyniu – story of one of the Polish members of the 1943 International Commission
* The Katyn Massacre: An Assesment of its Significance as a Public and Historical Issue in the USA and GB, 1940-1993
* Katyn Photo Galleries
* Stanisław Szukalski sclupture dedicated Katyń memory

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre"

NOTE: sections on Art and Memorials have been left out for brevity. Photos also not included.

 

[Sharwood]

Let's see how they spin this.

 

[CruelDwarf]

How i spin this - this is Wiki. Wiki is't source for any history information. It just reference material.

CruelDwarf, you are amazing. The only reason I put of with you is that you so superbly demonstrate much what everyone needs to know about today's Russia .

Yes, I'm very amazing and wonderful person. You want to talk about my personal qualities? Or about evel bad-ass russians? Or about modern authoritarian Russia, which is "threat for all free world"? Or some other biased political crap?

According to whom is it lost? "Nezavisimaya" Gazeta?

According to statement of polish Institute of National Memory, of course.

Gorbachev has admitted the responsibility of USSR and handed over execution orders signed by Stalin.

You know standart answer about such things - this s a fake.
But I forgot one very important matter - any soviet document is forged or "pokazuha" only in case it contradicts with theory about "evil bad-ass russians". Document which contributes to this theory is always perfectly true.



And I have to congratulate you, people. Once again thread is transformed from history discussion to political hate-speaches. Just by simple note that the matter with beginning of World War was more complex then story about two power-mongering dictators.

 

[Sharwood]

You can't have discussions with Holocaust deniers. In denying the Katyn Massacre, you are the doing the equivalent of that. Therefore, this stopped being a discussion the second you poked your willfully ignorant nose into it. I would suggest to everyone else in the history forum that we simply ignore any post you make on the topic of Russia from this point on, because it is blatantly obvious that you are incapable of objectively discussing the situation.

Oh, and by the way, I like Russia. I think Putin has done a fantastic job turning the country around, and have no problem with political assassinations, of which he's committed several, if it keeps the country from sliding back into the anarchy of the Yelstin period. Sometimes one death is needed to save many. 230,000 aren't. However, I do not condone lying about the past for present political gain. There are better ways of dealing with history than changing it to suit your own ends.

 

[plarq]

You can't have discussions with Holocaust deniers. In denying the Katyn Massacre, you are the doing the equivalent of that. Therefore, this stopped being a discussion the second you poked your willfully ignorant nose into it. I would suggest to everyone else in the history forum that we simply ignore any post you make on the topic of Russia from this point on, because it is blatantly obvious that you are incapable of objectively discussing the situation.

Oh, and by the way, I like Russia. I think Putin has done a fantastic job turning the country around, and have no problem with political assassinations, of which he's committed several, if it keeps the country from sliding back into the anarchy of the Yelstin period. Sometimes one death is needed to save many. 230,000 aren't. However, I do not condone lying about the past for present political gain. There are better ways of dealing with history than changing it to suit your own ends.

The best way of dealing history is alternating it. Otherwise, you don't have enough power to do so.

 

[Yeekim]

How i spin this - this is Wiki. Wiki is't source for any history information. It just reference material.

So, do you have any contradicting evidence of your own?

According to statement of polish Institute of National Memory, of course.

Care to point me to that statement?

Also - you did not answer my question to you. What kind of evidence would you consider sufficient?

Finally, I am perplexed at how closely you identify today's Russia with Stalin and NKVD. You say allegations against them are allegations against Russia. You say that this is all slander fabricated by Gorbachev to please West (LOL). Hell, you outperform Alexandr Matrossov in their defense. And then you start crying when others, too, start identifying today's Russia with Stalin and NKVD.

 

[Agent327]

How i spin this - this is Wiki. Wiki is't source for any history information. It just reference material.

Actually no. I posted the material for those too lazy to google, like yourself. If you'd even bother to look for yourself (or actually read it), you'd know this one article provides plenty of references to actual documents (Soviet and otherwise) for your so-called "SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH". This research has already been carried out thoroughly. Your denial of the Katyn massacre is therefore nothing more than a blatant lie. Not even Putin would deny it. And your claim that Russian leaders (Soviet and post-Soviet) would make statements "to please the West" is simply preposterously a-historical. Your whole diatribe is not doing your native country any good.

BTW, I did not post the included photos of the actual mass graves (from various sources, including the Red Cross).

 

[JohnRM]

Nope. Hitler took over the leadership of the DAP singlehandedly (his first ever political gamble) and renamed it National-Socialist DAP. (So one might even claim he invented National-Socialism.)

So, if I take over the Republican Party and name it something else, then I invented Conservatism?

 

[Agent327]

If you'd rename it National Conservative Republican Party, you might be considered to have founded National Conservatism, yes. (Neo-conservatism wouldn't work since that's already invented.) Perhaps you are confusing National-Socialism with Fascism (an Italian movement which had a great impact on later fascistoid movements like Hitler's).

Now, if your comment goes towards originality, there wasn't much original in any of Hitler's thoughts or ideas and there were plenty of far-right splinter parties in the Weimar Republic. What set the NSDAP apart, IMO, was the combination of Hitler's charisma and rhetorical genius with the occurrence of the 1929 financial-economic crisis - without which the NSDAP might never have been heard of again.

 

[Sharwood]

While the conditions for National Socialism existed prior to Hitler taking control of the DAP, he certainly consolidated it, bringing in elements from both Fascism and Communism and adapting them for his own purposes. So he can be said to have invented Nazism. You can also make arguments that he didn't though, it doesn't really matter. Hitler basically brought a bunch of different ideas that were swirling around, and incorporated them into one ideology.

 

[CruelDwarf]

Sharwood, you compare muder of several thousand people with murder of millions? I cannot see why is denying of the soviet hand in this matter may be equal to denying of holocaust. You cannot imagine that Nazi could did such thing and using it in their propaganda?
So I tend to see such words as another label - "see this guy is evil person".

2Yeekim

Also - you did not answer my question to you. What kind of evidence would you consider sufficient?

Reports by NKVD personnel from killings site, exact written orders for execution (not this strange vague copy without any direct orders) with surnames of convicted. Even 1937 never happened such things as "just shoot all people in prison camp", every death penalty was documented.

Finally, I am perplexed at how closely you identify today's Russia with Stalin and NKVD.

Sorry, but not I start this speaches about modern Russia, so this isn't my fault. This is your perception, not mine.

You say that this is all slander fabricated by Gorbachev to please West (LOL)

This is far more complex matter. And story about falcifications and fabrications about Stalin's period of USSR history was start not from Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but from Khruschev and his XX congress of CPSU. This story starts from campaigns of "destalinization" and "struggle with cult of Stalin's personality".
Khruschev came to power during struggle with Malenkov (and Beria) whom Stalin designated as his successors. So when Khruschev won the struggle within Kremlin he must secure his position in power from others. So he tried to blame Stalin and his followers for their too opressive methods and represent self as more dignified and progressive leader.

And then you start crying when others

Well, I'm not crying. My english just awful, so I hardly can clearly express emotions in written text. Sorry for this part. Disscussions in english forms are part of learning language for me.