Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II

Operation Keelhaul/Cossack Repatriated
Part of the Aftermath of World War II
File:Lientz.jpg Betrayal of Cossacks at Lienz Painting by S.G.Korolkoff
Date May 28, 1945 Location Lienz, Austria Result 45,000 - 50,000 repatriated Cossacks
Belligerents
Lienz Cossacks	Allied Forces
Strength
>50,000
Casualties and losses
45,000 - 50,000 repatriated

The Betrayal of Cossacks refers to the forced transfer of Cossacks and ethnic Russians to the Soviet Union after World War II, including those who were never Soviet citizens (having left Russia before the end of the civil war or who were born abroad). Ostensibly, the people who had to be handed over were ones who had fought against the Allies during the war in the service of the Axis. In practice, however, many innocent people -- ones who never fought against the Allies -- were handed over as well.

The Cossacks who fought against the Allies saw their service not as treason to the motherland, but as an episode in the Russian Revolution of 1917, part of the ongoing struggle against Moscow and Communism.

This relatively little known event, as well as other events that are results of Yalta, is referred to by Nikolai Tolstoy as "The Secret Betrayal" because of its lack of exposure in the Western hemisphere. The most recognized of these events was that which took place in Lienz, Austria. It is the most recognized and studied because the Cossacks resisted with force.

Background

During the Russian Revolution of 1917, thousands of Russians who had fought for the White Army and the Tsar against the Bolsheviks fled to western European countries and gained citizenship. Since they had fled Russia before it became the U.S.S.R they never claimed citizenship in Soviet Russia.

On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, prompting the Soviet Union's entrance into World War II. This created a conflict of interest among Cossacks in the Soviet Union. They could either fight with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany or they could fight with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, which had abolished the Cossack Republics.

The struggle of some Cossacks to liberate their homelands from the Bolsheviks brought them into the ranks of the German Army, with whose aid they hoped to regain their lost property. The Cossacks were first recruited by German commanders in the field. In 1942 their units received recognition and wore their own insignia. By early 1943 authorization was given to create the 1st Cossack Division which trained throughout the summer of 1943 to be sent to Yugoslavia to fight the Tito partisans. By the end of the war, the S.S. attempted to gain control of the Cossack Division and transfer the Cossacks under their structure. Despite the refusal of General Helmuth von Pannwith to enter the S.S. together with his division (from beginning 1945 enlarged to the XVth Cossack Cavalery Corps) the Corps was placed under SS administration in terms of replacements and supplies without actually making the Cossack units a part of the Waffen S.S.

Effect of Yalta and Tehran Conferences

File:Yalta Conference.jpg

The Big three of WWII at the Yalta conference.

The agreements of the Yalta and Tehran Conferences signed by President Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill had an enormous impact on the Cossacks who chose not to fight for the Soviet Union because many of them were P.O.W.s in German camps. Stalin demanded that all Russian and Soviet citizens held in prisons be handed over to the Soviet Union. This was not contested by the British or American governments because they felt that many of their citizens would be freed by the Soviet Union and they believed that nothing should delay that freedom. After Yalta, Churchill did question Stalin asking "Did they (cossacks and other minorities) fight against us?". Stalin replied "they fought with ferocity, not to say savagery, for the Germans." This was true to many Cossacks who had fought against the Soviet Union during the war, most notably a Tatar Caucasian Division who boasted of the description, than to the purely Cossack units, but few fought against the non-Soviet Allies. None the less, they were understood to be Nazi collaborators and treated accordingly.

In accordance with these agreements, the Cossacks were forcibly surrendered by the Allies to the Red Army and repatriated to the Soviet Union. Toward the end of the war General Krasnov and other Cossack leaders persuaded Hitler and his authorities to allow all civilians and non-fighting Cossacks to settle on a permanent basis in the sparsely settled foothills of the Italian Alps, more precisely in Carnia. The Cossacks moved there in numbers and established a refugee settlement, with several stanitzas and posts, their administration, churches, schools and defense units. When the victorious Allies moved from central Italy into the Italian Alps, Italian partisans under General Contini ordered the Cossacks to leave their new homes and to retreat northward, into Austria. There, on the banks of the Drava River, near Lienz, the British army units caught up with the Cossacks and interned them in a hastily arranged camp. For a few days the British fed these refugees and created the impression that they understood the unique problem of this group, and could see the reason for their fear and uneasiness. The advance units of the Red Army were only a few miles to the east, rapidly surging to establish contact with the Allies. Many of the Cossacks began to believe that, under the protection of the British, they were safe from being handed over to the Soviet Union.

On May 28, 1945, two thousand and forty six Cossack officers and generals, including the cavalry leaders, Generals Pyotr Krasnov, Andrei Shkuro and Kelech-Giray, were disarmed and carried in British cars and trucks to a neighboring town held by the Red Army. There they were surrendered to the Red Army general, who ordered that they stand trial for treason. Many of these Cossack leaders had never been citizens of the Soviet Union, being the men who had left Russia in 1920 and therefore could not be guilty of any treason. Some of these men were executed immediately; the higher ranking officers were subjected to trials at Moscow and were also executed. Most notably, General Pyotr Krasnov was hanged in a public square. Von Pannwitz, not a traditional Cossack, chose to accompany the Cossacks when they were repatriated by the British to the Soviet Union, and was executed with five other Cossack Generals and Atamans in Moscow in 1947.

On June 1, 1945, an additional 32,000 Cossacks, including women and children, were similarly forced by the British into cattle cars and trucks, and delivered to the Bolsheviks to be taken back to the Soviet Union. Similar scenes were enacted in the same year in the American Zone of Occupation, in Austria and in Germany.

The bulk of Cossacks were sent to labor camps in the Far North and Siberia, most of whom died while in the labor camp. However, some escaped or lived until they were given freedom by Moscow (see amnesty below). A total of two million people were repatriated to the Soviet Union following WWII. While the exact number of Cossacks who were repatriated is not known, most modern historians estimate it to be 45,000-50,000. Some other estimates, although usually not as widely accepted, have ranged from 15,000 up to 150,000.

Lienz

The British arrived in Lienz, where over 2,700 Cossacks resided, on 28 May 1945. They arrived to tell the Cossacks that they were invited to an important British conference with British officials and would return to Lienz by 6 o'clock that evening. Some Cossacks began to worry but were assured by the British that everything would be fine. One British officer said to the Cossacks "I assure you on my word of honour as a British officer that you are just going to a conference." The repatriation that happened in Lienz was an exceptional situation because the Cossacks put up resistance to the repatriation and felt that the British committed crimes worse than those by the Gestapo or NKVD. According to Julius Epstein in his 1973 book Operation Keelhaul, one Cossack noted

"The NKVD or the Gestapo would have slain us with truncheons, the British did it with their word of honor." The first to commit suicide by hanging was the Cossack editor Evgenij Tarruski. The second was General Silkin who shot himself. . . . The Cossacks refused to board the trucks. British soldiers with pistols and clubs began using their clubs, aiming at the heads of the prisoners. They first dragged the men out of the crowd and threw them into the trucks. The men jumped out. They beat them again and threw them onto the floor of the trucks. Again, they jumped out. The British then hit them with rifle butts until they lay unconscious and threw them like sacks of potatoes in the trucks.|Cossack officer|Operation Keelhaul (1973), Julius Epstein

In total 2,749 Cossacks, including 2,201 officers, were driven to a prison and told by British officials that Soviet authorities would soon pick them up.

Other locations

Fort Dix, New Jersey, United States

While this event is often viewed as occurring only on European soil, it also occurred across the Atlantic Ocean at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Andrey Vlasov, a man who repeatedly voiced objections against Nazism and communism, was one of the men captured by American forces. His conversation with his American captor was described by Sven Steenberg in his book "Wlassow - Verräter oder Patriot?"

He began to speak, at first slowly and dispassionately, but then with growing intensity. For one last time, he spoke of all the prospects, hopes, and disappointments of his countrymen. He summed up everything for which countless Russians had fought and suffered. It was no longer really to the American that he was addressing himself — this was rather a confession, a review of his life, a last protest against the destiny that had brought him to a wretched end. . . . Vlasov stated that the leaders of the ROA were ready to appear before an international court, but that it would be a monumental injustice to turn them over to the Soviets and thereby to certain death. It was not a question of volunteers who had served the Germans, but of a political organization, of a broad opposition movement which, in any event, should not be dealt with under military law.

Andrey Vlasov was hanged August 2, 1946 for treason as well as active espionage and terrorist activity against the Soviet Union.

Aftermath

The Cossacks, and particularly their officers who were more politically aware, had never doubted that this would be the fate of those who were handed back to Soviet Russia. They believed that the British would have related to their fight against communism, not knowing that their fates had already been decided by the Yalta Conference. When they discovered that they would be repatriated, as according to the Yalta Conference, many escaped, some probably with the aid of their Allied captors, some passively resisted, and hundreds of others committed suicide. Of the many Cossacks that succeeded in fleeing these extraditions, most hid themselves in the forests and mountains; many were saved by the local German population; but the greatest number of the escapees found safety and salvation in changing their identity, disguising themselves as Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Turks, Armenians and Ethiopians. Eventually they were admitted into the camps for Displaced Persons. Under such assumed nationalities and names, a considerable number of them went to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act. Many others left the Displaced Person camps for any land which would open its doors to them. A great number of these people remained in Germany, Austria, France, and Italy under assumed identities. Thousands of Cossacks chose to conceal their identity until the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991.

Amnesty

Moscow, no longer under Stalin, declared a partial amnesty for inmates of slave camps on March 27, 1953, and again on September 17, 1955, some political crimes were specifically omitted. For example, those convicted of Section 58.1(c) of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that in the event of flight abroad by a person in military service, all adult members of his family who abetted him or knew about the contemplated flight are subject to imprisonment of 5 to 10 years; all dependents who did not know of the planned flight are subject to exile in Siberia for 5 years, were not given amnesty.

Further reading

• Catherine Andreyev (1987). Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-30545-4.
• Nikolai Tolstoy (1978). The Secret Betrayal. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0-684-15635-0.
• Nikolai Tolstoy (1981). Stalin's Secret War. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-01665-2.
• John Ure (2002). The Cossacks: An Illustrated History. London: Gerald Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-3253-1.
• Samuel J. Newland (1991). Cossacks in the German Army 1941–1945, London: Franc Cass. ISBN 0-7146-3351-8.
• Nikolai Tolstoy (1986). The Minister and the massacres. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd. ISBN 0-09-164010-5
• Ian Mitchell (1997). The cost of a reputation. Lagavulin: Topical Books. ISBN 0-9531581-0-1.
• Józef Mackiewicz (1993). Kontra. London: Kontra. ISBN 0-907652-30-1.

See also

• Russian Liberation Army
• Andrey Vlasov
• Operation Keelhaul
• Helmuth von Pannwitz
• GoldenEye, a James Bond film in which the villain, Alec Trevelyan, is a descendant of Lienz Cossacks who bears a grudge against the United Kingdom

References

• Haines, Don. Web article from Combat Magazine
• "Motherland" (Rodina) Society Archives