czar: churchill offered poland to stalin atleast knowing of katyn
In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out by the Soviets. According to Count Edward 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."[58] 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."[59] 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.Churchill asked Owen O'Malley to investigate the issue, but in a note to Foreign Secretary he noted: "All this is merely to ascertain the facts, because we should none of us ever speak a word about it."O'Malley pointed out several inconsistencies and near impossibilities in the Soviet version.[56] Later, Churchill sent a copy of that report to Roosevelt on the 13th August 1943. The report deconstructed the Soviet account of the massacre and alluded to the political consequences within a strongly moral framework but recognised that there was no viable alternative to the existing policy. No comment by Roosevelt on the O'Malley report has been found.[61] Churchill's own post-war account of the Katyn affair gives little further insight. In his memoirs, he refers to the 1944 Soviet inquiry into the massacre, which found the Germans guilty and adds, "belief seems an act of faith." Wiki
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