760C.61/1022: Telegram
The Ambassador to the Polish Government in Exile (Biddle) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 17—4:40 p.m.]
Polish Series [No.] 16. Reference my despatch Polish Series No. 158, June 2, 194211 regarding missing Polish officers in Russia, and my telegram Polish Series No. 8, [March] 19, midnight, Sikorski expressed his concern over the growing animosity throughout the Polish Armed Forces against Russia provoked by Moscow’s now widely known insistence in its note of January 16, 1943, upon the Ribbentrop–Molotov line and the denial of citizenship to the Poles forcibly deported to the Soviet Union. His apprehension on this score has considerably increased as a result of the German radio broadcasts of past few days announcing the discovery in the Smolensk area of the graves of some 8,000 Polish officers which the broadcasts claim to have been shot by Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940.
Sikorski says that the German assertions thus far made regarding this “ghastly story” unfortunately corroborate his information received through Polish intelligence channels. In fact he and his associates had concluded from these reports that the Soviet authorities had “murdered” the Polish officers at the time of France’s defeat in the belief that Germany was on the eve of victory. In view of these German allegations and their potential effect upon the Polish Armed Forces, Sikorski had Lieutenant General Kukiel, Minister of National Defense, yesterday issue a communiqué setting forth in effect (a) the fruitless attempts made by himself and his Government to ascertain from the Soviet authorities the whereabouts of the missing Polish officers, and (b) stating that although the Polish Government had become accustomed to the lies of German propaganda and understood the purpose of its recent revelations, the situation called for an investigation of the graves and verification of the “detailed information” [Page 380] alleged by the Germans by a proper international body, such as the International Red Cross.
I am aware that the Polish authorities granted little, if any, credence to the statement issued by the Soviet Information Bureau on April 1512 labelling the German allegations as slanderous fabrications aimed at covering up their own unprecedented crimes and stating that these allegations left no doubt as to the tragic fate of the former Polish prisoners of war who in 1941 having been engaged in construction work in the Smolensk region had fallen into the hands of the Germans following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from that area.
- Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. iii, p. 150.↩
- For a summary of this statement, see telegram No. 322, April 19, from the Second Secretary of Embassy in the Soviet Union, p. 382; for complete text, see The Katyn Forest Massacre, pt. 6, pp. 1720–1721.↩