Katyń

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…