Operation Keelhaul: The Allies’ Final War Crime - WW2 Documentary Special

[@WorldWarTwo]

War Against Humanity will continue for some time, as there are still many difficult truths to face. Among the forthcoming episodes are the Nuremberg trials. The road ahead is long, but we must never forget.

[@Hyronimus-Decimus-Gaius]

@@user-mg3xr9tz7m That's you're opinion but its like ur blaming The WW2 channel for the Nuremberg trials lol, Hisotry should always be covered either u like it or not.

[@yeedbottomtext7563]

@@user-mg3xr9tz7mdoes your incoherent rant have a point?

[@ralphranzinger4197]

THANK YOU! This is the Episode I have wanted for years to watch! Thank you for your works!

[@RenaultFT]

We can never forget

[@michaelnewton5873]

I had a professor at Mo. State Univ. Dr. Meredith Adams, on whom be peace, who did Seminar class on Nuremberg, the Truman Library has the transcripts. I was American history so didn't take the class.

[@b.chaline4394]

My grandmother Maria Yablonskaya was one of the lucky Ostarbeiter :) taken from her native Belarus in the very early days of Barbarossa, aged only 16. First worked as a slave in a German factory, kept trying to escape "to look for food", as she always said, until the Germans had enough and sent her to a farm southside. There he met my grandfather René, a French POW. They were married by an US Army officer in 1945 and went back to France together. She never went back to the USSR/Belarus ever again.

[@tkm238-d4r]

Thanks for mentioning the historical background. Among young women who were made to work in German factories, after they were liberated by Soviet troops, the arrival of the NKVD was the start of another miserable experience. The NKVD believed these women survived because they slept with German troops. Many of these women were socially ostracized upon return. On the whole, it was not that bad compared to under the Germans but what the women really found objectionable was that such accusations came from their own comrades. 🙄🙄

[@Justanotherconsumer]

Happy that there are still always glimmers of hope in the darkness of history.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you for sharing that, what a remarkable journey your grandmother went through.

[@bassuverkropp1525]

​@@tkm238-d4rNearly 4000 Soviet women came to the Netherlands as war brides in 1945 with Dutchmen who had been forced labourers in Germany.

[@natheriver8910]

Very interesting

[@indianajones4321]

I believe this was part of the James Bond Film Goldeneye, where Alec Treveyln (Sean Bean) was the son of one of these Soviet citizens sent back to the USSR by the British and this is his motivation in becoming a Bond Villain.

[@吳聲杰-f7u]

Precisely,Alec is one of the “lienz cossack” Although he should be like 56 years old when goldeneye took place (1995) Sean bean was too young to play as him

[@tkm238-d4r]

@@吳聲杰-f7u Good day. Definitely agree with you. At the time of the movie screening, some movie reviewers wondered why the producers chose a somewhat obscure event, from the UK viewpoint, as part of the background storyline. Perhaps the original intention was to use betrayal by the Cambridge 5 or George Blake during the 1950s. However, back then, Philby had only been deceased for less than 10 years and Blake was still alive. Not very comfortable for the producers.

[@AshlandMan]

But you have to remember that time doesn't really matter in the original Bond continuity as every 007 from Connery to Bronson is supposed to be the same guy. So canonically Brosnan was a Royal Navy Commander in World War II before going on to fight Goldfinger​, went to space (Moonraker), and squared off against a Nazi science experiment KGB twink Christopher Walken (View to a Kill). Honestly they should go back to that sliding time scale with new actors. @@吳聲杰-f7u

[@balrog262]

His parents killed themselves in transit, yes. "Better to die like a Soldier under the treads of a tank, than to to be hanged like a dog in a Gulag." Unknown Russian Liberation Army Soldier, who lay dying after he threw himself under a soviet tank to Captain Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, Prussia, 1945.

[@Andreas021Possenig]

Yes, it was. In the english version they had i right, even the pronunciation of the cities name, "Lienz" by the late Robbie Coltrane was very good (kzbin.info/www/bejne/qGaug2CbrJicg6M). Sadly in the german dubbed version they changed that (at least it was pronounced like that) to Linz, which is the capital city of upper austria, about 300 km away from Lienz. Totally wrong, a painfull fuckup. Sparti did his homework and has named the correct city, but the pronunciation is a bit off. He did it like "Sieben" (German for seven), which may look right, both use this "ie", but in this case it is pronounced different. The "i" is spoken as usual, but the "e" sounds similar to the "a" in "amber" for example. For those of you who know IPA: ˈli:ɛnt͜s There is even a small museum in Lienz (kobro-kosakenmuseum-lienz.at/), a cemetery and a stone remembering Pannwitz in a near village. A local restaurant/hotel (www.goldener-fisch.at/) was headquarter for some time. There ist a bronze plate on the outside of it remembering this. The cossacks being in the SS is of minor concern, i guess even unknown to most of the locals. 1 or 2 cossack families where hiding in a barn, near the farm a grew up on, which is in a village close to lienz. Back then it was owned by my grandparents. The cossack kids approached them begging for food and my grandmother helped them. My grandmother knew starvation from here childhood at the end of WW1 and was poor all here life, rearding money, but atleast in here adulthood she always had enough food. Those kids visited again for decades, not only the cemetery or the city, but my grandmother, i think trying to thank her. The last time i saw them they where old man by themselves and my grandmother was in her late eighties. Sadly there isn´t much more to tell, since there was a language barrier. If i remember correctly the by then old man spoke english (i guess they made it to the US or UK), which nobody understood or spoke in our family a this time. The men problaby forgot the little german they knew from back then, after the war. So there wasn´t to much conversation and i was to young, occupied with other things to understand what i could have known talking to this guys. Now this information is lost in time.

[@rramos117]

Alec Trevelyan: We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife. James Bond: Hence Janus. The two-faced Roman god come to life.

[@williestyle35]

I am a gateway. An entry point to both sides of life - Janus talking at Mars Corridor

[@mgway4661]

This was from Goldeneye?

[@TheBearInTheChair]

Alec: "It wasn't God that gave me this face, it was you. Setting the timers for three minutes instead of six." James: "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" Alec: "No. You're supposed to die for me. And by the way, I did think of asking you to join my little scheme, but, somehow I knew 007's loyalty was always to the mission, never his firend. Closing time, James! Last call."

[@TheBearInTheChair]

Yes, ​@@mgway4661

[@robertnett9793]

Goldeneye had quite a deep message, come to think about it. It's one of those where you really can question the ethicacy of Bonds (and the MI5s) actions.

[@Jz4p]

Whoof, that poem at the end was spectacular and chilling.

[@NickRatnieks]

One of my friends who will be 97 in a few weeks time ended up in the UNRRA camp at Alt Garge near Bleckede by the Elbe, north Germany. He had been conscripted into the Luftwaffe at the age of 16 in August 1944 starting as a Flak Auxiliary but was offered pilot training which he deliberately flunked as he thought it horribly risky. At Alt Garge he met Vera Lynn and mentioned all manner of strange/funny stories which have been documented back in Latvia to record individual histories. He said one day some Red Army soldiers ( and the Soviets were just across the Elbe) came to talk to those in the camp to encourage their return. Before they could get out of their car, four burly Lithuanians turned the car upside down with the soldiers still inside. They took this to be a significant "No" vote!

[@klemenzagar6149]

My grandfather was in his early teens during the retreat of the German army north from Yugoslavia into Austria. He now of course feels sorry for the Cossacks, Slovenian whites, and German soldiers who were killed, but usually adds that they didn't do themselves any favours when they continued killing civilians, burning entire villages, and executing hostages all the way to the final days of the war. When you lose family members right at the end to the occupier's bullets, you rarely feel merciful when you get a chance at retribution. In my area we have many stories of columns of soldiers being marched into the mountain forests never to be seen again. A horrible end to a horrible war.

[@jerseycitysteve]

My father also wept no tears after VE Day in Czechoslovakia. His company received orders to "repatriate" Vlasov's troops. In his view, they brought this on themselves. The Germans burned my grandfather's village in Ukraine and killed all the men, women and children. He left Russia before the war. Please don't talk about allied war crimes to me.

[@otfriedschellhas3581]

This was not about retribution by the locals fir war crimes. This was the betrayal of anti-Communists by the Anglo-Americsns or more precisely by the British under Churchill to please their "democratic " buddy Stalin. Similar to their useless guarantee of Poland, which never extended to the Soviets, neither in 1939 nor in 44. All they did was support Soviet Communist expansion and power. We'll done.

[@tkm238-d4r]

Good point that you made. Not a coincidence those who felt the Allies should had been nicer were usually the ones least affected by the Axis, especially those of US origin. This was 1 reason why I never believed PRC would be able to replace the US in East Asia and Southeast Asia. The USA beat the crap out of the Japs, something which even those who later became hostile to the US, still wanted to maintain good relations with the US. As an Australian ex-POW spoke in a 1995 interview, he felt Japan should not had been re-created after the war. Back to main topic. The British lack of empathy with the Cossacks could be linked not only with WW2 itself but also the failed appeasements and the trenches of the earlier war. The Cossacks historically were also linked to Tsarist enforcers, a pre-cursor to what later became the Cheka, OGPU and NKVD. Similar to what Valery Zhukovsky in The World is not Enough described it, different name, same old good service. As the German treatment of France suggested, the British had no illusions on what would had happened if Germany won the war. Kind of strange that revisionists tend to dislike the NKVD-KGB, but were quite happy with their Tsarist predecessors. Sometime in the future, perhaps there might be a revisionist movement to argue that Beria was a victim of political repression and the Khrushchev and Zhukov were the bad guys.

[@joshuadaniel6121]

​@@jerseycitysteve its only a war crime if you lose the war.

[@tkm238-d4r]

@@joshuadaniel6121 Agree. Both Germany and Japan applied the principle of victors setting the standards. This was why both Germany and Japan fought till the end because they knew what they did and they expected they would be treated harshly. Not a coincidence that moaning over victors' justice came only after they lost but also they were treated not that badly. They were definitely given lots of space to moan, something which they would never had granted the other side if they had been the winners.

[@alexanderakh4955]

Some of these people sent by the British to the USSR were never Soviet citizens as they left Russia before 1922 or were born in Europe.

[@bert8373]

The White emigres including Krasnov,Andrei Shkuro among others

[@hullutsuhna]

Soviets didn't care, they demanded Finland to return all Estonian volunteers (among other 'Soviet citizens'-) still in Finland, and having little choice, the Finnish Army rounded up its Estonians & loaded them on trains to USSR, but 'sometimes forgot' to lock the doors of the rail cars & wouldn't you know, many returnees jumped from the moving trains & were never seen again by Finnish or Soviet officials (some also got away from the Army officials and/or the police when they were detained & informed of their deportation, I recall one story of an Estonian who, when detained by the police, claimed he had a Finnish passport & promised to come back to show it to the cop if he was allowed to go retrieve it unaccompanied, the cop agreed & the guy somehow got lost on his way to his lodgings & before long found himself in Sweden), Finnish Navy's Estonians on the other hand somehow all ended up in Sweden, what are the chances of every ship carrying Estonians to USSR having a faulty compass...

[@nickbell4984]

​@@hullutsuhnathat's actually pretty sad as the Estonians had every right to fight against the Soviets. As bad as the Nazis were, the enemies of the Estonian people weren't them but the Soviet Union. These people were probably fighting for the very small hope their country had left at independence, not for the Nazi regime.

[@Tadicuslegion78]

I remember first hearing about this as a kid watching GoldenEye and all of it going over my head because when you're 6 years old you have no idea what a cossack, Stalin, nazis or any of it means.

[@robertsettle2590]

I did.

[@jamescarter8693]

Oh such a game

[@kaieastwood3373]

For England James? -Alec Trevelyn.

[@indianajones4321]

@@kaieastwood3373 No, for me -James Bond

[@pnutz_2]

@@indianajones4321 RIP the dish in puerto rico

[@BubblewrapHighway]

The power of the poetry at the video's end could move mountains. What a work of art.

[@angusmacdonald7187]

When we read about wars in grade school and high school history books, they are all very neat. They begin here and end there. Oh, there may be horrible things that happen, but a neat little box has been placed around the war. This segment is a small and very necessary corrective to this vision.

[@pietjepuk9408]

That poem: mindbogging.

[@tniiler]

My family lived in a DP camp for Estonians in Germany for 5 years following the war. Our group was scheduled to be repatriated despite having fled the advancing Red Army. Fortunately, an American officer managed to help them, and many others, to escape to another camp and eventually make their ways westward.

[@frederickthegreatpodcast382]

My great-grandfather Alexis Avdakov was a Russian veteran of the Great War and the Russian Civil War and fought for the Whites. He fled to Yugoslavia after those wars where he built a life with my great-grandmother. They had my grandpa, Gregory Avdakov, four months before the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. My Great Grandfather then became a soldier in the German army and fought in the West. He was captured by the British in Belgium in 1944. If he was deported in this operation, I wouldn’t be alive. Luckily he stayed in Belgium after the war and saved enough money to bring his family over to the US on first class.

[@Justanotherconsumer]

One of the lucky ones, then. It is good that history has some silver lining, it is bleak enough.

[@irachowdhury4847]

​@@ZS-rw4qq!????

[@jerseycitysteve]

Nazi soldiers should never have been allowed into the US. Black American veterans were treated like trash upon their return while former Nazis got the red carpet.

[@Mshi-]

​@@ZS-rw4qq correct actually

[@fabiancosescu3200]

You think he had a choice for atleast part of those choices ?

[@EmilioooYT]

Again, a great episode with another poignant ending. Congrats on a million subscribers a few weeks ago! I hope your contribution to historiography shall reach as many poeple as possible. Learning from the past will make a better world.

[@jeremyhooper790]

Thankyou Spartacus and Team for continuing to shed light on the best and worst of humanity in our shared history. I find these videos insightful and educational. The manner in which they are presented is appropriate for the heavy topics at hand. Such documentary material must be treasured as opposed to censored for it targets the one thing that matters most, the unfiltered truth. Well done Spartacus. Never Forget.

[@spartacus-olsson]

Thank you

[@ΙωάννηςΚήτος]

I almost shed a tear listening to what happened to those poor Cossacks, but then I remembered what they did in Yugoslavia during WW2 and decided instead to keep my tears for the actual victims of their atrocities...

[@johnrockwell5834]

You can still sympathize with the women and kids. Not the perpetrators themselves.

[@Johann_Gambolputty_of_Ulm]

I am Polish myself and a bit of history afficionado; yet I never knew that Anders himself had fought to prevent the deportation of SS Galizien troops. Many of which would surely be brainwashed to hate Poles in the past years. It shows how scary was the perspective of the "big brother from the East" for any Slavs under its yoke. Thanks WW2 for educating me yet once again!

[@darked89]

Same here. Anders most likely assumed that the fate of these people will resemble that of Polish POWs in Katyń.

[@tkm238-d4r]

Not an expert on Anders but on this issue, perhaps Anders' sympathy was based on the enemy of my enemy as my friend. When it came to hating Poland among the people that we later called Western Ukrainians, much of the hating was already there back in the 17th Century. Despite hatred of Tsarist rule, the Western Ukrainians did not necessarily feel a sense of belonging to Poland. Stepan Bandera did not exist in a vacuum. Not blaming Anders in any way. In such a situation, quite hard for him to push for the most ideal decision.🙄🙄

[@Kornilovite]

I'm doing my masters' history degree on the topic of Cossack emigration and had the pleasure of visiting the New Kuban Museum in New Jersey this august.They had many artifacts and papers devoted to the illegal forced extraditions at the end of WW2. Of note is the painting "the betrayal of the Cossacks at Lienz" in which every person's face was apparently based off of a real person the artist remembered from their vivid memories

[@JohnRNewAccountNumber3]

Illegal in what sense?

[@rudylutz2085]

​​@JohnRNewAccountNumber3 Illegal in regards to the numerous White Imperial emigrés who NEVER were Soviet citizens, or others from elsewhere who were not Soviet citizens either. Try them and deal with them as appropriate if necessary, but do not send them to a country they never belonged to. Also immoral in regards to the women and children who were not combatants. The other immoral act at Lienz was that the British gave promises that repatriation would not happen. Please look up Nikolai Tolstoy's 1977 book "Victims of Yalta," and yes, he is a relative of the great Leo Tolstoy.

[@joseraulmiguens6699]

it was not illegal to extradite soviet citizens who had joined the armies of Nazi Germany to fight the allies to their respective country.

[@radapatada]

Say what you will about the allies. You did not have Western POWs fight desperately to stay in Soviet captivity.

[@MattStanton1999]

​@@penultimateh766 such a small number of people that it is virtually irrelevant

[@amogus948]

​@@penultimateh766so basically to enjoy a worse standard of living than the average low-middle class worker of Western Europe but without as many freedoms What a deal

[@BangFarang1]

I listened to the interview of a French guy who was a teenager kept in custody by the local French Gestapo because he was caught sending food to some resistance guys hidden in the wood. He was free to wander within town in exchange of some domestic work. After Normandy D-day the Gestapists fled to Germany. The teenager, by then an adult, went with them because all the population seeing him working for the Gestapo viewed him as a collaborationist. In Germany they were enroled in the Waffen SS to fight on the eastern front. He was captured by the Soviets and the war was over. During his interrogation, he told them that he learned mechanic and they offered him to be director of a factory in the USSR, telling him that he would have a car, and could choose a wife amongst the beautiful Russian maiden. Meanwhile he learned that France gave amnesty to the former collaborationists and choose to be sent back to France.

[@BangFarang1]

@@amogus948 Of course he knew only the pre-war standard of living of low class workers in western Europe. He could not imagine the Marshall plan and all those goodies that will be thrown by the USA.

[@amogus948]

@@penultimateh766 I'm not siding with any person, I'm siding with liberal democracies as a system which provided the average person the best standards of living in the world, the most advanced welfare states and the biggest amount of rights and freedoms Meanwhile you are siding with regimes which turned out to be some of the worst places to live in, with below average standards of living (I wonder why so many people was fleeing from the East to West), some of the highest rates of corruption and income inequality (while comrade Joe was eating potatoes comrade Stalin was fully enjoying his life) and basically no right and freedom given to their subjects

[@josephrielinger2637]

Another brilliant episode calling us to empathy and compassion for our fellow human beings. Thank you Spartacus.

[@balrog262]

As a Pole, thanks for covering this, Spartacus. Too many people lick the underside of Stalin's shoes when he was as bad as Hitler. My homeland was sold out. Never Forget.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you for your comment. And I guess your picture is a strong indicator ;) -TimeGhost Ambassador

[@leonardogregoratti386]

yes but not forget that the whole war began because the British and French tried to help you.

[@wasyl101010]

This is exactly what my dad (Wasyl Kotula) told me when I was young. He grew up near the Carpathian mountains in Poland, born into an ethnic Ukrainian family. He was 14 when the Russian invaded, stabbing Poland in the back in1939, was taken for slave labour by the Nazi's probably in 1942, was conscripted into a Ost Battalion after trying to escape from the Austria farm he was labouring in. He managed to surrender to Gurkha soldiers in Italy and ended up in Anders Army as a private in the 3rd Karpathian Mountain Regiment, driving a Bren Gun Carrier with a flamethrower attached. He arrived in England in 1946 aged 20, (along with 250,000 Poles and East Europeans) never to meet any of his family or seeing his homeland again before his death in 2001.

[@johnnystulic42]

Stalin was a horrible, murderous criminal. But please remember that, had Hitler won, there would be no Polish people left today to say Stalin was just as bad.

[@balrog262]

@@wasyl101010 Damn, how'd he manage that? Also, what did he think of UPA? Not too positive if he chose us I assume. You guys Lemkos?

[@Mr.Overby]

Thank you for doing such an outstanding job on this program. You have done such a service to the men, women, and children who have suffered under the jackboot of tyranny. You definitely are inspiring the next generation of historians.

[@spartacus-olsson]

Thank you, you are too kind.

[@Ryan_Winter]

@@spartacus-olsson All by the logic of "who is on our side is innocent, the rest is not". It can't be called "victor justice" either, because the Allies contributed very little to the defeat of the Bohemian Private.

[@spartacus-olsson]

@@Ryan_Winter I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.

[@balrog262]

"Better to die like a soldier under the treads of a tank, than to to be hanged like a dog in a Gulag." Unknown Russian Liberation Army Soldier, who lay dying after he threw himself under a soviet tank to Captain Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, Prussia, 1945.

[@Justanotherconsumer]

Realistically a bit like some folks accused in Salem where they chose how they died because it would be better for their families. “Our son died defending the cause of Communism” sounds so much better than “our son was executed for collaboration.”

[@balrog262]

@@ZS-rw4qq Found the Soviet war crime denier lol.

[@stellavinokur9377]

Solzhenitsyn was an artillery officer , CO of the counterbattery scouts squad. He had never drove a tank, let alone command one. Get your facts straight

[@balrog262]

@@stellavinokur9377 Yes, it was behind the lines, the T-34s were headed to the front, the ROA guys were being marched back by the Commisars, likely to killed. The one guy saw the tanks as they went to the front and threw himself in front of the treads, the driver very away so it only crushed his lower body, Solzhenitsyn ran to him demanding to know why the hell he would do such a thing. That was his response. And the guy was a Soviet POW, who switched sides, most likely.

[@cmck472]

The Russian bots are out again, I see...

[@redhen2123]

Glad to see this sad story finally talked about by Mark Felton and yourself. Perfidious Albion indeed.

[@gumdeo]

One wonders why the Poles ever trusted them.

[@donaldhill3823]

I could see returning those in uniform especially officers but I can’t see forcing Civilians to return. I also don’t understand why the Free Polish forces who fought under UK command were forced to return.

[@christopherconard2831]

Because Stalin promised a free Poland run by the Polish people. No one with more than three brain cells believed it. But it would make for some awkward conversations back home in England and America if politicians had to explain how they knew dear Uncle Joe was just as much a homicidal lunatic as the guy they'd just fought against.

[@anaturn12]

Because westerned didnt really cared for fate of the slavs under the communist regime. They wanted to appease stalin and people died because of it. Once you got corptured yo uwere forever "Dirty" to communists

[@baloonaticsw]

That is one of the single best poems I have ever heard. Thank you for reading it here, Sparty.

[@eeeandeee]

I thought Stalin had Allied prisoners of war that his forces had 'liberated' as they moved west and Stalin was holding them and would only return them when the Allies returned 'his citizens'.

[@kiankier7330]

Well, the thing was that the allies only return "some of them"

[@JohnBrownsBody]

Yeah this did not happen

[@Bhulk79]

Stalin DID hold allied prisoners and kept a bunch of them, but usa didn't feel like starting a new war over it

[@theoldar]

My professor Sergei Utechin always described Churchill as a war criminal because of the re-patriation. He managed to get to the UK and was not sent back.

[@joe4171]

Why should they allow citizens of another nation, who fought for their enemy stay in their country?

[@user-mg3xr9tz7m]

@@joe4171yes thats why he repaid the indians that were mostly forced to fight for the empire with the Bengal famine that killed around 3 million Indians and rejoicing with that like he noted on the executive orders “Indians are a bestial people" He was responsible directly and indirectly since the end of the 19th century till his last mandates for more deaths and misery than Hitler and Staline combined

[@Uselesshandlw]

@@joe4171because for everything that happened it would be deeply unhonorable to basically violate the Geneva convention and send these men who surrendered to you in hopes of providing service and avoid getting turned over to the vile and dangerous Soviet government that would kill or disappear anyone they saw fit it would have been better to leave them in Austria as they already set up communities there anyway Cossacks are nomadic by tradition as for the ROA fighters it was straight up a death sentence and they knew that and did it anyway which is a war crime

[@mgway4661]

@@joe4171because it’s wrong to allow mass murder to happen

[@MaFo82]

He was a war crimnal long before the repatriation, the Bengal Famine was not created by Churchill but his racism towards indians made it far worse then it had to be.

[@jonny46ba]

that poem at the end.. the first reading shocked and appalled me.. the second reading broke my heart... brilliant, powerful and very clever. I have never come across a peom like that.. playing it in reverse making it just as powerful as the first reading but turning emotions updide down... maybe I need to read more poetry. never forget

[@chickenperson-ir3bn]

"Western allies" for ROA PoWs and other such Vlasovites is a bit of a stretch: they were Soviet traitors seeking refuge in the West after the time of the Axis was up. A more difficult case is that of White emigres, who were never Soviet citizens in the real sense but chose collaboration to bring about its downfall. Realistically, they knew what they were signing up for even if that decision was impressed upon them by weaponised starvation on the part of the germans. I can't imagine us being very pleased if the Soviets were to capture a western collaborationist unit and refuse to transfer it to us

[@peteroneill5426]

Principle of non-refoulment has to be examined in that context; it is undeniably wrong to put people into danger, especially returning them to a system where they would not receive a fair trial etc.

[@Vegaswill714]

I was quite impressed by Sparticus' ending of this video.

[@alexamerling79]

Love that you are covering aspects of the war little discussed in the history books Sparty!

[@alexandrekuritza5685]

Looking forward to the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials episodes

[@daimpi]

Thanks for this impressive documentary with such a powerful ending!

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you very much for the superchat!

[@PuncakeLena]

I love that poem at the end, so clever to make it display 2 completely contrasting pictures of what people thought at the time through the same sentences

[@Apricot_Lover-r2c]

Not just at the time.

[@OperationPhantom]

Genius poem at the end there! Really shows how different things can look from another perspective. It's so damn clever and moving.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for watching.

[@The762nato]

A good friend in the US Army , 1945 , was on patrol with other solders when some Russians came to them to surrender . The patrol called up the HQ and were told they could not accept their surrender . The next day while on patrol they found the Russians executed in the ditch where they were at the day before . This was after the war was over !

[@theinfestedterran777]

The poem at the end is probably one of the creative and creative (if discussion of humanitarian crisis can be called creative) poems I’ve heard read. Thank you for that. Honestly surprised that is somehow not read or at least reviewed in English classes.

[@isakferm7686]

The poem in the end must have been the most important and memorable I have ever heard today 🥺

[@yeedbottomtext7563]

RIP to all abused POWs on all sides.

[@_ArsNova]

If this were a Reddit comment, it'd be downvoted en masse.

[@spartacus-olsson]

@@_ArsNovawell, it’s good that we’re not on Reddit here then, because it’s a good and decent thought.

[@spartacus-olsson]

@@penultimateh766 not my place to say what the OP is thinking… but in my view the key word here is _abused_ not _all._

[@_ArsNova]

@@penultimateh766 So are people not allowed to use the phrase "all/both sides" whatsoever, regardless of context, lest they be accused of "moral equivalency" by denizens of the internet? Are we literally not even allowed to say: "Rest in peace abused POWs"??

[@spartacus-olsson]

@@_ArsNova sadly that polarization is what the keyboard warriors are driving towards. They have become the vanguard of the enemy forces against Humanity.

[@sirhenrymorgan1187]

That final poem. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

[@leftnoname]

A genius piece of poetry to give hope after a difficult to watch episode.

[@kevinpascual]

Thank you for covering this!

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for watching.

[@ivanpticar8007]

I've never heard of this poem....but it is powerfull and touches you to the core. Thank you Spartacus and the team for sharing it and these stories with all of us.

[@rickgaston7118]

Such suffering , after a war meant to ‘free’ people

[@nortonyeung5818]

What an ending. Truly inspiring... I really feel that was the best special episode from Timeghost... So far!

[@shawnr771]

Thank you for the lesson. The closing is one of your best yet.

[@pathutchison7688]

Always good to hear your voice and see your glorious mustache, Spartacus.

[@spartacus-olsson]

Happy to be here!

[@TheSVgregor]

Horribly shameful behavior on the part of the Allie’s

[@samoilenko3887]

That’s so interesting! My grandgrandparents actually were from cossack settlement in Kuban. But the last cossack from my family died back during the communist revolution and during world warII, my grandmother’s mother was fighting on the soviet side. Generally speaking, the cossacks from Kuban’ were from Poltavska oblast’ of Ukraine, relocated to so called „Raspberry Ukraine” in 18th century. My grandmother although lived for all her life in Soviet Union talks ukrainian from childhood, same as other cossack descendants in Kuban

[@Petrowsky14]

My mother and aunt were born in DP camps in Germany...forever grateful to an unknown American Ukrainian soldier who help make sure our family weren't sent back to Ukraine.

[@posterestantejames]

Whoa. Bilston's poem took my breath away. The whole thing, the entire presentation, was necessary difficult difficult to watch

[@tonimickiewicz8453]

One of your best @Spartacus brought a tear to my eye (my great aunt was an NKVD rape victim who was gotten rid of in 1945 and sent to Khazakhstan by her tormentor... similiar fates befell a third of my extended family during those years.) Great reeportage, thank you

[@tkm238-d4r]

Sad to hear about this. 😐😐 At the same time, since the late 1990s, historical revisionism would have us believed that only Soviets and some Western Allied troops behaved badly. Meanwhile, German and Japanese troops were supposed to be on their best behavior throughout the time. Only a few Nazis misbehaved. Regrettably, the end of the Cold War could and should have provided a space for examining the less prominent but nevertheless important parts of history. Instead the revisionism got so ridiculous that experiences of your extended family would probably be dismissed as CIA-NED fake news. This was because some claims of what the Soviets did became so exaggerated that verifiable plausible events were viewed with skepticism. 🙄🙄

[@knswartz1]

On one rail line to the Soviet death in Keelhaul at the border , my Uncle and his men opened every rail car going east and asked them if they wanted to go to the Soviets. Naturally, nearly all did not want to go east and got out of the railcars.

[@greggashgarian8360]

Brilliant! Much applause! Bravi bravi bravi! Thank you Spartacus and all of your team. This whole series should be required material for every student of History, Politcal Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Law, for every judge and legislator, for all members of police and armed services, and for everyone with a little power over others. We shall not forget.

[@tombriggman2875]

Bravo Sparty for such a factual and very compassionate at one of the west's greatest mistakes.

[@prazcuray1388]

That poem was awesome. My motherland is split between two countries and two races, I’ve never seen my family from the south as any different and deserve every right to move freely where I’m at, we were here before the border.

[@henrik3291]

War crimes remain war crimes, independent of perpetrator or victim.

[@6896franksanc]

Don’t remember this ever being discussed in history class.

[@Cencrd]

I heard the poem at the end, then heard you read it in reverse...that's amazing poetry. Powerful.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for watching.

[@camg6400]

Never forget

[@kantemirovskaya1lightninga30]

Thank you Sparty and team, as always, you and the TIMEGHOST team have outdone yourselves.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Much appreciated!

[@janhaanstra2245]

Wow! What a brilliant poem, in form, langage and message. Never forget!

[@macleunin]

Just goes to show how easy it is for “good” soldiers to commit horrific things. Just like the Germans, they were “just following orders”.

[@storm___]

Yeah but only one got charged and put behind bars or murdered. Mostly the second.

[@gumdeo]

@@storm___ The only real war crime is losing.

[@DruiceBox]

@@gumdeosmooth brain take

[@steppedtuba50]

@@DruiceBoxhow so- history is written in pencil

[@adaw2d3222]

The cossacks must be the worst British war crime.

[@djjohn2126]

The poem is the best part of today's episode. Thank you sparty.

[@bigtoe333333]

This channel is amazing, please keep it going guys, we always need to be reminded how our more negative attitudes can lead to evil and inhumanity

[@DinJaevel]

And yet Society is in a hurry To forget

[@littlekong7685]

My grandmother was a Ukrainian war slave for Germany. Under occupation German soldiers came to her family's door in the night, and told them they were "volunteering" a child for the Reich, if they didn't they would "volunteer" all their children as be arrested for treason. She worked in a German hotel during the day as an assistant (she has memories of "being allowed to lick the flour from her fingers as a reward, but no more", and she had to pick snails from the sewers for the hotel to serve to officers so they had some kind of meat), and as a house servant in the evenings. Her memories of the war were.... grim, even after being heavily sanitized by time. Post war she was processed by the allies, shipped to a red cross camp and hid from Soviet enforcers seeking Ukrainian, Polish, Cossack, etc citizens who had been captured. Apparently many of the women and children would be shot there in the red cross camp, or hauled away in chains and shot behind the hill within earshot of the camp, some nationalities had blanket death marks on them and the soviets weren't shy in letting camps know this. She was a DP for months before she found a sponsor in Canada where she eventually moved provinces and finally met my grandfather, a Canadian Army signaller who had served on a navy base signalling for the air force hunting subs. In the early 70's the red cross finally contacted her family in Ukraine and got her father on the towns only phone where he fainted after hearing her (they had considered her dead the second the German car left their farm), and she visited in them as a Canadian citizen in the late 70's where she smuggled in denim as a giant dress so the family could sew jeans to sell on the market, so they could eat under Stalin's forced displacements. She also smuggled in English to Ukrainian dictionaries (as a "tourist that couldn't speak Ukrainian" it was allowed) for the local schools, since all Ukrainian books had been burned and local teachers shot by the Russians, she left with mailing addresses, phone numbers, and names to pass letters through for minimum theft and bribery needs.

[@veeli1106]

Where in Canada did she settle in?

[@littlekong7685]

@@veeli1106 Alberta, she was taken in by a local Jewish community before finding a local man who was also Ukrainian.

[@tkm238-d4r]

Good day, not expecting you to have all the answers. Will appreciate if you are able to at least answer some of these questions. Thanks. 1)Which part of Ukraine SSR was she from? Was her town part of the Poland before 1939? 2)When were the forced displacements? 1930s or after 1945? 3)If the Ukraine language was allegedly destroyed, how did that explain that according to the 1959 census, the USSR still had 37m people listed as ethnic Ukrainians? Was it because these anti-Ukrainian measures were reversed under Khrushchev? 4)If there were significant anti-Ukrainian measures in place under Stalin, why was Khrushchev able to transfer Crimea from RSFSR to Ukraine SSR in 1954, a mere 1 year after Stalin's death? Khrushchev did not denounce Stalin until 1956. 5)Why was Ukraine SSR permitted to have its own UN seat from 1945 onwards?

[@StrangerOman]

Never forget. The delivery of Refugees poem was... extremely strong.

[@Storgaaard]

This makes me so angry. In my opinion this is one of the worst crimes of the allies in the war.

[@artfasil]

Many war crimes the allies committed are unknown since the victors write history.

[@alexandrugheorghe5610]

Stalin applied same principles even to soldiers who were fighting against Barbarossa but who were captured by the Nazis.

[@RubberToeYT]

Very interesting video on a very overlooked subject

[@davidrussell8689]

Excellent video .

[@davidrussell8689]

I would highly recommend “ Savage Continent “ by Kieth Lowe .

[@naveenraj2008eee]

Hi Sparty Poor people,they caught between this war and revenge after the war. And the poem is beautiful. Never forget.

[@drewhunter8558]

My father's business partner, a White Russian, escaped an American convoy and eventually made it to America and put himself thru MIT.

[@tgapmax4051]

I'm not into poetry. That has me crying. Amazingly powerful. Perfect ending w/ Never Forget thank you

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for listening.

[@mariusmarcu4892]

Super! Chapeau! I am the grandson of a survivor who was not deported back "home"!!!

[@derektegjeu8022]

Beautiful ending to the narrative. God bless ❤❤❤

[@residentgeardo]

Man that poem at the end hit hard. So many lives were touched and destroyed by this f*cking war so many stories turned upside down. Yet I probably would not exist without all off this as it was the war that brought both my maternal and paternal grandparents together. What a weird world. 😢

[@konst80hum]

This is a truly depressing story but one that deserves remembrance. Never forget.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you for watching, never forget!

[@BigMakBattleBlog]

Im serving in Ukraine. I had heard the Brits handed over "paritsans" to the Reds. I had no Idea... That explains a lot

[@NigelDeForrest-Pearce-cv6ek]

A Heartbreaking Outrage!!! Brilliant, Especially the Poem at the End!!!!

[@georget8008]

Why is this deportation a war crime? These people were collaborators and traitors to an allied country. Have you ever thought of the attrocites these units have committed, as they were mostly used in anti guerilla operations? It is very easy to judge decisions taken 80 years ago from the coziness of our living rooms without having any war experience

[@TheDigitalApple]

Look up the Geneva Convention thoughts on forced deportations.

[@georget8008]

@@TheDigitalApple do they apply to war criminals?

[@ryano1267]

@@georget8008 Were they tried and convicted as war criminals? every single one of them?

[@georget8008]

@ryano1267 were the ppl in the burnt villages and the Maas executions tried to be proven if they were guilty or not? It is very easy to judge decisions taken 80yrs ago just after a war.

[@ryano1267]

@@georget8008 lame whataboutism doesn't impress me.

[@danielcreamer9669]

I live in Aurora Colorado suddenly political for thin reasons, thank you for ending on that poem.

[@abepotter9302]

That poem at the end was wonderful.

[@kennethkorri7775]

Great way to end it Sparty. Good work to the whole team on this and all the war against humanity eps.

[@dgrossiter8610]

Poem by Brian Bilston... genius... and delivered as only Spartacus can. Now to attend to the practical details.

[@gumdeo]

Excellent deep dive into Keelhaul.

[@DanaGrant-lw3nz]

Thank you.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for watching, never forget.

[@balancedactguy]

Very Good video Spartacus!👍

[@salty4496]

Comment to show my support for the channel, and the KZbin algorithm

[@davidcarr7436]

Your final soliloquy is as true today as it was then. Never Forget 🌺

[@MisterFastbucks]

My grandparents were DPs. So happy they got out of there.

[@jbart1411]

Another powerful message Thank you

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for watching.

[@tomomiko202]

Difficult to watch this video, but so well done and so important. Especially the recitation at the very end. Thank you!

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you for your comment. -Timeghost Ambassador

[@jyoung9181]

Very moving poem at the end.❤