Letter: Myth of missing Allied POWs
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: In his review (6 January) of Nigel Cawthorne's The Iron Cage, John Torode is quite right to cast doubt on the veracity of the suggestion that hundreds of thousands of Allied POWs disappeared into Stalin's Gulag at the end of the Second World War.
According to this preposterous claim, hundreds of British servicemen were also involved, and were worked to death in Siberian labour camps.
Not a single fact has emerged from anywhere at any time over the last 50 years to hold up this story. There are other facts however. Some 142,000 British servicemen were taken prisoner by the Germans and Italians during the war of whom almost all were repatriated or otherwise accounted for. True, some camps in Poland were overrun by the Red Army and about 4,000 POWs were handed back through Odessa. The rest were handed over in Gemany and have been accounted for. Incidentally, there is a major contradiction about the claim that some of the Britons were held by Stalin because of their special skills - ie, knowledge of Western military technology. But relatively few such experts worked in the front line, and thus became POWs. And if these men were valuable there was no reason why they should have been worked to death in slave labour camps.
It is also true that Boris Yeltsin appeared to lend currency to the debate about missing Allied POWs. But he subsequently approved a joint arrangement under which British officials have been investigating the possibility that hundreds of Britons were never handed back. They have found no evidence whatsoever that this was the case.
John Torode refers to Cawthorne's claim that the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office obstructed the author's research. If the author means that secret files supporting the myths were not made available then it is not surprising - there aren't any.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN MILLER
Southwold, Suffolk
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments