Operation Keelhaul - Treatment of Prisoners and Refugees

Treatment of Prisoners and Refugees

The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied eastern Europe numbered millions of people. They included many anti-communists of several categories, assorted civilians, both from the Soviet Union and from Yugoslavia, and fascist collaborationists from eastern Slavic and other countries.

At the end of World War II there were more than five million refugees from the Soviet Union in Western Europe, of whom approximately three million had been forced laborers (OST-Arbeiter). On return to the Soviet Union, OST-Arbeiter were sometimes treated as traitors. Many were transported to remote locations in the Soviet Union and were denied basic rights and the opportunity to further their education.

In particular, Russian Cossacks of XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps of Waffen-SS with their relatives were forcibly repatriated from Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria and Germany. Often prisoners were summarily executed by receiving Communist authorities, sometimes within earshot of the British.

The Ustaše from Yugoslavia were repatriated to the Yugoslav Partisans in the events known as the Bleiburg repatriations, where a part of the prisoners were killed, while the majority were sent to internment camps.

Among those handed over were White émigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens, but who had fought for Nazi Germany against the Soviets during the war, including General Andrei Shkuro and the Ataman of the Don Cossack host Pyotr Krasnov. This was done despite the official statement of the British Foreign Office policy after the Yalta Conference that only Soviet citizens, who had been such after September 1, 1939, were to be compelled to return to the Soviet Union or handed over to Soviet officials in other locations (for example see the Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II).

The actual "Operation Keelhaul" was the last forced repatriation and involved the selection and subsequent transfer of approximately one thousand "Russians" from the camps of Bagnoli, Aversa, Pisa, and Riccione. Applying the "NcNarney-Clark Directive", subjects who had served in the German Army were selected for shipment starting August 14, 1946. It was obvious to all that prisoners were sent to a fate of execution, torture, and slave labor. The transfer was codenamed "East Wind" and took place at St. Valentin in Austria on May 8 and 9, 1947. This operation marked the end of forced repatriations of Russians after World War II, and ran parallel to Operation Fling that helped Soviet defectors to escape from the Soviet Union.

On the other side of the exchange, the Soviet leadership found out that despite the demands set forth by Stalin, British intelligence was retaining a number of anti-Communist prisoners with the intention of reviving "anti-Soviet operations" under orders from Churchill. In response, the Soviets did not complete the repatriation of the Allied prisoners of war in their possession, leaving roughly 23,500 American and 30,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers in Soviet hands. Some of these men were to be repatriated in the coming years, but others were sent to the GULAG camp system and never returned home.