Katyn Forest

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 16

Katyn Forest

Sir,—Mr M. Creel’s version of the Katyn atrocity lacks a plausible motive. Is it likely that an army storming through Russia in 1941, so confident of imminent victory that it did not provide its soldiers with winter clothing, would murder 15,000 Polish officers on the way as an insurance policy against failure and retreat two years later? The implausibility is more evident when one remembers that these were the very men, the bourgeoisie, who were most likely to draw in Poland behind Germany if hostilities became prolonged. And the Russians knew it. Why does Mr Creel rely so heavily on articles in “The Press” in 1943? All papers make mistakes, particularly in wartime. On September 16, 1940, the whole British press proudly announced that the R.A.F. had shot down 185 German aircraft on September 15. Post-war research proved the total to be 56, Incidentally the loss admitted contemporaneously by the Germans. — Yours, etc.,

D. P. K. RENNICK. July 14, 1986.