News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Original WW II POW Research

Date: April 01, 2001

Dr. Patricia Wadley has graciously provided AII POW-MIA with a stunning original research dissertation on WW II European Theater POWs. Beginnig with the Bolshevik coup during WW I, the dissertation reveals the genesis of adversarial intransigence and the ever-developing unofficial official policy of Communist/Socialist entities to exploit the allied POW-MIA situation to their own political, social and financial gain.

What is patently clear is the hsitorical pattern of a de-facto, frequently illegitimate or unconstitutional 'government' insisting that unless all previously warring parties recognize (and thus legitimize) them and treat directly with them, there will be no formal and complete exchange of Allied POWs. (A tone repeated during accord discussions in later wars such as North Korea and with the DRV - and Laos - after the Second IndoChina War.)

What is notable is the dissertataion discusses, in-depth, the proclivity for POW-MIA manipulation in all instances, not just US and Allied. Forced repatriations, ethnic targeting, slave labor, exploitation, and more.

Within the carefully crafted paper we find the following, documented exchanges -

"We had 500 Russian prisoners. They had seven of ours. We were worried about hundreds missing from our ranks and arranged a truce to effect an exchange....Negotiation was difficult....But the Reds learned what we were up for, and haggled. The end was, they traded us two of the seven Americans for the 500 Russian soldiers, and we had to toss in a round of cigarettes to seal the bargain. We never did learn what had become of the missing."

AND

In June the Secretary of State learned from a letter sent by two Americans confined in a Moscow prison hospital that "American prisoners...[were being] held for exchange purposes....Americans are continually changed from place to place and information [on] their whereabouts withheld." The letter indicated that "Americans in prison have received especially cruel and inhuman treatment following Cooper's escape...some of the them...cannot survive under present conditions."

AND

In a War Department memorandum to the Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Subject: Alleged confinement of American Officers and Soldiers in Russian prisons: "An administrative determination has been placed on each of their records that they were killed in action on the date they were reported as missing." All of the men who had been designated MIAS were thus "determined to be KIA-BNR on the date they were reported missing." It was an admission that there were still American prisoners of war in Soviet hands in 1930, and that the United States had no way of getting them back. They were, therefore, written off as dead. (86) This practice established a precedent for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

AND

In early February 1945 the front line was about sixty miles from Berlin. American estimates were that there were thousands of American prisoners from German POW camps behind Soviet lines. Though the Soviets insisted that there were few if any American prisoners behind their lines, letters from U.S. prisoners were arriving through the good offices of the Lublin Government of Poland. The officials in the U.S. Embassy had been aware since the beginning of February that there were U.S. POWs in Soviet-occupied territory.

AND

Three U.S. ex-POWs arrived at Poltava and reported that there were thousands of Americans wandering around in Poland with the Soviets providing no help or transportation. They reported that many of the prisoners were still locked in German POW camps or "Soviet concentration camps, where they received practically no food, no news, no nothing."

Meticulously researched and presented, it is a sobering account and historical road map that is a must read. It is accompanied by an exceptional Bibliography. Please go to our Researchers Section -

http://www.aiipowmia.com/research/wadley.html