This is the second part of the review of the book by Tim Tzouliadis. My objective to posting book reviews is to give readers sufficient information to decide whether to read the book. I recommend this book, and the new book cost at Amazon is discounted.

Part I was about the massive immigration of Americans to the Soviet Union during the Great Depression and the beginning of the Terror in which Americans and all other nationalities, including Russians, were arrested and either executed or sentenced to slave labor in the Gulags. This part is about the Gulags and how Roosevelt and Churchill ignored the evidence of massive crimes against humanity by Stalin to justify support of their new ally against the Germans.  Reading the many descriptions of individuals being tortured made me wonder how anyone could have done what was described to another person and how the person being tortured could have held up to such treatments. Victor Herman, an American Jew, was punched in his back over his kidneys day after day while being exhorted to confess. On the fifteenth day he “…began bleeding from his penis, his rectum, his nose, and his eyes.” On the fifty-third night he was told he would be released if he only signed a list of names. He refused and was beaten by a gang with clubs. He was shocked into consciousness by the smell of his leg being burned. Believing he was about to die, Victor Herman spat in his torturers face. He woke up in the prison hospital and was sentenced to work in the Kolyma gold fields in Siberia where few prisoners survived for more than a few weeks. He served out his sentence, was released, built a house out of permafrost, married, and fathered a daughter who begged to be told stories about America.

Not all arrested were tortured. Millions were transported in NKVD prison trains with 70 packed into each car. Those who survived the trip would usually be quickly worked and starved to death in the Gulag. Walter Duranty wrote in the New York Times about “…thirty or forty thousand killed” in the Terror, which understated the number of deaths by about a factor of about a hundred. The Soviet Union’s own statisticians unwittingly revealed the truth about the Terror. One Soviet census was reported at 159 million instead of the expected 176 million. Stalin had the statisticians that had compiled the census executed.

Many were unfortunate to be transported to the frozen reaches of the Kolyma gold fields. Kolyma was described as “Twelve months winter–the rest, summer.” The prisoners were literally worked to death while mining the gold that would pay for the American factories Stalin was buying. Prisoners who had not met their daily work quota were lined up and shot one by one by an NKVD colonel as two guards followed to reload his pistols. I consider that the prisoners who were killed might have been more fortunate than those who died the much more painful death from exposure and starvation.

The U.S. government was well aware of what was happening, and one Treasury Department official wrote that 50 to 60 thousand would die in the gold fields. The only thing missed was that the estimate was significantly understated. If you remember nothing else from this review, I hope you remember the statement by a NKVD camp doctor. He explained the Soviet attitude that, “You are not brought here to live, but to suffer and die. If you live …either you worked less than was assigned, or you ate more than your proper due.” (Emphasis added)

On the international scene German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov shocked the Communists of the world by signing the non-aggression treaty on August 24, 1939. The Nazis then shocked Stalin by launching an attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The attack oddly brought some relief to Russian citizens, because the focus was put on fighting the Nazis with less effort to persecute citizens. Imprisoned Poles were freed and sent to Iran to train in what became known as “Anders army.” The Ukrainians greeted invading Nazi soldiers with gifts of bread and salt.

The official U.S. position on the Soviet Union was that nothing should be done to criticize the new ally. Harry Hopkins was sent to Moscow even as some cabinet members were setting up pools on which cities would fall to the Nazis during his visit. Hopkins reported “…a glowing impression…” of Stalin as he was gathering a list of Soviet military supply demands. Roosevelt gave a speech extolling freedom of religion in Russia to pave the way for getting approval for Lend-Lease in which he gave fifteen million tons of supplies to the Soviets while bankrupting the Bank of England by selling supplies to the English.

The official propaganda machines in both Moscow and Washington D.C. continued to portray the historically unsupportable positives of the USSR. Margaret White was invited to take pictures of “…overflowing congregations in Russian churches.” Files in the State Department documented “…that Russian priests of every denomination had been among the first to be arrested and killed in atheist campaigns.” An American pastor requested that Harry Hopkins inquire as the whereabouts of the survivors from318 Lutheran pastors who had been imprisoned. Joseph Stalin had written they had annihilated the clergy, but “The trouble is that it is not yet completely liquidated.”

The most absurd story to come out of the concentration camps was from U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace’s visit to the Soviet gold fields. The fences and guard towers were removed and the prisoners replaced by guards in prison garb. Wallace was completely fooled, and issued reports and gave speeches about the “….development of Siberia and the patriotic spirit of the masses of ‘volunteers’.” An account of the expedition was published in the December 1944 edition of National Geographic. The few surviving Americans among the prisoners had to suffer derision of others who couldn’t believe how “stupid” Americans must be. Roosevelt would soon dump Wallace for Truman before his last presidential campaign. Apparently even Roosevelt thought Wallace had gone too far in endorsing the glories of the Soviet Union. Wallace would later meet with and become a good friend of Vladimir Petrov who had survived the Kolyma gold fields, and Wallace publicly apologized for allowing himself to be fooled by the Soviets.

There are references to a few Americans who found ways to survive the Gulag. Very few people of any nationality survived the Gulags. Some who did have their stories told in the book “Gulag Voices, Surviving in the Gulag.” I posted a three part review of that book on this link on June 2nd, 8th, and 15th. The book “The Forsaken” does have additional information about the Gulag. It describes how the prisoners were fed the flesh of dead prisoners, although they didn’t complain despite suspicions as to the source of the food as they teetered on the edge of starvation. One prisoner was described as supplementing his diet by trapping rats, and I would think others undoubtedly were glad to imitate that. One prisoner’s assignment was to amputate the frozen hands of dead prisoners, hang them on hooks to thaw, and then to take fingerprints from the straightened fingers to fulfill the Soviet preoccupation with the keeping of detailed records.

There are numerous records that show the U.S. government was well aware of what was happening in the Gulags, although I prefer to believe (probably because of my unwillingness to believe our country would be as callous as to ignore the truth) there wasn’t knowledge of the incredible savagery. The U.S. government knew Americans were disappearing through execution or imprisonment, but the subject was taboo for discussion. The justification was that no one wanted to risk the wartime alliance with the Soviets. When Roosevelt had been trying to get Congressional support for Lend-Lease to the Soviets, Harry Truman said, “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many of each other as possible.” Roosevelt was quoted in a somewhat different vein. He said, “You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand is doing…I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.” As an example of Roosevelt’s duplicity, he was willing to perpetuate the lie that several thousand Polish officers had been executed and buried in the Katyn Forest by the Nazis when he knew the atrocity had been committed by the Soviets according to instructions in a memorandum signed by Stalin.

Roosevelt called Stalin “Uncle Joe,” and clearly wanted others to share his admiration for the man. The author observes that Stalin had “…contempt for the perceived weakness he saw in Roosevelt…” Roosevelt did not realize that or would not admit that Stalin could not be trusted until very late in their dealings. When Ambassador William Bullitt tried to warn Roosevelt about Stalin’s intentions, Roosevelt became impatient and told Bullitt “…he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” Churchill was often openly angered at how readily Roosevelt accepted some of the things Stalin said. Stalin had given Churchill reason to be skeptical. Churchill visited Stalin in Moscow in 1942, and asked about the strains created by WWII compared to what had happened a decade earlier. Stalin replied that “The collective farm policy was a terrible struggle.” Churchill mentioned that Stalin had to deal with a few thousand aristocrats, and Stalin corrected that it was much larger than that. He made a statement that shocked Churchill when he realized Stalin was admitting an eighth of the Russian population had been destroyed.

The final part of this review will be posted in about a week.