Operation Keelhaul

At the Yalta Conference it was agreed that the western Allies would return all Soviet citizens who found themselves in their zones to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected the liberated Soviet prisoners of war, but also extended to all Soviet citizens, irrespective of their wishes. In exchange, the Soviet government agreed to hand over several thousand western Allied prisoners of war whom they had liberated from German prisoner of war camps. ==Treatment of prisoners and refugees==

The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied parts of Europe included anti-communists, civilians, and Nazi collaborators from eastern European countries. They added to the mass of 'displaced persons' from the Soviet Union already in Western Europe, the vast majority of whom were Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers (). Soviet subjects who had volunteered for the German Army and/or units were forcibly repatriated. These included Russian Cossacks of the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps with their relatives, who were transported from the Western occupation zones of Allied-occupied Austria to the Soviet occupation zones of Austria and Allied-occupied Germany. Among those handed over were White émigré-Russians who had never been Soviet citizens. Some of them 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 1 September 1939 were to be compelled to return to the Soviet Union or handed over to Soviet officials in other locations (see 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. ==Critics==

British historian Nikolai Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after delivering a shipment of people to the Soviet authorities: "The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees." Notably, his accounts have been widely disputed by historians, who pointed out his reliance on three partial eyewitness accounts 40 years afterwards. Nigel Nicolson, a former British Army captain, was Tolstoy's chief witness in the libel action brought by Lord Aldington. In 1995, he wrote: Ghinghis Guirey, an American on one of the repatriation screening teams, reported: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II". He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Tolstoy, who was sued for libel in a 1989 case brought by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case in the British courts. He initially avoided paying damages by declaring bankruptcy, but was forced to pay £57,000 to Aldington's estate in 2000. ==See also==