Sakharov Valentin Alexandrovich

I. von Ribbentrop’s letter to W. Churchill with information about his last conversation with Hitler is of some interest not only for historians, but also for the general public, since the problems of the origin and development of the Second World War raised in it are at the center of the ongoing ideological struggle and psychological warfare.

In his letter, I. Ribbentrop tried to present Hitler’s Germany’s policy towards England as friendly, as well as to justify his and Hitler’s non-involvement in the outbreak of World War II. He offered his own version of the origin of this war: as a consequence of the strengthening of communist propaganda in Germany, after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact with the USSR, which threatened the unity of the German people, which caused the radicalization of National Socialism.. This version made it possible to remove or reduce Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of World War II. Being stated, it remained unfounded, contradicting the estimates and thoughts of Hitler reported by Ribbentrop himself. Trying to justify himself, Ribbentrop talked about his disagreements with Hitler, about his negative attitude to the repressions that took place in Germany, hoping that this could ease both the situation of the defeated Germany and his own position in the new world.

An analysis of the contents of this document leads to the conclusion: the main thing that could have been positively assessed by W. Churchill in this letter and could have eased Ribbentrop’s situation was the version of the emergence of the Second World War through the fault of communist ideology and the Soviet Union. Therefore, W. Churchill’s acquaintance of I.V. Stalin with I. Ribbentrop’s letter could have some political significance as one of the arguments in favor of the version about the responsibility of the USSR for the complication of its relations with England.

The testimony of a participant of the international commission of forensic medical experts, Bulgarian doctor A.M. Markov, about his business trip to the Smolensk region, to the place of mass graves in the Katyn forest, where the German special services exhumed and identified the corpses of Polish officers shot, allegedly in the spring of 1940. The purpose that the German authorities set before this commission was to confirm the validity of the conclusions of German experts about the three-year-old execution and burial of prisoners of war, as well as the results of the identification of corpses.

Markov records the fact that he was forced to take part in the work of this commission. Informs about the personal composition of the commission and its relocation to the place of work in Smolensk, familiarization with the site of excavation of graves, the examination of corpses by German specialists and the working conditions of the commission.

At the site of the excavation of the graves, the German forensic expert Butz was in charge of everything. The exhumation and identification work carried out in the Katyn forest and the results of the inspection of the graves are described, the members of the commission are familiarized with the stories of a group of local residents presented as witnesses to the executions by the NKVD of the USSR, a visit to the premises where work was carried out with documents found with corpses that served as evidence of 3-year-old burials, which seemed doubtful to Markov. At the second visit to the graves, the members of the commission carried out studies of the corpses. At this time, doubts about the German version of the execution of Markov intensified, which was facilitated by Dr. Orzos' attempt to back up the conclusions of German experts with his own experience. The condition of the young trees presented to the commission from the burial site further reinforced these doubts. Czech forensic expert Gayek had similar doubts. As a result, A.M. Markov did not sign the protocol prepared by the German side and participate in propaganda events designed to confirm the German version of the Katyn graves.