There are still people who do not believe in the official version of the death of the Polish military in the Katyn forest. They believe that the Poles were not shot by the NKVD workers, but by German soldiers. Let's try to figure out what facts they rely on and whether this is so.

From April to May 1940, more than 4,000 citizens of Poland, mainly prisoners of officers, were shot in the Katynsky forest (Smolensk region). The Soviet side for a long time refused to take the blame for this crime, accusing the Germans of his deed. However, the documents declassified during the years of perestroika turned the picture, and the conclusions of the post -Soviet commissions were unequivocal: executions were made by order of the NKVD. Nevertheless, and today there are people who are engaged in the propaganda of a German trace in this matter.
Typically, the arguments of the Katyn revisionists come down to three very simple theses:
1. The hands of the victims were tied with German paper ropes. Such ropes were not produced in the USSR. So the Germans shot.
2. The executions were carried out on the territory of the pioneer camp. The NKVD would not be shot there. So the Germans shot.
3. Katyn Poles were shot using German -made cartridges. So the Germans shot.

Consider these theses in more detail.

1. Paper ropes
All documents in which the Katyn ropes of German production are mentioned appeared during the investigation of the NKVD-NKGB, carried out before the arrival of the Burdenko commission in January 1944. The conclusions of the Burdenko commission are based precisely on the materials of the NKVD-NKGB investigation.

A few witnesses then ShowedThat the ropes that were connected by the hands of the victims were paper and probably German production, since such ropes were not produced in the USSR. There are no more primary documents of the mention of “German -made paper ropes”.

These individual indications do not deserve confidence in general: the NKVD-NKGB commission falsified evidence for several months and prepared false prisoners (which is proved).

But the commission Burdenko did not find German ropes. The only quote from the imprisonment of the commission, which mentioned the ropes on the hands of the executed: “In a very small part of the corpses (20 out of 925), the hands were tied behind the body with the help of white wicker cords.”

All this gives reason to consider “paper ropes” by fiction.

2. Pioneer camp
Here the primary source of the version is already the commission of Burdenko:

“... In the summer of 1941, in this forest there was a Pioneer camp of Promstrakhkassy, which was curtailed only in July 1941. With the capture of Smolensk by the German invaders in the Katyn forest, a completely different regime was established. The forest began to be protected by reinforced patrols; In many places there were inscriptions that warned that persons entering the forest without much pass are subject to execution on the spot. The part of the Katynsky forest, which was called the Kozi Gora, as well as the territory on the banks of the Dnieper, where at a distance of 700 meters from the discovered graves of the Polish prisoners of war, was especially strictly guarded - a summer house was located - the recreation house of the Smolensk Directorate of the NKVD. Upon the arrival of the Germans, a German institution, called the "headquarters of the 537th construction battalion", is located in this summer house. "

It is not said that the executions took place precisely on the territory of the former pioneer camp. The pioneer camp was once in the same forest, but it is huge, and there was never a pioneer camp in the goors of the pioneer camp.

That's what told Former chief of the Smolensk UKGB Anatoly Schiverski, a “hostile” witness who claimed that the Katynsky execution was the work of the Germans:

“The place of the execution of Polish officers - Kozi Gora - is located along the high coast of the Dnieper and the Vitebsk highway. <...> During the period of mass repressions, especially in 1937, they were buried here. It is important to note that even after the noisy shares of 1943 and 1944, to detect the graves of Polish officers there in 1943-1948, they continued to bury the traitors of their homeland, punishers, sentenced to execution. After the capture of Smolensk in 1941-1943, the Nazis turned the goors into the place of execution and the burial of prisoners of war, partisans, etc. This place. ”

And this is really so. In the Katyn forest, they shot and buried not only the Poles from the Kozelsky camp. The executions and burials there were before the Katyn execution, and after. Polish specialists in 1994-1996 was discovered About 150 collective graves of Soviet victims of Stalinist repressions.

Conclusion: there was never a pioneer camp at the scene of the Poles, but there was a special object of the NKVD for executions and the burial of the executed. The second argument of the Katyn denial is also not based on a fact, but on fiction.

3. German cartridges
This is the only argument based on a fact, not fiction. All the cartridges found in the Katyn graves - from GECO cartridges 7.65 mm of German production.

This discovery was completely unexpected For the Germans who conducted an investigation. But then it turned out that the sleeves were from cartridges, the samples of which were supplied by Germany to the Soviet Union back in the 1920s, during the time of the Weimar Republic, as well as pistols used by the executioners of the Walter and Parabellum, for which these cartridges were intended.

The problem with this argument is logical. From the fact that the cartridges for the execution were produced in Germany, it does not follow that they can be used only by the Germans.

If it were found that the NKVD in other cases never used valras or parabellums for cartridges of 7.65 mm, the argument would become more significant. The installed, however, can be considered the opposite. The NKVD basically used such pistols and cartridges:

Conclusion: The detection of German -made shells in the Katyn graves does not refute the version of the execution of the Poles by the NKVD employees. The third argument of the Katyn denial contains a logical flaw.

Thus, none of the three arguments can be called full -fledged, and two even almost certainly false.