It has been a long, heavy, and harrowing read, and have had to take it in little pieces at a time (you WILL get depressed if you read it all at once). Frankly, there are too many good quotes for me to pick from in these 2 chapters alone. But if I had to pick one (and only one), I would pick this excerpt from the end of chapter 2 detailing the British (and apparently American as well) betrayal of millions who were fleeing Soviet persecution after the end of WWII.

All during 1945 and 1946 a big wave of genuine, at-long-last, enemies of the Soviet flowed into the Archipelago. (These were the Vlasov men, the Krasnov Cossacks, and Moslems from the national units created under Hitler.) Some of them had acted out of convictions, other had been merely involuntary participants. Along with them were seized not less than one million fugitives from the Soviet government---civilians of all ages and of both sexes who had been fortunate enough to find shelter on Allied territory, but who in 1946-1947 were perfidiously returned by Allied territories into Soviet hands. ^45

And now… for the long and sobering (for lack of a better word) footnote. Any emphasis belongs to the author.

45. It is surprising that in the West, where political secrets cannot be kept for long, since they inevitably come out in print or are disclosed, the secret of this particular act of betrayal has been very well and carefully kept by the British and American governments. This is truly the last secret, or one of the last, of the Second World War. Having often encountered these people in camps, I was unable to believe for a whole quarter-century that the public in the West knew nothing of this action of the Western governments, this massive handing over of ordinary Russian people to retribution and death. Not until 1973---in the Sunday Oklahoman of January 21---was an article by Julius Epstein published. And I am going to be so bold as to express gratitude on behalf of the mass of those who perished and those few left alive. One random little document was published from the many volumes of the hitherto concealed case history of forced repatriation to the Soviet Union. “After having remained unmolested in British hand for two years, they had allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security and they were therefore taken completely by surprise. . . . They did not realize that they were being repatriated. . . . They were mainly simple peasants with bitter personal grievances against the Bolsheviks.” The English authorities gave them the treatment “reserved in the case of every other nation for war criminals alone: that of being handed over against their will to captors who, incidentally, were not expected to give them a fair trial.” They were all sent to destruction on the Archipelago. (Authors note, dated 1973)

I had heard some of this before, but to see it all laid out like that… I’m going to hate myself at the end of all this, aren’t I? It even had a codename: Operation Keelhaul .