Operation Keelhaul
August 14, 1946 marked the beginning of the disgraceful Operation "Keelhaul"
A secret protocol of the Yalta Conference called for the western Allies (the United States and Great Britain) to return all Soviet citizens who found themselves in the American and British post-war occupation zones to the Soviet Union.
Obviously, the people affected in these occupation zones included liberated Soviet prisoners of war, but horrifically it also applied to all Eastern European refugees – whether they had somehow gotten to the west before the war or had been escaping from the Soviet Union at the end of the war. 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.
On March 31, 1945, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded the final form of their plans with the secret Yalta protocol. It outlined the plan to return the refugees to the Soviet Union forcibly, This codicil was kept secret from the U.S. and British people for years.