The Minister and the Massacres

The Minister and the Massacres (1986) is a history written by Nikolai Tolstoy about the 1945 repatriations of Croatian soldiers and civilians and Cossacks, who had crossed into Austria seeking refuge from the Red Army and Partisans who had taken control in Yugoslavia. He criticized the British repatriation of collaborationist troops to Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav government, attributing the decisions to Harold Macmillan, then UK minister of the Mediterranean, and Lord Aldington. Tolstoy is among historians who say numerous massacres of such soldiers took place after their repatriation. His conclusions about leading British officials were criticized in turn. In this history, Tolstoy continued his exploration of late world war history. His earlier books were Victims of Yalta (1977) and Stalin's Secret War (1981). Lord Aldington later filed a libel lawsuit against Tolstoy and a man he had written for. He refused to settle and was found guilty of libel at trial, where he was sentenced to pay major damages. Contents Tolstoy accused Harold Macmillan, then "minister resident" in the Mediterranean and future prime minister of the United Kingdom, of persuading British General Alexander to ignore a telegram of the Foreign Office that would have restricted repatriation of certain refugees. It recommended against repatriating individuals who were not Soviet citizens by British law. Application of this would have divided the Cossacks into émigrés and those from the Soviet Union, the former, not subject to repatriation. Tolstoy also criticised Lord Aldington, who he claimed gave a key order on 21 May 1945 that made all of the Cossacks subject to repatriation. In referencing the documents of that time, Tolstoy quoted a General Alexander telegram, sent to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, in which Alexander mentioned "25,000 German and Croat units". In a second telegram sent to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Alexander asked for guidelines regarding the final disposition of “50,000 Cossacks including 11,000 women, children and old men; present estimate of total 35,000 Chetniks – 11,000 of them already evacuated to Italy – and 25,000 German and Croat units.” The telegram said that in each of above cases, “returning them to their country of origin immediately might be fatal to their health.”