The Last Secret; The Delivery to Stalin of Over Two Million Russians by Britain and the United States

New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1974. First Printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. xiv, [4], 224, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Some soiling and small stain to fore-edge. Some wear to DJ edges. Small tear in front DJ. Small bubbles on plastic coating of DJ. Introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper. Nicholas William Bethell, 4th Baron Bethell (19 July 1938 - 8 September 2007) was a British politician. He was a historian of Central and Eastern Europe. He was a translator and human rights activist. He sat in the House of Lords from 1967 to 1999. He served as an appointed member of the European Assembly from 1975 to 1979, and as an elected Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1994, and from 1999 to 2003. Bethell was staunchly anti-communist. He strongly supported the Anglo-American efforts to overthrow the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. What Bethell criticized was the execution of such operations, not their goal. He used his European post to campaign for the human rights of dissidents in the Soviet bloc, including Andrei Sakharov and Anatoly Sharansky. Derived from a Kirkus review: At Yalta it was agreed that the Allies would repatriate any Soviet citizen who had been captured by the Germans. Bethell bases this account on official archives released in 1972. Undoubtedly it was cruel to forcibly return innocent POW's to Stalin's xenophobic persecution of everyone who had been beyond the Motherland in any capacity but that of active Soviet combatant. The British soldiers obeyed orders. Bethell never deeply probes the Anglo-American motives for hesitating to ruffle Stalin at this point during the competition for occupation of Europe. He combines legal dilemmas with horror stories. The book's treatment of the pro-Nazis among the two million total of repatriates -- Cossack fighters, Ustashi, many of Vlasov's men, and so forth, is important. A reference that will have a certain demand.