ABSTRACT
The politburo took a crucial step on the road to the spring 1940 massacre by accepting, on 3 December 1939, the NKVD proposal to formally arrest all officers, of what they contemptuously called the ‘former Polish army’, registered in the three special camps.1 This momentous move had ultimately tragic consequences. The Soviet leadership thus categorised the Polish officer corps as anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary criminals subject to Soviet legal procedures of investigation, sentence and punishment and not as ordinary PoWs to be held for the duration of a wartime conflict. This decision was part of the wider policy of extinguishing the Polish state as indicated by its linkage to the deportations and associated arrests in the Occupied Territories. The investigation process against the PoWs was placed entirely in the hands of the NKVD Military Procuracy supported by the camp administrations; sentencing was initially the prerogative of the NKVD Military College.2
