After the surrender of Germany to the Allied forces May 1945  there was amongst the politicians in Europe a kind of fear that Russia might try to impose more power in European countries and eventually this became known as the Cold War.

In 1949 there was the start of NAVO what became NATO and such was the fear of Russian influence that the NATO countries formed what became known as the GLADIO Forces,a kind of a stay behind army, with branches all over the European countries

Part of this force was the Galician Division what in reality was actually a Waffen SS unit which members had been allowed to live in the UK.

Very little was then known about this Gladio Force and even  now only little bits of information is coming out.

It seems that this Gladio force over the years after the 1989 downing of the Berlin wall  turned into some type of criminal gang.


Have  members of this form any interest in discussing this posting.

There is a lot of information about Gladio and the Galacian division when you google .

Dirk

I remember I did some research for you in the BBC times. A bit about Belgium and a bit about Italy, which seems to be the core countries where Gladio was present...I remember a rather difficult research which was, perhaps by the subject it self, not clear at all. Some connections if I recall it well with your "prins gemaal" Bernard...the same Bernard, who seems during WWII pointed to about unintentional leaking to the Germans of the Arnhem plan...

If I have time I will see if I can find new evidence about the stories as there is perhaps more information come up during the last ten years....

As with the covering of the Iraq/Syria war nowadays it is always difficult to discern what happens...especially as the several sources in the conflict (including the West!!!) try to give their "truth" about the events...

Kind regards, your friend Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Dirk

I remember I did some research for you in the BBC times. A bit about Belgium and a bit about Italy, which seems to be the core countries where Gladio was present...I remember a rather difficult research which was, perhaps by the subject it self, not clear at all. Some connections if I recall it well with your "prins gemaal" Bernard...the same Bernard, who seems during WWII pointed to about unintentional leaking to the Germans of the Arnhem plan...

If I have time I will see if I can find new evidence about the stories as there is perhaps more information come up during the last ten years....

As with the covering of the Iraq/Syria war nowadays it is always difficult to discern what happens...especially as the several sources in the conflict (including the West!!!) try to give their "truth" about the events...

Kind regards, your friend Paul.

Hiya Paul,

 Yes remember posting  the Gladio topic on the BBC forum.
Actually why I did posted Gladio again was just to get a discussion going about the 14th Waffen SS "Galacia Division"  and why they were allowed to settle in the UK .

"Home office papers reveal how 7,100 Ukrainian men from the 14th Waffen SS 'Galicia' Division were allowed to settle in Britain in order to protect them from persecution in Stalinist controlled Ukraine. The documents follow the case of the Ukrainian soldiers, from their capture in Italy by British forces to Britain's reaction to an Italian treaty with the Soviet Union to repatriate the men.


Did you know some of them went to French Indo China and fought with the French Foreign Legion during the Dien Ben Phu Battle.
And there were a few who teamed up with Colonel "Mad" Mike Hoare the Congo mercenary in the early 1960's. Actually they did give a good account of themselves during that time.

Strange that they were treated so differently from the "Victims of Yalta", many of whom were officially stateless, so couldn't, in any real sense, be described as being "repatriated".

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Strange that they were treated so differently from the "Victims of Yalta", many of whom were officially stateless, so couldn't, in any real sense, be described as being "repatriated".

 Russia in their push towards Germany had liberated quite a number of concentration and POW camps and made it known that they would not release  the British POW's unless the British army handed over the Cossack army who had surrendered to the British army in Italy and Austria.

Am not that certain if the Yalta agreement about handing over included the Cossack free forces.
Most of the Cossacks and their families were executed by the Yugoslav partisans when the British army handed the Cossacks over.
It has been called a black page in the British army history.

What is your recommended source for the Cossack prisoner exchange and its role in the establishment of this covert army, Dirk? I would like to read more about this but the bibliographical references that pop up when googling are few, and frankly rather discouraging when examined with a view to dependability.

nordmann wrote:

What is your recommended source for the Cossack prisoner exchange and its role in the establishment of this covert army, Dirk? I would like to read more about this but the bibliographical references that pop up when googling are few, and frankly rather discouraging when examined with a view to dependability.

nordman,

there is a lot of information when you start looking for what happened in June 1945 with the handing over of the Cossack army ( also sometimes known as Vlasovites so called after their leader Vlasov.
Btw it is alleged that Russia's present president Vladimir Putin's father was a member of the Vlasov army.

Very difficult to give a recommended source but author Nikolai Tolstoy's book "Victims of Yalta" might be a start bearing in mind that he may be a bit biased.

Have a go at Google with:

   " Operation Keelhaul"  and  "Massacre of Cossacks at Lienz".

Some more links may come up if you use keywords like  Vlasov's Cossack Army and "Free Russian army"  or even "Lienz Cossack massacre"

Wikipedia also has a lot of information on this particular subject.

But bear in mind that this issue has over the years caused embarrassment to the British army and more than likely a lot of info has been swept under the carpet.

Another incident mentioned many years ago is the fact that British soldiers used sticks and whips to force family members of the Cossacks into train trucks at Klagenfurt (Austria) which then moved to a place called Ljubljana ( in the then known Yugoslavia). On arrival all the prisoners were driven into a valley where they were killed by Yugoslav ( Tito's) partisans by means of  shooting and hand grenades and the valley was then blown up to cover the massacre.

I don't know if this story is true but I thought of just mentioning it to you.

Thanks, I had read Tolstoy's book many years ago and found it biased only in the sense that he omits much that might go against his main contention - that there was a conspiracy amongst the Allies in facilitating Stalin's rather murderous policy towards his own citizens upon repatriation. He pursued this theme in subsequent books with less and less credibility, though I have also yet to see a comprehensive rebuttal of his principal contention either.

What I fail to see, despite copious googling, is a reference to any body of literature supporting the contention that this admittedly murky episode in Allied conduct might be directly related to what amounts to a covert Allied armed presence in post-war Europe, let alone one incorporating former SS troops. The Galician Division, like a lot of what the Nazis initiated militarily outside the strict control of the Wehrmacht, was a typically heroic and dashing sounding title to what in military terms would elsewhere be regarded as uniformed thuggery with near-psychopaths placed in command of paramilitary and fractious dregs who emerged from displacement in the Ukraine and Poland, augmented by recruits from those who had undergone domestic political ostracisation in their native countries, and from the criminal class from a variety of Nazi occupied lands, had there still been civic government in those countries to classify them as such and protect citizens from their conduct. By the end of the war they had been hammered and drastically reduced back to a hard core of Ukrainian nationalists who successfully petitioned the Allies for exemption from the very repatriation to Soviet controlled territory that Tolstoy claimed was conducted with complete and unquestioning Allied acquiescence, and who quite contrary to his claim actually found themselves dispersed largely between the UK and Canada with new identities. As far as having any further military role, overt or covert, this would appear not to have been the case, the majority having simply vanished, probably quite gratefully and with no small relief, into their adoptive societies. In fact this vanishing act itself gave rise later to accusations of another conspiracy theory entirely, that the UK in particular had assisted them avoiding being tried for war crimes.

But then, as said, internet searches related to this subject throw up quite a lot of assertions and unsubstantiated conspiracy claims of various hues, but precious little by way of reference to dependable sources for any of it.

Tolstoy is more than a little biased. He lost a libel suit to the tune of £1.5m plus £1/2m costs over this matter, and I would be a touch wary of relying purely on his work.

Yes, I think that was from his third essay into this territory, by which time his pursuit of establishing an Allied conspiracy had led him into making very broad and unsubstantiated conclusions and stupidly naming quite a lot of people as complicit while doing so. He was a libel case waiting to happen, and it did.

His first book, that Dirk mentioned above, is still regarded however as pretty much a well researched and substantially supportable account of the post-Yalta wheeling and dealing which led to some rather embarrassing outcomes for the Allied administrations which facilitated them and which were indeed played down in later years to the point of attempting to hide them under the blanket of official secrets status. He should have stopped when he was ahead though.

Dirk Marinus wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

Dirk

I remember I did some research for you in the BBC times. A bit about Belgium and a bit about Italy, which seems to be the core countries where Gladio was present...I remember a rather difficult research which was, perhaps by the subject it self, not clear at all. Some connections if I recall it well with your "prins gemaal" Bernard...the same Bernard, who seems during WWII pointed to about unintentional leaking to the Germans of the Arnhem plan...

If I have time I will see if I can find new evidence about the stories as there is perhaps more information come up during the last ten years....

As with the covering of the Iraq/Syria war nowadays it is always difficult to discern what happens...especially as the several sources in the conflict (including the West!!!) try to give their "truth" about the events...

Kind regards, your friend Paul.

Hiya Paul,

 Yes remember posting  the Gladio topic on the BBC forum.
Actually why I did posted Gladio again was just to get a discussion going about the 14th Waffen SS "Galacia Division"  and why they were allowed to settle in the UK .

"Home office papers reveal how 7,100 Ukrainian men from the 14th Waffen SS 'Galicia' Division were allowed to settle in Britain in order to protect them from persecution in Stalinist controlled Ukraine. The documents follow the case of the Ukrainian soldiers, from their capture in Italy by British forces to Britain's reaction to an Italian treaty with the Soviet Union to repatriate the men.


Did you know some of them went to French Indo China and fought with the French Foreign Legion during the Dien Ben Phu Battle.
And there were a few who teamed up with Colonel "Mad" Mike Hoare the Congo mercenary in the early 1960's. Actually they did give a good account of themselves during that time.

Dirk,

while I was interested in the actual knowledge of the Belgian Gladio and its connections with the murders of the Gang of Nijvel I did nevertheless some research:
First about the whole Gladio by the omnipresent wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
And Belgium in particular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_stay-behind_network

And alleged actions of Gladio among others:
From wiki:

"Attempted coup d'état[edit]

A September 10, 1973, note from the Belgian Brigade de Surveillance et de Renseignement intelligence agency described the organization of a coup d'état by certain "financial networks and far-right organizations", naming among others Emile Lecerf, boss of the Nouvelle Europe magazine (NEM) and political godfather of Francis Dossogne (future leader of far-right Front de la Jeunesse - FJ) and Paul Latinus, founder of the Westland New Post extremist group, in which Gladio's influence has been suspected, although ultimately never proved in justice. Paul Latinus would escape to Pinochet's Chile for a few months in 1981, before "committing suicide" in 1984. On the other hand, Emile Lecerf was also a member of the Jeune Europe far-right group.^[20]

Nijvel gang violence, 1980s[edit]

Main article: Nijvel gang
The violence of the Nijvel gang was linked in 1985 by the press to a conspiracy among the Belgian stay-behind SDRA8, the Belgian Gendarmerie SDRA6, the Belgian neo-Nazi group Westland New Post, and the Pentagon secret service Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). However, after a parliamentary inquiry, no hard proof sustaining these claims was found, and investigations into the Nijvel gang continue to this day. However, the mystery of how those cold-blooded massacres were committed did convince the Belgian Parliament to create a Permanent Committee of Surveillance of Intelligence Agencies' activities.^[21]


Found this BBC documentary from Timewatch I am watching now...



From watching this documentary it is obvious that there were parallels with the right-wing murders of Italy and therefore it is nearly matematecilly sure that the rumours about the attempted coup d'état and the gang of Nijvel are right...only that the "raison d'état" and the "silence" of the involved parties in the case are the obstacles to reveal the true story...

So as so many events in history it will be always nearly impossible to acquire the truth...
I agree there are many "conspiracy" theories and it is not easy to discern the false from the true information, but in every conspiracy theory you have as in this case the likelyhood as one studies the parallel facts as from Italy's parallel organisation where there is more proof...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_New_Post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_la_Jeunesse_(Belgium)


Kind regards, Paul.