In the spring of 1940, NKVD executioners killed nearly 22,000 Polish officers, reserve officers, police, and intellectuals, and they did it with German-made Walther pistols, partly because the heavy Nagant M1895 revolver's recoil was bruising the shooters' hands and partly to plant a built-in alibi in the skulls of the victims. This episode dissects the Katyn Massacre as a masterclass in geopolitical cover-up, drawing on declassified diplomatic cables, forensic historical analyses, and internal memos from Soviet archives.

From the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, through the months of ideological interrogations at Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk, Beria's March 5, 1940 memorandum signed by Stalin and the Politburo, and the sandbagged, felt-lined basement at Kalinin where Vasily Blokhin repor ...