Regarding the Harry Pollet thing Joe...that was Realpolitik at the time. Nothing unusual at all. The Russians were getting along fine with the Germans in '39, and expected to continue to do so for some time. If they pulled strings to get Harry sacked, they did no differently than the USA or Britain would do and have done in similar situations. All major powers behave that way.

Example: The USA loved Islamic fundamentalists and the forerunners of the Taliban in the 80's as long as they were killing Russians for them (during the last days of the Cold War), and they loved Saddam when he was killing Iranians for them. Is that any better? It's the same kind of cynical, self-serving behaviour that you are so disturbed about when Communists do it. ;-)

The Russians treated interned American airmen badly? Yeah, I bet they did. The Stalinist regime treated ALL internees badly, including their own people. They had not grown up with the niceties of western society, and no one who dealt with them expected any mercy. They killed (eventually, by bad treatment or execution) most of the hundreds of thousands of Germans whom they took prisoner.

Allies in a war are not necessarily one's allies because they are "nice people" or because they share one's cultural leanings...they are allies out of pure necessity and that is all. War is the most ruthless and vicious thing that people ever do on an organized national basis, and their grand pretensions of morality while they engage in doing it are mostly concocted to stir up enthusiasm among the hapless citizens who are sent off to die fighting the other guy's hapless citizens. No need to get huffy about the Russians being called our "allies"...war is a question of survival, and one finds allies where one can.

And you can thank them for being the primary force that broke the back of the German army, because that's what they were. The immense campaign on the Eastern Front between June '41 and April '45 dwarfed the western campaign in its size and its bloodshed, and it destroyed the main fighting strength of the German army, particularly its Panzer formations and its tactical air forces and its air supply squadrons, all of which were decimated in Russia. The Russians also paid a terrible price for that...and should be owed a debt of gratitude by their former allies for the blood they shed in a common cause.