Operation Keelhaul

Operation Keelhaul was a programme carried out in Austria by British forces in May and June 1945 whereby thousands of refugees from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were rounded up in Austria, and forcibly repatriated to Stalin and Tito. Men, women, and children were forced into boxcars headed for the Soviet zone of Germany in the east, or for Slovenia in the south. Many of the refugees were summarily executed, sometimes within earshot of the British. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II".