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".