Lt. Colonel John H. Van Vliet, Jr.

John Huff Van Vliet Jr. was the son of Colonel John H. Van Vliet Sr. (USMA 1913). His great-grandfather was Stewart Van Vliet (USMA 1840) who fought on the Union side and was nominated general during the Civil War.

John Junior was nominated to West Point by the Senator from Kansas, where the family was living at the time. He graduated from the Academy in 1937 and was nominated an Infantry Lieutenant JG., and then served for three years in the 12 and 27 infantry regiments. On June 12, 1940 he was appointed Lieutenant.

Van Vliet was clearly considered to be particularly talented, since in September 1941 he was assigned to Temporary Duty Status in Operations, Plans and Training and was sent to the United Kingdom as a military observer, where he remained until December 1941. Because his work in Great Britain was of a delicate nature he did not work in uniform, and because his work required interfacing with higher ranking officers he was ‘frocked’ as a colonel, and his official passport issued for that trip listed his rank as Colonel. His assignment was to determine the best sites for establishing US military bases, which would be needed once the United States entered the conflict. This, of course, occurred during a time when there was still much discussion in the US about whether the nation should enter the war.

After his return stateside, he most probably continued working on this, or a similar project – in any case there is a lapse in the records until June of 1942, when he was assigned as an instructor at The Infantry School (TIS) at Fort Benning. He served there for a short time, and by September was in the United Kingdom once again, from whence he was assigned to the North African Theater Operations – then known as NATO.

While a prisoner of the Germans, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr. spent some time at the site of the Katyn Massacre, and concluded from what he saw that the Soviets were responsible for the atrocity. On May 22, 1945, immediately upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., after being freed from captivity, Van Vliet filed a personal report with General Clayton Bissell indicating what he had found. Bissell classified the report Top Secret in order to minimize its circulation, and later the report disappeared from archives. Although Bissell claimed he had sent the report to the State Department, State said it never received it, and the Army had no receipt to show that it did. When called to account for his actions before a Congressional Committee investigating Katyn in February 1952, Bissell contended that he was merely carrying out the spirit of the Yalta Conference.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE

http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland-WW2/katyn_memorial_wall/madde...

http://researchingkatyn.blogspot.com/2013/05/lt-colonel-john-h-van-...

John Huff Van Vliet Jr. (ur. 9 listopada 1914 w Teksasie, zm. 2 lutego 2000 w Atlancie) – amerykański pułkownik Armii Stanów Zjednoczonych, autor tzw. „Raportu van Vlieta” (ang. Van Vliet Report) z 1945 (zaginionego i odtworzonego w 1950) dotyczącego zbrodni katyńskiej z 1940.

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En:
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE

http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland-WW2/katyn_memorial_wall/madde...

http://researchingkatyn.blogspot.com/2013/05/lt-colonel-john-h-van-...