The Minister and the Massacres

The Minister and the Massacres is a 1986 book written by Nikolai Tolstoy that described the 1945 Bleiburg repatriations as well as the Cossack repatriations. The book's criticism of the British repatriation of collaborationist troops to Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav government was in turn the target of strong criticism. It continued on the topic Tolstoy started with Victims of Yalta (1977) and Stalin's Secret War (1981), and led to a 1989 lawsuit in which Tolstoy was found guilty of libel.

In the book, Tolstoy accused Harold Macmillan, "minister resident" in the Mediterranean then and later prime minister, of persuading the British General Alexander to ignore a telegram of the Foreign Office that would have excluded individuals who were not Soviet citizens by British law from "repatriation"; application of this directive would have separated Cossacks into emigres and those from the Soviet Union, the former, of course, not subject to repatriation. Another person of interest was Toby Low, 1st Baron Aldington, whom Tolstoy claimed gave a key order on 21 May 1945 that sealed the fate of Cossacks, including the emigres.

In referencing the documents of that time, Tolstoy quoted a General Alexander telegram, sent to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, where Alexander mentioned "25,000 German and Croat units". Further, in a second telegram sent to Combined Chiefs of Staff, Alexander asked for guidelines regarding the final disposition of “50,000 Cossacks including 11.000 women, children and old men; present estimate of total 35,000 Chetniks – 11,000 of them already evacuated to Italy – and 25,000 German and Croat units.” In each of above cases “return them to their country of origin immediately might be fatal to their health.”

Further, Tolstoy "reconstructed what happened when, on May 31, the commandant of the military camp at Viktring, 'Lieutenant Ames', reported that he had received orders for 2,700 of the civilian refugees in Major Barre's camp to be taken to Rosenbach and Bleiburg the following day, to be handed over to Tito's partisans."

Alistair Horne wrote:

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