It wasn’t until the Wehrmacht launched a shock attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 that the relationship soured. In the meantime, though, the Soviets had secretly carried out the Katyn Massacre, an atrocity they would diligently conceal for decades. Hence, the killings came to be known as the ‘Katyn Massacre’, despite many of the bodies actually being left elsewhere. Early reactions to the Katyn MassacreThe Germans had every reason to break news of the Katyn Massacre to the world, as indeed they did. In this spirit, Gorbachev eventually conceded in 1990 that the NKVD had indeed been culpable for the Katyn Massacre.