Ukrainian-German collaboration during World War II

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During World War II Ukraine was a battleground. While it is clear that Ukrainians played an important role in the victory over Nazism, during the military occupation of Ukriane by Nazi Germany some Ukrainians chose to collaborate with the Nazis for various reasons, including the hopes for self-rule and disatisfaction with Soviet control. However, the lack of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers, soon led to to a rapid change in the attitude among Ukrainians. By the time the Red Army returned to Ukraine, most of the population welcomed the soldiers as liberators.^[1] Furthermore, more than 4.5 million Ukrainians fought Germany in the Red Army and more than 250,000 as part of the Soviet partisans.^[2] Ukraine also produced noted commanders such as Marshal Rodion Malinovsky and partisan leader Sydir Kovpak.

Contents 1 Background 2 Attitudes towards German invasion 3 Under Occupation 4 SS Division "Galizien" 5 Holocaust 5.1 Righteous Among the Nations in Ukraine 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading

[edit] Background

The Russian Revolution of 1917 presented an opportunity for Ukrainians to create their own independent state. By early 1920s most of the ethnic Ukrainian territory was divided by the Bolshevik Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Second Polish Republic (See Polish-Soviet War and Polish-Ukrainian War). After an initial period of national revival, which encouraged ethnic diversity, Stalinism, with its forced collectivization of agriculture and political repression soon became the order of the day. While the Polish republic refused any cultural or linguistic atonomy from the very beginning and engaged a policy of Polonization, its more liberal system resulted in the creation of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929, which sought Ukrainian independence and tried to use the clash between the Polish and the German political interests as leverage against the Poles. For example, in 1933 the head of the OUN met with the head of the Nazi SA and regularly received seven thousand Marks per month.^[3]

During the German-Soviet Invasion of Poland (1939), Western Ukraine was taken by the Soviets and included in the Ukrainian SSR. During this period the OUN deliberately kept a low profile while secretly hoping for a German invasion that would result in an independent Ukraine.

[edit] Attitudes towards German invasion

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The Nazi Germany invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) began on June 22, 1941, and by September the occupied had set up the first administration including the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Germans had their own plans for Ukraine: it was to beceme Lebensraum, allowing for "Aryan" colonisation, and the local population - the Slavs were viewed as sub-humans by the Nazi idealology. Many Ukrainians chose to resist, fighting German occupantion forces with Red Army or Soviet Partisans. However, particularly in the Western Ukraine, loyalty to the Soviet State was low. Although the Ukrainian SSR did give the population the national and cultural autonomy that neither the Second Polish Republic nor the interwar Romania did, it came at a price. In 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in an artificial famine Holodomor and in 1937 several thousand intelligentsia were exiled, sentenenced to Gulag labor camps or executed. The negative impact of Soviet policies helped the Germans win popular support in some regions and some initially viewed the Germans as allies in the struggle to free Ukraine from oppression and achieve independence. In some areas, Ukrainians publicly celebrated the invasion of their homeland by Nazi Germany; the German soldiers were kissed and greeted warmly by Ukrainians in streets.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Under Occupation

Many Ukrainians collaborated with the German occupiers, participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft,^[3] in the German military, and serving as concentration camp guards. Nationalists in the west of Ukraine were among the most enthusiastic collaborators early on, hoping that their efforts would enable them to establish independent state later on. For example, on the eve of Barbarossa as many as four thousand Ukrainians, operating under Wehrmacht orders, sought to cause disruption behind Soviet lines.^[3] After the capture of Lviv, in important Ukrainian city, OUN leaders proclaimed a new Ukrainian State on June 30, 1941 and were simultaneously encouraging loyalty to the new regime, in hope that they would be supported by the Germans.^[3] Already in 1939, during the German-Polish war, the OUN had been “a faithful German auxiliary”, according to ^[4]

However, despite initially acting warmly to the idea of an independent Ukraine, the Nazi administration had other ideas, in particular the Lebensraum programme and the total 'Arianisation' of the population. They preferred to play Slavic nations out one against the other. OUN initially carried out attacks on Polish villages, trying to destroy or expel Polish enclaves from what the OUN fighters perceived as Ukrainian territory. ^[5] When OUN help was no longer needed, its leaders were imprisoned.

Later, hundreds of members and sympathisers were executed at Baby Yar. In response to the new realities, the OUN ceased it collaboration and formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1942, which quickly grew into a large guerilla force and proceeded to fight against all foreign militaries in Ukraine, including the Germans, the Soviets, and the Poles.

[edit] SS Division "Galizien"

Main article: 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian)

By April 28, 1943 the German Command had created the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian) manned by 14,000 Ukrainians. The history, composition, and function of the SS Galizien are the topic of contentious debate among scholars still today. Some have held that these men volunteered eagerly for war against the Soviets allied to Germany ^[6] while others claim that at least some of them were victims of compulsory conscription as Germany suffered defeats and lost manpower on the eastern front ^[7]. Sol Litman, a Jewish historian of the Simon Wiesenthal Center claims that there are many proven and documented incidents of atrocities and massacres committed by the SS Galizien against minorities, particularly Jews during the course of WWII^[8], however other authors, including Michael Melnyk^[9], whose father fought in the Division, and Michael O. Logusz^[10] maintain that members of the division fought almost entirely at the front against the Soviet Red Army and defend the unit against the accusations made by Litman and others since the war. Neither the division nor any of its members was never formally charged with any war crime.

[edit] Holocaust

The atrocities against the Jewish population during the Holocaust took place within a few days of the German occupation. The Ukrainian auxiliary police participated in the Babi Yar massacre.^{[11] [12]} and in other Ukrainian cities and towns, such as Lviv, ^[13][14] Lutsk,^[15] and Zhitomir.^[16] On September 1, 1941, Nazi-controlled Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote "The element that settled our cities (Jews)... must disappear completely from our cities. The Jewish problem is already in the process of being solved."^[17]

In May 2006, a Ukrainian newspaper Ukraine Christian News commented: "Carrying out the massacre was the Einsatzgruppe C, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln. The participation of Ukrainian collaborators in these events, now documented and proven, is a matter of painful public debate in Ukraine."^[18]. Among others, about 621 members of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) were executed in Babi Yar, including the Ukrainian poet Olena Teliha.

Ukrainian forces participated in crushing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943^[19] and later the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.^[20][21]

[edit] Righteous Among the Nations in Ukraine

According to Yad Vashem historian Mordecai Paldiel, 1750 righteous Ukrainians had been identified by the year 2000. These are the people, who risked their lives to save the Jews ^[22].

During his visit to Ukraine Pope John Paul II raised one of the righteous - Father Emilian Kovtch to the honours of the Altar for his sacrifice while saving innocent people from death. In 1942 father Kovtch began to baptize Jews in large numbers in atttempt to save their lives. In doing so, he broke the Nazi prohibitions and so he was arrested in December 1942. In August of 1943, for helping Jews he was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp where he was killed and burned in the camp's ovens for his courageous attempt to save lives^[23].

The most famous instances of the saving of hundreds of Jews during WWII features the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Andrey Sheptytsky. He harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.

[edit] See also

• Soviet Army
• Russian Liberation Army
• Vichy France
• Ukrainian SSR
• Soviet partisans
• Ukrainian Insurgent Army
• History of the Jews in Ukraine

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Andrew Gregorovich (1995). The Ukrainian Experience in World War II With a Brief Survey of Ukraine's Population Loss of 10 Million, Electronic Reprint Edition, Forum.  here
• Gilbert Martin (1987). The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Reprint Edition, Owl Books. ISBN 978-0805003482. 
• Gilbert Martin (1986). The Holocaust: The Jewish tragedy, Unknown Binding, Collins. ISBN 978-0002163057. 
• Collaborationism in World War II: The Integral Nationalist Variant in Eastern Europe, by John A. Armstrong in The Journal of Modern History > Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1968), pp. 396-410