When I say German occupation of Ukraine you most likely will think about WW2
when the German armies attacked the Soviet Union Ukraine back then
was a part of. This was not the first time the German armies had been here because
during WW1 they also took control over the Ukrainian lands
and this happened in 1918. How it started, how it ended is what you will learn today.
Welcome back regular viewers; if you are new: my name is Stefan and I'm a Dutch history teacher and
I like to cover history for you. If you find it interesting please consider subscribing
and also hit that notification bell. Now first and foremost when I say German occupation what
I actually mean is German and Austro-Hungarian occupation to be more precisely, but the Germans
did have the upper hand. Normally I cover these occupation videos on location but at the time
it's not possible and you know to be fair I guess there's no traces left after the short-lived
1918 German occupation. So you have to do with some footage that I recorded in my past travels. Now not
many details of this short-lived occupation are known to the general public. Reason for this is
that it was a short-lived occupation but also it got overshadowed by larger events that followed
shortly after: the Ukrainian War of Independence, the Russian Civil War and later Stalin's rule and
of course the Second World War. Now to understand how the Central Powers came in possession of
Ukraine we need to discuss the treaty that made this possible and that was a Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk that was signed on the 3rd of March 1918. When after the October Revolution in 1917
the Bolsheviks had seized power in Petrograd and Moscow they asked for an armistice with
the Central Powers. Soon negotiations began. Now Ukrainian nationalists asserted independence on
the 12th of January 1918 and when near the end of this month the talks between the Germans and the
Soviet delegation deadlocked the Ukrainian signed a separate peace deal with the Central Powers: a
so-called bread piece in which: “... Ukraine agreed to supply Germany and Austria-Hungary with a million
tons of bread annually in exchange for their recognition of the Ukrainian People’s Republic
(UNR) that had recently declared its independence from Russia.” Eventually the
Bolsheviks did sign the treaty with the Central Powers and this happened on the 3rd of March 1918
and was known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans gained control over huge swaths of land
among which the whole of Ukraine. A week after the bread peace was signed the Ukrainian Rada
had was chased away from the capital Kyiv because the Bolsheviks took over power. Now and they made
an appeal to the Germans to help them. After the 3rd of March the Bolsheviks had agreed to move
out. Now the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians they moved in and by the 8th of May 1918 they managed
to reach their furthest point which was Rostov-on-Don. From what I understand is that the
Germans did not encounter much resistance when they moved in; only locally but this resistance
would soon increase. I'll get to that later. The German brought in 16 infantry divisions,
most of them third rate troops. All in all I read that the Austrians and Germans had around 600 000
troops in the region. Now let's discuss the political side because the Germans and
the Ukrainian Rada definitely were not on the same page as historian Laura Engelstein wrote: “The Rada
had abolished private property in land, though without endorsing the peasant seizures already
transforming the countryside. The Germans now imposed martial law, assumed control of the railroads,
restored private land ownership, and tried more energetically to extract the grain the Rada had
failed to wrest from the peasants.” See according to the treaty the Ukrainians had to give the Central
Powers one million tons of grain per year. Now initially the Germans worked together with the
Ukrainian Rada however the Rada failed to meet the quotum. German General Hoffman acknowledged
from the beginning that the Ukrainian Rada was kept in peace because of the German presence
German General William Groener wrote to General Ludendorff the following: “Our policy is to walk
on eggshells around the Ukrainian government, which has not earned this name and has no roots
in the people,” […] “The attitude of the population is generally against us. In favor of us are the large
landholders and capitalists, if we help them to recover their property. Otherwise they too will be against us.”
The German military governor of Ukraine became General Field Marshal Hermann Von Eichhorn who
ordered to force the peasants to sow the fields. The Germans were impatient and so were the large
landowners. At the end of April with German backing they seized power in Kyiv: “The coup engineered by
by the Germans brought to power the government of General Pavlo Skoropadsky, a descendant of an eighteenthcentury
Cossack hetman, deeply conservative in his views, who represented the interests of Ukraine’s
landowning class. He declared himself hetman of the new state, appealing to the historical memory
of the masses. In the tradition of the hetmans of old, he ruled as a dictator, his power limited
only by foreign authority—the German and Austrian command.” Skoropadsky did manage to do some
state building: taking steps to reorganize an army and creating a Ukrainian language school system
an Academy of Sciences and National Library. Eleven countries sent their ambassadors to Kyiv.
But keep in mind all this was backed by German guns. The Skoropadsky regime was highly in popular
with the workers who saw their working hours being increased to 12 hours and of course the peasants
who had their grain confiscated. The German troops then went into the countryside themselves to get
the grain from the peasants who of course resisted. The Austrian and German troops then launched raids
against them. John Xydias, a Russified Greek who lived in Odessa claimed that the German and
Austrian raids outdid the rates of the tsarist times and had this to say about it: “Thus a detachment
would arrive in a village; on the instructions of the pomieschik [big landowner], a collective note
was presented to the peasants, demanding the return of given quantities of livestock, tools, chattels,
etc.; the raid complete, the German or Austrian officer would pocket ten percent to twenty percent of the
value of the 'restored' assets. It goes without saying that the German military; educated to
the most profound contempt for the Russian people, were very appreciative of these sources of income
and shrank from no measure, no matter how brutal, likely to generate them.” I read the peasants who
resisted ran the risk of being summarily executed. All a landowner had to do was point
out an alleged curlprit and that person would then be executed after a show trial or no trial at all.
I read that during the months of German occupation 80 000 Ukrainian peasants perished... to what extent
the peasants died of execution or perished in armed resistance against the Central Powers I
wasn't to figure out exactly. What is clear is that armed resistance occurred and it already started
in the early days of the Rada when the Rada tried to confiscate the grain as historian Orlando Figes
puts it: “The result was a wave of peasant revolts and guerrilla wars designed to disrupt
the German requisitions: bridges and railway lines were destroyed and German units were
attacked from the woods. The Ukrainian countryside was thrown into chaos.” Most resistance came from
the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. On 30 July a young Russian Left SR assassinated German
governor of Ukrainian in Kyiv: Eichhorn. As the field Marshal was crossing the street on his way back
after lunch Boris Donskoy threw her hand grenade at him. Eichhorn died of his wounds that evening. The
perpetrator was sentenced to death by hanging. I read that by the end of the summer most of
the workers were on strike and 40 000 peasants managed to join armed insurgents groups; one of
these groups were the followers of Nestor Makhno. I did dedicate a video on his movement, see the link
in the top right corner and at the end screen. At the end the economic gains of the occupation were
little and the costs were high. The Germans could transfer 33 divisions from the east to the west
for the upcoming Spring Offensive: Germany's last gamble to win the war which ultimately failed. As
historian Prit Buttar wrote: “Had another 12 divisions been available in the west, the
outcome of Germany’s last gamble to secure victory might have been different. […] If Germany prevailed
in the west, its armies would be free to rewrite the map of Europe in any manner that they chose,
but defeat in the west ultimately made any settlement in the east irrelevant. It is arguable therefore
that greed and a hasty desire to impose as harsh terms as possible on the Bolsheviks effectively
eliminated Germany’s last chance to win the war.” On the 11th of November 1918 the Armistice was
signed. The terms annuled the terms that were set in the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty: therefore the Germans
had to pull back from Ukraine. Most German units managed to successfully escape from Ukraine but
not all units were that lucky... some of them ran into armed partisans who wanted to avenge the
harsh occupation: in some cases German convoys had to battle their way out. When unsuccessful
often officers were shot while rank-and-file soldiers were allowed to go free. Their weaponry
was confiscated and used by the insurgents for battles to come. I read that a number of 50 000 of
Austro-Hungarians and Germans joined the Red Army. A smaller number joined Nestor Makhno's movement.