During the Second World War most Ukrainians fought against the Germans.
However, some Ukrainians joined the Axis
during the Second World War.
Why was this? Since the Germans considered Slavic people – among which Ukrainians – as inferior and treated
them as such.
There are different reasons for Ukrainian collaboration and in this video we're gonna explore these. Keep watching.
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Around 220,000 Ukrainians fought for the Germans.
On the flipside: 4.5 million Ukrainians served in the Red Army.
So make no mistake here: most Ukrainians fought against the Nazis. For those who fought for the Axis, what were their motivations?
In this video we're gonna explore the reasons why they collaborated with the Germans.
When the Second World War came around Ukraine had a troublesome history to say the least.
The Ukrainian War of Independence and the broader conflict named the Russian Civil War
was won by the Bolsheviks, the Reds.
Communist rule in Ukraine in the 1920s became lenient and Ukrainian culture was allowed
to florish.
That ended when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin rose to power.
In the 1930s he created a man-made famine in which millions of Ukrainian perished.
In the same decade many Ukrainians fell victim to Stalin's Great Purge.
Ukranian nationalism was most prevelent in the western part of the country, which was part
of the Second Polish Republic.
In 1929 the ultranationalist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) saw the light
of day which called for an independent Ukraine and lived by the slogan: Ukraine for Ukrainians.
The OUN started operating in in Eastern Galicia (then part of interwar Poland).
The OUN saw violence as a legitimate means and carried out assassinations. Polish
politicians were targetted but also moderate Ukrainians. They also carried out acts of
sabotage.
This provoked the Polish pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia in 1930 where Galician
villages were combed to weed out Ukrainian nationalism.
Because of this the OUN radicalized even more.
1939 was also the year that the Second Polish Republic ceased to exist.
On September 1 the Germans invaded Poland starting WW2. On September 17 the Soviet invaded Poland from the east.
Poland was carved up by Nazi Germany and the USSR. As agreed upon with the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact which was signed a month earlier.
And so Ukraine was 'united'.
Albeit under Soviet rule. Countless of Ukrainian nationalists as well as other perceived enemies were targeted by
the Soviet NKVD. Many were executed and many more were deported.
Ukrainian collaboration with the Germans started before the German invasion of the USSR.
Many OUN members came to live in German-occupied Poland.
In 1940 a split occured within the OUN.
From now on there was the more moderate wing: the OUN-M led by Andrei Melnik and the
radical faction: the OUN-B led by Stepan Bandera.
Two Ukrainian Axis formations were set up, in German-occupied Poland.
I'm talking about: the Nachtigall Battalion and the Roland Battalion.
Why did Ukrainians join these battalions?
Well, as said before: they came from the OUN and were nationalists.
They wanted to restore an independent Ukraine.
With hindsight it's naive to choose Germany as an ally to liberate
your country.
But back then they saw the USSR as the occupier of their lands and it came down to this phrase:
the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Besides: the Germans gave them uniforms and equipment.
Let's first take a look at the ideas of the OUN-B. This is an example of a resolution that was read during an OUN-B congress in
April 1941:
“Jews in the USSR are the most devoted supporters of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the avant-garde
of Muscovite imperialism.
The anti-Jewish mood of the Ukrainian masses is being exploited by the Muscovite-Bolshevik
government in order to distract their attention from the true cause of the hardship and to
direct them to carry out pogroms against the Jews.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists struggles against the Jews as props of the
Moscow-Bolshevik regime, while at the same time it makes the popular masses aware that
Moscow is the main enemy.”
So what we read here is very interesting.
The OUN-B makes a distinction between the Jews and
Bolshevik Moscow.
So there're not really advocating the myth of Judeobolshevism but make no mistake: they for sure were anti-Semitic.
As was stated in a later section on minorities:
“Jews are to be isolated, dismissed from positions in order to avoid sabotage; all
the more so, Russians [Muscovites] and Poles.
If there would be an unavoidable need to leave a Jew—e.g., in the economic apparatus—place
one of our militia men over him and liquidate him for the slightest infraction.
[…] Assimilation of the Jews is excluded.”
Anti-Semitism and the murder of Jews was nothing new for the Ukrainians. During the war of independence
the Ukrainian People's Army carried out anti-Jewish pogroms. As well as the Whites
and to a lesser extent the Reds.
This time the Ukrainian nationalists helped the Nazis with hunting down Jews and killing them:
either by bullets or later as a camp guards.
So apart from nationalism also anti-Semitism was a reason of the Ukrainians to join the Germans.
Do notice that the current State of Israel has recognized more than 2,500 citizens of
Ukraine as “Righteous Among the Nations” for sheltering Jews during
the war.
On 22 June 1941 the Germans had invaded the USSR and on 30 June they had taken control
of a city that went by different names: Lemberg / Lwów / Lviv.
In origin a Polish cultural city, but also a Ukrainian one.
Fought over during the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1919 where the Poles emerged victorious
and thus Lwów became part of the Second Polish Republic.
Today the city is known as Lviv, located in Western Ukraine and a hotbed for Ukrainian nationalism.
Back to the Summer of 1941: among the first Axis troops that entered the city was the Nachtigall Battalion and
some of the Ukrainian nationalists among which Stepan Bandera (despite being forbidden by
the Nazis to do so, he had to stay in German-occupied Poland).
On that same day Bandera issued the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian state as he proclaimed:
“The newly established Ukrainian State will collaborate closely with National Socialist
Greater-Germany, which under the direction of its leader Adolf Hitler is creating a new
order in Europe and the world, and is helping the Ukrainian people to free itself from Moscow’s
occupation.”
Why did Bandera think this one-sided proclamation of independence would be any success?
Well, he had hoped for was a similar situation in former Yugoslavia.
Where shortly after the Axis invasion kicked off the (not so) Independent State of Croatia (NDH)
was established.
Banderas plan backfired completely as the Germans had no intentions to give the Ukrainians
any form of independence and worse: the Germans started to doubt if the OUN-B was a force
they could rely on.
Bandera was arrested and spent most of the war incarcerated.
Many other followers were shot.
The OUN was soon at conflict with Germany.
See: the German plans for Eastern Europe were way different than for the Balkans.
As written in Hitler's book Mein Kampf: Eastern Europe was to be colonized by the Germanic
races.
So there was no way the Germans would ever recognize an independent Ukraine (which ironically
they did a few months before the end of the war, when they were already pushed out from
the region and needed all the support they could get).
And there was the Nazi Alfred Rosenberg who as a Baltic German envisioned a series of
client states to undermine Soviet rule but he lost the political contest to Himmler.
As for Yugoslavia: the Germans initially had no plans of invading this kingdom.
As Regent Paul eventually signed the Triparte Pact, but was then overthrown by Serbian military
leaders shortly after who distanced themselves from the Axis.
Thus Hitler vowed to destroy Yugoslavia and therefore gave the Croats limited self-rule.
As for Ukrainians: there was to be no self-rule.
The Germans established Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
Do notice that Eastern Galicia (former south-eastern Poland; current western Ukraine) wasn't part
of this, but became part of the General-Government (a region within German-occupied Poland).
The southwest of Ukraine was transferred to Romanian administration.
Initially many Ukrainians welcomed the Germans.
Not only those living in the west but also those living in central and eastern Ukraine.
As the population remembered the horrors of the famine and collectivization,
as well as the ban on religion:
“Some expected that “national socialism” would bring true socialism.
Others simply hoped for improved living standards.
With Soviet salaries insufficient to buy even a pair of shoes, it was not difficult to nourish
false hopes and imagine that the “European” Germans would make life better for the population
they were “liberating” from Moscow’s control.”
Many remembered the German occupation of Ukraine in 1918 where living standards were better
than under Stalin.
Many hoped for a restoration of the Ukrainian state, as was the case in 1918 when the
Central Powers established a puppet government led by Pavlo Skoropadsky.
These hopes were soon dashed.
Many were enslaved by the Germans: close to 2.2 million were apprehended and sent to work
in Germany in 1942 and 1943.
Many died of malnutrition, disease, and Allied bombing of the factories where they worked.
Thousands of peasants who refused to help the Germans were hanged as
an example.
Also those suspsected of partisan activity.
Hundreds of villages were obliterated to encourage good behaviour in the rest.
Tens of thousands more died of starvation because the Germans deliberately blocked the food going to the cities.
Some Ukrainians served in police battalions where they had to perform guard duties or
fight against the partisans.
Reason for them to join was pragmatic: they needed a job.
And this here is an important thing to keep in mind during times of war
ideology plays a big part: many people aren't concerned with ideology; most people are concerned
with survival.
This is shown by the following example: on 6 November 1943 a forty-nine-year-old Lieutenant
General Nikita Khrushchev (future Soviet leader) entered Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
He approached the old opera house which survived the war.
A man came screaming running towards him:
“I am the only Jew left!
I am the only Jew in Kyiv who is still alive!
I have a Ukrainian wife and she kept me hidden in the attic.
She fed me and took care of me.”
Soon more people emerged from their hiding places and welcomed Khrushchev and the Red
Army:
“The soldiers of the regime, for whom many in the summer of 1941 had wished nothing but
defeat, now returned as saviors.
It was not so much what the Soviets did after their return but what the Germans had done
during the occupation that changed the attitude of those who survived, leading them to welcome
the Red Army soldiers not only as victors but also as liberators.
Those who thought otherwise, including a good part of the Ukrainian intellectual elite,
had left with the Germans.”
Among those who thought otherwise was the UPA.
More on this formation in a future episode.
If you like to learn the full story of Ukrainian collaboration during WW2 and want to learn
about all the pro-Axis units: please check this video.