Nazi Terrorists in Ukraine

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Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/31/24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisat ... tionalists

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Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
Організація українських націоналістів
[x]
Emblem of OUN-M
[x]
Emblem of OUN-B
Leader: Andriy Melnyk (conservative)[1]; Stepan Bandera (militant)
Foundation: 1929; 95 years ago
Ideology: Integral nationalism[2][3][4]; Corporate statism[5]; Ukrainian irredentism[6]; Ethnocracy[10][11]
Faction: Banderite (from Feb. 1940)[12]
Political position: Far-right
Slogan: "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!"[13]
"March of Ukrainian Nationalists" (anthem)[14]
Major actions: Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Notable attacks: Killing of Bronisław Pieracki
Size: 20,000 (1939 est.)[15][16]: 105 
Part of: Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
Allies: Ukrainian Insurgent Army (paramilitary wing)
[x]
[x]
Flag
Preceded by: Ukrainian Military Organization; League of Ukrainian Nationalists

The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; Ukrainian: Організація українських націоналістів, romanized: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv) was a Ukrainian nationalist organization established in 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. The OUN was the largest and one of the most important far-right Ukrainian organizations operating in the interwar period on the territory of the Second Polish Republic.[17][18] The OUN was mostly active preceding, during, and immediately after the Second World War. Its ideology has been described as having been influenced by the writings of Dmytro Dontsov, from 1929 by Italian fascism, and from 1930 by German Nazism.[19][20][21][22][23][24] The OUN pursued a strategy of violence, terrorism, and assassinations with the goal of creating an ethnically homogenous and totalitarian Ukrainian state.[23][25]

During the Second World War, in 1940, the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members supported Andriy Melnyk's OUN-M, while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera's OUN-B. On 30 June 1941 OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv, which had just come under Nazi Germany's control in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.[26] OUN-B pledged to work closely with Germany, which was described as freeing the Ukrainians from Soviet oppression, and OUN-B members subsequently took part in the Lviv pogroms.[27] In response to the OUN-B declaration of independence, the Nazi authorities suppressed the OUN leadership. Members of the OUN took an active part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland. In October 1942, OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).[nb 1] In 1943–1944, in an effort to prevent Polish efforts to re-establish prewar borders,[35] UPA units carried out massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.[26]

In the course of the war, with the approaching defeat of Nazi Germany, the OUN-B changed its political image, exchanging fascist symbolism and totalitarianism for democratic slogans.[36] After World War II, the UPA fought Soviet and Polish government forces. In 1947, in Operation Vistula, the Polish government deported 140,000 Ukrainians as part of the population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine.[37] Soviet forces killed 153,000, arrested 134,000, and deported 203,000 UPA members, relatives, and supporters.[26][nb 2] During and after the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, covertly supported the OUN.[38] A contemporary organization that claims to be the same Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is still active in Ukraine.

History

Background and creation

Further information: Ukrainian Military Organization

[x]
Yevhen Konovalets, the OUN's leader from 1929 to 1938

In 1919, with the end of the Polish–Ukrainian War, the Second Polish Republic took over most of the territory claimed by the West Ukrainian People's Republic and the rest was absorbed by the Soviet Union. One year later, exiled Ukrainian officers, mostly former Sich Riflemen, founded the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian – Українська Військова Організація: Ukrayins'ka Viys'kova Orhanizatsiya, the UVO) [UVO], an underground military organization with the goals of continuing the armed struggle for independent Ukraine.[39] The UVO was strictly a military organization with a military command structure. Originally the UVO operated under the authority of the exiled government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, but in 1925 following a power struggle all the supporters of the exiled president Yevhen Petrushevych were expelled from the organization.[40]

[x]
Symon Petliura (center) and Colonel Yevhen Konovalets (to Petliura's right) taking the oath of office of the Sich Riflemen training school in Starokostiantyniv, 1919

The UVO leader was Yevhen Konovalets, the former commander of the elite Sich Riflemen. West Ukrainian political parties secretly funded the organization. The UVO organized a wave of sabotage actions in the second half of 1922, when Polish settlers were attacked, police stations, railroad stations, telegraph poles and railroad tracks were destroyed. An attempt to assassinate Poland's Chief of State Józef Piłsudski was made in 1921. In 1922, they organized 17 attacks on Polish officials, 5 of whom were killed, and 15 attacks on Ukrainians, whom they considered traitors, 9 of whom died, among them Sydir Tverdokhlib.[41]

UVO continued this type of activity, albeit on a smaller scale later. When the League of Nations recognized Polish rule over western Ukraine in 1923, many members left the UVO.[citation needed] The Ukrainian legal parties turned against the UVO's militant actions, preferring to work within the Polish political system. As a result, the UVO turned to Germany and Lithuania for political and financial support. It established contact with militant anti-Polish student organizations, such as the Group of Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. After preliminary meetings in Berlin in 1927 and Prague in 1928, at the founding congress in Vienna in 1929 the veterans of the UVO and the student militants met and united to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Although the members consisted mostly of Galician youths, Yevhen Konovalets served as its first leader and its leadership council, the Provid, comprised mostly veterans and was based abroad.[42][43]

Pre-war activities

See also: Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia (1930) and Assassination of Bronisław Pieracki

Prior to World War II, the OUN was smaller and less influential among the Ukrainians minority in Poland than the moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance.[44][45] The OUN sought to infiltrate legal political parties, universities, and other political structures and institutions.[25][26][nb 3] OUN ideology was influenced by several political theorists,[19] such as Dmytro Dontsov, whose political thought was characterised by totalitarianism, national chauvinism, and antisemitism, as well as Mykola Stsiborskyi and Yevhen Onatsky [uk], and Italian fascism and German Nazism.[46][47][48] OUN nationalists were trained by Benito Mussolini in Sicily jointly with the Ustase, they also maintained offices in Berlin and Vienna.[49] Before the war, the OUN regarded the Second Polish Republic as an immediate target, but viewed the Soviet Union, although not operating on its territory, as the main enemy and greatest oppressor of the Ukrainian people.[50] Even before the war, impressed by the successes of fascism, OUN radicalised its stance, and it saw Nazi Germany as its main ally in the fight for independence.[51]

In contrast to UNDO, the OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. Most of its activity was directed against Polish politicians and government representatives. Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established in February 1929), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and assassinations. From 1921 to 1939 UVO and OUN carried out 63 known assassinations: 36 Ukrainians (among them one communist), 25 Poles, 1 Russian and 1 Jew.[52] This number is likely an underestimate because there were likely unrecorded killings in rural regions.[53]: 45 

[x]
The corpse of Bronisław Pieracki on 18 June 1934

The OUN's victims during this period included Tadeusz Hołówko, a Polish promoter of Ukrainian-Polish compromise, Emilian Czechowski, Lwow's Polish police commissioner, Alexei Mailov, a Soviet consular official killed in retaliation for the Holodomor, and most notably Bronisław Pieracki, the Polish interior minister. The OUN also killed moderate Ukrainian figures such as the respected teacher (and former officer of the Ukrainian Galician Army) Ivan Babij. Most of these killings were organized locally and occurred without the authorization or knowledge of the OUN's emigre leaders abroad.[53] In 1930 OUN members assaulted the head of the Shevchenko Scientific Society Kyryl Studynsky in his office.[54] Such acts were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, who was particularly critical of the OUN's leadership in exile who inspired acts of youthful violence, writing that they were "using our children to kill their parents" and that "whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of the people."[55] OUN's terrorist methods, fascination with fascism, rejection of parliamentary democracy and acting against Poland on behalf of Germany did not find support among many other Ukrainian organizations, especially among the Petlurites, i.e. former activists of the Ukrainian People's Republic.[56]

As the Polish state's repressive policies with respect to Ukrainians during the interwar period increased, many Ukrainians (particularly the youth, many of whom felt they had no future) lost faith in traditional legal approaches, in their elders, and in the western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine. The young were much more radical, calling for the use of terror in political struggle, but both groups were united by national radicalism and advocacy of a totalitarian system.[57] The leader of the "old" group Andriy Melnyk claimed in a letter sent to the German minister of foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop on 2 May 1938 that the OUN was "ideologically akin to similar movements in Europe, especially to National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy".[58] This period of disillusionment coincided with the increase in support for the OUN. By the beginning of the Second World War, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and many times that number of sympathizers. Many bright students, such as the talented young poets Bohdan Kravtsiv [uk] and Olena Teliha (executed by the Nazis at Babi Yar) were attracted to the OUN's revolutionary message.[43]

As a means to gain independence from Polish and Soviet oppression, before World War II the OUN accepted material and moral support from Nazi Germany. The Germans, needing Ukrainian assistance against the Soviet Union, were expected by the OUN to further the goal of Ukrainian independence. Although some elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they were ultimately overruled by Adolf Hitler and his political organization, whose racial prejudice against the Ukrainians and desires for economic exploitation of Ukraine precluded cooperation.[citation needed] The interwar Lithuanian government had particularly close ties with the OUN.[59]

During World War II

See also: Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)

Split in the OUN

In September 1939 Poland was invaded and split by Germany and the Soviet Union. On 1 November 1939, Polish territories annexed by the Soviet Union (i.e. Volhynia and Eastern Galicia) were incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Initially, the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland was met with limited support from the ethnic Ukrainian population. Repression was directed mainly against the ethnic Poles, and the Ukrainisation of education, land reform, and other changes were popular among the Ukrainians. The situation changed in the middle of 1940 when collectivisation began and repressions hit the Ukrainian population. There were 2,779 Ukrainians arrested in 1939, 15,024 in 1940 and 5,500 in 1941, until the German invasion of the Soviet Union.[60]

The situation for ethnic Ukrainians under German occupation was much better. About 550,000 Ukrainians lived in the General Government in the German-occupied portion of Poland, and they were favoured at the expense of Poles. Approximately 20 thousand Ukrainian activists escaped from the Soviet occupation to Warsaw or Kraków.[61] In late 1939, Nazi Germany accommodated OUN leaders in the city of Kraków, the capital of the General Government and provided a financial support for the OUN.[62][63] The headquarters of the Ukrainian Central Committee headed by Volodymyr Kubiyovych, the legal representation of the Ukrainian community in the Nazi zone, were also located in Kraków.[64][65]

[x]
Stepan Bandera

[x]
Andriy Melnyk

Despite the differences, the OUN's leader Yevhen Konovalets was able to maintain unity within the organization. Konovalets was assassinated by a Soviet agent, Pavel Sudoplatov, in Rotterdam in May 1938. He was succeeded by Andriy Melnyk, a 48-year-old former colonel in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic and one of the founders of the UVO. He was chosen to lead the OUN despite not having been involved in activities throughout the 1930s. Melnyk was more friendly to the Church than any of his associates (the OUN was generally anti-clerical), and had even become the chairman of a Ukrainian Catholic youth organization that was regarded as anti-nationalist by many OUN members. His choice was seen as an attempt by the leadership to repair ties with the Church and to become more pragmatic and moderate. However, this direction was opposite to the trend within western Ukraine itself.[66]

[x]
Bandera's Second OUN Conference resolutions legalised the existence of Bandera's OUN. OUN leader Andriy Melnyk denounced it as "saboteur".

In Kraków on 10 February 1940 a revolutionary faction of the OUN emerged, called the OUN-R or, after its leader Stepan Bandera, the OUN-B (Banderites). This was opposed by the current leadership of the organization, so it split, and the old group was called OUN-M after the leader Andriy Melnyk (Melnykites). The OUN-M dominated Ukrainian emigration and the Bukovina, but in Ukraine itself, the Banderists gained a decisive advantage (60% of the agent network in Volhynia and 80% in Eastern Galicia).[67] Political leader Transcarpathian Ukrainians Avgustyn Voloshyn praised Melnyk as a Christian of European culture, in contrast to many nationalists who placed the nation above God.[68] OUN-M leadership was more experienced and had some limited contacts in Eastern Ukraine; it also maintained contact with German intelligence and the Germany army.[69] OUN-B consisted mainly of Galician youth, who were earlier shut out of the leadership. It had a strong network of devoted followers and was powerfully aided by Mykola Lebed, who began to organize the feared Sluzhba Bezpeky or SB,[citation needed] a secret police force modelled on the Cheka with a reputation for ruthlessness.[citation needed]

Early years of the war and activities in Central and Eastern Ukraine

[x]
An OUN-B leaflet from the World War II era

On 25 February 1941, the head of Abwehr Wilhelm Franz Canaris sanctioned the creation of the "Ukrainian Legion". Ukrainian Nachtigall and Roland battalions were formed under German command and numbered about 800 men.[70] OUN-B expected that it would become the core of the future Ukrainian army. The OUN-B already in 1940 began preparations for an anti-Soviet uprising. However, Soviet repression delayed these plans and more serious fighting did not occur until after the German invasion of the USSR in July 1941. According to OUN-B reports, they then had about 20,000 men grouped in 3,300 locations in Western Ukraine.[71] The NKVD [Russian Interior Ministry] was determined to liquidate the Ukrainian underground, according to Soviet reports 4435 members were arrested between October 1939 and December 1940.[72] There were public trials and death sentences were carried out. In the first half of 1941, 3073 families (11329 people) of members of the Polish and Ukrainian underground were deported from Eastern Galicia and Volhynia.[73] Soviet repression forced about a thousand members of the Ukrainian underground to take up partisan activities even before the German invasion.[74]

After Germany's invasion of the USSR, on 30 June 1941, OUN seized about 213 villages and organized diversion in the rear of the Red Army. In the process, it lost 2,100 soldiers and 900 were wounded.[75] The OUN-B formed Ukrainian militias that, displaying exceptional cruelty, carried out antisemitic pogroms and massacres of Jews.[76][77][78] The biggest pogroms in which Ukrainian nationalists were complicit took place in Lviv in two waves in June–July 1941, involving OUN-B activists, German military and paramilitary personnel, Ukrainian, and to a lesser extent Polish urban residents and peasants from the nearby countryside, and in the later wave the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.[79][80] Estimates of Jewish deaths in these events range between 4,000 (Dieter Pohl),[81] 5,000 (Richard Breitman),[82] and 6,000 (Peter Longerich).[83] The involvement of OUN-B is unclear, but certainly OUN-B propaganda fuelled antisemitism.[84] The vast majority of pogroms carried out by the Banderites occurred in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia.[85]

[x]
One of the versions of the "Act of Proclamation of Ukrainian State" signed by Stepan Bandera

Eight days after Germany's invasion of the USSR, on 30 June 1941, the OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of Ukrainian State in Lviv, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier. In response to the declaration, OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo (circa 1500 persons).[86] Many OUN-B members were killed outright or perished in jails and concentration camps (both of Bandera's brothers were eventually murdered at Auschwitz). On 18 September 1941, Bandera and Stetsko were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in "Zellenbau Bunker", where they were kept until September 1944. While imprisoned, Bandera received help from the OUN-B including financial assistance. The Germans permitted the Ukrainian nationalists to leave the bunker for an important meeting with OUN representatives in Fridental Castle which was 200 meters from Sachsenhausen.[87][verify]

As a result of the German crackdown on the OUN-B, the faction controlled by Melnyk enjoyed an advantage over its rival and was able to occupy many positions in the civil administration of former Soviet Ukraine during the first months of German occupation. The first city which it administered was Zhitomir, the first major city across the old Soviet-Polish border. Here, the OUN-M [Melnyk's OUN-M] helped stimulate the development of Prosvita societies, the appearance of local artists on Ukrainian-language broadcasts, the opening of two new secondary schools and a pedagogical institute, and the establishment of a school administration. Many locals were recruited into the OUN-M. The OUN-M also organized police forces, recruited from Soviet prisoners of war. Two senior members of its leadership, or Provid, even came to Zhitomir. At the end of August 1941, however, they were both gunned down, allegedly by the OUN-B which had justified the assassination in their literature and had issued a secret directive (referred to by Andriy Melnyk as a "death sentence") not to allow OUN-M leaders to reach Ukrainian SSR's capital Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine). In retaliation, the German authorities, often tipped off by OUN-M members, began mass arrests and executions of OUN-B members, to a large extent eliminating it in much of central and eastern Ukraine.[88]

According to the Nuremberg Trials documents, on 25 November 1941 Einsatzgruppe C5 received an order to "quietly liquidate" members of "Bandera-Movement" as it was confirmed that they were preparing a rebellion in the Reichskomissariat with the goal of establishing independent Ukraine.[89]

As the Wehrmacht moved East, the OUN-M established control of Kiev's civil administration; that city's mayor from October 1941 until January 1942, Volodymyr Bahaziy, belonged to the OUN-M and used his position to funnel money into it and to help the OUN-M take control over Kiev's police.[90] The OUN-M also initiated the creation of the Ukrainian National Council in Kiev, which was to become the basis for a future Ukrainian government.[91] At this time, the OUN-M also came to control Kiev's largest newspaper and was able to attract many supporters from the central and eastern Ukrainian intelligentsia. Alarmed by the OUN-M's growing strength in central and eastern Ukraine, the German Nazi authorities swiftly and brutally cracked down on it, arresting and executing many of its members in early 1942, including Volodymyr Bahaziy, and the writer Olena Teliha who had organized and led the League of Ukrainian Writers in Kiev.[90] Although during this time elements within the Wehrmacht tried in vain to protect OUN-M members, the organization was largely wiped out within central and eastern Ukraine.

A declassified 2007 CIA note summarised the situation as follows:

"The [German] army, which desired the genuine cooperation of the Ukrainians and was willing to allow the formation of a Ukrainian state, was quickly overruled by the [National-Socialist] party and the SS. The Germans used all means necessary to force the cooperation which the Ukrainians were largely unwilling to give. By summer 1941 a battle raged on Ukrainian soil between two ruthless exploiters and persecutors of the Ukrainian people [:] the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. The OUN and the partisan army created in late 1942, the UPA, fought bitterly against both the Germans and the Soviets and most of their respective allies".[92]

OUN-B's fight for dominance in western Ukraine

As the OUN-M was being wiped out in the regions of central and western Ukraine that had been east of the old Polish-Soviet border, in Volhynia the OUN-B, with easy access from its base in Galicia, began to establish and consolidate its control over the nationalist movement and much of the countryside. Unwilling and unable to openly resist the Germans in early 1942, it methodically set about creating a clandestine organization, engaging in propaganda work, and building weapons stockpiles.[93] A major aspect of its programme was the infiltration of the local police; the OUN-B was able to establish control over the police academy in Rivne. By doing so the OUN-B hoped to eventually overwhelm the German occupation authorities ("If there were fifty policemen to five Germans, who would hold power then?"). In their role within the police, Bandera's forces were involved in the extermination of Jewish civilians and the clearing of Jewish ghettos, actions that contributed to the OUN-B's weapon stockpiles. In addition, blackmailing Jews served as a source of added finances.[94] During the time that the OUN-B in Volhynia was avoiding conflict with the German authorities and working with them, resistance to the Germans was limited to Soviet partisans on the extreme northern edge of the region, to small bands of OUN-M fighters, and to a group of guerrillas knowns as the UPA or the Polessian Sich, unaffiliated with the OUN-B and led by Taras Bulba-Borovets of the exiled Ukrainian People's Republic.[93]

By late 1942, the status quo for the OUN-B was proving to be increasingly difficult. The German authorities were becoming increasingly repressive towards the Ukrainian population, and the Ukrainian police were reluctant to take part in such actions. Furthermore, Soviet partisan activity threatened to become the major outlet for anti-German resistance among western Ukrainians. By March 1943, the OUN-B leadership issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined the German police in 1941–1942, numbering between 4,000 and 5,000 trained and armed soldiers, to desert with their weapons and to join the units of the OUN-B in Volyn.[95] Borovets attempted to unite his UPA, the smaller OUN-M and other nationalist bands, and the OUN-B underground into an all-party front. The OUN-M agreed while the OUN-B refused, in part due to the insistence of the OUN-B that their leaders be in control of the organization.

After negotiations failed, the OUN commander Dmytro Klyachkivsky coopted the name of Borovets' organization, UPA, and decided to accomplish by force what could not be accomplished through negotiation: the unification of Ukrainian nationalist forces under OUN-B control. On 6 July, the large OUN-M group was surrounded and surrendered, and soon afterward most of the independent groups disappeared; they were either destroyed by the Communist partisans or the OUN-B or joined the latter.[93] On 18 August 1943, Taras Bulba-Borovets and his headquarters were surrounded in a surprise attack by an OUN-B force consisting of several battalions. Some of his forces, including his wife, were captured, while five of his officers were killed. Borovets escaped but refused to submit, in a letter accusing the OUN-B of among other things: banditry; of wanting to establish a one-party state; and of fighting not for the people but in order to rule the people. In retaliation, his wife was murdered after two weeks of torture at the hands of the OUN-B's SB. In October 1943 Bulba-Borovets largely disbanded his depleted force in order to end further bloodshed.[96] In their struggle for dominance in Volhynia, the Banderists would kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians for links to Bulba-Borovets or Melnyk.[97]

OUN-B's fight against Germany, Soviet Union and Poland

Further information: Ukrainian Insurgent Army
Further information: Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

Besides armed struggle, according to ICJ documents, OUN-B (referred as "Banderagruppe") has been spreading anti-German propaganda comparing German policy towards Ukrainians with Holodomor.[98]

Further information: Hunger Plan

By the fall of 1943, the OUN-B forces had established their control over substantial portions of rural areas in Volhynia and southwestern Polesia. While the Germans controlled the large towns and major roads, such a large area east of Rivne had come under the control of the OUN-B that it was able to set about creating a "state" system with military training schools, hospitals and a school system, involving tens of thousands of personnel.[99] Its combat organization, the UPA, which came under the command of Roman Shukhevich in August 1943, would fight only limited skirmishes and defensive actions against the Germans. The USSR was considered the primary enemy, and the fight against the Soviets continued until the mid-1950s. It would also play a major role in the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia from western Ukraine.

Towards the end of the war

It is believed that the OUN ordered the assassination of Ukrainian writer Yaroslav Halan in 1949 who was highly critical of the organization.[citation needed]

After the Second World War

See also: Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists

After the war, the OUN in eastern and southern Ukraine continued to struggle against the Soviets; 1958 marked the last year when an OUN member was arrested in Donetsk.[100] Both branches of the OUN continued to be quite influential within the Ukrainian diaspora. The OUN-B was formed in 1943 by an organization called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations [ABN] (headed by Yaroslav Stetsko). The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations it created and headed would include at various times emigre organizations from almost every eastern European country with the exception of Poland: Croatia, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, anti-communist emigre Cossacks, Hungary, Georgia, Bohemia-Moravia (today the Czech Republic), and Slovakia. In the 1970s, the ABN was joined by anti-communist Vietnamese and Cuban organizations.[101] The Lithuanian partisans had particularly close ties with the OUN.[59] In 1956, Bandera's OUN split into two parts,[102] the more moderate OUN(z) led by Lev Rebet and Zinoviy Matla, and the more conservative OUN led by Stepan Bandera.[102]

[x]
Euromaidan in Kyiv, December 2013. Protesters with OUN-B flag.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, both OUN factions resumed activities within Ukraine. The Melnyk faction threw its support behind the Ukrainian Republican Party at the time that it was headed by Levko Lukyanenko. The OUN-B reorganized itself within Ukraine as the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) (registered as a political party in January 1993[103]). Its conspiratorial leaders within the diaspora did not want to openly enter Ukrainian politics and attempted to imbue this party with a democratic, moderate facade. However, within Ukraine, the project attracted more primitive nationalists who took the party to the right.[104] Until her death in 2003, KUN was headed by Slava Stetsko, widow of Yaroslav Stetsko, who also simultaneously headed the OUN and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

On 9 March 2010, the Kyiv Post reported that the OUN political party[clarification needed] rejected Yulia Tymoshenko's calls to unite "all of the national patriotic forces" led Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko against President Viktor Yanukovych. The OUN political party did demand that Yanukovych should reject the idea of cancelling the Hero of Ukraine status given to Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, Yanukovych should continue the practice of recognizing fighters for Ukraine's independence, which was launched by (his predecessor) Viktor Yushchenko, and posthumously award the Hero of Ukraine titles to Yevhen Konovalets. [a Ukrainian military commander and political leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.[105] On 19 November 2018, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and fellow Ukrainian nationalist political organizations Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Right Sector and C14 endorsed Ruslan Koshulynskyi's candidacy in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election.[106] In the election Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the votes.[107]

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Part 2 of 3

Organization

The OUN was led by a Vozhd or Supreme Leader. Originally the Vozhd was Yevhen Konovalets ; after his assassination he was succeeded by Andriy Melnyk resulting in a split where the Galician youths followed their own Vozhd, Stepan Bandera. Underneath the Vozhd were the Provid, or directorate. At the start of the second world war the OUN's leadership consisted of the Vozhd, Andrii Melnyk, and eight members of the Provid.[108] The Provid members were: Generals Kurmanovych and Kapustiansky (both generals from the times of Ukraine's revolution in 1918–1920); Yaroslav Baranovsky, a law student; Dmytro Andriievsky, a politically moderate former diplomat of the revolutionary government from eastern Ukraine; Richard Yary, a former officer of the Austrian and Galician militaries who served as a liaison with the German intelligence services, the Abwehr; colonel Roman Sushko, another former Austrian and Galician officer; Mykola Stsyborsky, the son of a tsarist military officer from Zhytomir, who served as the OUN's official theorist; and Omelian Senyk, a party organizer and veteran of the Austrian and Galician armies who by the 1940s was considered too moderate and too conservative by the youngest generation of Galician youths.[108] Yary would be the only member of the original Provid to join Bandera after the OUN split.[109]

Ideology

The OUN was formed from the UVO and several extreme right-wing organizations, including the Ukrainian National Association, the Union of Ukrainian Fascists and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine.[110][111] Initially, it was led by war veterans who failed to establish a Ukrainian state in 1917–1920.[110] According to Per Anders Rudling, the ideology of the organization was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, German Nazism, and Italian fascism, combining extreme nationalism with terrorism, corporatism, and antisemitism.[110] Heorhii Kasyanov wrote that it manifested typical anti-democratic features.[111]

According to its initial declaration, the primary goal of OUN was to establish an independent and ethnically pure Ukrainian state.[112] This goal was to be achieved by a national revolution, that would drive out all foreign element and set up an authoritarian state led by a strong man. The OUN's leadership felt that past attempts at securing independence failed due to democratic values in society, poor party discipline and a conciliatory attitude towards Ukraine's traditional enemies. Its ideology rejected the socialist ideas supported by Petliura,[citation needed] and the compromises of Galicia's traditional elite. Instead, the OUN, particularly its younger members, adopted the ideology of Dmytro Dontsov, an émigré from Eastern Ukraine.

Integral nationalism

The Ukrainian nationalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries had been largely liberal or socialist, combining Ukrainian national consciousness with patriotism and humanist values.[citation needed] In contrast, the nationalists who emerged in Galicia following the First World War, much as in the rest of Europe, adopted the form of nationalism known as Integral nationalism.[113][nb 4] According to this ideology, the nation was held to be of the highest absolute value, more important than social class, regions, the individual, religion, etc. To this end, OUN members were urged to "force their way into all areas of national life" such as institutions, societies, villages and families. Politics was seen as a Darwinian struggle between nations for survival, rendering conflict unavoidable and justifying any means that would lead to the victory of one's nation over that of others. In this context willpower was seen as more important than reason,[43] and warfare was glorified as an expression of national vitality.

Integral nationalism became a powerful force in much of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. The OUN's conceptualization of this idea was particular in several ways. Because Ukraine was stateless and surrounded by more powerful neighbors, the emphasis on force and warfare was to be expressed in acts of terrorism rather than open warfare, and illegality was glorified. Because Ukrainians did not have a state to glorify or serve, the emphasis was placed on a "pure" national language and culture rather than a State. There was a strain of fantastic romanticism, in which the unsophisticated Ukrainian rejection of reason was more spontaneous and genuine than the cynical rejection of reason by German or Italian integral nationalists.[114] The OUN viewed the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a rival and condemned Catholic leaders as police informers or potential informers; the Church rejected integral nationalism as incompatible with Christian ethics. The conflict between the OUN and the Church eased in the late 1930s.[115]

Myth and nationalism of the deed

Dmytro Dontsov claimed that the 20th century would witness the "twilight of the gods to whom the nineteenth century prayed" and that a new man must be created, with the "fire of fanatical commitment" and the "iron force of enthusiasm", and that the only way forward was through "the organization of a new violence." This new doctrine was the chynnyi natsionalizm – the "nationalism of the deed".[116] To dramatize and spread such views, OUN literature mythologized the cult of struggle, sacrifice, and emphasized national heroes.[43] The OUN, particularly Bandera, held a romantic view of the Ukrainian peasantry, glorified the peasants as carriers of Ukrainian culture and linked them with the deeds and exploits of the Ukrainian Cossacks from previous centuries. The OUN believed that a goal of professional revolutionaries was, through revolutionary acts, to awaken the masses. In this aspect the OUN had much in common with 19th-century Russian Narodniks.[117]

Connection to fascism and [Connection to Nazism]

Historian Per Anders Rudling described the OUN as having "the fascist attributes of antiliberalism, anticonservatism, and anticommunism, an armed party, totalitarianism, anti-Semitism, 'Führerprinzip', and an adoption of fascist greetings. Its leaders eagerly emphasized to Hitler and Ribbentrop that they shared the Nazi 'Weltanschauung' and a commitment to a fascist New Europe."[110] He described it as a "typical fascist movement" and wrote that it "cultivated close relations with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Spanish Falange and the Croatian Ustaše".[118]

According to political scientist Ivan Gomza, the "morphological structure" of the OUN's ideology in the 1930s and early 1940s could be defined as fascist because it had the following principles: (1) rebirth of the national community; (2) the search for some new form of political and economic organization, which transcends liberal democracy and collectivistic communism; and (3) the use of threats and violence during its political struggle.[119] Gomza wrote that OUN writers rejected both Soviet communism and liberal democracy and wished to instill a single-party state, living in the unrealized glory of battles past and an economic system that aimed to avoid class conflict.[119] He also argued that violence was an "extensive, widespread and frequent" occurrence and was central in the group's ideology and policy; the group took advantage of wartime chaos to eliminate Polish, Muscovite and Jewish activist groups. However, he wrote that after 1943 some "peripheral concepts" came to substitute the fascist core, which led to a splinter within the OUN and subsequent democratization of one of its factions.[119]

The political scientist Ivan Katchanovski described it as "a semi-totalitarian organization which combined elements of extreme nationalism and fascism".[120] Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that the OUN had "created its own form of fascism" and that it "attempted to become a mass movement and to establish an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state. It viewed and used mass violence as a political aim and killed civilians en masse."[121] He also wrote that the members of the movement "claimed to be related to movements such as the Italian Fascists, the German Nazis, the Ustasa, and the Iron Guard".[49] Marples has described how some writers in the OUN tradition, as well as some later Ukrainian writers, have been "self-deceptive" in emphasizing the absence of racism from OUN ideology, downplaying its connection to western European fascism, and suggesting that the Ukrainian brand of nationalism was a product of domestic development.[111]

Political scientist Alexander J. Motyl considered the OUN to have fascist inclinations, but viewed it to be a kind of nationalist movement, with differences from fascism arising from the goal of nationalists to create nations, rather than run existing nations. He compared it in its nature to other national liberation movements which had authoritarian inclinations, strong leaders, and engaged in violence and terrorism, such as the Algerian National Liberation Front or the Palestine Liberation Organization.[122][123] According to historian Stanley Payne "there were elements in [the OUN] that favored fascism, but it was not so much a revolutionary movement as a composite radical nationalism". He said it was "highly authoritarian and violently antisemitic" but said that was "rather common in the East European politics of the era". According to him, it was on the "extreme end of the radical right but not fully fascist", and the ideology was comparable to Putinism, saying the only difference between them is the antisemitism.[124]

Metamorphosis beyond World War II

Many Ukrainian historians, such as Peter Potichnyj, have argued that from 1941 and especially after the war, the OUN developed in a pro-democratic and anti-Nazi direction.[111][125] After the Second World War, OUN émigrés and UPA members began to produce documents that emphasised this shift and downplayed the controversial aspects of the organization. For example, they published anti-Nazi texts by OUN activists.[111] In some documents, they removed statements related to fascism or the Holocaust, or they reprinted the April 1941 resolution in Cracow of the Second Great Congress of OUN, omitting that the organization adopted the official salute which consisted in the fascist salute while shouting "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!".[13] OUN's denials of its role in the Holocaust began in 1943 after it became obvious that Germany would lose the war. What Rossolinski describes as a whitewashing of its history continued after the war, with OUN's propaganda describing its legacy as a "heroic Ukrainian resistance against the Nazis and the Communists".[126][127][128]

In 1943, the OUN developed a new political program that focused on a "new order of a free individual. A man's free will should animate social life." The group also accepted the following:

"(1) the OUN renounced the principles of economic centralism and adopted the idea of a market economy (Zakordonni chastyny Orhanizatsiyi Ukrayinskykh Natsionalistiv, 1955, 261; Iarlan, 1986, 159)

(2) it rejected the aggressive rhetoric concerning national minorities and claimed "we must abandon the chauvinism and assimilation politics towards the minorities and create optimum conditions for national and cultural tolerance" (Stepanov 1946, 113e114)

(3) the idea of a unique labor union was rejected (Resolutions of the 3rd Extraordinary Great Council of the OUN, 1943, 231)

(4) the OUN adopted central political ideals of liberal democracy, proclaiming to "stand for real democracy, liberty of speech, freedom of assembly, and liberty of conscience, but against all kinds of dictatorship and totalitarianism" (Poltava, 1950, 18).″[129]

Although the groups realized allegiance to these edits, and whether the group could in fact remove itself from the label of fascism is debated among historians, the result of these changes led to a split, which divided the faction into two groups, the fascists, and the liberals.[119] The infighting of these groups was limited to diasporic communities in the US, Canada, and Germany. [119] notably, the liberal faction became more powerful due to support from the United States Government which funded multiple thinktanks including the Prolog Research and Publishing Company.[119]

Authoritarianism

The nation was to be unified under a single party led by a hierarchy of proven fighters. At the top was to be a Supreme Leader or Vozhd. In some respects the OUN's creed was similar to that of other eastern European, radical right-wing agrarian movements, such as Romania's Legion of the Archangel Michael (more commonly known as the Iron Guard), Croatia's Ustashe, Hungary's Arrow Cross Party, and similar groups in Slovakia and Poland;[43] however, there were significant differences within the OUN regarding its relationship to fascism. The more moderate leaders living in exile admired some facets of Benito Mussolini's Italian fascism but condemned Nazism, while the younger more radical members based within Ukraine admired the fascist ideas and methods as practised by the Nazis.[130] The faction-based abroad supported rapprochement with the Ukrainian Catholic Church while the younger radicals were anti-clerical and felt that not considering the Nation to be the Absolute was a sign of weakness.[68] The two factions of the OUN each had their own understanding of the nature of the leader. The Melnyk faction considered the leader to be the director of the Provid and in its writings emphasized a military subordination to the hierarchical superiors of the Provid. It was more autocratic than totalitarian. The Bandera faction, in contrast, emphasized complete submission to the will of the supreme leader.[131]

At a party congress in August 1943, the OUN-B rejected much of its fascistic ideology in favor of a social democratic model, while maintaining its hierarchical structure. This change could be attributed in part to the influence of the leadership of Roman Shukhevych, the new leader of UPA, who was more focused on military matters rather than on ideology and was more receptive to different ideological themes than were the fanatical OUN-B political leaders, and was interested in gaining and maintaining the support of deserters or others from Eastern Ukraine. During this party congress, the OUN-B backed off its commitment to private ownership of land, increased worker participation in the management of industry, equality for women, free health services and pensions for the elderly, and free education. Some points in the program referred to the rights of national minorities and guaranteed freedom of speech, religion, and the press and rejected the official status of any doctrine. Nevertheless, the authoritarian elements were not discarded completely and were reflected in the continued insistence on the "heroic spirit" and "social solidarity, friendship and discipline."[132] In exile, the OUN's ideology was focused on opposition to communism.

Treatment of non-Ukrainians

The OUN intended to create a Ukrainian state with widely understood Ukrainian territories, but inhabited by Ukrainian people narrowly understood, according to Timothy Snyder. Its first congress in 1929 resolved that "Only the complete removal of all occupiers from Ukrainian lands will allow for the general development of the Ukrainian Nation within its own state." OUN's "Ten Commandments" stated "Aspire to expand the strength, riches, and size of the Ukrainian State even by means of enslaving foreigners",[133] or "Thou shalt struggle for the glory, greatness, power, and space of the Ukrainian state by enslaving the strangers". This formulation was modified by OUN's theoreticians in the 1950s and shortened to "Thou shalt struggle for the glory, greatness, power, and space of the Ukrainian state".[134] According to Door Karel C. Berkhoff, due to the influence of Roman Shukhevych on the OUN[clarification needed] the organization in October 1943, issued a communication (in Ukrainian only) that condemned the "mutual mass murders" of Ukrainians and Poles.[135]

OUN and antisemitism

Antisemitism was a common attribute of agrarian radical right-wing Eastern European organizations, such as the Croatian Ustashe, the Yugoslav Zbor and the Romanian Iron Guard.[136][137] The OUN's ideology, on the other hand, did not emphasize antisemitism and racism despite the presence of some antisemitic writing.[136] Three of its leaders, General Mykola Kapustiansky, Rico Yary (himself of Hungarian-Jewish descent), and Mykola Stsyborsky, who was the OUN's chief theorist,[108] were married to Jewish women,[138] and Jews belonged to the OUN's underground movement.[139] The OUN in the early 1930s considered Ukraine's primary enemies to be Poles and Russians, with Jews playing a secondary role or not considered an enemy.[94] An article published in 1930 by OUN leader Mykola Stsyborsky denounced the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1918, stating that most of its victims were innocent rather than Bolsheviks. Stsyborsky wrote that Jewish rights should be respected, that the OUN ought to convince Jews that their organization was no threat to them and that Ukrainians ought to maintain close contacts with Jews nationally and internationally.[140] Three years later, an article in the OUN journal Rozbudova Natsii ("Development of the Nation"), despite its focus on Jews' alleged exploitation of Ukrainian peasants, also stated that Jews, as well as Ukrainians, were victims of Soviet policies.[140] Evhen Onatsky, writing in the OUN's official journal in 1934, condemned German Nazism as imperialist, racist and anti-Christian.[141]

By the late 1930s, the OUN's attitude towards Jews grew more negative. Jews were described in OUN publications as parasites who ought to be segregated from Ukrainians. For example, an article titled "The Jewish Problem in Ukraine" published in 1938[clarify] called for Jews' complete cultural, economic and political isolation from Ukrainians, rejecting forced assimilation of Jews but allowing that they ought to enjoy the same rights as Ukrainians. Despite the increasingly negative portrayal of Jews, for all of its glorification of violence Ukrainian nationalist literature generally showed little interest in Nazi-like antisemitism during the 1930s.[140] German documents from the early 1940s give the impression that extreme Ukrainian nationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews; they were willing to either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate, for their political goals.[94] The OUN-B's ambivalent wartime attitude towards the Jews was highlighted during the Second General Congress of OUN-B (April 1941, Kraków) in which the OUN-B condemned anti-Jewish pogroms.[142] and specifically warned against the pogromist mindset as useful only to Muscovite propaganda.[143] At that conference the OUN-B declared "The Jews in the USSR constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in Ukraine. The Muscovite-Bolshevik government exploits the anti-Jewish sentiments of the Ukrainian masses to divert their attention from the true cause of their misfortune and to channel them in a time of frustration into pogroms on Jews. The OUN combats the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime and simultaneously it renders the masses conscious of the fact that the principal foe is Moscow."[144][verification needed]

The OUN was willing to support Nazi antisemitic policies if doing so would help their cause. The OUN sought German recognition for an independent Ukrainian state. Despite its declared condemnation of pogroms in April 1941, when German official Reinhard Heydrich requested "self-cleansing actions" in June of that year the OUN organized militias who killed several thousand Jews in western Ukraine soon afterward that year.[145] During the German invasion of the USSR, Yaroslav Stetsko stated in a report to Bandera: "We are raising a militia that will assist in the extermination of Jews... I am of the opinion that the Jews should be annihilated by applying the German methods of extermination in Ukraine."[146] The Ukrainian People's Militia under the OUN's command led pogroms that resulted in the massacre of 6,000 Jews in Lviv soon after that city's fall to German forces.[147][148][149] OUN members spread propaganda urging people to engage in pogroms.[150] A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in the 16 July 1941 Einsatzgruppen report stated: "Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows".[151][152][verification needed]

In instructions to its members concerning how the OUN should behave during the war, it declared that "in times of chaos... one can allow oneself to liquidate Polish, Russian and Jewish figures, particularly the servants of Bolshevik-Muscovite imperialism" and further, when speaking of Russians, Poles, and Jews, to "destroy in struggle, particularly those opposing the regime, by means of: deporting them to their own lands, eradicating their intelligentsia, which is not to be admitted to any governmental positions, and overall preventing any creation of this intelligentsia (e.g. access to education etc)... Jews are to be isolated, removed from governmental positions in order to prevent sabotage... Those who are deemed necessary may only work under strict supervision and removed from their positions for slightest misconduct... Jewish assimilation is not possible."[153] Ivan Klymiv, the OUN-B leader in Volhynia, wrote a directive in August 1941 calling for the OUN-B to "wipe out Poles, Jews, professors, officers, leaders, and all established enemy elements of Ukraine and Germany."[154] OUN members who infiltrated the German police were involved in clearing ghettos and helping the Germans to implement the Final Solution. Although most Jews were actually killed by Germans, the OUN police working for them played a crucial supporting role in the liquidation of 200,000 Jews in Volyn in the beginning of the war.[155] OUN bands also killed Jews who had fled into the forests from the Germans.[156] One of the UPA leaders reportedly compared the OUN's massacres of Poles to the Final Solution: "When it comes to the Polish question, this is not a military but a minority question. We will solve it as Hitler solved the Jewish question."[157] The OUN did help some Jews to escape in isolated cases. According to a report to the Chief of the Security Police in Berlin, dated 30 March 1942, "...it has been clearly established that the Bandera movement provided forged passports not only for its own members, but also for Jews."[158][159]

Once the OUN was at war with Germany, anti-Jewish instances lessened, but never stopped. According to documents released from the Security Service of Ukraine, the OUN not only never gave up its antisemitic ideology and always associated Jews with communists. Among the documents released was this, giving clear evidence of continued antisemitism.

"National minorities are divided into a / friendly to us ... b / hostile to us Muscovites, Poles, Jews ... a / They have the same rights as Ukrainians, we allow them to return to their homeland. b / Extermination in the struggle, in particular those that will fight the regime; extermination mainly of the intelligentsia, which is not free to admit to any government, and in general make it impossible to produce the intelligentsia, that is, access to schools, etc. Eg the so-called to assimilate Polish peasants, realizing to them that they are Ukrainians, only of the Latin rite ... To destroy leaders, to isolate Jews, to move from governments to avoid sabotage, especially Muscovites and Poles. If there was an irresistible need to leave a Jew in the household apparatus, put our policeman over his head and eliminate him for the slightest offence. Only Ukrainians can be leaders of individual spheres of life, not foreigners - enemies. Our government must be terrible for its opponents. Terror for foreign enemies and traitors. /Арх.спр. № 376, v.6, ark.294-302 /.

— Reference of the Security Service of Ukraine № 113 "On the activities of the OUN-UPA" dated 30 July 1993

Legacy

A number of contemporary far-right Ukrainian political organizations claim to be inheritors of the OUN's political traditions, including Svoboda, Right Sector, the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence, and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists.[26][nb 5][160] According to historian Per Anders Rudling, one of the reasons the role of the OUN remains contested in historiography is the fact that some of these later political inheritors developed literature justifying or denying the organization's fascist political heritage and collaboration with Nazi Germany.[26][nb 6][161] On 1 October 2023, during the Defenders Day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy handed honorary titles, insignia and battle flags to military units, including a ribbon of honorary name to the 131st separate reconnaissance battalion of the Ground Forces, named in honor of OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets.[162][163][164]

Symbols

Main article: Flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army

[x]
Flag of OUN

The organization's symbols were established in 1932 and were published in a magazine 'Building a Nation' (Ukrainian: Розбудова Нації, Rozbudova Natsii). The author of the OUN emblem with a stylized trident was Robert Lisovskyi.[citation needed] The organization's anthem "We were born in a great hour" (Ukrainian: Зродились ми великої години) was finalized in 1934 and also was published in the same magazine. Its lyrics were written by Oles Babiy, and it music by composer Omelian Nyzhankivsky.[citation needed] For a long time OUN did not officially have its own flag. However, during the Hungarian campaign against the Republic of Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, Carpathian Sich, a militarized wing of OUN, adopted its flag from the OUN's emblem – a golden nationalistic trident on a blue background. The flag was finalized and officially adopted by the organization only in 1964 at the 5th Assembly of Ukrainian Nationalists.[citation needed]

When the organisation split in 1941, OUN-r refused to adopt the nationalistic trident as a symbol and came up with its own heraldry. Lisovskyi created the organizational emblem for OUN-r as well. The central element of the new emblem was a stylized cross within a triangle. According to Bohdan Hoshovsky, the color combination of red and black was based on a concept of the OUN ideologue and veteran of the Ukrainian Galician Army Yulian Varanasi.[165] The flag consists of two colors: red and black. The black color symbolizes the black earth ("Chornozem") that Ukraine is synonymous for, and the red color represents blood spilled for Ukraine.[166][better source needed] Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (and scholar of Ukrainian folklore) contested that the red is traditionally synonymous with "life" rather than with violence. "Blood as life, as blossom, and not as blood lost in battles."[167]

2019 official veteran status

In late March 2019 former OUN combatants (and other living former members of irregular Ukrainian nationalist armed groups that were active during World War II and the first decade after the war) were officially granted the status of veterans.[168] This meant that for the first time they could receive veteran benefits, including free public transport, subsidized medical services, annual monetary aid, and public utilities discounts (and will enjoy the same social benefits as former Ukrainian soldiers Red Army of the Soviet Union).[168] There had been several previous attempts to provide former Ukrainian nationalist fighters with official veteran status, especially during the 2005–2009 administration President Viktor Yushchenko, but all failed.[168]

Leaders

Early OUN

OUN
[edit]
No. Picture Name
(Birth–Death) Time in office Citizenship/Allegiance
1 Yevhen Konovalets
(1891–1938) 1929–1938 • Austria-Hungary
• Ukrainian People's Republic

2 Andriy Melnyk
(1899–1964) 1938–1940 • Austria-Hungary
• Ukrainian People's Republic

OUN (Melnyk)
[edit]
• Andriy Melnyk (1940–1964)
• Oleh Shtul (1964–1977)
• Denys Kvitkovskyi (1977–1979)
• Mykola Plaviuk (1979–2012)
• Bohdan Chervak (2012–present)
OUN (Bandera)
[edit]
• Stepan Bandera (1940–1959)
• Stepan Lenkavskyi (1959–1968)
• Yaroslav Stetsko (1968–1986)
• Vasyl Oleskiv (1986–1991)
• Slava Stetsko (1991–2001)
• Andriy Haidamakha (2001–2009)
• Stefan Romaniw (2009–2022)[169]
• Oleh Medunytsia (2022–present)[170]
OUN (abroad)
[edit]
• Zenon Matla (1954–1956)
• Lev Rebet (1956–1957)
• Roman Ilnytskyi (1957–?)
• Bohdan Kordyuk (?–1979)
• Daria Rebet (1979–1991)
• Anatol Kaminskyi (1991–present)

See also

• Warsaw Process

References

Notes

1. OUN-UPA was a terrorist organization,[28][29] relying on terrorist tactics and collaboration with Nazi Germany that favoured the OUN at the expense of more moderate Ukrainian organizations, such as the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance; not all UPA soldiers were members of the OUN or shared OUN's ideology. UPA was also responsible for the large-scale ethnic cleansing of Poles, such as with the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, the mass murders of Jews, such as the Lviv pogroms (1941),[30][31] as well as of Ukrainians during the World War II and post-war anti-Soviet terror campaign in western Ukraine.[32][33][34]
2. Rudling writes: "After the war, the UPA until 1953 continued a hopeless struggle against the Soviet authorities, in which they killed 20,000 Ukrainians. The Soviet authorities killed 153,000 people, arrested 134,000 and deported 203,000 UPA members, sympathizers and their families (Siemaszko, 2010: 93; Motyka, 2006: 649)."[26]
3. Rudling writes: "OUN founder Evhen Konovalets' (1891–1938) stated that his movement was "waging war against mixed marriages" with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter of whom he described as "foes of our national rebirth" (Carynnyk, 2011: 315). After Konovalets' was himself assassinated in 1938, the movement split into two wings, the followers of Andrii Melnyk (1890–1964) and Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), known as Melnykites, OUN(m), and Banderites, OUN(b). Both wings enthusiastically committed to the new fascist Europe."[26]
4. From page 523: "The term "integral nationalism" has emerged as the most accurate and least tendentious label for "active nationalism" in the scholarly literature on Dontsov and the OUN"[113]
5. Rudling writes: "After 1991, the OUN faced considerable difficulties re-establishing itself in independent Ukraine. It split between the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) in Ukraine and the émigré OUN(b), led by second-generation émigrés in Germany and Australia. Today, no fewer than four organizations claim to be the heirs to Stepan Bandera — KUN and the émigré OUN(b), the clandestine 'Tryzub imeni Bandery' ('Trident'), and VO Svoboda (Kuzio, 2011). The latter was initially founded in Lviv in 1991 as the Social-National Party of Ukraine through the merger of a number of ultranationalist organizations and student fraternities. Its ideology was inspired by Stets'ko's ideology of "two revolutions", one national and one social. As a party symbol, it chose a mirror image of the so-called Wolfsangel, or Wolf's hook, which was used by several SS divisions and, after the war, by neo-Nazi organizations. It organized a paramilitary guard and recruited skinheads and football hooligans into its ranks. Its appeal to Ukrainian voters was limited."[26]
6. Rudling writes: "The OUN wings disagreed on strategy and ideology but shared a commitment to the manufacture of a historical past based on victimization and heroism. The émigrés developed an entire literature that denied the OUN's fascism, its collaboration with Nazi Germany, and its participation in atrocities, instead presenting the organization as composed of democrats and pluralists who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The diaspora narrative was contradictory, combining celebrations of the supposedly anti-Nazi resistance struggle of the OUN-UPA with celebrations of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) a Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich Himmler in 1943 (Rudling, 2011a, 2011c, 2012a)."[26]

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Part 3 of 3

Footnotes

1. Kuzio, Taras; D'Anieri, Paul J. (2002). Dilemmas of State-led Nation Building in Ukraine. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-275-97786-3. The OUN divided in 1940 into a radical wing under Bandera and a more conservative one under Melnyk ...
2. Trevor Erlacher (2014). "The birth of Ukrainian "active nationalism": Dmytro Dontsov and heterodox marxism before World war I, 1883–1914". Modern Intellectual History. 11 (3): 519–548. doi:10.1017/S1479244314000171. S2CID 144888682.
3. Myroslav Shkandrij (2015). "National democracy, the OUN, and Dontsovism: Three ideological currents in Ukrainian Nationalism of the 1930s—40s and their shared myth-system". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2–3): 209–216. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.002.
4. John A. Armstrong (1968). "Collaborationism in World War II: The Integral Nationalist Variant in Eastern Europe". The Journal of Modern History. 40 (3): 396–410. doi:10.1086/240210. JSTOR 1878147. S2CID 144135929.
5. Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; Morlino, Leonardo, eds. (7 September 2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE Publications (published 2011). ISBN 9781483305394. Retrieved 9 September 2020. [...] fascist Italy [...] developed a state structure known as the corporate state with the ruling party acting as a mediator between 'corporations' making up the body of the nation. Similar designs were quite popular elsewhere in the 1930s. The most prominent examples were Estado Novo in Portugal (1932-1968) and Brazil (1937-1945), the Austrian Standestaat (1933-1938), and authoritarian experiments in Estonia, Romania, and some other countries of East and East-Central Europe,
6. Kyrylo Halushko, Birth of a country. From a land to a state., Family Leisure Club (2015) (in Ukrainian), ISBN 978-617-12-0208-5
7. Snyder, Timothy (1999). ""To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All"". Journal of Cold War Studies. 1 (2): 86–120. doi:10.1162/15203979952559531. JSTOR 26925017. S2CID 57564179.
8. Carynnyk, Marco (2011). "Foes of our rebirth: Ukrainian nationalist discussions about Jews, 1929-1947". Nationalities Papers. 39 (3): 315–352. doi:10.1080/00905992.2011.570327. S2CID 159894460.
9. Carynnyk, Marco (2011). "Foes of our rebirth: Ukrainian nationalist discussions about Jews, 1929-1947". Nationalities Papers. 39 (3): 315–352. doi:10.1080/00905992.2011.570327. S2CID 159894460.
10. "Ethnocratic Concepts. Ukrainian Statehood in the 20th Century".
11. https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... he_'Other' [bare URL]
12. Motyl, Alexander J (2000). Encyclopedia of Nationalism. Vol. Two-Volume Set. Elsevier, Academic Press. p. 40. ISBN 0080545246. With over one hundred contributors. On February 10, 1941, Bandera called a conference of radicals in Kraków, Poland. The conference refused to accept Melnyk as leader, and named Bandera head of the OUN. This led to the split of the OUN in the spring of 1941 into two groups: OUN-B (Banderites), who were more militant, younger and supported Bandera, and OUN-M (Melnykites), who were generally older, more ideological.
13. Jump up to:a b Grzegorz, Rossolinski (2014). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848. The investigation of Bandera's life, his cult, and the history of the OUN and UPA are highly contingent upon the study of archival documents and original publications. Because of the extremist nature of the OUN and its involvement in the Holocaust and other kinds of etnic and political mass violence during and after the Second World War, OUN émigrés and UPA veterans began producing forged or manipulated documents during the Cold War, by means of which they whitewashed their own history. They removed undesiderable and inconvenient phrases from republished documents, especially those relating to fascism, the Holocaust, and other atrocities. In 1955, for example, in a new edition of documents entitled The OUN in the Light of the Resolutions of Great Congresses, the OUN reprinted the resolutions of the Second Great Congress of the OUN in Cracow in April 1941. According to the original resolutions, the OUN adopted a fascist salute, consisting of raising the right arm "slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head," while saying "Glory to Ukraine" (Slava Ukraïni!), and answering "Glory to the Heroes" (Heroiam Slava!)
14. Lypovetsky, Sviatoslav (17 February 2009). "Eight Decades of Struggle". The Day. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
15. Yurkevich, Myroslav (1993). "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists". Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved 9 December 2022.
16. Potocki, Robert (2003). Polityka państwa polskiego wobec zagadnienia ukraińskiego w latach 1930-1939 (in Polish). Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. ISBN 978-83-917615-4-0.
17. Rudling, Per Anders (2016). "The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications". Fascism. 5 (1): 31. doi:10.1163/22116257-00501003. ISSN 2211-6249. Founded in 1929, the OUN was the largest and most important Ukrainian far-right organization. Explicitly totalitarian, the movement embraced the Führerprinzip, a cult of political violence, racism, and an aggressive anti Semitism. It sought the establishment of Ukrainian statehood at any price..
18. Bellant, Russ (1991). Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. South End Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-89608-418-6. During the rise of European fascism after World War I, some Ukrainian nationalist groups tied their hopes to fascism as an ideology and then collaborated with Hitler and nazism in World War II. One Ukrainian nationalist group was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which split into two organizations: a less militant wing, led by Andrew Melnyk and known as OUN-M, and the extremist group of Stepan Bandera, known as OUN-B.
19. Jump up to:a b Rudling, Per A. (2011). "The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths". The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (2107): 2. ISSN 2163-839X. The ideology of the organization was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Dmytro Dontsov, Italian Fascism, Nietzsche, and German National Socialism, combining extreme nationalism with terrorism, corporatism, and the Führerprinzip.
20. Albanese, David C. S. (2015). IN SEARCH OF A LESSER EVIL ANTI SOVIET NATIONALISM AND THE COLD WAR (PDF). Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University. p. 188. OUN leaders emulated the Nazi's organizational structure and portions of its political ideology. Both wings of the OUN had an affinity for Nazi-style organization, based on the dictatorial fiihrerprinzip that placed a single leader above the law itself.
21. Marples, David (2013). "The OUN, 1929–43". Heroes and Villians. Central European University Press. pp. 79–123. ISBN 9789637326981. Most writers concur that the UVO was one of the principal foundation stones for the creation of OUN, which—Kost' Bondarenko maintains—"was a classical, radical rightist terrorist organization," ideologically close to Fascism of the Italian type, which was believed to be the "avant-garde European ideology" of that time
22. Himka, John-Paul (21 September 2021). Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust. BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3-8382-1548-8. The question of whether OUN was fascist has exercised a number of scholars, particularly since the rehabilitation of the nationalists in independent Ukraine. OUN certainly looked fascist. At the trials of the OUN leaders in 1935-36, OUN defendants and witnesses shocked the courtroom by giving what a Polish newspaper called "the Hitlerite greeting. .. "The organizational greeting has the form of raising the extended right arm to the right, higher than the crown of the head. The mandatory words of the full greeting: 'Glory to Ukraine!' with the answer 'Glory to the heroes.'" The same document stipulated that the (Banderite) OUN was to have its own flag, in red and black which alluded to the German nationalist and national socialist concept of blood and soil.
23. Jump up to:a b Wodak, Ruth; Richardson, John E. (2013). Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. Routledge. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-415-89919-2. OUN relied on terrorism, violence and assassinations, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and ethnically homogenous Ukrainian nation-state...The former Marxist Dmytro Dontsov created an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel and Charles Maurras and translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian
24. Bresciani, Marco (2021). Conservatives and Right Radicals in Interwar Europe. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-22516-2. The ideology, organisational foundations and political style of the OUN were markedly influenced by fascism, especially Italian, and from 1929 to 1939 this influence steadily increased... The German version of fascism – National Socialism – attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Nationalists in the autumn of 1930, when the NSDAP achieved its first major success in the Reichstag elections.
25. Jump up to:a b Shekhovtsov, Anton (March 2011). "The Creeping Resurgence of the Ukrainian Radical Right? The Case of the Freedom Party". Europe-Asia Studies. 63 (2): 207–210. doi:10.1080/09668136.2011.547696. S2CID 155079439.
26. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j Rudling, Per Anders (2013). "The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda" (PDF). In Wodak and Richardson (ed.). Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. New York: Routledge. pp. 229–235.
27. "Державний архів Львівської області". Archived from the original on 5 January 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
28. Snyder, Timothy (11 July 2004). The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. Yale University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-300-10586-5. The OUN was an illegal, conspirational, and terrorist organization bound to destroy the status quo. The OUN counted on German help ... Germany was the only possible ally.
29. Katchanovski, Ivan (2013). "The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the Nazi Genocide in Ukraine". Paper Presented at the "Collaboration in Eastern Europe During World War II and the Holocaust" Conference, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum & Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. The OUN and the UPA can both be classified as terrorist organizations because their actions correspond to academic definitions of terrorism as the use of violence against civilians by non-state actors in order to intimidate and to achieve political goals.
30. Delphine, Bechtel (2013). The Holocaust in Ukraine – New Sources and Perspectives – The 1941 pogroms as represented in Western Ukrainian historiography and memorial culture (PDF). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 3, 6. Some Ukrainian immigrant circles in Canada, the United States, and Germany had been active for decades in trying to suppress the topic and reacted to any testimony about Ukrainian anti-Jewish violence with virulent diatribes against what they dismissed as 'Jewish propaganda' ... the Ukrainian Insurrectional Army (UPA), which was responsible for ethnic "cleansing" actions against Poles and Jews in Volhynia and Galicia.
31. Plokhy, Serhii (2015). The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. New York: Basic Books. p. 320. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which had close to 100,000 soldiers at its height in the summer of 1944, was fighting behind the Soviet lines, disrupting Red Army communications and attacking units farther from the front ... Among the UPA's major successes was the killing of a leading Soviet commander, General Nikolai Vatutin. On 29 February 1944, UPA fighters ambushed and wounded Vatutin as he was returning from a meeting with subordinates in Rivne, the former capital of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. He died in Kyiv in mid-April. Khrushchev, who attended Vatutin's funeral, buried his friend in the government center of Kyiv ... not all the UPA fighters shared the nationalist ideology or belonged to the OUN.
32. Friedman, Philip; Friedman, Ada June (1980). Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust. New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies: Jewish Publication Society of America. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-8276-0170-3 – via Internet Archive. After the outbreak of World War II, the Germans constantly favored the OUN, at the expense of more moderate Ukrainian groups. The extremist Ukrainian nationalist groups then launched a campaign of vilification against moderate leaders, accusing them of various misdeeds ... As early as the spring of 1940, a central Ukrainian committee was organized in Cracow under the chairmanship of Volodimir Kubiovitch ... Shortly before the outbreak of Russo-German hostilities, the Germans, through Colonel Erwin Stolze, of the Abwehr, conducted negotiations with both OUN leaders, Melnyk and Bandera, requesting that they engage in underground activities in the rear of the Soviet armies in the Ukraine.
33. Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). Poland's Holocaust. McFarland. pp. 224, 233, 234. ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4 – via Internet Archive. ... after the massive exodus of the Polish people created a hiatus in the flow of requisitions, the Germans decided to stop the UPA terrorist attacks against civilians ... These anti-Jewish actions were carried out by the members of the Ukrainian police who eventually joined the UPA ... By October (1944), all of Eastern Poland lay in Soviet hands. As the German army began its withdrawal, the UPA began to attack its rearguard and seize its equipment. The Germans reacted with raids on UPA positions. On July 15, 1944, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (Ukrainska Holovna Vyzvolna Rada, or UHVR, an OUN-B outfit) was formed and, at the end of that month, signed an agreement with the Germans for a unified front against the Soviet threat. This ended the UPA attacks as well as the German countermeasures. In exchange for diversionary activities in the rear of the Soviet front, Germans began providing the Ukrainian underground with supplies, arms, and training materials.
34. Katchanovski, Ivan (2015). "Terrorists or national heroes? Politics and perceptions of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine". Communist and Post-Communist Studies – Paper Prepared for Presentation at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, June 1–3, 2010. 48 (2–3): 15. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.006. ISSN 0967-067X. However, historical studies and archival documents show that the OUN relied on terrorism and collaborated with Nazi Germany in the beginning of World War II. The OUN-B (Stepan Bandera faction) by means of its control over the UPA masterminded a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia during the war and mounted an anti-Soviet terror campaign in Western Ukraine after the war. These nationalist organizations, based mostly in Western Ukraine, primarily, in Galicia, were also involved in mass murder of Jews during World War II. The 2009 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey shows that only minorities of the residents of Ukraine have favorable views of the OUN-B and the UPA and deny involvement of these organizations in mass murders of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews in the 1940s.
35. Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 168
36. Motyka 2006, p. 124.
37. "Poland's president expresses regret over 1947 Akcja Wisla Archived 6 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine", The Ukrainian Weekly
38. Rudling, Per Anders (2013). "The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda". In Wodak and Richardson (ed.). Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. New York: Routledge. pp. 229–35. During the Cold War, US, West German, and British intelligence utilized various OUN wings in ideological warfare and covert actions against the Soviet Union (Breitman and Goda, 2010: 73– 98; Breitman, Goda, Naftali and Wolfe, 2005). Funded by the CIA, which sponsored Lebed's immigration to the United States and protected him from prosecution for war crimes, OUN(z) activists formed the core of the Proloh Research and Publishing Association, a pro-nationalist semi academic publisher.
39. Motyka 2006, p. 36.
40. Christopher Gilley (2006). A Simple Question of 'Pragmatism'? Sovietophilism in the West Ukrainian Emigration in the 1920s Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Working Paper: Koszalin Institute of Comparative European Studies pp.6–13
41. Motyka 2006, p. 37-38.
42. "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists". Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved 1 May 2024.
43. Orest Subtelny. (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp.441–446.
44. Snyder, Timothy (1999). "'To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All': The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943–1947". Journal of Cold War Studies. 1 (2): 117. doi:10.1162/15203979952559531. ISSN 1520-3972. JSTOR 26925017. S2CID 57564179. In interwar Poland, the Ukrainian nationalist OUN was a far smaller party than the moderate UNDO.
45. Compilation of various authors (2019). "Ukrainian Fascism". A compilation of articles by various US, Canadian and European authors describing the role of various fascist organizations in Ukraine, from WW-II collaborationists (OUN-UPA, Waffen-SS Galizien, etc.) to present day neo-Nazis. p. 257. Before the war, the moderate UNDO party was more important among Ukrainians in Poland than the radical nationalists of the OUN. See Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, 'The 'Ukrainian National Revolution' of 1941'.
46. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 71, 77-89.
47. Motyka 2006, p. 44-45.
48. BROWN, Kate (30 June 2009). A Biography of No Place. Harvard University Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-674-02893-7. ..(OUN), a nationalist, terrorist organization which had plotted to create an independent Ukrainian state in eastern Poland and carried out the assassination of several Polish leaders in interwar Poland. The OUN had many factions and was rife with ideological disputes, but on the whole it harmonized with the fascist, integral-nationalist, anticommunist, and antisemitic profile of German National Socialists.
49. Bauerkämper, Arnd; Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz (2019). Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (1 ed.). Berghahn Books. pp. 176, 177. ISBN 978-1-78533-468-9. JSTOR j.ctvw04hnr. It saw itself as a fascist movement, but it called itself the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and not the Organization of Ukrainian Fascists. The members of the movement called themselves the Ukrainian nationalists, too, but they claimed to be related to movements such as the Italian Fascists, the German Nazis, the Ustasa, and the Iron Guard. Mussolini trained Ukrainian nationalists together with Ustasa revolutionaries in Sicily, and the OUN had offices in Berlin and Vienna.
50. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 68.
51. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 73-74.
52. Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska Partyzantka 1942–1960, Warszawa 2006
53. Alexander Motyl (1985). "Ukrainian Nationalist Political Violence in Inter-War Poland, 1921–1939". East European Quarterly. 19 (1).
54. Chornovol, Ihor. "Lvivska Hazeta (Lviv Gazette), October 7, 2005. The Art of Compromises: Kyryl Studynsky and Soviet Rule". Archived from the original on 15 June 2009.
55. Bohdan Budurowycz. (1989). Sheptytski and the Ukrainian National Movement after 1914 (chapter). In Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.). Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytsky. Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. pg. 57. A more detailed sample of Sheptytsky's impassioned words condemning the OUN, printed in the newspaper of the maninstream western Ukrainian newspaper Dilo: "If you are planning to kill treacherously those who are opposed to your misdeeds, you will have to kill all the teachers and professors who are working for the Ukrainian youth, all the fathers and mothers of Ukrainian children...all politicians and civic activists. But first of all you will have to remove through assassination the clergy and the bishops who resist your criminal and foolish actions...We will not cease to declare that whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of our people."
56. Motyka 2006, p. 54-55.
57. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 70-71.
58. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 71.
59. Armstrong, John A. (1968). "Collaborationism in World War II: The Integral Nationalist Variant in Eastern Europe". The Journal of Modern History. 40 (3): 403. doi:10.1086/240210. ISSN 0022-2801. JSTOR 1878147. S2CID 144135929.
60. Motyka 2006, p. 75.
61. Motyka 2006, p. 77.
62. Breintman and J.W. Goda. "Hitler's Shadow" (PDF). National Archives. p. 74. ..the OUN turned its hopes toward the Germans. In late 1939 the Germans housed OUN leaders in Krakow, then the capital of the German-occupied General Government.
63. Encyclopedia of Nationalism, Two-Volume Set. Elsevier. 27 October 2000. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-08-054524-0. One of the main sources of financial support in this period for the OUN was Germany.
64. Hnatiuk, Ola (28 January 2020). Courage and Fear. Academic Studies PRess. ISBN 978-1-64469-253-0. ..the Ukrainian Central Committee set up in Cracow under the leadership of Volodymyr Kubiyovych..
65. Friedman, Philip; Friedman, Ada June (1980). Roads to extinction : essays on the Holocaust. Internet Archive. New York : Conference on Jewish Social Studies : Jewish Publication Society of America. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-8276-0170-3. After the outbreak of World War II, the Germans constantly favored the OUN, at the expense of more moderate Ukrainian groups. The extremist Ukrainian nationalist groups then launched a campaign of vilification against moderate leaders, accusing them of various misdeeds...As early as the spring of 1940, a central Ukrainian committee was organized in Cracow under the chairmanship of Volodimir Kubiovitch...Shortly before the outbreak of Russo-German hostilities, the Germans, through Colonel Erwin Stolze, of the Abwehr, conducted negotiations with both OUN leaders, Melnyk and Bandera, requesting that they engage in underground activities in the rear of the Soviet armies in the Ukraine.
66. Armstrong 1963, p. 36–39.
67. Motyka 2006, p. 79.
68. Armstrong 1963, p. 159.
69. Armstrong 1963, p. 87.
70. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. Archived 4 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 (No ISBN) p.271-278
71. Motyka 2006, p. 81.
72. Motyka 2006, p. 85.
73. Motyka 2006, p. 86.
74. Motyka 2006, p. 84.
75. Motyka 2006, p. 88.
76. Kopstein 2020, pp. 219-220: Kopstein writes: "On June 30, 1941, on the eighth day of operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a pogrom broke out in Lviv, the capital city of Eastern Galicia. Ukrainians, and to a lesser extent Poles, massacred their Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens. ... For the next two days Lviv witnessed terrible anti-Jewish violence at the hands of the local Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian militia, and under the Nazis' approving eyes.".
77. Glöckner Olaf (2021). "The Collaboration of Ukrainian Nationalists with Nazi Germany". In Bitunjac, Martina; Schoeps, Julius H. (eds.). Complicated Complicity European Collaboration with Nazi Germany During World War II. De Gruyter. pp. 90–91. ISBN 9783110671261. Ukrainian militiamen and civilians chased down Jews, took them to the prisons, forced them to exhume bodies of killed prisoners, mistreated and finally killed them.
78. Rudling, Per A. (2011). "The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths". The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (2107): 8. ISSN 2163-839X. OUN activists participated in the July 1941 pogroms, in which many of them displayed an above-average brutality. Upon their arrival in L'viv the commandos of the Ukrainian Nachtigall Battalion could rely on a fanatically anti-Semitic auxiliary contingent with good knowledge of local conditions..Similar pogroms took place across Western Ukraine. At least 58 pogroms are documented in Western Ukrainian cities, the estimated number of victims of which range between 13,000 and 35,000.
79. "Lvov". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2011. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012. Encouraged by German forces to begin violent actions against the Jewish population in Lvov, Ukrainian nationalists massacred about 4,000 Jews in early July 1941. Another pogrom, known as the Petliura Days, was organized in late July. This pogrom was named for Simon Petliura, who had organized anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine after World War I. For three days, Ukrainian militants went on a rampage through the Jewish districts of Lvov. They took groups of Jews to the Jewish cemetery and to Lunecki prison and shot them. More than 2,000 Jews were murdered and thousands more were injured.
80. Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority (11 March 2005). "July 25: Pogrom in Lvov". archive.ph. Archived from the original on 11 March 2005. Retrieved 31 May 2022. The pogroms were organized by Ukrainian nationalist circles with German encouragement. Among the Jews of Lvov, rumors had spread that the Ukrainians were planning a pogrom. As July 25 approached, an unusual bustle was noticed among the Ukrainian police in the city. Jews tried not to step outside. Early in the morning of July 25, groups of peasants from nearby villages began to flow into Lvov. They assembled on the premises of police stations, set out from there to the street accompanied by Ukrainian policemen, and assaulted any Jew whom they encountered with clubs, knives, and axes. Groups of Jews were taken to the Jewish cemetery and murdered brutally.
81. Lower 2012, p. 204.
82. Breitman 1991.
83. Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
84. Motyka 2006, p. 98-99.
85. Rossoliński-Liebe 2014, p. 234–236: "The OUN-B organized a militia, which both collaborated with the Germans and killed Jews independently.".
86. "Book chapter (1941—1942)" (PDF). history.org.ua (in Ukrainian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 July 2011.
87. A.B. Shirokorad, Uteryannie zemli Rossii: otkolovshiesya respubliki, Moscow:"Veche", 2007, p. 84.
88. Armstrong 1963, p. 91–98.
89. International Military Tribunal (1947). Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal ("Blue Series"). Vol. 39. pp. 269–270.
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91. Paul Robert Magocsi. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: pg. 629.
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93. Armstrong 1963, p. 142–165.
94. Ukrainian Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: Sorting Out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors Archived 24 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine by John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta. Taken from The Fate of the European Jews, 1939–1945: Continuity or Contingency, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13 (1997): 170–89.
95. (in Ukrainian) Організація українських націоналістів і Українська повстанська армія p.165 Archived 11 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine
96. Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army Chapter 3 pp. 152–153 http://history.org.ua/oun_upa/upa/9.pdf Archived 3 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
97. Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 164
98. International Court of Justice. "IMT Nuremberg Archives. H - 3453" (PDF). Stanford University Library - Digital Stacks. p. 136. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 May 2024.
99. Armstrong 1963, p. 156.
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101. Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
102. Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army Chapter 8 pp. 462–463 http://www.history.org.ua/LiberUA/Book/Upa/30.pdf
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108. Armstrong 1963, p. 33–36.
109. Armstrong 1963, p. 62.
110. Rudling, Per A. (November 2011). "The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths". The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (2107). University of Pittsburgh. p. 3 (6 of 76 in PDF). ISSN 0889-275X.
111. Marples, David R. (2007). Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. Central European University Press. pp. 285–286. ISBN 978-9637326981.
112. Cooke, Philip; Shepherd, Ben (2014). Hitler's Europe Ablaze: Occupation, Resistance, and Rebellion during World War II. Skyhorse Publishing. p. 336. ISBN 978-1632201591.
113. Trevor Erlacher (2014). "The birth of Ukrainian "active nationalism": Dmytro Dontsov and heterodox marxism before World war I, 1883–1914". Modern Intellectual History. 11 (3): 519–548. doi:10.1017/S1479244314000171. S2CID 144888682.
114. Armstrong 1963, p. 20–22.
115. Myroslav Shkandrij.(2015). National democracy, the OUN, and Dontsovism: Three ideological currents in Ukrainian Nationalism of the 1930s–40s and their shared myth-system".Communist and Post-Communist Studies 1–8
116. Wilson, A. (2000). The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08355-6.
117. Bandera – romantyczny terrorysta Archived 28 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine "Bandera – Romantic Terrorist, interview with Jaroslaw Hrycak. Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 May 2008.
118. Rudling, Per Anders (2016). "The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications". Fascism. 5 (1): 32. doi:10.1163/22116257-00501003. ISSN 2211-6249. A typical fascist movement, the OUN cultivated close relations with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Spanish Falange and the Croatian Ustaše.
119. Gomza, Ivan (1 September 2015). "Elusive Proteus: A study in the ideological morphology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2–3): 195–207. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.005 – via online.ucpress.edu.
120. Katchanovski, Ivan. "Terrorists or National Heroes? Politics of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine: Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, June 1-3, 2010" (PDF). Canadian Political Science Association.
121. Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz; Willems, Bastiaan (31 March 2022). "Putin's Abuse of History: Ukrainian 'Nazis', 'Genocide' and a Fake Threat Scenario". de:L.I.S.A. – Das Wissenschaftsportal der Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
122. Council, Atlantic (15 March 2010). "Stepan Bandera: Hero of Ukraine?". Atlantic Council. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
123. Zaitsev, Oleksandr (2015). "Fascism or ustashism? Ukrainian integral nationalism of the 1920s–1930s in comparative perspective". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2/3): 183–193. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.009. ISSN 0967-067X. JSTOR 48610446.
124. Heretica (16 October 2022). "Stanley Payne: Fascism is not relevant nowadays, neither Putin nor Meloni are fascists". Heretica. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
125. Marples, David R. (21 January 2010). "Anti-Soviet Partisans and Ukrainian Memory". East European Politics and Societies: And Cultures. 24 (1). SAGE Publications: 26–43. doi:10.1177/0888325409354908. ISSN 0888-3254. S2CID 144394106.
126. Rudling, Per A. (2011). "The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths". The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (2107): 14, 15, 16, 20. ISSN 2163-839X. The outcome of the battle of Stalingrad had changed the geopolitical situation and necessitated a reorientation. The OUN(b) now started to do away with its overtly fascist attributes. In February 1943 the Third Congress of the OUN(b) decided that raising the right arm was no longer to be considered an obligatory party salute and began to remove any references to it in their own documents...The OUN(b) leaders issued explicit instructions on how to blame pogroms and anti-Jewish violence on the Germans and Poles... One of these collections, "The Book of Facts" (Do pochatku knyha faktiv), was aimed at deflecting attention from OUN(b) and UPA participation in the Holocaust...It claimed that the Germans asked the OUN(b) to take part in a three-day pogrom in early July 1941, but that the OUN(b) regarded it as a German provocation, and refused...The Banderite narrative represented their own legacy as a "heroic Ukrainian resistance against the Nazis and the Communists' which had been "misrepresented and maligned" by 'Moscow propaganda' the OUN(b) and the UPA were fighting 'not only for Ukraine, but also for all of Europe ... The OUN(b) regularly censored any documents that contradicted the image they wanted to produce ... In 1947 and 1948, the OUN-UPA annual commemoration was presented as an oppositional, anti-German step. At this time, the OUN's denial of its own anti-Semitism was already categorical. In 1947, the OUN issued an English-language propaganda leaflet in post-war Poland..Given the particular stigma anti-Semitism carried following the Holocaust, pronationalist historians have gone to great lengths to deny its very existence. Denial of the fascist and anti-Semitic nature of the OUN, its war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and participation in the Holocaust have become central components of the intellectual history of the Ukrainian diaspora.
127. Rudling, Per Anders (2013). "The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda" (PDF). In Wodak and Richardson (ed.). Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. New York: Routledge. pp. 229, 230. In 1943–1944, OUN(b) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing, resulting in the deaths of more than 90,000 Poles and thousands of Jews. After the war, the UPA continued a hopeless struggle against the Soviet authorities until 1953, in which they killed 20,000 Ukrainians. The Soviet authorities killed 153,000 people, arrested 134,000 and deported 203,000 UPA members, sympathizers and their families (Siemaszko, 2010: 93; Motyka, 2006: 649). The OUN was dominant among the Ukrainian Displaced Persons who settled in the West after the war....The OUN wings disagreed on strategy and ideology but shared a commitment to the manufacture of a historical past based on victimization and heroism. The émigrés developed an entire literature that denied the OUN's fascism, its collaboration with Nazi Germany, and its participation in atrocities, instead presenting the organization as composed of democrats and pluralists who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The diaspora narrative was contradictory, combining celebrations of the supposedly anti-Nazi resistance struggle of the OUN-UPA with celebrations of the Waffen-SS Galizien, a Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich Himmler in 1943.
128. Rossolinski, Grzegorz (1 October 2014). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Columbia University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-3-8382-6684-8. The investigation of Bandera's life, his cult, and the history of the OUN and UPA are highly contingent upon the study of archival documents and original publications. Because of the extremist nature of the OUN and its involvement in the Holocaust and other kinds of ethnic and political mass violence during and after the Second World War, OUN émigrés and UPA veterans began producing forged or manipulated documents during the Cold War, by means of which they whitewashed their own history. They removed undesiderable and inconvenient phrases from republished documents, especially those relating to fascism, the Holocaust, and other atrocities. In 1955, for example, in a new edition of documents entitled The OUN in the Light of the Resolutions of Great Congresses, the OUN reprinted the resolutions of the Second Great Congress of the OUN in Cracow in April 1941. According to the original resolutions, the OUN adopted a fascist salute, consisting of raising the right arm "slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head," while saying "Glory to Ukraine" (Slava Ukraïni!), and answering "Glory to the Heroes" (Heroiam Slava!)
129. Gomza, Ivan (2015). "Elusive Proteus: A study in the ideological morphology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2–3): 201. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.005.
130. Paul Robert Magocsi. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pg. 621
131. Armstrong 1963, p. 38–39.
132. Armstrong 1963, p. 159–165.
133. Snyder, Timothy (2003). Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 143. ISBN 030010586X – via Google Books.
134. Gomza, Ivan (2015). "The elusive Proteus: A study in ideological morphology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2–3): 9. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.005.
135. Berkhoff, Karel C. (2004). Harvest of despair: life and death in Ukraine under Nazi rule, p. 298. President and Fellows of Harvard College. ISBN 9780674027183
136. Subtelny, Orest. (1988) Ukraine: a History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pg. 442
137. Volovici, Nationalist Ideology, p. 98, citing N. Cainic, Ortodoxie şi etnocraţie, pp. 162–4
138. Kost Bondarenko, Director of the Center for Political Research, The History We Don't Know or Don't Care to Know, Mirror Weekly, #12, 2002 Archived 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine
139. Philip Friedman. Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation. In Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust. (1980) New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies. pg. 204
140. Myroslav Shkandrij. (2009). 'Jews in Ukrainian Literature: Representation and Identity.' New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 152–153
141. Myroslav Yurkevich. (1986). Galician Ukrainians in German Military Formations and in the German Administration. In Ukraine during World War II: history and its aftermath : a symposium (Yuri Boshyk, Roman Waschuk, Andriy Wynnyckyj, Eds.). Edmonton: University of Alberta, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press pg. 69
142. Jarosław Hrycak, Ukraińcy w akcjach antyżydowskich. Appeared in the journal Nowa Europa Wschodnia
143. Hunczak, Ukrainian-Jewish Relations, p.41
144. Philip Friedman. "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation." In Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (1980) New York: Conference of Jewish Social Studies. pp.179–180
145. The Lviv pogrom of 1941 By John Paul Himka. Kyiv Post 23 September 2010.
146. Statiev, Alexander (2020). "The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists as the Leader of a Unique Fascist Armed Resistance". Violent Resistance: From the Balkans to Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe 1944–1956. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. p. 153. doi:10.30965/9783657703043_009. ISBN 978-3-506-70304-0. S2CID 235836250.
147. Yad Vashem (2005). "June 30: Germany occupies Lvov; 4,000 Jews killed by July 3". Archived from the original on 11 March 2005.
148. Holocaust Encyclopedia (2006). "Lwów". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
149. Yad Vashem (2005). "July 25: Pogrom in Lwów". Chronology of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 11 March 2005.
150. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 I.K Patrylyak. (2004). Military activities of the OUN (B) in the years 1940–1942. Kyiv, Ukraine: Shevchenko University \ Institute of History of Ukraine National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. pg. 324.
151. Philip Friedman. "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation." In Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust. (1980) New York: Conference of Jewish Social Studies. pg. 181
152. Philip Friedman. "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation." at Yivo annual of Jewish social science Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1959 pg.268
153. Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Chapter 2 Archived 25 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, pp.62–63
154. McBride, Jared (2016). "Peasants into Perpetrators: The OUN-UPA and the Ethnic Cleansing of Volhynia, 1943–1944". Slavic Review. 75 (3): 636. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.75.3.0630. S2CID 165089612 – via JSTOR.
155. Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 162
156. Friedman, Philip (1980). "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation". In Ada June Friedman (ed.). Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust. New York: Conference of Jewish Social Studies (YIVO). pp. 203. ISBN 0827601700.
157. Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2014). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. ibidem Press. p. 266. ISBN 9783838206868.
158. Timothy Snyder. (2008). "The life and death of Volhynian Jewry, 1921–1945." In Brandon, Lowler (Eds.) The Shoah in Ukraine: history, testimony, memorialization. Indiana: Indiana University Press, pg. 95
159. Divide and Conquer: the KGB Disinformation Campaign Against Ukrainians and Jews Archived 20 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Ukrainian Quarterly [uk], Fall 2004. By Herbert Romerstein
160. Umland, Andreas; Anton Shekhovstsov (2013). "Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukraine Ultranationalists in 1994–2009". Russian Politics and Law. 51 (5): 33–58. doi:10.2753/rup1061-1940510502. S2CID 144502924. In 1990, one of the best known nationalist parties—the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA), headed by Dmytro Korchyns'kyi—was established in Lviv ... . In Ukraine itself, the UNA-UNSD became a media phenomenon, not least thanks to its deliberate provocation aimed at left-wing and pro-Russian forces and its frequent clashes with the police. But the UNA had little political success ... . The second best-known ultraright party to emerge at the beginning of the 1990s was the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN)—a direct heir of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera) (OUN-B), which Stepan Bandera headed in 1940 after a split in the original OUN. The continuity between the OUN-B and the CUN was ensured by the return from abroad of Iaroslava Stets'ko, a former member of the OUN-B and the widow of Iaroslav Stets'ko, one of the leaders of the OUN-B and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
161. Rudling, Per Anders (1 July 2012). "'They Defended Ukraine': The 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 25 (3): 329–368. doi:10.1080/13518046.2012.705633. ISSN 1351-8046. S2CID 144432759.
162. "В ЗСУ з'явився батальйон Євгена Коновальця" [A battalion of Yevhen Konovalets has appeared in the Ukrainian Armed Forces]. Istorychna Pravda.
163. "Зеленський присвоїв ім'я Євгена Коновальця 131-му окремому розвідбатальйону Сухопутних військ ЗСУ" [President Zelenskyi names 131st separate reconnaissance battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine after Yevhenii Konovalets]. Hromadske Radio. October 2023.
164. "On the Day of Defenders of Ukraine, the President presented state awards and took part in the oath taking by military lyceum students". president.gov.ua.
165. Hoshovsky, B. Who is the author of new concept for the Ukrainian National Flag?. Calendar-almanac on 1985 "New Way". Toronto 1984.
166. Archived copy Archived 6 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
167. Hopper, Tristin (3 March 2022). "Did Chrystia Freeland pose with extremist symbols or is it Russian disinformation?". National Post. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
168. Jump up to:a b c Former WWII nationalist guerrillas granted veteran status in Ukraine, Kyiv Post (26 March 2019)
169. Kuzio, Taras (23 June 2015). Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism: Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3503-2.
170. "For the first time, a citizen of Ukraine by birth was elected as the head of the OUN(b)". Istorychna Pravda (in Ukrainian). 16 December 2022. Retrieved 16 December 2022.

Bibliography

• Armstrong, John (1963). Ukrainian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Breitman, Richard (1991). "Himmler and the 'Terrible Secret' among the Executioners". Journal of Contemporary History. 26 (3/4): 431–451. doi:10.1177/002200949102600305. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 260654. S2CID 159733077.
• Gomza, I. (2015). Elusive Proteus: A study in the ideological morphology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 48(2/3), 195–207.
• Kopstein, Jeffrey S. (3 December 2020). "Pogroms". Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 215–228. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51658-1_17. ISBN 978-3-030-51657-4. S2CID 240643166.
• Jonathan Levy, The Intermarium: Wilson, Madison, & East Central European Federalism.
• Lower, Wendy (2012). "Axis collaboration, Operation Barbarossa, and the Holocaust in Ukraine". In Alex J. Kay; Jeff Rutherford; David Stahel (eds.). Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization. University of Rochester Press. ISBN 978-1-58046-407-9.
• Paul Robert Magocsi (1989), Morality and Reality: the Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, Edmonton Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, ISBN 0-920862-68-3.
• Motyka, Grzegorz (2006). Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii [Ukrainian partisans 1942-1960. Activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army] (in Polish). Warsaw.
• Grzegorz Motyka (2005), Służby bezpieczeństwa Polski i Czechosłowacji wobec Ukraińców (1945–1989), Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa, ISBN 83-89078-86-4. (in Polish)
• Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz (2014). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-3838266848.
• Rossoliński-Liebe, G. (2019). Inter-Fascist Conflicts in East Central Europe: The Nazis, the “Austrofascists,” the Iron Guard, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. In G. Rossoliński-Liebe & A. Bauerkämper (Eds.), Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (1st ed., pp. 168–191). Berghahn Books.
• Shkandrij, M. (2015). The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. In Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology, and Literature, 1929-1956 (pp. 101–132). Yale University Press.
• Władysław Siemaszko, Ewa Siemaszko (2000), Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939–1945, Kancelaria Prezydenta Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, Warszawa, tom I i II, 1,433 pages, photos, quells, ISBN 83-87689-34-3. (in Polish)
• Snyder, Timothy (2003). "The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943" (PDF). Past & Present (179): 197–234. doi:10.1093/past/179.1.197.
• Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8020-5808-6.
• Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-300-08355-6.
• Антонюк Ярослав Діяльність, "СБ ОУН на Волині." Луцьк : «Волинська книга», 2007. – 176 с.
• Антонюк Ярослав Діяльність, "СБ ОУН(б) на Волині таЗахідному Поліссі (1946–1951)" : Монографія. – Луцьк: «Надстир'я-Ключі», 2013. – 228 с.
External links
[edit]
• Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists webpage in Ukrainian
• Petelycky, Stefan (1999). Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine (PDF). Kashtan Press. ISBN 978-1-896354-16-3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2021.War memoirs of an OUN veteran.

[admin]

Nachtigall Battalion [Nightingale Battalion]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/31/24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachtigall_Battalion

Nachtigall Battalion
[x]
February, 1941.
Active February 25 – late October 1941
Country Nazi Germany
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Branch Abwehr
Role Special Forces
Size 360 to 400
Engagements Operation Barbarossa
Commanders
Notable
commanders Roman Shukhevych, Theodor Oberländer
The Nachtigall Battalion (English: Nightingale Battalion), also known as the Ukrainian Nightingale Battalion Group (German: Bataillon Ukrainische Gruppe Nachtigall), or officially as Special Group Nachtigall[1] (German: Sondergruppe 'Nachtigall'[2]) was a subunit under command of the German Abwehr special-operations unit Lehrregiment "Brandenburg" z.b.V. 800 in 1941. Along with the Roland Battalion it was one of two military units which originated on February 25, 1941, when the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris, sanctioned the formation of a "Ukrainian Legion"[3] under German command. The Legion was composed of volunteer Ukrainians many of whom were members or supporters of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B).[4] The Battalion participated in early stages of Operation Barbarossa (the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union) with Army Group South[5] between June and August 1941.

After returning to Germany, in November 1941 the Ukrainian members of the Legion were reorganized into the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion. It numbered 650 persons who served for one year in Byelorussia (present-day Belarus) before disbanding.[6] Many of its members, especially the commanding officers, went on to join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (founded in 1942), and 14 of its members joined SS Division Galicia in spring 1943.[7]

Formation and training

This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources.
Find sources: "Nachtigall Battalion" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2023)
Prior to Operation Barbarossa, the Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) sought contact with Nazi Germany and in fact received its training there in order to use this as an opportunity to restore independence of Ukraine.[citation needed]

According to the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and other sources, OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera held meetings with the heads of Germany's intelligence, regarding the formation of the Nachtigall and Roland Battalions. February 25, 1941, Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, sanctioned the creation of the "Ukrainian Legion" under German command. The unit would have had[vague] 800 persons. Roman Shukhevych became a commander of the Legion from the OUN-B side.[vague] OUN expected that the unit would become the core of the future Ukrainian army. In the spring the OUN received 2.5 million marks for subversive activities against the USSR.[8][9][verify] In the spring of 1941 the Legion was reorganized into two units. One of the units became known as Nachtigall Battalion, a second became the Roland Battalion.[citation needed]

Training for Nachtigall took place in Neuhammer near Schlessig. On the Ukrainian side, the commander was Roman Shukhevych and on the German, Theodor Oberländer. (Oberländer was later to become Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims in the Federal Republic of Germany.) Ex-Brandenburger Oberleutnant Dr. Hans-Albrecht Herzner (de) was placed in military command of the Battalion.[citation needed]

The Nachtigall unit was outfitted in the standard Wehrmacht uniforms. Before entering Lviv, they placed blue and yellow ribbons on their shoulders.[10][verify]

War with the Soviet Union

This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources.
Find sources: "Nachtigall Battalion" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2023)
Four days before the attack on the Soviet Union, the Battalion was moved to the border. On the night of June 23–24, 1941, the Battalion crossed the border near Przemyśl while traveling in the direction of Lviv. The Nachtigall Battalion traveled along with a Panzer-Jaeger Division[dubious – discuss] and some tank units went along through Radymno-Lviv-Ternopil-Proskuriv-Vinnytsia path.[11][verify] As part of the 1st Brandenburg Battalion, the first soldiers of the Nachtigall Battalion entered Lviv on June 29.[12] The battalion took up guard of strategic objects, the most important of which was the radio station on the Vysoky Zamok Hill in the centre of Lviv. From the radio station, the proclamation of the Act of Ukrainian Independence was made.[4]


Excerpt from a report by a member of the battalion about shooting "all Jews which were met" in Vinnytsia region
The Nachtigall servicemen participated in and organized the Declaration of Ukrainian Independence proclaimed by Yaroslav Stetsko on June 30. Battalion chaplain Ivan Hrynokh made a speech after declaration meeting ended. The German administration did not support these activities but did not act harshly against organizers until mid-September 1941.[13][verify]

The first company of the Nachtigall Battalion left Lviv with the Brandenburgers on July 7 in the direction of Zolochiv. The remainder of the unit joined later during their eastward march towards Zolochiv, Ternopil and Vinnytsia.[4] The unit participated in action against Stalin Line where some of its members were awarded by the Germans. During the march at three villages of the Vinnytsia region "all Jews which were met" were shot.[14][verify]

The German refusal to accept the OUN(b)'s June 30 proclamation of Ukrainian independence in L'viv led to a change of the Nachtigall battalion direction. As the result, the battalion was recalled to Cracow and disarmed on August 15. It was later transformed together with Roland battalion into the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion.[15][16][verify]

Assessment
Russian historian Sergei Chuyev states that despite the ending, OUN achieved its ultimate goals – 600 members of their organization had received military training and had battle experience and these men took positions as instructors and commanders in the structure of the newly formed Ukrainian Insurgent Army.[17][verify]

Stepan Bandera wrote: "The end of OUN was such: the revolutionary columns were commanded by Roman Shukhevych with a small party of officers who had not only undergone military training but had come to a clear understanding of military tactics. Most importantly, they brought with them - an understanding of organization, strategies and tactics of partisan fighting, and the German method of dealing with partisan groups. This knowledge was very useful in the formation and activities of the UPA and in its future conflicts.[17][verify]

During its short history, the Nachtigall Battalion had 39 casualties and 40 wounded soldiers.[17][verify]

Controversy

KGB document on action against Theodor Oberländer and Ukrainian Nachtigall (1959).[18][19]

A Ukrainian postage stamp (2007) honouring the Ukrainian Commander of the Nachtigall Battalion - Roman Shukhevych on the 100th anniversary of his birth
Main article: Controversy surrounding the Lviv pogroms of 1941
Accusations have placed the Battalion in Lviv in July 1941 and claimed that the unit participated in the pogrom that took place. Some members of the unit did indeed participate in the pogrom, which implicates the unit as a whole.

World opinion: An international commission was set up at The Hague in the Netherlands in 1959 to carry out independent investigations. The members were four former anti-Hitler activists, Norwegian lawyer Hans Cappelen, former Danish foreign minister and president of the Danish parliament Ole Bjørn Kraft, Dutch socialist Karel van Staal, Belgian law professor Flor Peeters, and Swiss jurist and member of parliament Kurt Scoch. Following its interrogation of a number of Ukrainian witnesses between November 1959 and March 1960, the commission concluded: "After four months of inquiries and the evaluation of 232 statements by witnesses from all circles involved, it can be established that the accusations against the Battalion Nachtigall and against the then Lieutenant and currently Federal Minister Oberländer have no foundation in fact".[20]

The Ukrainian side[vague] states that none of the allegations have been proven by any documents and that the Battalion's main priority was securing the radio station, newspapers and proclaiming Ukrainian independence.[21]

Canadian Investigation: The Canadian Commission on War Criminals in Canada (Deschênes Commission) that look into allegations of war criminals residing in Canada, has not named any of the members of the Nachtigall Battalion. Moreover, it concluded, that units collaborating with the Nazis should not be indicted as a group and that mere membership in such units was not sufficient to justify prosecution.[22]

Yad Vashem's Encyclopedia of the Holocaust contends that between June 30 and July 3, 1941, in the days that the Battalion was in Lviv, the Nachtigall soldiers together with the German army and the local Ukrainians participated in the killings of Jews in the city. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states that the unit was removed from Lviv on July 7 and sent to the Eastern Front.[23]

The Polish side[vague] contends that members of the Nazi-led Nachtigall battalion also participated in the massacres of Polish professors, including the ex-Polish Prime minister Kazimierz Bartel, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński and others, in Lwów in 1941. See Massacre of Lviv professors. [citation needed]

References
[edit]
1. Abbot, Peter. Ukrainian Armies 1914-55, p.47. Osprey Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-84176-668-2
2. Boli︠a︡novsʹkyĭ, Andriĭ (2003). Українські військові формування в збройних силах Німеччини, 1939-1945 [Ukrainian military formations in the armed forces of Germany, 1939-1945]. Lviv: Львівський національний університет ім. Івана Франка. p. 571. ISBN 9789666132195. Retrieved 24 November 2022. During April-June 1941, Abwehr organized again two new Battalions mostly from adherents of OUN-B : Special group 'Nightingale'" (Sondergruppe 'Nachtigall' ) and Organization 'Roland' [...].
3. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian Legion of Self-Defense founded in 1943.
4. Jump up to:a b c І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. Archived 2016-11-04 at the Wayback Machine — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 (No ISBN) p.271-278.
5. Melnyk, Michael James (17 May 2017). "The Crucible of a Nation State". The History of the Galician Division of the Waffen SS: On the Eastern Front: April 1943 to July 1944. Fonthill Media. ISBN 9781781555286. Retrieved 24 November 2022. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Roland advanced into Southern Bessarabia and Nachtigall crossed into Galicia with Army Group South.
6. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України, Київ, 2004 (No ISBN) pp 371-382.
7. Боляновський А.В. Дивізія «Галичина»: історія — Львів: , 2000.
8. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 (No ISBN) p.273-275
9. Організація українських націоналістів і Українська повстанська армія. Інститут історії НАН України.2004р Організація українських націоналістів і Українська повстанська армія, Раздел 1 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 17, 2011. Retrieved September 1, 2009. стр. 17-30
10. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 (No ISBN)
11. І.К. Патриляк. Військова діяльність ОУН(Б) у 1940—1942 роках. — Університет імені Шевченко \Ін-т історії України НАН України Київ, 2004 [I.K Patrylyak (2004): Military activities of the OUN (B) in the years 1940-1942.] Kiev, Ukraine: Shevchenko University \ Institute of History of Ukraine National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. pp. 300-311
12. Дружини українських націоналістів у 1941 — 1942 роках. — Без місця видання, 1953. — С. 6, 109 — 110. (Teams of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1941-42 - 1953, 109)
13. ОУН в 1941 році: документи: В 2-х ч Ін-т історії України НАН України К. 2006 ISBN 966-02-2535-0
14. "... скрепив нашу ненависть нашу до жидів, що в двох селах ми постріляли всіх стрічних жидів. Під час нашого перемаршу перед одним селом... ми постріляли всіх стрічних там жидів" from Nachtigal third company activity report Центральний державний архів вищих органів влади та управління України (ЦДАВО). — Ф. 3833 . — Оп. 1. — Спр. 157- Л.7
15. Дружини українських націоналістів у 1941 — 1942 роках. — Без місця видання, 1953. — С. 110 — 110. (Teams of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1941-42 - 1953, 110 "По нараді з командиром Р.Шухевич вислав письмо до Команди що наша частина не є здібна дальше воювати. Цілий легіон було стягнено з фронту та відправлено назад до Нойгаммеру
16. Ivan Kazymyrovych Patryliak, Viis'kova diial'nist' OUN(b) u 1940-1942 rokakh (Kyiv: NAN Ukraïny, 2004) p 361-362
17. Jump up to:a b c (in Russian) Chuyev, Sergei Ukrainskyj Legion - Moskva, 2006 pp. 179-184
18. [1].(ГДА СБУ фонд 1, опис 4 за 1964 рік, порядковий номер 3, том 5, аркуш 195 Розсекречено: 24/376 від 05.02.2008 р. - original sygnature of document).
19. In accordance with your indication of the Office of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR in Lviv region in the period from October 1959 to April 1960 measures were taken to document and collect evidence of atrocities in the city of Lviv and the region, committed by Oberländer and the battalion "Nachtigall". In order to compromise Oberlander and Ukrainian nationalists, KGB collected materials are widely used in the local and national press, newsreel and the press-conference in Moscow. In addition, they have been identified and trained accordingly witnesses who spoke of the case at a press conference in Moscow on the court in Berlin. Given the positive results achieved in the special events on Oberlander, I ask you to award the badge "Honorary Officer of State Security" (name not disclosed) Declare gratitude and reward valuable gift.
20. Alfred M. de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 , University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1979, pp. 214-227
21. "The history which we do not know or do not want to know - Dzerkalo Tyzhdnia" (in Ukrainian). Archived from the original on 2010-06-17. Retrieved 2007-11-11.
22. Wasyl Veryha. Along the Roads of World War II. War Criminals in Canada? (Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals Report) Archived 2007-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
23. ""Ukrainian Military Unit" ,Encyclopedia of the Holocaust [1990]. Macmillan Publishing Company: New York, 1990". motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org. 28 September 2007. Archived from the original on 12 February 2008. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
Sources
[edit]
• (in Russian) Chuyev, Sergei Ukrainskyj Legion - Moskva, 2006
• Ukrainians in the military during World War II
Categories:
• Abwehr
• Foreign volunteer units of the Wehrmacht
• Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
• The Holocaust in Poland
• The Holocaust in Ukraine
• Military history of Germany during World War II
• Local participation in the Holocaust
• Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany
• Military units and formations established in 1941
• Military units and formations disestablished in 1941

[admin]

‘A slap in the face for Putin’ — Russians in shock at Ukrainian advance. People in Kursk are pleading to Putin for help but he has been humiliated and his troops are struggling to repel Kyiv’s incursion
by Marc Bennetts
The Times
Monday August 12 2024, 5.10pm BST,
https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-u ... -2zm5p9zz7

[x]
President Putin’s reaction to Ukraine’s incursion has been oddly muted as Kyiv vows to make Russians feel the pain of destruction that he has wrought upon Ukraine

President Putin’s reaction to Ukraine’s incursion has been oddly muted as Kyiv vows to make Russians feel the pain of destruction that he has wrought upon Ukraine

As the Ukrainian army swept into western Russia in the biggest incursion by enemy forces since the Second World War, locals recorded a frantic video appeal to President Putin.

“We have lost our land and we have lost our homes. We fled under fire, through ruins,” said dozens of residents of the Kursk region’s Sudzhansky district. “We and our children have been left without a roof over our heads.”

After Ukrainian missiles exploded nearby, locals took cover in basements. Others jumped into vehicles and evacuated the area. “Some left in just their underpants or nightshirts. The kids were terrified,” one resident said. Others swam across a river to escape the Ukrainian assault, one man said.

Ukrainian forces, which analysts say could number up to 10,000 troops, are thought to have advanced 20 miles into Russian territory since the push began last week. More than 120,000 Russians have been evacuated in scenes of chaos and destruction reminiscent of the terror that Putin’s army has brought to Ukraine in the past two and a half years.

[x]

Near Sudzha, a town 75 miles from the city of Kursk, the regional capital, Ukrainian soldiers posted videos of themselves tearing down Russian flags from government buildings. Other videos showed the bodies of Russian soldiers in fields.

“We know nothing about the fate of 2,000 people located in 28 settlements that are under enemy control,” Alexei Smirnov, the governor of the Kursk region, said on Monday. He claimed that at least a dozen Russian civilians had died and more than 120 had been injured..

With communications down in much of the area, missing persons announcements have flooded VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook. “Please, help me find my grandfather, I haven’t heard from him since August 6,” read one message.

Media outlets loyal to the Kremlin have reportedly been told to play down the scale of the incursion to prevent panic. However Kommersant, a daily newspaper in Moscow that is usually compliant, reported on civilians fleeing the warzone and growing anger directed at officials.

“Where is our government? Where is the local administration?” said one woman who was quoted. “We don’t understand why they don’t tell us the truth. The enemy entered our territory and on TV they keep saying: ‘This is an emergency’. What kind of emergency is it when there are foreign tanks on our land!” She described Russian defence officials as “corrupt” and “crazy”.

On Monday Putin ordered his military to “dislodge” the Ukrainians. “One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,” he said in a televised meeting with officials.

[x]
Russian strikes from Kursk deserved fair response, says Zelensky

The unprecedented incursion by Ukraine in a war that Russia expected to win in a few days has dealt a blow to Putin’s reputation, said Sergei Markov, a political expert at Moscow State University who formerly advised the Kremlin on Ukraine.

“It’s humiliation for Vladimir Putin and people, of course, are not happy,” he told Times Radio. “There are tens of thousands of refugees from these regions … it’s clear that the Russian army cannot handle the situation.”

[x]
People in Sudzha receive aid. Russian updates have been scarce as it seeks to strike a balance between denouncing the escalation and avoiding panic
ANATOLIY ZHDANOV/KOMMERSANT PHOTO/AFP

Putin’s initial reaction to the Ukrainian advance was muted. Speaking last week he described the incursion as a “provocation” and ordered officials to resolve the situation. But he also found time to sign a swathe of new laws, including one to ban the sale of energy drinks to children.

President Zelensky has said the operation is aimed to bring the war to Russia and make its people “feel” the consequences of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. An unnamed Kyiv official told the AFP news agency that the incursion was an attempt to “destabilise the situation” in Russia.

The Russian military appears to have been taken by surprise by the speed of the offensive. Analysts say the incursion could trigger the dismissal of senior defence officials, including General Valery Gerasimov, the head of general staff.

“This is a slap in the face for the president. We have been unable to push the enemy back,” an unnamed Russian official told the Politika.Kozlov website.

[x]
Ukrainian troops are said to be 20 miles inside Russia. Moscow has evacuated 120,000 civilians from the border areas
VIACHESLAV RATYNSKYI/REUTERS

Videos on Russian social media showed civilians’ empty cars strewn beside a road leading to Kursk while shots rang out. It was unclear what had happened to the occupants. “People are in denial. They really believe all that propaganda about our army not targeting civilians in Ukraine and they can’t understand why this is happening,” said one local.

Dozens of Russian conscripts may also have been captured during the fighting, despite the Kremlin’s promise that only mobilised men or professional soldiers would be sent to the front.

Putin has sought to convince his people that the war in Ukraine is aimed at toppling a “Nazi regime” in Kyiv that was carrying out a genocide of ethnic Russians. There is no truth to that claim although there are far-right fighters on both sides.

One of the units deployed by Kyiv to western Russia has been identified by Ukrainian media as the Nachtigall [Nightingale] Battalion. It takes its name from group of Ukrainian nationalists that fought alongside Nazi forces in the Second World War in an attempt to achieve independence from the Soviet Union. A Ukrainian military source confirmed the battalion’s existence to The Times.

Deep State, Ukraine’s leading military analytical website, has also sought to rub salt into the memory of the Nazi invasion of Russia. In a post last week on Telegram, it said a Ukrainian drone unit that it described as the “Luftwaffe” had dropped cluster munitions on “Russian Communist” troops.

Ilya Yashin, one of the Russian opposition leaders who was freed in this month’s prisoner exchange and flown to Germany, said responsibility for the Ukrainian incursion lay with Putin.

“What is happening now was inevitable and was caused by Putin’s decision to order the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. When Putin’s propaganda was shouting that we would take Kyiv in three days, I told people that the war would definitely come to Russia. And that not only Ukrainians would suffer, but that they would, as well.”

[admin]

Are Western Spooks Backing a New 'Ukrainian White Helmets? Al Mayadeen investigates
by Samir Mustafa
Source: Al Mayadeen
4 May 2022 23:56
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... helmets-al

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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A new attempt is made by Western mercenaries to fuel the fight in Ukraine further under the guise of "humanitarian assistance," former Western soldiers and mercenaries are at the forefront of such operations.

[x]

A British mercenary with alleged ties to the US intelligence services is working to establish a version of the pseudo-humanitarian White Helmets in Ukraine.

Macer Gifford, who has previously fought with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syriac Military Council is crowdfunding for supplies which he says are bound for the frontline.

“On the 27th of February, President Zelensky formally called for International Volunteers from around the world to assist his country. The people of Ukraine need our support and they need it NOW!,” his appeal page declares.

Gifford aims to raise at least £15,000 that he says will enable him “to create a fast response medical team, staffed by international volunteers, that will deploy to the frontline within the next month.”

He plans to emulate his experiences in northern Syria where as well as fighting ISIS, he established a medical team and provided training to mercenary forces and locals there. But he is clear that this will not merely be a humanitarian mission.

“The terrain, the particular needs of the Ukrainian military, and the enemy that we'll be fighting mean that we'll have to bring the very best equipment with us,” he writes, indicating that he is recruiting people to take part in combat against Russia.

His own Twitter page appears to support this, sharing posts on how to sign-up for the Ukrainian armed forces following Zelensky’s plea for international support. He made similar appeals during a BBC radio debate with one of the leaders of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition John Rees who described the call for volunteers to fight as “ludicrous” and dangerous.

Gifford’s organization aims to join the fight against Russia under the guise of humanitarian intervention, a model that has been used before.“I want to be absolutely clear here, the ambition is to create a Ukrainian version of the White Helmets,” Gifford states, a reference to the notorious group operating in Syria.

Also known as the Syrian Civil Defence force, the White Helmets poses as a humanitarian organization, however, is linked to both jihadist groups and western military and intelligence services. Set up by former British Army officer James Le Mesurier it has received millions in funding from the US, British, and other western governments, acting as a front for regime change operations.

Predictably, criticism of the White Helmets is dismissed as propaganda and smears led by the Syrian and Russian governments. But the White Helmets operate in jihadist-held areas and have its buildings situated next to the Islamists headquarters in many Syrian cities.

The group has been involved in a series of controversies and some of its members have been shown to be supporters of Al Qaeda and other Salafist organizations. It has been accused of staging chemical attacks, most notably in Douma, to pave the way for western military intervention in Syria.

Fears that a White Helmets-style operation could be deployed in Ukraine for similar purposes have long been praised by critics. Gifford - whose real name is Harry - hails from a wealthy part of rural Cambridgeshire. Prior to his military adventurism, he served as a Tory councilor and city currency trader.

He has openly boasted of meetings with the US and British intelligence services and has briefed government officials on the situation in Syria, pleading for increased military support. Using his connections he tried to drum up support for the YPG and attended meetings with financiers in Switzerland, the FBI in New York, and inside the British parliament.

“I’ve been to the Carlton Club [a private Conservative club in central London], you would not believe, so many times,” he said.

“But it’s important to get the message across. It’s so intensely frustrating to be out there, to be on the frontline and see the success and then see politics hold back people’s hand,” he told The Guardian newspaper in a 2016 interview.

Gifford now openly encourages British military volunteers to follow him and join “the defense of Ukraine.”

His Twitter feed sees him glorify what he describes as “a British sniper” posing with a weapon and fatigues bearing the logo of what appears to be the ultranationalist Right Sector.

Photographs appear to show members of his organization delivering training to Ukrainian soldiers in an unknown location. In video footage, he claims that he and his partner are off to train the Ukrainian police force.

His operation works under the name Nightingale Squadron, its flashy logo emblazoned on the side of an expensive Landrover Freelander vehicle seen loaded with aid packages.

While to westerners the name may seem innocent enough, it has chilling connotations for those in Lviv, evoking the name of the unit that collaborated with the Nazis, sending tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust.

The Nachtigall Battalion/Nightingale Battalion was founded in 1941 and came under the control of Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists.

Most of its members formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, while 14 of them joined the SS Galicia Division in 1943.

The Simon Wiesensthal Centre says the Nightingale Battalion was in Lviv and collaborated with the Nazis between June 30 and July 3 of 1941 when 4,000 Jews were massacred. Its descendants can be found in the far-right forces now operating in Ukraine that have been involved in the massacre of Russian speakers and pogroms against Jews.

Gifford shot to prominence in Britain having served in northern Syria in the fight against ISIS.

A notorious self-publicist who seeks to further his career in politics, Gifford published an “Andy McNab-style” book, Fighting Evil in 2019 describing his experiences in the region.

His treatment is a stark contrast to the working-class volunteers, many of whom served alongside him in Raqqa and other key battles on the frontline.

The large majority have faced arrest, surveillance, and the threat of prison on their return to Britain while Gifford has escaped similar scrutiny.

By contrast, Gifford roams freely between parliament, TV studios, and radio stations that fall over themselves to amplify his voice.

Many of his YPG peers have privately voiced suspicions that Gifford is a state agent.

He certainly fits the mould and has the contacts. Politically right-wing with conservative values, he can be relied on to trash the antiwar movement and opponents of the Tory government along with the political establishment.

And there are obvious similarities between Gifford and the man he seeks to emulate, White Helmets founder Le Mesurier who died in suspicious circumstances in Istanbul in 2019.

In many ways, he is the perfect candidate to establish a “Ukrainian White Helmets” which those on the ground have long-suspected of being an international operation.

Other former YPG fighters are also getting in on the act. Gifford’s comrade in arms, former British paratrooper and veteran of the Afghanistan war Daniel Burke, has set up a similar operation which he announced last week.

He has established what he described as an NGO named “Dark Angels of Ukraine,” although the background to this is unclear.

Burke, who was discharged from the army for fighting, said he had set up the NGO “because other NGOs or international military units tend to go to war against each other to show who is best.”

Dark Angels of Ukraine exists to provide humanitarian relief and training to the military and is already known to be operating inside Ukraine. The activities of the unit, which appears to be made up of military veterans include “moving logistical requirements such as food, water, and medicine to refugee centers and military units.” Their vehicle rescued a couple stranded somewhere in Ukraine and enabled them to return to France.

“It was on this trip that we had christened our truck the "Dark Angel" since our backgrounds as veterans lends our expertise to the Territorial Defence Forces,” the fundraising page says.

The group is there to “protect the freedoms that we all hold so dearly from our homelands here in Ukraine,” it declares.

Burke is in many ways the opposite of Gifford.

A trained soldier he was motivated to join the fight against ISIS in Syria after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 people died following an attack on an Ariana Grande concert.

During his time in Syria, Burke photographed and retrieved documents and hard drives that he passed onto the British counter-terror experts, and maps, which he handed to US special forces.

This led to accusations by the YPG that he was a British spy and he was interrogated for days before he eventually convinced them otherwise.

Unlike Gifford, Burke came to the attention of security services, spending eight months in prison after he was charged with terror offenses, although his case was later dropped.

According to social media networks, many former YPG volunteers have joined the ranks of the international mercenary fighters in Ukraine.

It is not clear exactly how many have traveled to the country, however, Nottinghamshire care worker Aiden Aslin - also known as Cossack Gundi - surrendered to Russian forces in Mariupol last month.

He insists that he is not a foreign mercenary and, like fellow Brit Shaun Pinner, was a member of the regular Ukrainian armed forces having signed up in 2018.

Russia claims that thousands of foreign mercenaries have entered Ukraine and accuses NATO and the west of shipping weapons and equipment via civilian rail and transport networks.

As the war drags on, the profits of the arms companies continue to rise and western efforts to weaken Russia continue while peace looks to be further away than ever.

"It is quite conceivable for a Ukrainian White Helmets to play the same role as its Syrian counterparts; a major anti-Russian propaganda offensive, staged events, and the triggering of incidents to pave the way for NATO intervention."

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

[admin]

Theodor Oberländer
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/1/24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Oberl%C3%A4nder

"Oberlaender" redirects here. For the German wine grape that is also known as Oberlaender, see Riesling.
Theodor Oberländer

[x]
Oberländer in 1952
Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and Victims of War
In office: 1953–1960
Preceded by: Hans Lukaschek
Succeeded by: Hans-Joachim von Merkatz
Member of the Bundestag
In office: 1953 – 1961; 1963 – 1965
Member of the Landtag
In office: 1950–1953
Personal details
Born: 5 January 1905, Meiningen, Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, German Empire
Died: 19 April 1998 (aged 93), Bonn, Germany
Nationality: German
Political party: National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP);Free Democratic Party (FDP); All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (GB/BHE); Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

Theodor Oberländer (1 May 1905 – 4 May 1998) was an Ostforschung scientist and German Nazi official and politician, who after the Second World War served as Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and Victims of War in West Germany from 1953 to 1960, and as a Member of the Bundestag from 1953 to 1961 and from 1963 to 1965.[1]

Oberländer earned a doctorate in agriculture in 1929 and a second doctorate in economics in 1930. He spent time in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and early 1930s, including as an employee of DRUSAG (Deutsch-Russische Saatbau AG [de]), [2] a German company involved in developing Soviet agriculture in cooperation with the Soviet government. Subsequently, he became active in Ostforschung, area studies of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states, Poland and other countries of Eastern and Central Europe, advocating elimination of Jews and subjugation of Polish people in Poland, which he characterised in his writings as having "eight million inhabitants too many". In 1933, he became Director of the Institute for East German Economy in Königsberg, and in 1938 he became Professor of Agriculture at the University of Greifswald. He served as a lieutenant in the German military intelligence service (the Abwehr) in the Soviet Union during the Second World War and was promoted to captain of the reserve before his discharge in 1943; in the same year he became Director of the Institute for Economic Sciences. From 1944 he was affiliated with the staff of Andrey Vlasov's collaborationist Russian Liberation Army. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1933. However, from 1937 until the end of Nazi rule, he was under surveillance by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), as he was suspected of disloyalty to the Nazi cause.[3] In 1940, he endorsed ethnic cleansing of Poland. He later became the leader of the mixed German and Caucasian Bergmann Battalion (established in October 1941), which was active in anti-partisan warfare. Both groups[which?] were later accused of participation in war crimes.

After the war, the Americans held Oberländer as a POW. He worked with the American-sponsored Gehlen intelligence organisation (c. 1946 to 1948) as an expert on Eastern Europe.[4][5] He entered politics for the liberal Free Democratic Party from 1948. In 1950, he was a co-founder of the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights and served as its chairman from 1954 to 1955. He served as a member of the Parliament of Bavaria from 1950 to 1953 and as Secretary of State for Refugee Affairs in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior from 1951 to 1953. He then served as Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and Victims of War in the Second and Third Cabinets of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer from 1953 to 1960, and as a Member of the Bundestag from 1953 to 1961 and from 1963 to 1965, during which time he represented Hildesheim from 1957 to 1961. In 1956, Oberländer became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Oberländer was one of the most staunch anti-communists in the German government. He received the Grand Cross of Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Bavarian Order of Merit and the Legion of Honour.

Background and early career

Oberländer was born in 1905 in Meiningen, Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, part of the German Empire, to a Protestant family; his father Oskar Oberländer was a civil servant and director of the insurance agency in Thüringen.[6]

After the First World War, Oberländer was a member of the Gilde Greif (Greif Guild), a student association that emerged from the youth movement. As part of a military exercise in Forstenried, he, aged 18 and other members of the guild took part in Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Bavaria, on the 9th of november 1923, during the Weimar Republic era, according to their own admission, “rather by chance”. As a result of this he was imprisoned for four days.

Oberländer then became a member of the right-wing extremist paramilitary association Bund Oberland (Oberland League) and the fiercely antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (The German Folkish Defense and Defiance Federation), before finally adhering to the NSDAP in 1933 (where he swiftly climbed the rangs, up to the position of Gau Department Leader, becoming one of the functionaries of the nazi provincial leadership).

From 1923 to 1927, he studied agricultural science at LMU, the University of Hamburg and the University of Berlin, and earned a master's degree in this field in 1927. In 1928, he spent half a year in the Soviet Union as an employee of DRUSAG, which was involved in developing Soviet agriculture in cooperation with the Soviet government.[7] In 1929, he earned a doctorate in agriculture at the University of Berlin with a dissertation titled Die landwirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Landes Litauen ("The agricultural base of the country of Lithuania"). In 1930, he earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Königsberg with the dissertation Die Landflucht in Deutschland und ihre Bekämpfung durch agrarpolitische Maßnahmen ("The rural exodus in Germany and its prevention by agricultural policy measures"). From 1930 to 1931, he spent nearly two years in the Soviet Union, China, Canada and the United States, where he worked for the Ford Motor Company. In 1931, Oberländer became an assistant professor at the Institute for East German Economy in Königsberg, and in 1933 he became Director of the institute. From 1934, he was also Associate Professor of Agriculture at the Technical College of Danzig. He became Associate Professor at the University of Königsberg in 1937. In 1938, he became Professor of Agriculture at the University of Greifswald.[6]

Oberländer wrote several books about the need for German intervention in the agricultural systems of the Soviet Union and Poland, which he considered "un-economic".

During the Nazi regime

Oberländer became a member of the NSDAP in 1933, a member of the SA and leader of an NSDAP district.[8] On 4 August 1935, he became an assistant to Gauleiter Erich Koch, under whose authority he started to gather information about non-German minorities in East Prussia. A significant role in this process was played by the "Bund Deutscher Osten" (BDO – "League for a German East"), which advocated radical Germanization of the eastern provinces and the elimination of the Polish language in Masuria. The language's traditional usage in the Protestant churches of the Masurians was outlawed in November 1939, with the Lutheran Prussian Church leadership acquiescing in December.

In March 1935, he attended a meeting of professors, scholars and NSDAP training specialists dedicated to the study of the "East" where he focused his essays on what he described as "border struggle" with Poland.[9] The meeting was divided into two groups:”base" and "front".[9] The "base" included 58 professors, lecturers and research assistants, the "front" was made up of political functionaries, seven training specialists of the NSDAP, the Hitler Youth, three heads of Reichsarbeitsdiensts, two teachers and two civil servants.[9] It was Oberländer who introduced the 72 participants on the first day and set for them the task to study the "border struggle" against Poland.[9] Attacking Poland, he advocated fighting the Polish minority in Nazi Germany and demanded that social relationships between Germans and Polish immigrants be prohibited.[9] Oberländer implied that Poland was not capable of sociopolitical and agrarian reforms due to the fact that it was not a "racially homogenous" nation state.[9] He dismissed the population of Polish cities as "transplanted rubes".[9] Sharing Hitler's views, Oberländer believed that the treaties regarding the East, like the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression, were only conditional, and that Ostforschung studies should go on as usual "so that after ten years we have everything ready that we could need in any given circumstances".[10] Continuing his studies on the rural population of Poland he noted in his works that "Poland has eight million inhabitants too many".[10] Reflecting on the temporary lack of possibility of open war in the East, Oberländer wrote the following: "The struggle for ethnicity is nothing other than the continuation of war by other means under the cover of peace. Not a fight with gas, grenades, and machine-guns, but a fight about homes, farms, schools and the souls of children, a struggle whose end, unlike in war, is not foreseeable as long as the insane principle of the nationalism of the state dominates the Eastern region, a struggle which goes on with one aim:extermination!"[10] Other features of Oberländer's thoughts concentrated on depicting Jews as carriers of communism, and the benefits of peasant antisemitism to German goals in Central and Eastern Europe.[10] His preparatory work in the BDO involved monitoring over 1,200,000 Poles living in Germany, with a card-name index of untrustworthy Poles and Germans living in the borderlands, and proposals to Germanise Polish place, street, and family names.[10]

In the middle of 1937, Oberländer formulated a "divide and conquer" strategy for Poland.[9] Within Poland, ethnic groups were to be directed into fighting with each other in order to prepare the ground for German rule.[9] The Poles were to be steered away from opposing Germans and guided into confrontation with Russians and Jews.[9] Oberländer additionally called for elimination of "assimilated Jewry" which in his view carried "communist ideas".[9] Polish peasants were to be "taught" that they benefit from German "law".[9] In order to win over Poles to the side of German hegemony in Europe, Oberländer proposed that they share in the theft of Jewish property.[9] Around 3.5 million Polish Jews and 1.5 million people who were considered "assimilated Jews" were to be deprived of all of their rights.[9] He is considered by some historians to be among the academics who laid the intellectual foundation for the Final Solution.[11]

By 1937, Oberländer, however, started to lose influence in the Nazi Party as his views on the treatment of the Polish population (but not the Jewish question) were losing out to more hardline positions[9] and his personal conflict with Erich Koch.[12] As a result, he had lost his position in East Prussia and within the BDO by 1938.[9] He was essentially fired by the University of Königsberg, after the Nazi government had attacked the "political nature" of his work. He was instead appointed Professor of Agriculture at the University of Greifswald, and was ordered to refrain from involving himself in Ostforschung.[13] From 1937 until the end of Nazi rule he was under surveillance by the Sicherheitsdienst, as he was henceforth suspected of being disloyal to the Nazi cause.[3] From 1 April 1938, he worked as Professor of History at University of Greifswald.[10]

In 1939, Oberländer moved to work in Abwehrstelle Breslau; one of the main centers of sabotage and diversion organised by the Nazis that conducted operations against Poland. At the same time, his work concerned issues connected to Ukraine and the Sudetes region and he had contacts with Osteuropa Institut located in Breslau (Wrocław).[14]

World War II

In 1940, Oberländer endorsed the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population[15] and, in 1941, wrote in the German magazine Deutsche Monatshefte: "We have the best soldier in the world who re-conquered German soil in the East. There is no bigger responsibility than educating this colonist to be the best on earth and to secure the living space for all time to come" Oberländer's words echoed the views of Heinrich Himmler, who envisioned settling former soldiers, armed with weapons and ploughs in the East, not just pure peasants.[16] During 1940 he moved to the University of Prague, after which he became active in Ukraine, where he was used by Nazi Germany's military as an expert on "ethnic psychology".[10] Biographer Philipp-Christian Wachs describes Oberländer as a "German nationalist and anti-communist, but not a national socialist racial fanatic"; according to Wachs Oberländer was a pragmatist who wanted to secure the cooperation with Poles and Ukrainians, among others, in order to achieve German political dominance and defeat the Soviet Union.[17]

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Oberländer became an advising officer of the Nachtigall Battalion (a Ukrainian battalion of Wehrmacht) in occupied Lwów. The participation of the Battalion in The Lwów Civilian Massacre of 1941 has since been subject to controversy, and Oberländer himself was accused after the war of participating in the events.

In January 1942, he sent a report on the situation in the Ukraine in which he wrote that success lay in "winning over the masses and pitilessly exterminating partisans as deleterious to the people".[10] He later became the leader of the mixed German and Caucasian Sonderverband Bergmann, which was active in anti-partisan warfare. Both army groups were later claimed to have participated in war crimes. Oberländer's involvement in the Eastern front would lead to the Oberländer case at the end of the 1950s.[8] In 1943, he was dismissed from the Wehrmacht due to political conflict with his superiors and returned to Prague. In 1944, he joined the staff of Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army.[8] He was a participant to crimes in the Vercors (France), in Chapelle en Vercors and Saint Nazaire en Royans. (5 bis).[18] He was taken prisoner of war by the United States Army in 1945.

Cold War

After the war, Oberländer worked for American intelligence as an expert on Eastern Europe until 1949.[4] In his denazification hearing, he was deemed to be an opponent of Nazism and categorized as "entlastet" (acquitted).[4] After the war, Oberländer claimed that he had criticised Nazi policies and personally only wanted German hegemony over Slavic peoples in which they would have "some respect" and were "treated reasonably humanely".[8]

Oberländer again became active in German politics, first in the liberal Free Democratic Party, then in the Bloc of Refugees and Expellees (GB/BHE)(despite the fact that he himself was not expelled), where he would become a prominent figure alongside another ex-Nazi Waldemar Kraft who had previously been interned for two years for his wartime activities in occupied Poland[19] The BHE itself was connected in various ways to the Nazis, as it openly tried to win over former NSDAP members angry at denazification, calling their crimes to be only "uncritical belief in Germany's future".[19] The party classified those Nazis on a par with war-damaged as fellow victims.[19] The fact that it selected as its leaders two ex-Nazis, who had taken part in the expulsion of non-Germans and expropriation of their property severely undermined German complaints about their situation.[20] Oberländer joined the Adenauer government of West Germany in 1953 as Minister for Refugees and Expellees.[11] His appointment prompted negative press coverage and made details of his Nazi past known.[11] However, despite the fact that he nominated several former Nazis as co-workers, the criticism soon died down.[11] Adenauer in particular was keen on getting the BHE on board, as, with its support, he controlled a two-thirds majority in parliament.[11] Adenauer knew very well that Oberländer was a former National Socialist and admitted he has a "very brown past"[8]

In 1956, when Oberländer tried to visit his former Nazi co-workers, who were still serving time in Landsberg prison, the foreign minister of Germany vetoed the trip, fearing international consequences, nevertheless, despite hindrances, Oberländer still tried to support far right groups.[21] Oberländer left the GB/BHE for the centrist Christian Democratic Union in 1956 when it broke with Adenauer. Adenauer himself continued to support him, as a matter of principle.[11] In the fall of 1959, the Eastern Bloc unleashed a coordinated campaign against the presence of Nazis in the West German government, which included Oberländer. He was accused of participating in the Lvov Massacre.[11] Previously, he had been able to remain active in politics despite the accusations, but the situation this time became more unfavourable, and some of his fellow CDU colleagues pushed for him to resign for the good of the government and country.[11] While many in West Germany did not believe the accusations of war crimes, it was clear that Oberländer had been an enthusiastic Nazi;[11] due to the fact that the West German community had reinvented its image as a community of innocent bystanders during the Second World War, Oberländer's past was considered a liability.[11]

[x]
KGB document from the campaign against Oberländer and Ukrainian Nachtigall (1959).[22]

In 1960, Oberländer was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by an East German court, for his alleged involvement in the Lviv massacre in 1941. In January 1960, during discussions with 3,000 students of University of Cologne, Adenauer was faced with protests against the continued presence of Oberländer in the German government.[8] In response, Adenauer stated that Oberländer was a Nazi but "never did anything dishonourable".[8] Despite Adenauer's protection, Oberländer became a heavy burden on the German government in May 1960[8] and finally was forced to resign from the government, but not because of his past but due to the fact that he politically represented no value that was worth the trouble.[11]

Oberländer nevertheless continued efforts to influence the German public, and in 1962 published an article in Der Stahlhelm, an organ of the former Frontsoldaten.[10] In it, he repeated claims about a "revolutionary war" in which he accused the "dictatorship in the East" of conducting an offensive revolution against the West, in which there was "no beginning", and no movement of troops, but which was led by "infiltration and publicism" as well as "espionage".[10] He denounced any possibility of "coexistence" between East and West and blamed such ideas on a "rootless intelligentsia";[10] Oberländer wrote "to appease the enemy" was "to further world revolution".[10] Historian Michael Burleigh notes that the idea that the "unfree" perhaps didn't wanted to be "liberated" by the likes of Oberländer and his "Bund der Frontsoldaten" (who passed that way twenty years ago)-did not occur to him.[10] In 1986, Oberländer received the Bavarian Order of Merit from the state of Bavaria. The GDR conviction of Oberländer was declared null and void by the Berlin Kammergericht in 1993.[23] At the end of his life, Oberländer became involved in anti-immigration politics.

A preliminary inquiry into Oberländer's role in connection with the unlawful killing of a civilian in Kislovodsk in 1942 during his Bergmann leadership was opened by a district attorney in Cologne in 1996.[24] The allegations involved an interrogation of a female Soviet teacher; it was alleged that she was whipped and, after refusing to talk about suspected partisan activity, shot in the breast by Oberländer, and then left to die. Oberländer called those allegations "old Soviet lies".[25] The inquiry was closed in 1998 due to lack of evidence.[26]

Theodor Oberländer died in Bonn in 1998. He is the father of Professor Erwin Oberländer, a noted expert on Eastern European history, and the grandfather of Christian Oberländer, Professor of Japanese Studies.[citation needed]

Honours

• Grand Cross with Star and Sash of Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1955)[6]
• Bavarian Order of Merit (1972)[6]
• Commander of the Legion of Honour[6]

Publications

• Die agrarische Überbevölkerung Polens, Berlin 1935.
• Die agrarische Überbevölkerung Ostmitteleuropas, in: Aubin, Hermann u. a. (Hrsg.): Deutsche Ostforschung. Ergebnisse und Aufgaben seit dem ersten Weltkrieg, Bd. 2 (Deutschland und der Osten. Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte ihrer Beziehungen, Bd. 21), Leipzig 1943, S. 416 – 427.
• Der Osten und die deutsche Wehrmacht: sechs Denkschriften aus den Jahren 1941–43 gegen die NS-Kolonialthese. Hrsg. von der Zeitgeschichtlichen Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt. Asendorf, Mut-Verlag. 144 S. In: Zeitgeschichtliche Bibliothek; Bd. 2. ISBN 3-89182-026-7
• Bayern und sein Flüchtlingsproblem, München 1953. – Die Überwindung der deutschen Not, Darmstadt 1954.
• Das Weltflüchtlingsproblem: Ein Vortrag gehalten vor dem Rhein-Ruhr-Club am 8. Mai 1959. Sonderausg. des Arbeits- u. Sozialministers des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Verleger, Bonn: Bundesministerium f. Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge u. Kriegsgeschädigte. 1959.

References

1. Victor Silling: Die Hintergründe des Falles Oberländer. Grenzland Verlag 1960, p. 60–61.
2. Heeke, Matthias (2003). Reisen zu den Sowjets: der ausländische Tourismus in Russland 1921-1941; mit einem bio-bibliographischen Anhang zu 96 deutschen Reiseautoren. Band 11 von Arbeiten zur Geschichte Osteuropas (in German). Münster: LIT Verlag. p. 246. ISBN 9783825856922. Retrieved 24 November 2022. [...] die Deutsch-russische Saatgut AG - kurz Drusag.
3. Victor Silling: Die Hintergründe des Falles Oberländer. Grenzland Verlag 1960, p. 60–61.
4. Klaus von Wiegrefe: "Der seltsame Professor." Der Spiegel 27/2000, 3 July 2000, pp. 62–66.
5. Wolf, Thomas (4 October 2018). Die Entstehung des BND: Aufbau, Finanzierung, Kontrolle. Volume 9 of Veröffentlichungen der Unabhängigen Historikerkommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte des Bundesnachrichtendienstes 1945-1968 (in German). Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag. ISBN 9783962890223. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
6. Biographisches Handbuch der Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundestages 1949–2002, Vol. 1, p. 556, K.G. Saur, 2002
7. "Oberländer – Baustein oder Dynamit." Der Spiegel 17/1954, 21 April 1954
8. "Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction : The Statesman : 1952–1967", Hans Peter-Schwarz pages 91, 432, Berghahn Books 1997
9. German scholars and ethnic cleansing 1919–1945" Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch Berghahn Books 2006 page 10, 12
10. "Germany turns eastwards: a study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich", Michael Burleigh Cambridge University Press, 1988, pages 76 ,144–146, 222, 317–318
11. "In pursuit of German memory: history, television, and politics after Auschwitz", Wulf Kansteiner Ohio University Press; 2006 page 222-224
12. "Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945"Valdis O. Lumens page 63
13. Werner Zschintzsch: "Betrifft: Verwendung des Prof.Dr. Oberländer, zuletzt in Königsberg", letter of 22 December 1937
14. "Przeglad Zachodni", volume 16 Instytut Zachodni 1960 page 115
15. "Working Paper 38/1997". gplanost.x-berg.de.
16. ”SCHWERTE MUSS DER PFLUG FOLGEN: Űber-peasants and National Socialists Settlements in the Occupied Eastern Territories during World War Two”Simone C. De Santiago Ramos, M.S. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of Master of Arts University of Texas page 68
17. Philipp-Christian Wachs: Der Fall Oberländer (1905–1998). Ein Lehrstück deutscher Geschichte. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36445-X.
18. "MÉMORIAL DE SAINT-NAZAIRE-EN-ROYANS". museedelaresistanceenligne.org (in French).
19. "Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat: West Germany and the Reconstruction of Social Justice" Michael L. Hughes, The University of North Carolina Press 1999
20. ”A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II" Gerhard L. Weinberg Cambridge University Press 1995 page 792
21. "Legacies of Dachau: the uses and abuses of a concentration camp 1933–2001"„ Harold Marcuse Cambridge University Press 2001 page 118
22. "С целью компрометации Оберлендера и украинских националистов, собранные УКГБ материалы широко использовались в местной и центральной прессе, кинохронике,а также на пресс-конференции в Москве. Кроме этого, были выявлены и соответственно подготовлены свидетели, выступавшие по данному делу на пресс-конференции в Москве и на суде в Берлине.С учетом достигнутых положительных результатов в проведении специальных мероприятий по Оберлендеру, прошу Вас наградитъ нагрудным знаком «Почетный сотрудник Госбезопасности». Объявить благодарность и наградить ценным подарком.". (ГДА СБУ фонд 1, опис 4 за 1964 рік, порядковий номер 3, том 5, аркуш 195 Розсекречено: 24/376 від 5 February 2008 р. – original sygnature of document). Another: "Из Москвы тов. Щербак №33988 от 13 ноября 1958 года вх.№15107 копией во Львов сообщил, что установленных очевидцев злодеяний батальона «Нахтигаль» следует подготовить для допроса работниками прокуратуры, о чем будут даны указания прокуратурой СССР. При подготовке к допросам свидетелей следует использовать опубликованные в прессе статьи о преступлениях «Нахтигаля». Работу по установлению других очевидцев злодеяний, их документации и добыче дополнительных материалов продолжить.""Довідка: КГБ про підготовку свідків проти "Нахтігалю" на базі відповідних публікацій в пресі". Archived from the original on 13 May 2011. Retrieved 11 March 2011.. ГДА СБУ фонд 1, опис 4 за 1964 рік, порядковий номер 3, том 5, аркуш 86 Розсекречено: 24/376 від 5 February 2008 р. – original sygnature of document.
23. Philipp-Christian Wachs: Die Inszenierung eines Schauprozesses – das Verfahren gegen Theodor Oberländer vor dem Obersten Gericht der DDR, Schriftenreihe des Berliner Landesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, Vol. 14, p. 13, Berlin 2001.
24. Der Spiegel 18 / 1996 Kriegsverbrehen. Die Mühlen mahlen langsam
25. "Die Mühlen mahlen langsam". Der Spiegel. 28 April 1996 – via http://www.spiegel.de.
26. Philipp-Christian Wachs: Der Fall Oberländer (1905–1998). Ein Lehrstück deutscher Geschichte (p. 480). Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36445-X.

Sources

• Article about the events in Lviv/Lemberg Archived 12 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine (in German)
• Fate of the Jews in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Oberländer's involvement (in German)
• "Grenzlandpolitik" und Ostforschung an der Peripherie des Reiches. Das ostpreussische Masuren 1919–1945 by Andreas Kossert [de] (in German)

External links

• Media related to Theodor Oberländer at Wikimedia Commons
• Theodor Oberländer in the German National Library catalogue (in German)

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Mikola Lebed
Excerpt from "U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, by Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda, Timothy Naftali and Robert Wolfe"
2005

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Mikola Lebed

Mikola Lebed is one of the better-known cases of a former collaborator living in the United States. Newly released FBI records, together with Lebed's CIC file, CIA Name File, and INS dossier, make it possible to reveal his history with greater detail. [115] Before and during World War II, Lebed was a leading member of the younger, more radical wing of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization (OUN) under Stephan Bandera (OUN-B) and its military/terrorist arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Based in Galicia, a region of Ukraine that was located in Poland from 1919 to 1939, the OUN had long called for an independent greater Ukraine. OUN counted among its enemies those that had denied Ukrainian independence (Poles, Soviets) and those in the Ukraine who had failed to assimilate (Jews). [116] During the Polish government's repression of the OUN in Galicia, Lebed helped plan the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in Warsaw. In 1936 he was jailed by the Polish government for his role. Following the German attack on Poland in September 1939, he escaped from a column of prisoners.

In its work to destabilize the Polish state, the OUN's ties with Germany extended back to 1921. These ties intensified under the Nazi regime as war with Poland drew near. [117] Galicia was allotted to the Soviets under the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the Germans welcomed anti-Polish Ukrainian activists into the German-occupied General Government. In 1940 and 1941, in preparation for what would become the eastern campaign, the Germans began to recruit Ukrainians, particularly from Bandera's wing, as saboteurs, interpreters, and police, and trained them at a camp at Zakopane near Cracow. In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht also developed two Ukrainian battalions with the approval of the Banderists, one code named "Nightingale" (Nachtigall) and the other code named "Roland."

Germans and Ukrainian units reached Lvov four days after the eastern campaign began, and on June 30, 1941, OUN-B officials proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state under a government of OUN-B members who hoped the Germans would accept the fait accompli. But though the Germans hoped to use the Ukrainians against the Poles, Soviets, and Ukrainian Jews, they had no intention of allowing even a semi-independent Ukraine. The Germans arrested Bandera and other OUN-B leaders and moved them to Sachsenhausen. [118] On July 16, the Germans absorbed Galicia into the General Government.

When the Germans arrested the OUN-B leadership, Lebed slipped through the German police net and became the de facto leader of the OUN-B. In October 1941, the German Security Police issued a wanted poster with Lebed's photograph. The following year he would form the underground terror wing, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), which would initially fight German imperialism in the Ukraine but which also settled scores with rival Ukrainian leaders, Poles, Communists, and Jews. [119] Indeed, the Banderists sent a manifesto to the Gestapo in Lvov that Hitler had deceived them but which also proclaimed, "Long Live greater independent Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans: Poles behind the San [River], Germans to Berlin, Jews to the gallows." [120] There are numerous survivor testimonies concerning the Banderist murder of Jews who had escaped to the forests in Galicia in 1941 and 1942. [121]

From the fall of 1941, German police officials in the western Ukraine had nagging problems with Banderist sabotage and anti-German Ukrainian nationalist propaganda issued by the OUN-B. Certain German police reports even mention Banderist aid to Jews in the form of false papers, most likely for Jewish doctors or skilled workers who could help the movement. [122] Only in 1943 -- the year in which German police units carried out a major campaign against the UPA -- did OUN-B leaflets suggest that for the moment participation in anti-Jewish actions would make the OUN-B "a blind tool in foreign hands." [123] In the long run, the OUN-B's chief enemies remained the Soviets, who were more likely to regain control of Galicia with the German retreat from the Ukraine in 1943 and 1944. Red Army POWs told their German captors in 1944 that the UPA, led by Lebed and made up of "fanatic" Banderists, was a "terror" for Red Army units in the Ukraine to the point where the Soviets viewed them as German agents. A war of extreme atrocities thus raged between the Red Army and the UPA, with former Ukrainian Nazi collaborators backing the UPA but eventually suffering Red Army counter-insurgency methods. With the advance of the Red Army, Jews serving the UPA were murdered either by the UPA or by the Germans, and by September 1944 German Army officers in northern Ukraine told their superiors in Foreign Armies East that the UPA was a "natural ally of Germany" and "a valuable aid for the German High Command." [124] Himmler himself authorized intensified contacts with the UPA. [125] Though UPA propaganda emphasized that organization's independence from the Germans, the UPA also ordered some young Ukrainians to volunteer for the Ukrainian SS Division "Galicia," and the rest to fight by guerrilla methods. [126] Lebed still hoped for recognition from the Germans. In July 1944 he helped form the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council (UHVR), which would claim to represent the Ukrainian nation while soon serving as a theoretical government-in-exile. The leadership positions in the UHVR tended to be held by OUN-B members, since more moderate Ukrainian nationalists had drifted away earlier in the year. [127]

With the war lost, Lebed adopted a strategy similar to that of General Reinhard Gehlen -- he contacted the Allies after escaping to Rome in 1945 with a trove of names and contacts of anti-Soviets located in the western Ukraine and in displaced persons camps in Germany. The contacts theoretically made him very useful in the postwar intelligence world, and CIC took the bait. Though CIC noted in July 1947 one witness's claim that "[Lebed] is a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans," it used him in 1947 and 1948 because he could provide complete information on Ukrainian groups within the U.S. zone of Germany, information on Soviet activity within the U.S. zone, and information on Ukrainian and Soviet activities outside of occupied Germany. [128]

In late 1947, the danger arose that the Soviets, who had recently ordered Lebed's arrest, would kidnap him from Rome, especially should U.S. occupation forces withdraw from Italy. "Should such an eventuality arise," said the American authorities, "the interest of the U.S. would suffer an indirect damage in as much as [Lebed] is in possession of vital information regarding the Ukrainian resistance activities ... in the Ukraine." [129] In addition, Lebed's safety would reassure Father Ivan Hrynioch (Hirnyj), a wartime collaborator of Lebed who was now the chief of the UHVR Political Section and a provider of counterintelligence to American authorities. Hrynioch requested Lebed's movement to safety. [130] The CIC therefore smuggled Lebed and his family from Rome to Munich in December 1947.

By late 1947, Lebed had thoroughly sanitized his prewar and wartime activities for American consumption. In his own rendition, he had been a victim of the Poles, the Soviets, and the Germans -- he would carry the Gestapo "wanted" poster for the rest of his life to prove his anti-Nazi credentials. [131] Though he admitted to U.S. authorities his involvement in the 1934 Pieracki assassination, he blamed Pieracki. Lebed characterized his participation in the proclamation of the Ukrainian State in Lvov in June 1941 as having taken "part in the Ukrainian independence demonstration." After the June 1941 house arrest of OUN-B leaders, Lebed said, he began to organize resistance against the Germans while becoming the "spiritual father" of the UPA. For this, he said, the Gestapo and NKVD both placed a price on his head, and the Gestapo took his family to Buchenwald and Auschwitz in an attempt to force him to surface. In 1947, he was the official Foreign Minister of the UHVR, and he presented his manufactured credentials via mail to Secretary of State George C. Marshall and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He also published a 126-page booklet on the UPA, which chronicled the heroic struggle of Ukrainians against both Nazis and Bolsheviks, while calling for an independent, greater Ukraine that would represent the human ideals of free speech and free faith. The UPA, according to the booklet, never collaborated with the Nazis, nor is there mention of the slaughter of Galician Jews or Poles in the book. [132] The CIC considered the booklet to be the "complete background on the subject." [133] The CIC overlooked the fact that under its own watch an OUN Congress held in September 1947 had split, thanks to Lebed's own criticism of the creeping democratization of the OUN. [134] This was also overlooked by the CIA, which began using Lebed extensively in 1948. [135]

Despite living under an assumed name (Roman Turan) in Munich, Lebed was still in danger of being found by his Stalinist enemies. He hoped to immigrate to the United States, but, unlike most Nazi collaborators, he became familiar enough with U.S. immigration law to be "loath to perjure himself and face deportation after ... passing false [information]." [136] He managed anyway. In June 1949, after Assistant CIA Director W. G. Wyman notified the INS of the fact that Lebed "has been rendering valuable assistance to this Agency in Europe," the CIA smuggled him into the United States with his wife and daughter under the legal cover of the Displaced Persons Act. [137]

After his arrival, Lebed reverted to his real name and began speaking to immigrant groups in New York, which triggered Justice Department interest in him. The INS began investigating Lebed the same month he arrived in the United States. It reported to Washington in March 1950 that numerous Ukrainian informants had spoken of Lebed's involvement in the Pieracki assassination and of his role as "one of the most important Bandera terrorists." During the war, these informants said, the Banderists were trained and armed by the Gestapo and responsible for "wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish [sic] ... In all these actions, Lebed was one of the most important leaders." [138] At some point during the investigation, the INS learned of the CIA's interest in Lebed, and in 1951 top INS officials apprised the CIA of its findings along with the comment that Lebed would likely be subject to deportation. The CIA countered on October 3, 1951, that all of the charges were false and that the Gestapo "wanted" poster of Lebed proved that he "fought with equal zeal against the Nazis and Bolsheviks." Lebed's deportation, added the CIA, would damage national security. [139]

INS officials were willing to suspend the investigation but they remained uncomfortable. In the first place, they noted that the CIA note of October 3 "does not ... dispose of the allegations." Additionally the INS worried that "this is the sort of case that can be exploited by commentators of the [Walter] Winchell variety," especially since Ukrainians that knew Lebed could contact the press on their own. "We will [then] be in no position," said W W Wiggins, the Chief of the INS Investigative Section, "to explain our failure to investigate." [140] INS officials asked the CIA to notify them when their need for Lebed's services would end so that the INS could "pursue our investigative responsibilities." [141] The CIA sidestepped the question. Instead, the Agency pressed the INS in February 1952 to grant Lebed reentry papers so that he could leave and reenter the United States at will. [142]

This was too much for Argyle Mackey, the Commissioner of the INS. He contacted Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to ask for guidance. "We have always cooperated whole-heartedly with the Central Intelligence Agency within the permissible limits of the law," Mackey said, "and have in this case suspended further investigation of what appears to be a clear-cut deportation case." But should Lebed leave the country and apply once again for readmission, said Mackey, "I do not see how we can give the requested assurance." Mackey gave the same reply to the Director of the CIA, Walter Bedell Smith. A reentry permit for Lebed, he said, brought "no guarantee of readmissability," since for non-U.S. citizens each re-entry was legally a new entry under which the subject had to be investigated. In other words, if Lebed left the country on CIA business, he would likely not get back in. [143]

Mackey's comments are notable in light of the notion that the INS was careless in allowing war criminals into the United States, and his warning that Lebed might not get back into the country showed there were limits beyond which the INS could not comfortably go. His statement that the INS had "always cooperated with the CIA" suggests, moreover, that there might have been similar cases.

Regardless, the CIA would not be denied Lebed's services. In a decisive letter to Mackey of May 5, 1952, Allen Dulles, then Assistant Director of the CIA, said that Lebed was the "authorized Foreign Minister of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UHVR), an underground organization within the USSR," and his contacts as such "have been of inestimable value to this Agency and its operations." Dulles added:

In connection with future Agency operations of the first importance, it is urgently necessary that subject be able to travel in Western Europe. Before [he] undertakes such travel, however, this Agency must ... assure his reentry into the United States without investigation or incident which would attract undue attention to his activities.

Dulles claimed that Lebed's 1936 trial in Poland could be discounted because it "was largely influenced by political factors and this Agency has no reason to disbelieve subject's denial of complicity in this assassination." This statement contradicted all information on Lebed, who had not denied his role in the killing. [144] Dulles also wanted Lebed's legal status changed to that of "permanent resident," under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949, since his continued availability, as Dulles said, was "essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission and is in the interest of national security." Thus Lebed would be able to come and go from the United States as he pleased. Dulles also wanted Lebed's application for permanent residence status backdated to October 1949, when Lebed had first entered the United States. Since Section 8 of the Act provided legal cover for permanent residence without regard to existing immigration laws, the INS had no choice but to comply even though, as Wiggins later said, Lebed's "deportability would be established" if the INS should investigate further. [145] They never did -- Lebed became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 1957.

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Ukraine During World War II: History and its Aftermath
edited by Yury Boshyk with the assistance of Roman Waschuk and Andriy Wynnyckyj: A Symposium
Copyright © 1986 Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Canadian

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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-- Ukraine During World War II: History and its Aftermath, edited by Yury Boshyk with the assistance of Roman Waschuk and Andriy Wynnyckyj: A Symposium

He said that there was only one good, namely, knowledge; and only one evil, namely, ignorance. -- Diogenes

CONTENTS

• Preface xi
• Acknowledgements xv
• Contributors xvii
• List of Photographs xix
• Part I: Ukraine during World War II
• Introduction to Part I 3
• 1: Occupation
• The Soviet Occupation of Western Ukraine, 1939-41: An Overview
• Orest Subtelny 5
• Soviet Ukraine under Nazi Occupation, 1941-4
• Bohdan Krawchenko 15
• Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Soviet and Nazi Occupations
• Taras Hunczak 39
• 2: Collaboration and Resistance
• Ukrainians in World War II Military Formations: An Overview
• Peter J. Potichnyj 61
• Galician Ukrainians in German Military Formations and in the German Administration
• Myroslav Yurkevich 67
• Soviet Military Collaborators during World War II
• Mark R. Elliott 89
• Part II: History and Its Aftermath: Investigating War Criminals in Canada and the United States
• Introduction to Part II: Bringing Nazi War Criminals in Canada to Justice
• David Matas 113
• Alleged War Criminals, the Canadian Media, and the Ukrainian Community
• Roman Serbyn 121
• Co-operation between the U. S. Office of Special Investigations and the Soviet Secret Police
• S. Paul Zumbakis 131
• Nazi War Criminals: The Role of Soviet Disinformation
• Roman Kupchinsky 137
• Ukrainian Americans and the Search for War Criminals
• Myron Kuropas 145
• Discussion 153
• Part III: Documents, 1929-66
• Resolutions of the First Congress of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,
• 28 January - 2 February 1929 165
• The Ten Commandments of the Ukrainian Nationalist (Decalogue), June 1929
• Einsatzkommando Order against the Bandera Movement, 25 November 1941 175
• Letter from Alfred Rosenberg to General Keitel on Nazi Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War,
• 28 February 1942 176
• Memorandum from Alfred Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler on Nazi Policy toward Ukrainians, 16 March 1942 178
• Erich Koch on the Economic Exploitation of Ukraine, 26-8 August 1942 180
• Memorandum from Erich Koch to Alfred Rosenberg on Harsh Measures Adopted in Ukraine by the German Administration, 16 March 1943 181
• Appeal to Ukrainian Citizens and Youth by the Ukrainian Central Committee President on the Formation of the Galician Division, 6 May 1943 183
• Programmatic and Political Resolutions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists' Third Congress, 21-5 August 1943 186
• What Is the Ukrainian Insurgent Army Fighting For? August 1943 192
• Platform of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, 11-15 July 1944 196
• Declaration on the Formation of the Ukrainian National Committee and the Ukrainian National Army, March 1945 200
• U.S. Army Guidelines on the Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, 4 January 1946 202
• U.S. Army Procedures for the Forcible Repatriation of Soviet Nationals, 22 January 1946 206
• Why the Displaced Persons Refuse To Go Home, May 1946 209
• Report on the Screening of Ukrainian Displaced Persons, 22 August 1946 223
• The Condition of Displaced Persons, September 1946 225
• Report on the Screening of the First Ukrainian Division, 21 February 1947 233
• British Foreign Office Assessment of the First Ukrainian Division, 5 September 1950 241
• Address by Ivan Dziuba at Babyn Iar, 29 September 1966
• Appendix A Chronology of Major Events, 1914-45 249
• Appendix B The Canadian Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals: Terms of Reference 261
• Abbreviations and Glossary 263
• Sources and Bibliography 267
• Index 287

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PREFACE

The year 1985 marked the fortieth anniversary of the Nazi surrender to the Allies in Europe, the liberation of the concentration camps, and freedom for millions of slave labourers and prisoners of war. With the commemoration of this anniversary has come a renewed interest in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.

In an attempt to illuminate the historical period and to make the current discussion on war criminals more informed, a symposium was held in Toronto on 2 March 1985 to examine several important aspects of the war in Eastern Europe: the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Ukrainian territory; relations between Ukrainians and Jews; collaboration with and resistance against the occupying powers; as well as Canadian and American perspectives on bringing war criminals to justice.

This volume is based on papers and discussions from the symposium. Part 1 is a scholarly examination of the period 1939-45, from the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Ukrainian territory to the circumstances relating to collaboration and resistance. Part 2 is devoted to a discussion about one of the most important questions of the war's aftermath, one which has become a matter of public debate: the methods and means of bringing alleged Nazi and other war criminals living in Canada and the United States to justice. This discussion rests on the assumption, shared by the contributors to this volume, that all war criminals must be brought to justice; it focuses, however, on the procedures that should be followed, consistent with the legal traditions and practices of Canada and the United States. Most contributors in part 2 abided by the definitions applied at the Nuremberg trials, which established three basic categories of war criminality: responsibility for instigating war; crimes against civilians and soldiers, including the murder of political prisoners, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the use of slave labour; and, finally, crimes against humanity, with the intention of exterminating entire peoples and nations.

Together with the chronology of major events, glossary, and bibliographical aids, the documents in part 3 provide historical background. They relate directly to the previous parts of the book. Documents of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from the 1920s have been included to illustrate the ideology and political nationalism of one of the main political organizations in Western Ukraine during the war. Similarly, materials from the archives of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) have been included to provide a more balanced evaluation of the postwar displaced persons population in Germany and Austria than that found in recent publications.

The modified Library of Congress system of transliteration used by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies has been applied to the transliteration of Ukrainian and other Slavic references, unless a commonly accepted English-language version exists. Some authors' names have been given in the original language. Thus, for example, the transliterated spelling Volodymyr Kubiiovych appears with his Ukrainian-language publications, but Kubijovyc is used for his English-language publications; this practice also applies to Potichnyj-Potichny, Yevhen-Ievhen, and the like.

Readers might encounter inconsistencies in statistical information, for example, on the number of Ukrainians killed by the Soviet secret police during the 1939 Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine; the number of Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Germans; the precise number of Ukrainian slave labourers; and the scale of human losses in the artificial Soviet Ukrainian famine of 1932-3. Great care has been taken to ensure historical accuracy, but the available statistical information is of varying reliability and conclusiveness. The reasons for this range from the nature of the historical documents to the lack of free access to vital archival records.

Because of these and other limitations, some questions require further study. Among them are the degree to which the Soviet Union's alliance with Germany during 1939-41 later helped the Nazis on the Eastern front; and the extent and reasons for the local population's assistance in the Nazi program of repression and extermination. This volume, therefore, is still the product of research bound by the constraints of analyzing the recent past, the political control of primary sources and information, and a lack of scholarly consensus on several vital issues and events.

The war brought enormous loss of life and hardship to Ukrainians. Of all the republics of the Soviet Union, it was in Ukraine that the Nazis stayed the longest and caused the greatest suffering. The Nazis viewed all non-Aryans and hence Ukrainians as Untermenschen (subhumans) whose only task was to serve the needs of the Third Reich. Moreover, the brutality of the war in Ukraine had been clearly planned by Hitler: his soldiers were instructed to abandon the normal rules and codes of military conduct while on the Eastern front. Estimates of the number killed or taken as slave labourers or prisoners of war range from seven to ten million.

Nor did the Nazis treat Western Ukrainians with favour. They were barely tolerated, and then only to the degree to which they fit Germany's plans for war against the Soviet Union. More nationalistic and better organized than their brethren in the Soviet Union, many Western Ukrainians were committed to the destruction of the Soviet state and the creation of an independent Ukraine. Hence, they had their own political agenda and priorities during the war, and this fact always influenced events in this region. Nevertheless, as several contributors to this volume point out, no amount of historical understanding can ever justify the historical fact that, as was true of other peoples during the war, some individuals directly aided and abetted the Nazis in committing crimes against their own people as well as against others.

It is my hope that the articles in this volume will help clarify the complex situation in which Ukraine and Ukrainians found themselves during the war and the controversial issues associated with its aftermath.

The authors, of course, are responsible for their views. Their arguments may cause discomfort to some readers but, as is often said, in coming to terms with the past, we gain a better appreciation of our own moral values and principles. The aim of this book is not to judge but to promote understanding, and thoughtful readers will come to their own conclusions. If, in some small way, this book has been of assistance in this effort, the work will have been worthwhile.

Yury Boshyk
University of Toronto