Ukrainian collaborationism with the Axis powers

Distrikts Galizien Spring 1943. Celebrations dedicated to the creation of the SS-Freiwilligen-Schützen-Division «Galizien».

The very topic of Ukrainian "collaboration" with Axis powers is a red herring. Ukraine had no country or government of its own, and during Nazi occupation, was administered directly by the Germans as part of the Reich. Therefore, unlike Quisling's Norway etc., there could be no collaborationist government.

During the first two years of World War II while the Soviets and Nazis were collaborating with each other the territory of what is now Poland and Ukraine was invaded and split between the two dictatorships. The territory that is now Ukraine suffered under brutal Soviet repressions between 1939 and 1941, including 1.2 million Ukrainians deported to Siberia, Russian being made an official language, and the shooting of 15,000 Ukrainian intelligensia. Between June and July 1941, the Soviet NKVD exterminated 22,000 people considered political threats. These were mostly Ukrainians, but Poles and Zionist Jews were also murdered.

The Soviets and Nazis conducted massive population transfers without regard for the people involved. Hitler wanted Germans in the Reich and Stalin wanted Slavs. During these operations, the Germans proposed a population transfer of two million European Jews in January 1940 to the Soviet Union, but Stalin was not interested.

Between the late 1930s until the end of the war, the Soviet and Nazi regimes murdered fourteen million people. This includes millions and millions of non-Jews. During the years that Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the world.

It is no wonder that when Ukraine was initially invaded by Nazi Germany, some Ukrainians initially saw them as saviors. They wrongly thought that no one could be worse than the Soviets and their extermination policies. Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians by using the Soviet military to control Ukraine's food supply and starve massive sections of Ukraine. He did this to suppress a growing revolutionary sentiment that supported Ukrainian nationalism and independence from the U.S.S.R.

However, the absence of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of million of Ukrainians as slave laborers, soon led to a rapid change in the attitude among those few collaborators. Nazi ideology considered Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Slovaks, Silesians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs and Montenegrins) to be subhuman and they were scheduled for extermination.

As the Red Army returned to Ukraine, some of the population initially welcomed the soldiers as "liberators". Unfortunately, the civilian populace in Ukraine was caught between two warring armies, both with little regard for human life. Realizing that neither the Soviets nor the Nazis had Ukrainian interests in mind, Ukrainians fled by the thousands into the woods, mountains and marshes, and by 1943, formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. At its height, this underground army has as many as 100,000 people bearing arms. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought first the Nazis, and then the Soviets. After the war, Displaced people were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union, where they were "re-educated" in Siberian work camps. Many committed suicide to avoid this fate.

It should be noted that more than 4.5 million Ukrainians had joined the Red Army to fight Germany and more than 250,000 served as Soviet partisan paramilitary units.

Initial attitudes towards German invasion

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa began on June 22, 1941, and by September the occupied territory was divided between two German administrative units the General Government and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

Ukrainians greeting arriving Germans in Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941.

Many Ukrainians chose to resist and fight German occupation forces by joining the Red Army or the Soviet Partisans. However, particularly in the Western Ukraine assigned to General Government, loyalty to the Soviet State was low due to the fact that it had been under brutal Soviet control for a brief period of 2 years after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland under the Hitler-Stalin-agreement following September 17, 1939. Although the Ukrainian SSR did give the population the national and cultural autonomy that neither the Second Polish Republic nor the interwar Romania did, it came at a price. In 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the infamous famine, the Holodomor and in 1937 several thousand intelligentsia were exiled, sentenced to Gulag labor camps or executed. The negative impact of Soviet policies helped garner support for the German cause, and in some regions, parts of the nationalist minority initially, albeit briefly, viewed the Germans as allies in the struggle to free Ukraine from Stalinist oppression and achieve independence.

Under occupation

Main article: Reichskommissariat Ukraine

Some Ukrainians out of greed, fear or prejudice cooperated with the German occupiers, participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft, in the German military, and serving as concentration camp guards. Nationalists in the west of Ukraine hoped for a geopolitical structuring of Europe that would see Ukraine emerge as an independent state and so were prepared for some tactical cooperation with the Germans. For example, on the eve of Barbarossa as many as four thousand Ukrainians, operating under Wehrmacht orders, sought to cause disruption behind Soviet lines. After the capture of Lviv, in important Ukrainian city, OUN leaders Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed a new Ukrainian State unilaterally against Hitlers wishes on June 30, 1941 and were arrested by the Nazis for doing so and put in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Ukrainians had to fight a war on two sides, against both the Soviets and the Nazis. Because of this, they were branded by the Nazis as Bolshevist sympathizers, and by Soviets as Nazi sympathizers. Here is an example:

Professor Ivan Katchanovski of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University writes that during the war the leadership of OUN B and UPA was heavily engaged in Nazi collaboration:at least 23% of its leaders in Ukraine were in the auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 as well as other police formations, 18% took part in training in Nazi Germany's military and intelligence schools in Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland, 11% served the Nachtigall and Roland Battalions, 8% in local administration during the Nazi occupation, and 1% in the SS Galicia Division;according to Katchanovski the percentage of Nazi collaborators among the OUN-B and UPA leadership is likely higher than those numbers, as much data from early occupation is missing

The Nazi administration was not interested in an independent Ukraine. They saw Ukraine as their "breadbasket", instituting the Hunger Plan on May 23, 1941: to starve to death 30 million people to make room for Germans.

The Nazis also played Slavic nations out one against the other. OUN initially carried out attacks on Polish villages, trying to destroy or expel Polish enclaves from what the OUN fighters perceived as Ukrainian territory. When OUN help was no longer needed, its leaders were imprisoned, and many member were summariry executed, with over 600 shot in the Babi Yar massacres^{[citation needed]}.The arrests were only temporary however according to professor Katchanovski;while 27% of the leadership of OUN B and UPA were arrested at one time, they were released relatively soon or allowed to escape

Holocaust

Holocaust in Ukraine: the map

The atrocities against the Jewish population during the Holocaust started within a few days of the beginning of German occupation. There have been allegations that the Ukrainian auxiliary police was used in the round-up of Jews for the Babi Yar massacre despite the fact that the auxiliary Ukrainian police units were only established in November of that year. As well, there is only documentation of a single Ukrainian language speaker among the perpetrators at Babi Yar, and that was Second Lieutenant Joseph Muller, an ethnic German from Galicia. Thus, it is more accurate to describe these people as "Ukrainian speakers." A German policeman who guarded Babi Yar testified in 1965 that "the Jews were guarded by Wehrmacht units and by a Hamburg Police Battalion, which, as far as I can remember, carried the number 303.

While some proportion of collaborators were volunteers, others were given little choice. Ukrainian and some other nationalities caught fighting for the Red Army were sometimes given the option between dying of starvation and exposure in the ill-equipped POW camps reserved for the Red Army or working for the Germans as a hiwi including duty in the concentration camps and ghettos primarily as guards. The men selected for such duty were trained in the Trawniki concentration camp and were used for that part of the Final Solution known as Operation Reinhard. However they were never fully trusted, and with good reason as some would escape their enforced duty, sometimes along with the prisoners they were meant to be guarding and occasionally killing their SS commanders in the process.

Righteous Among the Nations in Ukraine

According to Yad Vashem, 2185 righteous Ukrainians had been identified by the year 2007. These are the people who risked their lives to save the Jews. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, little information was known of these acts due to Soviet censorship of this topic.

During his visit to Ukraine, Pope John Paul II beatified one of the righteous - Father Omelyan Kovch who sacrificed his life while saving several hundred of Jews. In 1942, father Kovch issued Jews large numbers of baptism certificates in attempt to save their lives. In doing so, he broke the Nazi prohibitions and so he was arrested in December 1942 and deported to the Majdanek concentration camp where he was gassed and burned on March 26, 1943.

The most famous instances of the saving of hundreds of Jews during World War II features the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Andrey Sheptytsky. He harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued two pastoral letters, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "On Misericordia" that instructed the Greek-Catholic believers not to participate Nazi atrocities and aid those persecuted. Despite this, however, Sheptytsky remains unrecognized for his acts by Yad Vashem, a consequence of stereotypes advanced by Soviet and Polish historians.^{[citation needed]}

Collaborationist organizations, political movements, individuals, and military volunteers

Auxiliary police

German officers visiting the Schutzmannschaftant unit in Zarig, near Kiev.

Main article: Ukrainian Auxiliary Police

109, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 201-st Ukrainian Schutzmannschaftant-battalions participated in anti-partisan operations in Ukraine and Belarus. In February — March 1943 50-th Ukrainian Schutzmannschaftant-battalion participated in the large anti-guerrilla action «Winterzauber» (Winter magic) in Belarus, cooperating with several Latvian and 2nd Lithuanian battalion. Schuma-battalions burned down villages suspected in supporting Soviet partisans. All the inhabitants of the village Chatyń in Belarus were burnt alive by the Nazis with participation of the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion on 22 March 1943

Ukrainian volunteers in the German armed forces

• Nachtigall Battalion
• Roland Battalion
• Freiwilligen-Stamm-Regiment 3 & 4 (Russians & Ukrainians)

SS Division "Galizien"

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

The volunteers of the SS-Freiwilligen-Schützen-Division «Galizien» marching in front of the Lviv University (1943).

On 28 April 1943 the German Governor of District Galicia, Dr. Otto von Wächter, and the local Ukrainian administration officially declared the creation of the SS-Freiwilligen-Schützen-Division Galizien. Volunteers signed for service as of 3 June 1943 numbered 80 thousand. On 27 July 1944 the Galizien division was formed into the Waffen SS as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (gal. Nr. 1). The history, composition, and function of the SS Galizien are the topic of contentious debate among scholars still today^{[citation needed]}.

One theory is that these men volunteered eagerly for war against the Soviets, rather than being an example of evidence for active support of Nazi Germany. A counter theory is that at least some of them were victims of compulsory conscription as Germany suffered defeats and lost manpower on the eastern front. Sol Litman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center claims that there are many proven and documented incidents of atrocities and massacres committed by the Waffen-SS Galizien against minorities, particularly Jews during the course of World War II, however other authors, such as Michael Melnyk, and Michael O. Logusz, maintain that members of the division fought almost entirely at the front against the Soviet Red Army. They also defend the unit against the accusations made by Litman and others since the war. German official records noted that the 4,5,6 and 7 SS-Freiwilligen regiments were under Ordnungspolizei command at the time of the accusations. Neither the division nor any of its members were ever charged with any war crime (see 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian)#Accusations of war atrocities).

Ukraine propaganda news

• Ukrainskyi Dobrovoletz (Der ukrainische Kämpfer) - Ukrainische Freiwilligenverbände

Ukrainian units in the German work organization

• Organization Todt OT-Einsatzgruppe Ost (Kiev)

Ukrainian collaborators (heads of local administration and public figures)

• Oleksander Ohloblyn (Kiev mayor, 1941)
• Volodymyr Bahaziy (Kiev mayor, 1941–1942, executed by Germans in 1942)
• Leontii Forostivsky (Kiev mayor, 1942–1943)
• Mykola Velychkivsky (head of the Ukrainian National Committee in Kiev, dismissed in 1942, later emigrated)
• Fedir Bohatyrchuk (head of the Ukrainian Red Cross, 1941–1942)
• Ivan Rohach (journalist, public figure, executed in 1942)
• Oleksii Kramarenko (Kharkiv mayor, 1941–1942, executed by Germans in 1943)
• Oleksander Semenenko (Kharkiv mayor, 1942–1943)
• Paul Kozakevich (Kharkiv mayor, 1943)
• Aleksandr Sevastianov (Vinnytsia mayor, 1941 – ?)

See also

• Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II
• Reichskommissariat Ukraine
• History of the Jews in Ukraine
• Ukrainian SSR
• Ostlegionen

Further reading

• Andrew Gregorovich (1995). The Ukrainian Experience in World War II With a Brief Survey of Ukraine's Population Loss of 10 Million (Electronic Reprint Edition ed.). Forum.  here
• Gilbert Martin (1987). The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (Reprint Edition ed.). Owl Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-0348-2. 
• Gilbert Martin (1986). The Holocaust: The Jewish tragedy (Unknown Binding ed.). Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-216305-7. 
• Collaborationism in World War II: The Integral Nationalist Variant in Eastern Europe, by John A. Armstrong in The Journal of Modern History > Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1968), pp. 396–410
• Mordecai Paldiel (1993). The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. KTAV Publishing House in association with the ADL. ISBN 0-88125-376-6.  [3]
• Mordecai Paldiel and Elie Wiesel (2007). The Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-115112-2.  [4]