Ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk
Ukrainians in German Armed Forces During the Second World War
Olesya Khromeychuk
Abstract
During the Second World War large numbers of inhabitants of central, eastern and southern Europe joined the German Armed Forces. Among them were around 250,000 soldiers who identified themselves as Ukrainian. They served in the Wehrmacht, as well as the Waffen SS; a considerable number of them also served in the auxiliary police. They were motivated to join the German Armed Forces by a combination of different factors. This paper aims to shed some light on the broad range of circumstances that facilitated the recruitment of thousands of Ukrainians to fight on the side of the Third Reich. It discusses several well-known formations that were comprised of Ukrainians, such as the Nachtigall and Roland battalions and the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division, as well as other units that have not been widely discussed in an academic context.
2 July 1943
I was on a tram, carrying saccharin. German schutzmanns had set a trap. They caught me too […] I was going to be sent to work in Germany. They asked me what work I could do. I answered: all sorts. I can be an engineer, a manager, a scholar. They appointed me to look after pigs in some Prussian village.
3 July 1943
[…] In the morning I said that I want to volunteer for the Ukrainian Division. They let me go at once. I went to the Military Board. […]
‘Do you have documents?’
‘None. I only have my photograph; here it is!’
The Director […] looked at the picture and at me.
‘That is the same man. Everything is in order. You are recruited.’ [i]
This absurd description of the unintended recruitment of a Ukrainian Švejk-like soldier into the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division comes from a satirical ‘Diary of a National Hero’, written by a former ‘Galicia’ Division member.[ii] It ridicules the accidental nature of events that were far from humorous, and paints the unfathomable reality of life of a Ukrainian fighting in a German uniform. While Selepko Lavochka, the Ukrainian incarnation of Švejk, tells an incredible story of sleepwalking into the German army, his story is not as implausible as it seems at first sight. Many real-life ‘Selepkos’ found themselves in German uniforms through a series of (un)fortunate coincidences. Others, however, joined the ranks of the German Armed Forces consciously and enthusiastically.
During the Second World War large numbers of inhabitants of central, eastern and southern Europe joined the German Armed Forces. Among them were Bosnians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Russians, Slovenes, Serbs, Ukrainians and others.[iii] Hitler’s own view was that ‘only Germans should carry weapons, not Slavs, Czechs, Cossacks, or Ukrainians.’[iv] Nevertheless, in October 1944, the Eastern Troops commander General Ernst Köstring estimated that there were over 800,000 ‘Eastern volunteers’ in the German Army, and 100,000 in the Air Force and the Navy.[v] Over 400,000 of them self-identified as Russian; [vi] at least 150,000 were of Polish origin,[vii] and Ukrainians comprised about 250,000 of these Eastern soldiers.[viii] Ukrainians served in the Wehrmacht, as well as the Waffen SS; a considerable number of them also served in the auxiliary police. Although their numbers are large enough to provoke the curiosity of scholars, and generate sensationalist material for popular history, most studies to date have focused on a relatively small percentage of all self-identified Ukrainians who served in German uniforms during the Second World War: those who comprised the battalions Nachtigall and Roland, and the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division. The members of these formations are usually remembered in Ukraine and beyond either as freedom-fighters or traitors; the discussion of the complex motivations which led these men as well as other Ukrainians who belonged to less well-known military groups to join the German Armed Forces is left out of the simplified memory wars. The lack of academic literature on Ukrainians who fought in German uniforms makes these overgeneralised discussions and the myths that they perpetuate harder to dispel. This paper aims to shed some light on the broad range of circumstances that facilitated the recruitment of thousands of Ukrainians to fight on the side of the Third Reich. As well as analysing other units that have not been widely discussed in an academic context, the paper will discuss the better-known groups as, in spite of their relative numerical inferiority, members of these groups have formed a certain generic idea of a ‘Ukrainian Nazi collaborator’, an image which requires contextualisation.
The majority of the Ukrainian soldiers who chose to fight on the side of the Reich were what Christopher Browning has called ‘ordinary men’,[ix] motivated by a combination of different factors. In his study of the participation of the local people in the Holocaust in Belarus and Ukraine, Martin Dean outlines some of the motives that might have played a part in encouraging the local population to collaborate:
Whilst anti-Semitism clearly formed a very important motive and was linked to some extent in people’s minds with revenge for communist excesses, indoctrination and propaganda do not appear sufficient to explain the killing of former neighbours.
The other motives which spring to mind are those of personal enrichment and advancement, obedience to authority and group behaviour (peer pressure). […] Those who carried out German orders eagerly and efficiently could expect promotion and rewards.[x]
Another factor that is often emphasised in accounts of Ukrainians who served in the German Armed Forces is the opportunity for state building that collaboration supposedly presented, an objective that ‘overshadowed all other considerations.’[xi] Both pragmatic, individual choices and nationalist, ideological motivations will be examined in this paper. At the same time, the discussion of the choices that the collaborators made must include an acknowledgement of the role of ‘the corrupting environment engendered by the German occupation’ and the fact that ‘the behaviour of occupied populations throughout Europe was in large measure “occupier driven”’, as Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin argue,[xii] though they also acknowledge that the occupied populations ‘were not necessarily left without any power of their own’.[xiii] In the Ukrainian case, the question of agency is particularly complicated by the fact that Ukrainians were a stateless group, and because the territory in which they lived had experienced a collapse of state institutions (Polish or Soviet) and, in some parts, double occupation (first Soviet and then German). Timothy Snyder describes the dangers of such a situation:
A single occupation can fracture a society for generations; double occupation is even more painful and divisive. […] When foreign troops left, people had to reckon not with peace but with the policies of the next occupier. They had to deal with the consequences of their own previous commitments under one occupier when the next one came; or make choices under one occupation while anticipating another. [xiv]
Ukrainians who fought on the German side can be separated into two main categories: those who were recruited under duress (mostly former Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Germans, usually from territories of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, formerly under Soviet rule) and those who joined voluntarily (Ukrainian nationalists, mainly from the lands of the Generalgouvernement which until 1939 were part of Poland). The early phase of the formation of the Ukrainian units that fought on the German side is strongly linked to the question of nationalism and aspirations of state building. The legacy of the state-building attempts of the early twentieth century, when the lands populated by Ukrainians were part of the Romanov and the Hapsburg empires, is thus crucial for our understanding of the events that unfolded during the Second World War. In the aftermath of the First World War, ‘[t]he fast changing revolutionary governments envisioned very different Ukraines’, explains Serhy Yekelchyk.[xv] The national projects popular in the turbulent post-war period included ‘autonomy within a democratic Russia, an independent socialist Ukraine, a conservative Ukrainian monarchy, [and] a nationalist military dictatorship’.[xvi] Often mutually exclusive, they were similar in their ultimate aim: Ukraine as a sovereign entity.
The Legacy of the First World War and the Interwar Period
During the First World War, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were conscripted to fight in the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Among them were a number of key figures who facilitated Ukrainian nationalist cooperation with Germany in the years leading up to the Second World War. One such figure was Ievhen Konovalets, who went on to become the leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiia Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN) in 1929 and remained in this position until his assassination in 1938. At the start of the First World War he served in the 19th Regiment of the L’viv Regional Defence, and in 1915 was taken prisoner by the Russians.[xvii] During his internment he had contact with other former Ukrainian officers of the Austro-Hungarian Army such as Andrii Mel’nyk and Roman Sushko, both of whom went on to play prominent roles in Ukrainian nationalist circles during the Second World War. The First World War signalled for Ukrainians an opportunity to achieve sovereignty while the empires around them were weakened by the conflict. With the collapse of the Hapsburg empire Ukrainian men and women who had formerly belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Army joined the military units of the army of the short-lived Ukrainian state: Ukrainian People’s Republic (Ukrainska Narodna Respublika, UNR).[xviii] The experience of participation in the ranks of the Austrian army and the army of the UNR, in spite of the failure of the UNR, was of great importance to Ukrainians at the outbreak of the Second World War. Sensing the possibility of another war and drawing parallels with the events of WWI, former officers such as Konovalets’, Sushko and Mel’nyk encouraged their younger nationalistically inclined fellow Ukrainians to join forces with Germany in the 1930s for another chance to fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty.[xix]
In what is now western Ukraine, much of the younger generation in the 1930s was already united into nationalistic groups such as the OUN, eager to fight against both Poland and the Soviet Union. Snyder notes that ‘[f]ollowing the lead of Dmytro Dontsov, the young generation of the 1930s preferred ideology to history and dreamed of a violent revolution that would establish a Ukrainian state.’[xx] The political and socio-economic situation in the region where the nationalist movement was formed played an important part in its ability to generate enough support for their cause. After the brief independence of 1918-21, the territory of contemporary Ukraine was separated into four parts, which were under Soviet, Polish, Czechoslovak and Romanian rule. Throughout the 1930s, Soviet Ukraine, encompassing the largest territory, underwent industrialisation, collectivisation and the subsequent famine, known as the Holodomor.[xxi] The situation in the western lands of what is present-day Ukraine was also problematic. From 1919, territories with a large number of Ukrainian residents including western Volhynia and eastern Galicia were under Polish rule. The relationship between the Polish authorities and Ukrainian nationalists worsened throughout the 1920s and grew into an open conflict that became particularly intense in the 1930s.[xxii] In his memoir, Teodor Koliasa, a former Galicia Division member, quotes a popular saying of the 1930s: ‘a Ukrainian who has not been to prison for politics is not a true Ukrainian’. [xxiii] The idea of a military formation that would stand against the ruling authorities and for the independence of a Ukrainian state was more than timely. ‘The very word [sic] “Ukrainian Army” simply electrified our patriotic youth’, explains Koliasa. ‘Every young man had an invincible desire to fight for the statehood of his people in the ranks of a Ukrainian Army.’[xxiv] The war that was to follow presented an opportunity to turn these desires into reality.
The Outbreak of the Second World War: the OUN and the Abwehr
In 1939, as Germany invaded Poland from the West, the USSR occupied eastern Poland up to the Curzon line. Ukrainians who were citizens of Poland east of the Curzon line were now under Soviet rule, while those residing west of the Curzon line found themselves under German occupation. A number of Ukrainian nationalist leaders, especially those in the German-occupied territories, were in close contact with German political and military circles. Snyder argues that ‘[b]ecause the Ukrainian state had to be created […] Ukrainian nationalists had a political motive to collaborate with the Germans and to encourage Ukrainian youth to join Nazi organs of power’.[xxv] Koliasa remembers the early days of the war: ‘[People] were glad to witness the chaos of the flight of the Polish soldiers to the East. The [Ukrainian] youth collected the weapons left behind by the Polish military in case there would be an order to join the ranks of one’s own army.’[xxvi] When the Nazis allowed a Ukrainian Central Committee (Ukrіains’kyi tsentral’nyi komitet (UTsK), Ukrainischen Hauptausschuß) to operate in Krakow as a relief organisation, Ukrainians also used it as ‘the quasi-official centre of Ukrainian political life’.[xxvii] Finder and Prusin state that the Ukrainian nationalists’ idea of Ukrainian sovereignty ‘based on ethnic homogeneity’ was rooted in the feeling of ‘a deep and hopeless sense of oppression’ and the powerful, but largely imagined, idea of the alleged Jewish cooperation with the Soviet regime.[xxviii] For some Ukrainian nationalists, ethnic cleansing operations (directed against both Jews and Poles) were treated as an unavoidable part of the state building process. Snyder argues that ‘Ukrainian members of the Central Committee wished to use German power to remove Poles and Jews from Ukrainian “ethnographic territory”’, and saw Germany as an ally in the struggle for independence.[xxix]
Iaroslav Hrytsak suggests that Ukrainians who looked towards Germany for cooperation were acting in the context of ‘an extreme situation’, in which one’s ‘consciousness relies not on new solutions, but on familiar schemes.’[xxx] Believing that ‘Ukrainians and Germans were natural allies against Poland, the Entente, and the Versailles Treaty’,[xxxi] nationalist Ukrainians followed the channels of collaboration familiar from the First World War. One such figure was the already mentioned Roman Sushko, a member of the OUN who served as an important link to the Abwehr. In the summer of 1939, Sushko was preparing a group of 600 men in Wiener-Neustadt (Austria) to act as an auxiliary to the Wehrmacht in its approaching attack on Poland. This military group was intended to become the nucleus for an armed force which would take part in an uprising leading to the independence of Ukraine.[xxxii] Two battalions (known in German as Bergbauernhilfe, Mountain Peasant’s Help and in Ukrainian as Viis’kovi viddily Natsionalistiv, Military Units of Nationalists) were formed by the Abwehr under the command of Major Hans Dehmel and Colonel Roman Sushko. These battalions consisted of OUN members who were mostly students in Austria and Germany; some were also former soldiers of the Carpathian Sich, a military formation of the Subcarpathian Autonomous Region within Czechoslovakia and the short-lived Carpatho-Ukrainian state that proclaimed independence in March 1939.[xxxiii] These battalions took part in the Polish campaign as part of the 14 Army Group South. Their duties mainly consisted of helping with the organisation of local administration on the territories populated by Ukrainians, informing the civilian population of the existence of the ‘Ukrainian legion’ and recruiting new soldiers. After the end of the German-Polish war and following the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union the battalions were disbanded and their soldiers joined other formations such as Werkschutz, Bahnschutz, Hilfspolizei.[xxxiv]
On 24 April 1941 Gottlob Berger, Chief of Staff of the Waffen SS, suggested to Himmler the formation of a Waffen SS unit consisting of Ukrainians. On 3 May 1941 Himmler rejected Berger’s idea due to the racial policy of the Nazis.[xxxv] Nevertheless, on 25 February 1941, the head of the Abwehr Admiral Wilhelm Canaris issued an order to form a new Ukrainian legion out of Ukrainian nationalists.[xxxvi] In his Roads to Extinction, Philip Friedman states that ‘[a]fter the outbreak of World War II, the Germans constantly favoured the OUN at the expense of more moderate Ukrainian groups’.[xxxvii] Snyder explains that ‘[t]he OUN counted on German help, since in the grand endeavor of building a Ukrainian state from Polish, Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territories, Germany was the only possible ally.’[xxxviii] ‘In the first weeks and months of their rule, the Germans gave Ukrainians the false impression that the Ukrainian nationalist movement would be tolerated’, argues Wendy Lower.[xxxix] Leaders of the German Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) were glad to use radical anti-Communist east European forces in their campaign against the USSR.[xl] The eagerness of the OUN to cooperate with the German authorities is partly explained by Taras Hunczak:
The German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941 brought about a moment of deliverance in the view of the Ukrainians and particularly the OUN. Finally, they thought, the archenemy of the Ukrainian nation would be destroyed, thus creating an opportunity for the Ukrainian people to re-establish a sovereign Ukrainian state.[xli]
In the meantime, the OUN split into two factions: the OUN-M, supporting Andrii Mel’nyk as their leader, and the OUN-B, seeking a more radical course of action and thus choosing to follow a younger and more radical leader Stepan Bandera. The German military authority decided to base the Ukrainian legion on the members of the OUN-B.[xlii]
Sondergruppe Nachtigall
In April-June 1941 two Ukrainian battalions, mentioned in the introduction to this paper, were organised by the Abwehr: Sondergruppe Nachtigall and Organization Roland, together known as the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists (Druzhyny Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, DUN).[xliii] The soldiers of Nachtigall were commanded by Lieutenant Hans Albrecht Herzner and Captain Roman Shukhevych. The formation of these units is characteristic of one of the trends of recruitment of Ukrainians into the German Armed Forces. Nachtigall officer, Myroslav Kal’ba, explained why he joined the unit:
we did not volunteer to join Nachtigall, we were appointed by the Organisation [OUN] to join Nachtigall as people who had sworn loyalty to Ukraine and the Organisation and who, according to the first point of the Decalogue, had promised to ‘Achieve the Ukrainian State or die fighting for it’. We were happy and proud to be the first ones to take up arms in the battle for an Independent Ukraine.[xliv]
Kal’ba argues that for the OUN men participation in the German Armed Forces was voluntary and desired, as it was viewed as part of serving the OUN rather than the German command. As the rest of the paper demonstrates, the situation was more complex for other soldiers in the German army.
When Germany invaded the USSR, Nachtigall was attached to the 1st Battalion of the Regiment Brandenburg-800 and became part of the 1st Mountain Infantry Division whose order was to march on L’viv. Nachtigall reached L’viv on 30 June 1941 and occupied the city’s strategic positions (industrial warehouses, prisons, and a radio station).[xlv] As the Soviet regime was withdrawing its forces from western Ukrainian lands, rather than transporting their political prisoners east, they decided to execute them en masse.[xlvi] It is thus unsurprising that ‘[a]fter two years of Soviet rule, many had some reason to receive the German invasion of the Soviet Union as a liberation’,[xlvii] especially, as Ukrainian battalions were entering western Ukrainian lands together with the German forces. The new occupying regime blamed the Jews for Soviet killings of Ukrainians. Snyder details the immediate retaliation actions against the Jewish population by the new regime and their local supporters following the NKVD executions of prisoners:
In Kremenets, where more than a hundred prisoners were found murdered, some 130 Jews were killed in a pogrom. In Lutsk, where some 2,800 prisoners were found machine-gunned, the Germans killed two thousand Jews, and called this revenge for the wrongs done to Ukrainians by Jewish communists. In Lviv, where about 2,500 prisoners were found dead in the NKVD prison, Einsatzgruppe C and local militia organized a pogrom that lasted for days.[xlviii]
The L’viv pogrom took place in the first few days of the Nazi occupation of the city. During the time of the pogrom the Nachtigall battalion was on a week-long leave from duty and although individual members of the battalion might have participated in the pogrom, there seems to be a consensus among a number of scholars that the unit as a whole did not partake in the atrocities in L’viv.[xlix] The arrival of Nachtigall coincided with the proclamation of the restoration of an independent Ukrainian state by Stepan Bandera’s deputy Iaroslav Stets’ko. This proclamation was condemned by the Nazi officials and resulted in the arrest of Bandera, Stets’ko and the self-proclaimed government.[l] This episode demonstrates that Ukrainian nationalists had their own motives in cooperating with the Germans. It also shows that while the Germans were keen on using the willing Ukrainian manpower to their advantage, they were not prepared to accept their political ambitions and grant them independence or event autonomy.
The Roland battalion, formed also of OUN-B supporters, has enjoyed less attention than Nachtigall. It trained in total secrecy in Saubersdorf (Austria). The commander of the battalion was the former Polish Army officer, Ievhen Pobihushchyi. Just like Nachtigall, Roland was disbanded after the proclamation of independence in L’viv in 1941.[li]
Andrii Mel’nyk’s OUN also cooperated with the German authorities. A Ukrainian unit, Sonderkommando PuMa, was organised in June 1941 consisting of members of the OUN-M: 100 Ukrainians belonging to the unit had higher education and good knowledge of the German language.[lii] Puma was expected to secure local administration, prepare warehouses with ammunition, food and accommodation for the Wehrmacht, but they were not expected to participate in front line combat. According to Ivan Dereiko, they used their ‘“legitimate” position to conduct nationalist work on the occupied territories of Ukraine’.[liii] Puma was disbanded following the disbandment of Nachtigall and Roland.[liv]
Hiwis and Schuma
During the course of the German advance in July 1941 Ukrainian units were being formed by the German military authorities throughout the territory of contemporary Ukraine. The territory itself was not treated as a single entity: the Galicia district was part of the Generalgouvernement, while the territories of the Ukrainian SSR were divided into several administrative units, all together known as Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU). The attitude of the occupying authorities in these regions towards the civilian population differed significantly. While Ukrainians in the western territories had their own representative body (the already mentioned UTsK), the RKU was seen as nothing but a colony by the Nazis and its people were little more than the slaves.[lv] Reichskommissar Erich Koch’s proudly ruthless leadership is evident from his infamous remark: ‘[i]f I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with me, I must have him shot.’[lvi] This did not prevent the recruitment of Ukrainians, including those from the RKU, into the German Armed Forces.
Andrii Bolianovs’kyi estimates that by the end of 1942 there were ‘over 150 so-called Eastern Battalions, at least 70 of which consisted partly or mostly of Ukrainians.’ [lvii] These Ukrainian units could be separated into Hilfswillige (Hiwis) (indigenous auxiliary volunteers) and Schutzmannschaft Bataillons (guard battalions). Hiwis were often comprised of former Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war (POWs) who had volunteered to serve in the auxiliary units.[lviii] Large numbers of Red Army soldiers were being imprisoned by the Germans, many of them were from pre-occupation Ukrainian SSR. Karel Berkoff offers some figures relating to Soviet POWs:
German Army Group South counted 103,000 captured near Uman, south of Kiev (early August); a staggering 665,000 near Kiev (by September 26); 100,000 by Melitopol and Berdiansk, near the Sea of Azov (by October 10) and another 100,000 at Kerch in the Crimea (by November 16).[lix]
Snyder confirms Berkhoff’s estimates saying that ‘[n]ever before in modern warfare had so many prisoners been taken so quickly [...]. By the end of 1941, the Germans had taken about three million Soviet soldiers prisoner.’[lx] Soviet POWs were experiencing extremely poor conditions which often led to death by starvation. Snyder describes the POW camps as ‘the site of death on an unprecedented scale’.[lxi] Browning argues that Nazi officials ‘visited the POW camps and recruited Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian “volunteers”’ and offered them ‘an escape from probable starvation, and promised that they would not be used in combat against the Soviet army.’[lxii] It is thus not surprising that a significant number of these Soviet POWs joined German formations as an alternative to POW camps.
Describing the Hilfswillige Berkhoff states that ‘[b]ecause Hitler hated the notion of “Russians” in army service, these Hiwis remained an open secret, without official duties or rights, until as late as October 1942.’[lxiii] They performed guarding duties at military warehouses and were occasionally employed in action against Soviet partisans. Usually, however, they were not armed.[lxiv] Berkhoff cites a figure of 200,000 Hiwis recruited by the spring of 1942 and about 310,000 a year later.[lxv] At first these volunteers received no remuneration. By mid-1942, they started to be paid between thirty and forty-two reichsmarks per month. The supply of uniforms or rations of soap was not compulsory, which ‘produced a far from uniform appearance of the volunteers, who […] comprised up to 10% of the whole German army in the East’.[lxvi]
Schutzmannschaft Bataillonen also known as Schuma were organised by the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police). Their members were chosen ‘from the local militias that had sprung up under the military occupation and from the screening of acceptable racial groups among the POWs, first and foremost the Volksdeutsche and then the Ukrainians.’[lxvii] Finder and Prusin state that members of the Ukrainian police ‘represented all strata of Ukrainian society. Peasants, workers and Lumpenproletariat constituted the bulk of the rank and file, while more educated individuals from the middle class filled the officer ranks.’[lxviii] 35,000 Ukrainians are estimated to have served in fifty-eight of the Schutzmannschaft battalions.[lxix] Most of these units consisted of Ukrainian volunteers from eastern and central Ukraine. Schuma 201, 203-208 and 212 comprised Ukrainians from the Galicia region. Former DUN soldiers were organised into Schuma 201 led by Pobihushchyi and his deputy Shukhevych.[lxx] This is another example where the racial policy of the Nazi commandments went against the reality they faced in the course of the war.
Arriving in a new locality, the occupation regime often found a network of OUN’s people’s militia. Finder and Prusin argue that ‘[f]rom the perspective of the Ukrainian leadership, a competent Ukrainian police force in the region was essential to prospective Ukrainian autonomy.’[lxxi] The Ordnungspolizei, however, ‘could not accept the existence of the nationalist formations, which were carriers of the enemy ideology’.[lxxii] These nationalist groups were thus often incorporated into the German structures and used by the Germans to their own ends. In some regions the formations simply changed names but the people remained the same, and so did their loyalty to Bandera or Mel’nyk. The nationalists unwilling to cooperate were executed by the German authorities.[lxxiii]
In June 1942 Himmler voiced the need for the political training of the Schutzmannschaft. Together with Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, they ‘outlined the goals of the indoctrination program, with an emphasis on “stirring up the strong instinctual anti-Semitism of the eastern peoples” by drawing attention to “the Jewish face of Bolshevism”’.[lxxiv] The ideological position of the programme was relayed in an essay Das neue Werden im Osten Europas (The New Development in Eastern Europe) which emphasised that ‘[t]he Jews brought Bolshevism to power through a tyranny of terror, hunger, crime’ and stressed that ‘[t]he current war being led by the Germans and Italians will mean the destruction of Bolshevism and with it the liberation of the people of Eastern Europe.’[lxxv] Thus the war on the side of the Reich was presented to Ukrainians as the war of liberation and against ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’. This only added fuel to the already evident antisemitic attitudes among Ukrainians in general and the OUN members in particular.[lxxvi] Finder and Prusin argue that ‘traditional Ukrainian anti-Judaism, the Ukrainian association of Jews with the despised Soviet occupation of 1939-41, and the pro-German orientation of the Ukrainian national movement’, together with ‘ethnic irredentism and affinities between Nazi ideology and extreme nationalism’ facilitated German engagement of Ukrainians in the destruction of the Jews.[lxxvii] Antisemitic indoctrination further enabled Ukrainian military participation in the implementation of the Holocaust.
Discussing the case of Volhynia, Snyder argues that the share of Ukrainians in the actual killing was small, but they ‘provided the labor that made the Holocaust possible’.[lxxviii] In his assessment of the role of the Ukrainian and Belarusian police in the implementation of the Holocaust, Dean argues that the significance of these groups ‘can be seen from the fact that in these predominantly rural areas at the time of the massacres in the summer and autumn of 1942 they outnumbered the Gendarmes by between five and ten to one.’[lxxix] The very presence of the locals thus enabled the completion of the massacres: ‘the rounding up and escorting of large numbers of Jews would have been difficult without the active support of the local police units.’[lxxx] Wendy Lower’s assessment points to similar conclusions: ‘thousands of Ukrainian policemen provided the commissariat officials with the necessary manpower and local information about the population and terrain. Hundreds in the mobile battalions (♯108, 109, 110) and stationary SS-police units participated directly in the killing of Jews.’[lxxxi] Lower also states that ‘[i]n the SS and police hierarchy, the Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the bottom of the chain of command structure. Mostly Ukrainians filled the ranks of the rural auxiliaries’.[lxxxii] She highlights the precariousness of the German choice to use the Ukrainian help and explains that there was no consistent policy which would place the Ukrainian police in the role of executioners:
in general the Germans were wary of arming Ukrainian police auxiliaries in the occupation administration, many of whom had not been carefully screened. The Germans realized that a Ukrainian aide might misuse his weapon or desert his post and join the partisans (and many did). Moreover, armed Germans were not inclined to give over their primary source of power – the gun.[lxxxiii]
Intelligence reports by the Ukrainian nationalist resistance corroborate Lower’s assessment: ‘those recruited into the SS are given weapons and immediately in that same village receive military training; at night their weapons are taken away and they are carefully watched in case they decide to flee.’[lxxxiv] Dean states that ‘[t]he policy with regard to arming of the militia depended essentially on how much they could be trusted.’[lxxxv] The German authorities were thus in a position where they had to rely on Ukrainians whose loyalty they could not trust; this mistrust further alienated their local recruits.
The Symbolic ‘Liberation Army’
Formations that consisted of Ukrainians were highly fragmented. They were not recognised as Ukrainian and not united into a separate structure until 1943 when they were formally integrated into the nominal Ukrainian Liberation Army (Die Ukrainische Befreiungsarme or Ukrains’ke vyzvol’ne viis’ko, UVV).[lxxxvi] It was officially headed by former officers of the UNR Army Colonel Ivan Holub and Colonel Petro Kryzhanivs’kyi. This ‘army’ had no political influence and the German officials made it clear to the Ukrainian leadership of the UVV that there would be no tolerance of any attempts to gain political independence for Ukraine. Bolianovs’kyi estimates that
[i]n February, 1943 there were approximately 100,000 Ukrainians in units of the Eastern Troops. The majority of them was organized in the UVV (about 75,000 soldiers). Its units gradually were created mainly in Ukraine’s regions of Dnipropetrovs’k, Zhytomyr, Kamianets’-Podil’s’kyi (now Khmel’nyts’kyi region), Kyiv, Poltava, Rivne, Stalino (now Donets’k), Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and some in the Crimean peninsula.[lxxxvii]
The UVV units had no communication with each other, yet they had a common oath:
As a faithful son of my Homeland, I enter the ranks of the Ukrainian Liberation Army and solemnly swear that I will fight honestly for the good of my people against Bolshevism. In this fight, that will occur on the side of the German and Axis armies against the common enemy, I swear loyalty to Adolf Hitler as the leader and Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Armies. For the fulfilment of this oath I am ready at any time to give my life.[lxxxviii]
In October 1944 the UVV numbers reached 190,000 men.[lxxxix] The lack of desire of the German authorities to give real power to the UVV led to many desertions. In March 1943 about four thousand Ukrainian soldiers from Schuma joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA).[xc] The UVV leadership had close links with the UPA; partly because of this, in January 1944 the UVV staff was disbanded.[xci]
Waffen SS ‘Galicia’[xcii]
Another opportunity to form a separate Ukrainian formation came after the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943. The head of the Civil Administration in the Krakow and Galicia districts in Generalgouvernement, Otto Gustav Wächter, was authorised in March 1943 to form a Ukrainian division within the Waffen SS. The title ‘Galicia’ was chosen in order to limit any Ukrainian nationalist feelings that the recruits might have had. This did not prevent 80,000 volunteers from seeking to enlist. Out of these, 13,000 reported for duty.[xciii] By the end of 1943 General Fritz Freitag was nominated as the Division’s commander, with Major Wolf-Dietrich Heike as the Chief-of-Staff. There were two Ukrainian officers that attained the rank of major: Ievhen Pobihushchyi, formerly of Organization Roland, and Mykola Paliienko. ‘Galicia’ became one of over thirty Waffen SS divisions formed after 1941.[xciv]
The Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ entered combat as a division in July 1944 in what has become known as the Battle of Brody, where it suffered great losses. It had to be reformed from around 3,000 survivors, reserve personnel and recruits from other military formations. Once reformed, the ‘Galicia’ participated in anti-partisan operations in Slovakia and Slovenia.[xcv] Thus, as Snyder points out, ‘Ukrainian nationalists hoping to build a Ukrainian state left their own country at the orders of foreigners to suppress the analogous strivings of others.’[xcvi] The division then fought the Red Army on the Austro-Slovenian border before surrendering to the Western Allies in May 1945.[xcvii]
Hitler’s view of the ‘Galicia’ Division was recorded during the night of 23-24 March 1945: ‘[a]t the moment I can’t even create new formations in Germany because I have no weapons. Therefore it is idiocy to give weapons to a Ukrainian division which is not completely reliable.’[xcviii] Hitler explained why, in his opinion, the unit could not be trusted, (and here the legacy of the First World War is evident once again):
If it is composed of Austrian Ruthenians, one can do nothing other than immediately to take away their weapons. The Austrian Ruthenians were pacifist. They were lambs, not wolves. They were miserable even in the Austrian Army.[xcix]
This confusion as to the exact origin and national identity of the Ukrainians in German uniforms proved to be critical in the eventual civilianization of the ‘Galicia’ division men.[c] Their statelessness was crucial in both driving them to form a Ukrainian army, and preventing such an army from being formed other than within another state’s armed forces.
Shortly before its surrender, the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ came closest to fulfilling the desire of the Ukrainian nationalists who wanted to set up a Ukrainian army and use a formation of the German Armed Forces as a nucleus for that army. In the spring of 1945 the Nazi leadership took the most radical step in relation to Ukrainians. ‘On 12 March the formation of the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) within the German Armed Forces was announced.’[ci] General Pavlo Shandruk, Lieutenant-General of the former UNR Army, was appointed as Commander in Chief of the UNA. Shandruk symbolically re-organized the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ into the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army (1st UD UNA).
The 2nd division of the UNA started to be formed in early 1945. The division consisted of former UNR Army soldiers and officers, as well as former Red Army soldiers and members of Schuma and other units. One of its brigades was the anti-tank brigade ‘Free Ukraine’, officially known as Panzerjäger Brigade Freie Ukraine. Dereiko estimates that the brigade consisted of over 1,800 persons.[cii] Simultaneously, an infantry brigade, commanded by the former chief of the Lemberg (L’viv) district Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian auxiliary police) Volodymyr Pitulei, was being formed. By early April 1945 the brigade consisted of 3,400 persons. [ciii] The main difference between the units of the 2nd UD UNA and all other German formations comprised of Ukrainians was that the 2nd UD’s commanders were Ukrainian rather than German. Out of the estimated 250,000 Ukrainians which scattered across numerous Eastern Troops towards the end of the war, 38,000 joined Shandruk’s UNA.[civ] Thus, as Snyder puts it, the ‘Galicia’ Division eventually became ‘an institutional embodiment of Ukrainian goals.’[cv]
Ukrainian Youth and ‘Wild’ Mobilisation
While the older generation were of much importance to the formation of the initial Ukrainian units, towards the end of the war, the German command also started recruiting the Ukrainian youth, with the plan to transfer them to the ‘Galicia’ division as officers once they reach the age of eighteen. Available estimates suggest that 6,547 boys and 1,121 girls from Galicia were recruited, but some scholars suggest that their numbers were higher.[cvi] Volodymyr Salamakha, who with his brother, Bohdan, joined the German Armed Forces as young men, remembers:
In June 1944 I was not even 15 and my brother Bohdan was 17. UPA did not want to recruit us because we were too young. On 26 April 1944 we left L’viv to be trained in Czechoslovakia. Among the youth there were Ukrainians from Galicia, eastern Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, young men from the Baltic States.[cvii]
The drive to train the youngsters was increasing with the losses of the German army. Another solution to the shortage of military personnel was ‘wild’ mobilisation. During 1944 more and more Ukrainians were recruited into German units; many of them were drafted under duress. Evidence of ‘wild mobilisation’ of Ukrainian men, similar to that described by the fictional Selepko Lavochka, can be found in memoirs as well as the documents produced by the UPA:
I am writing to inform you that since the start of May [1944] in the zone near the frontline the Germans have started to capture men in villages and forcefully take them to the German Army. These people-traps have taken place in a number of regions […]. The captured men are herded into one place where brief individual protocols are made, stating where the man was born, where he resides, what he does for a living. Once the protocol is made the captured man is offered a chance to join a German SS unit, and if he refuses he is threatened with being taken to ‘Arbeitsabteilung’, to the front line to dig trenches, and so people are forced to join the SS.[cviii]
Those who were mobilized forcefully towards the end of the war without even the façade of ‘volunteering’ were not always able to join the units comprised of Ukrainians. There were some who ended up in the 30th Grenadier Division Russian No 1, 1st Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 2nd Das Reich, 3rd Totenkopf, 5th Wiking, 9th Hohenstaufen, 10th Frundsberg, 12th Hitler Jugend, 18th Horst Wessel, 22nd Volunteer Cavalry Maria Theresia, 29th Grenadier Division and 31st Grenadier Division Wallonien.[cix]
Conclusions
The path to the German Armed Forces differed radically for many Ukrainians. There are nevertheless certain patterns of recruitment, which this paper has tried to detail. Analysis of the wider circumstances that facilitated the employment of supposedly racially inferior people into the many parts of the German army and the varied motivations that drove Ukrainians from all parts of contemporary Ukraine to serve on the side of the German Reich is vital both for the deeper understanding of the specificities of the Ukrainian case as well as the larger issue of collaboration of the local population on the occupied territories.
This paper is only able to offer an overview of the participation of Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces. The subject requires a more detailed research. Being highly controversial, the issue of Ukrainian participation in the German Armed Forces often attracts those who seek to condemn these people as war criminals as well as those who justify them as Ukrainian patriots fighting for independence. The most unfortunate consequence of this dichotomous discussion is that basic information about the role of the Ukrainian population during the Second World War gets distorted, and this distortion is reproduced and popularised by the media and individuals with set political agendas. The consideration of the wide variety of motivations for serving on the side of the Reich immediately complicates the habitually simplified traitor/hero dichotomy. For instance, the choice of the Red Army soldiers to fight on the side of the Reich was usually based on their wish to save their lives. At the same time, this does not suggest that all of them lacked ideological persuasion to fight against the USSR. As noted by Bihl, ‘the call for a “struggle against Bolshevism,” and the belief that National Socialism was a lesser evil than communism or Stalinism, led many Slavs to apply to join the armed forces of the German Reich, despite their experience of German occupation and German treatment of prisoners of war.’[cx] Ukrainian nationalist volunteers were frequently driven by the nationalist idea of state building, which for many involved the desire to create an ethnically pure state, hence the support some of them had for Nazi antisemitic policies. Some joined because of the potential career prospects within a regular army, and others because they wanted to provide relative security for their families, whom they had left in German-occupied villages and cities. Many were mobilised forcefully.
The level of knowledge on the range and complexity of the different kinds of participation of Ukrainians and other non-Germans, especially those from eastern Europe, in the German Armed Forces continues to suffer from a lack of open debate. Discussing the present-day consequences of the distortion of the controversial history of the Second World War in Ukraine, Marco Carynnyk explains that the ideals and collective understanding of the ‘other’ held by parts of Ukrainian society during the war ‘continue to rule in the era of integration and social pragmatism. Hence the emergence of desire for heroisation or stigmatization where simply a sober assessment and unbiased truth is needed.’[cxi] It is only through such an assessment of the circumstances in which these ‘ordinary’ men joined the ranks of the German Armed Forces that we will be able to better understand why the Reich found its supporters among those it branded as racially inferior.
-----------------------
* I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. An early draft of this paper was presented at a conference organised by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Initiative in partnership with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Potsdam) 27-30 June 2011.
[i] Iurii Tys-Krokhmal’uk, Shchodennyk natsional’noho heroia Selepka Lavochky (Buenos Aires, 1954), , paragraphs 1-2. Accessed 2 January 2015. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
[ii] Tys-Krokhmal’uk, Shchodennyk natsional’noho heroia.
[iii] See Wolfdieter Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich: the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS’ in Hans-Joachim Torke and John-Paul Himka (eds), German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective (Edmonton, 1994), pp. 138-162 (138).
[iv] In Hans Werner Neulen, An deutscher Seite: Internationale Freiwillige von Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS (Munich, 1985), cited in Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p. 138.
[v] Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia v zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny (1939-1945) (L’viv, 2003), p. 583.
[vi] Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, ‘Ukraintsi, rosiiany i poliaky u Zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny u 1939-1945 rokakh: porivnial’nyi analiz’, in Mykola Lytvyn (ed), Ukraina–Pol’shcha: istorychna spadshchyna i suspil’na svidomist’ (L’viv, 2012), pp. 71-91 (84-7).
[vii] This figure refers to those recruits who came from Upper Silesia (Górny Śląsk). See Ryszard Kaczmarek, ‘Niemiecka polityka narodowościowa na Górnym Śląsku (1939–1945), Pamięć i sprawiedliwość. Pismo Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, (2004) 2 (6), pp. 115-38. For a detailed analysis of Polish participation in the Wehrmacht see Ryszard Kaczmarek, Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Kraków, 2010).
[viii] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 583. See also Bolianovs’kyi, ‘Ukraintsi, rosiiany i poliaky’, pp. 84-7.
[ix] Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men (London, 1998).
[x] Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44 (New York, 2003), p. 102.
[xi] Taras Hunczak, ‘OUN-German Relations, 1941-5’ in Torke and Himka, German-Ukrainian Relations, pp. 178-86 (178).
[xii] Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia: The Ukrainian police and the Holocaust’, East European Jewish Affairs, 34:2 (2004), pp. 95-118, (96).
[xiii] Ibid, p. 97.
[xiv] Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London, 2010), p. 190.
[xv] Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine. Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford, 2007), p. 67.
[xvi] Ibid. See also Torke and Himka (eds), German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective, especially chapters by Andreas Kappeler, ‘Ukrainians and Germans in Southern Ukraine, 1870s to 1914’, pp. 45-68, and Jaroslav Pelenski, ‘Hetman Skoropadsky and Germany (1917-18) as Reflected in His Memoirs’, pp. 69-83.
[xvii] See Taras Hunchak [Hunczak], Ukraina. Persha polovyna XX stolittia (Kyiv, 1993), pp. 98-111. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists was a political activist organisation that often employed terrorist techniques in order to make its voice heard in eastern Poland. It gained a monopoly on the nationalist political scene in eastern Galicia (now western Ukraine) in the 1930s-50s. See Oleksandr Zaitsev, Ukrains’kyi integral’nyi natsionlalizm (1920-1930 roky). Narysy intelektual'noi istorii (Kyiv, 2013).
[xviii] See Timothy Snyder, ‘Galicia and Volhynia at the Margin (1914-1939)’, in The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, (Yale, 2003), pp. 133-53.
[xix] See Anatolii Kentii, Zbroinyi chyn ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv. 1920-1956. Vol. 1 (Kyiv, 2005).
[xx] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 143. The ideology of the OUN has been described as that of Ukrainian integral nationalism, influenced by Dmytro Dontsov’s concept of the ‘nationalism of the deed’ (chynnyi natsionalism). See Zaitsev, Ukrains'kyi integral'nyi natsionlalizm.
[xxi] See Hiroaki Kuromiya, ‘The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered’, Europe- Asia Studies, 60:4 (2008), pp. 663-675; and David R Marples, ‘The Famine of 1932 – 1933’ in Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest, 2007) pp. 35-78.
[xxii] See Zaitsev, Ukrains’kyi integral’nyi natsionlalizm, pp. 241-59.
[xxiii] Teodor Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’ zakatovanym Druziam Zemliakam. V 20-tu richnytsiu trahedii sela Malnova. 1940-1960. (1960), p. 9, (author’s private archive).
[xxiv] Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’, pp. 21-2.
[xxv] Timothy Snyder, ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Western Ukraine (1939-1945)’, in The Reconstruction of Nations, pp. 154-78 (160).
[xxvi] Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’, p. 11.
[xxvii] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 158.
[xxviii] Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 99.
[xxix] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 158.
[xxx] Iaroslav Hrytsak, ‘Svoiu dol’u dyviziinyky ne vybyraly...’, Visti Kombatanta 3 (2007), pp. 63-65 (64).
[xxxi] Frank Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian Relations in Galicia’, in Ray Brandon, and Wendy Lower (eds), The Shoah in Ukraine. History, Testimony, Memorialization (Bloomington, IN, 2008), pp. 114-55 (121).
[xxxii] See John Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism (New York, 1963), p. 42 and Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p. 139.
[xxxiii] See Mykola Vehesh, Velych i trahediia Karpats’koіi Ukraіiny, (Uzhhorod, 2007).
[xxxiv] Werkschutz was formed in the Generalgouvernement in October 1939. It consisted of a number of local Ukrainians, mostly former residents of the Carpathian region, Galicia and Volhynia. In spring 1940 the unit had almost 1,000 members, half of them OUN supporters. See Klymyshyn, U pokhodi do voli. Spomyny (Detroit, 1984). Snyder points out that many of the Hilfspolizei men had served as militiamen under the Soviet regime since 1939. See Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 159. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei are described by Finder and Prusin as ‘the institutional epicentre of Ukrainian collusion with the Nazis’. See Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 96.
[xxxv] George H. Stein, Hitler’s Elite Guard at War. The Waffen SS. 1939-1945 (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 185-6.
[xxxvi] Bolianovs’kyi states that Canaris ‘personally knew and valued’ Konovalets. See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 23.
[xxxvii] Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction (New York, 1980), p. 179.
[xxxviii] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 143.
[xxxix] Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), p. 38.
[xl] See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 570.
[xli] Taras Hunczak, ‘OUN-German Relations, 1941-5’ in Torke and Himka, German-Ukrainian Relations, pp. 178-86 (178).
[xlii] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 51.
[xliii] See Ivan Patryliak, Lehiony Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv (1941-1942): Istoriia vynyknennia ta diial’nist’, (Kyiv, 1999).
[xliv] Myroslav Kal’ba, Nakhtigal’ v zapytanniakh i vidpovidiakh (L’viv, 2008), p. 19.
[xlv] See Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p.140 and Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 58.
[xlvi] Shukhevych’s brother was among those executed. See Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p.140.
[xlvii] Snyder also points out that those who perceived the German invasion as a lesser evil included the Jewish population of the region: ‘in summer 1941 some Jews imagined that German rule could be no worse than Soviet. It is possible that Soviet deportations had, proportionally, touched Jews more than anyone else’. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 157. Finder and Prusin state that ‘[a]mong Polish citizens deported into the interior of the Soviet Union, 30 per cent were Jews, even though Jews constituted only 10 per cent of the population of Soviet-occupied south-eastern Poland’. Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 99.
[xlviii] Snyder, Bloodlands, pp. 195-6.
[xlix] Among others see John-Paul Himka, ‘Be Wary of Faulty Nachtigall Lessons’, Kyiv Post, 27 March 2008. For an opposing view see Sol Littman, Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion, The Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Division (London, 2003), p. 30. It is often assumed that those Ukrainians who were among the perpetrators of the pogrom in L’viv as well as in other parts of western Ukraine were the so-called riffraff (shumovynnia). However, in his research of Ukrainian participation in the implementation of the Holocaust, John-Paul Himka argues that ‘these were not simple thugs, but members of the militia organized by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists’. See John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust. Divergent Memories (Saskatoon, 2009), p. 21. See also Lower, ‘Making Genocide Possible’, in Nazi Empire-Building, pp. 69-97.
[l] See Ivan Dereiko, ‘Ukrains’ki dopomizhni voienizovani formuvannia nimets’koii armii i politsii v heneral’nii okruzi Kyiv u 1941-43 rr.’, in Natalia Makovs’ka (ed), Arkhivy okupatsii 1941-1944, Vol. 1 (Kyiv, 2006), pp. 796-804 (797).
[li] See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 41-74.
[lii] See Ivan Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia nimets’koi armii ta politsii u raikhskomisariati ‘Ukraina’ (1941-1944 roky) (Kyiv, 2012). pp. 21-22.
[liii] Ibid., p. 25.
[liv] Bolianovs’kyi gives a very detailed account of Puma’s activities in Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 74-87.
[lv] Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair. Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 1-6.
[lvi] In Ibid., p. 37.
[lvii] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 573.
[lviii] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 35.
[lix] Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 91.
[lx] Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 175.
[lxi] Ibid.
[lxii] Browning, Ordinary Men, p. 52.
[lxiii] Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 107.
[lxiv] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 122.
[lxv] Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 107.
[lxvi] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, pp. 49-50.
[lxvii] Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 90.
[lxviii] Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 104. It is estimated that in eastern Galicia alone by July 1943 there were 4,047 NCOs/rank-and-file and 86 officers in the Ukrainian police. See DALO, f. P-58, o. 1, spr. 30, ark. 11 in Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 106. The estimates for Reichskommissariat Ukraine in 1942-1943 suggest that there were 15,665 Ukrainian Schutzpolizei and 55,094 Ukrainian Gendarmes. See Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p. 141.
[lxix] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 574.
[lxx] While this issue requires further investigation, a number of scholars have pointed out the likelihood of the Schuma 201’s involvement not only in fighting the Soviet partisans but also in murdering Jews and Belarusians while they were stationed in Belarus in February 1942. See Marples, Heroes and villains; John-Paul Himka, ‘True and False Lessons’; Per Anders Rudling, ‘Szkolenie w mordowaniu: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i Hauptmann Roman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku’, in Bogusław Paź (ed), Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych: Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach południowej-wschodniej Polski w latach 1939-1946 (Wrocław, 2011), pp. 191-212.
[lxxi] Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 101.
[lxxii] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 64.
[lxxiii] Ibid., p. 65.
[lxxiv] Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 137.
[lxxv] In Ibid., p. 137.
[lxxvi] See John-Paul Himka, ‘The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Ukraine’, in John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic (eds), Bringing the Dark Past to Light (Lincoln, NE, 2013), pp. 626-62 (629-30). See also See Taras Kurylo and Ivan Khymka [John-Paul Himka], ‘Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv? Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra V’iatrovycha’, Ukraina Moderna 13 (2008), pp. 252-65; and Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, ‘The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets’ko’s 1941 Zhyttiepys’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3/4 (1999), pp. 149-184.
[lxxvii] Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 96.
[lxxviii] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 162.
[lxxix] Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, p. 101.
[lxxx] Ibid.
[lxxxi] Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 138.
[lxxxii] Ibid., p. 131.
[lxxxiii] Ibid., p. 136.
[lxxxiv] Report by Dovbak, 22 May 1944. Halyzevyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bezpeky Ukrainy (HDA SBU), – F. 13. – Spr. 376. – T. 28. - Ark. 86.
[lxxxv] Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, p. 30.
[lxxxvi] The name of the Ukrainian Liberation Army mirrored that of the Russian Liberation Army (Russkaia Osvoboditel’naia Armiia, ROA) led by General Vlasov. ROA also encouraged Ukrainians to join its ranks, promising to support a formation of a sovereign Ukraine ‘once the victory over Bolshevism has been achieved’. See Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, pp. 51-2.
[lxxxvii] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 576-7.
[lxxxviii] In Ibid., p. 577.
[lxxxix] Some units of the UVV were sent to Belgium or Denmark and performed guard duties. Some were sent to France to fight the French Resistance. Two Ukrainian battalions joined the French. See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 583-4.
[xc] UPA was the largest Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary resistance group during the Second World War. It was established by the OUN-B. Former Captain of Nachtigall and Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 201, Roman Shukhevych, became Commander-in-Chief of the UPA. For a variety of views on the activities of the UPA see Ivan Patryliak, Peremoha abo smert’. Ukrains’kyi vyzvol’nyi rukh u 1939-1960 rr. (L’viv, 2012); Grzegorz Motyka, Od rzezi wołyńskiej do akcji ‘Wisła’. Konflikt polsko-ukraiński 1943–1947 (Kraków, 2011) and Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960 (Warszawa, 2006); Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi, Orhanizatsiia ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv i Ukrains’ka povstans’ka armiia (Kyiv, 2005).
[xci] Apart from the units of the UVV, Ukrainians could also be found in Croatian, Cossack (Helmut von Pannwitz Cossack Division, Kuban Cossack Army, Don Cossack Army) Russian and other formation cooperating with the German army. Ukrainians also served in the 369th Croatian Regiment and as part of this regiment participated in the attack on Stalingrad. See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 578-9.
[xcii] The ‘Galicia’ Division underwent a number of name changes. The names most often used are 14. Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) and 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (ukrainische Nr. 1). See Wolf-Dietrich Heike, Sie Wollten Die Freiheit. Die Geschichte der Ukrainischen Division 1943–1945 (Dorheim, 1973).
[xciii] See ‘Report on Recruitment’ in Michael James Melnyk, To Battle. The Formation and History of the 14th Galician Waffen-SS Division (Solihull, 2002), p. 325.
[xciv] The Waffen SS also contained Belgian, French, Danish, Norwegian, Albanian, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Estonian, Latvian, Russian and other non-German divisions. See Marc J. Rikmenspoel, Waffen-SS Encyclopaedia (Bedford, PA, 2004).
[xcv] See Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 149-95 and Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’. Istoria (L’viv, 2000), pp. 270-81.
[xcvi] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 166.
[xcvii] For more information on the division’s military engagements, see Melnyk, To Battle, Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’ and Heike, Sie Wollten Die Freiheit. Since the end of the Second World War the ‘Galicia’ men have been accused of having participated in war crimes such as the destruction of the village of Huta Pieniacka. In 1986, the Deschênes Commission in Canada, where many of the former members of the division settled after the war, cleared the Division of participation in war crimes. However, while the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ as a division might not have participated in war crimes, there is a high probability of individual war criminals’ presence in the ranks of the division. For information on the war crimes allegations and the post-war screenings of the ‘Galicia’ division see Olesya Khromeychuk, ‘War Crime Allegations and Investigations’ in ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS 'Galicia' Division (Oxford, 2013), pp. 61-90.
[xcviii] ‘Abendlage von 23. Marz 1945 in Berlin (Fuhrerwohnung)’, Hitlers Lagebesprechungen, in George Stein, The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945 (Ithaca NY, 1984), pp. 194-6.
[xcix] In Ibid., p. 195.
[c] See Khromeychuk, ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians, pp. 91-146
[ci] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 107. The Ukrainian National Army (UNA) and the Ukrainian Liberation Army (UVV) were different entities.
[cii] Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 107.
[ciii] Ibid., p. 108.
[civ] Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 587.
[cv] Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 166.
[cvi] See Michael Paziuk, Victim of Circumstance, (Wrexham, 1993). P. Pilkiv, ‘Ukrainian Youths in the Division’, Visti Kombatanta, 2 (1995) and Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 584.
[cvii] Volodymyr Salamakha, ‘Spomyny brativ Volodymyra i Bohdana Salamakhiv iz sluzhby v iunakakh protypovitrianoi oborony’, Visti Kombatanta 2 (2007), p. 85.
[cviii] Report by Dovbak, 22 May 1944. HDA SBU, F. 13, Spr. 376, T. 28, Ark. 86. See also Mykhailo Roman Hrycyszyn, God Save Me from My Friends, and from My Enemies, I'll Save Myself Alone: A Ukrainian Memoir (New Cambridge, 2011).
[cix] See Ievstakhii Len’ko, Piat’ rokiv u riadakh Vermakhtu (Ternopil’, 1999); and Ievstakhii Zahachevs’kyi, Spohady frontovyka (Munich, 1952).
[cx] Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the Armed Forces of the Reich’, p. 138.
[cxi] In Dmitrii Rybakov, ‘Marko Tsarynnyk [Marco Carynnyk]: Istorychna napivpravda hirsha za odvertu brekhniu’, lb.ua (5 November 2009), , paragraph 23 of 24. Accessed 8 January 2015.
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