The myth of the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists against Hitler
Nazi propaganda poster in Ukrainian with the inscription "Hitler the Liberator"
Ukrainian state
On June 30, 1941, German troops occupied Lvov. On the same day in the evening, on behalf of the hastily assembled Legislative Assembly, Bandera's closest associate Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed the "Act of the Proclamation of the Ukrainian State." A new Ukrainian state was created "on the mother Ukrainian lands." The leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) hoped that the Ukrainian state would receive the same status as Tiso's Slovakia or Pavelic's Croatia, and together with the Third Reich would "establish a new order around the world." The Bandera leadership was supported by the well-known ideologist of Ukrainianism, Metropolitan of Galicia Andrey Shcheptytsky.
OUN members in a number of district and regional centers of western Ukraine began to form government bodies and the police. On July 3, Stetsko sent letters of welcome to Hitler, Mussolini, Horthy, Mannerheim and other leaders of the new Europe. The Germans were stunned by such a quickness of their mercenaries, but quickly came to their senses and dispersed the self-proclaimed government. The Nazi leadership was not going to create an "independent Ukraine", Berlin planned to make the Ukrainian SSR part of the "eternal Reich".
Bandera and Stetsko were taken under house arrest, and then completely deprived of their liberty. Later, the nationalists will claim that they were victims of the Nazis. In fact, the leaders of the OUN were in very good conditions in the central Berlin prison Alexanderplatz, then transferred to a special corps on the territory of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where prominent political figures (for example, former Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg) were already staying.
"Honorary prisoners" could receive packages from relatives, friends, help from the Red Cross. Bandera received assistance from his organization, including money. Ukrainian leaders were free to move around the camp and communicate with each other. Compared to ordinary concentration camp prisoners, they were in a resort. The Germans even allowed OUN leaders to leave the camp for secret meetings with liaisons in order to maintain control over the organization.
After the arrest of Bandera, the duties of the "Guide", that is, the head of the OUN, began to be performed by the head of the security service, Nikolai Lebed. After the collapse of the USSR, the heirs of Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalists, created a myth that the OUN allegedly fought against Hitler and Stalin, becoming the basis of the Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance movement. But in fact, the OUN and other nationalists did not even try to fight the Nazis. In general, the emergence of Ukrainian gangs was associated with the policy of the Third Reich in western Ukraine.
First Deputy Head of the OUN(b) S. Bandera, in July 1941 - Chairman of the Ukrainian State Board Yaroslav Stetsko (1912–1986)
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Even before the war, the leadership of the Reich decided not to create puppet state formations on the territory of the USSR in general and the Ukrainian SSR in particular. In August 1941, the Fuhrer decided to divide the territory of the Ukrainian SSR into several parts. In particular, on the Right Bank, Volhynia and Polissya, parts of the Poltava and Kharkov regions created the Reichskommissariat Ukraine with its capital in Rivne. Eric Koch became the ruler of "Ukraine". Formally, the Reichskommissariat was subordinate to the Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories of A. Rosenberg. But in fact, Koch managed his possessions, not submitting to the department of Rosenberg.
The Reichskommissariat was divided into general districts (some were only planned to be created) headed by general commissars. The local administration consisted of district councils and village elders. The Ukrainian auxiliary police were subordinate to the German police and the German occupation authorities. The policy in the Reichskommissariat was based on the principles of the Eastern policy of the Reich. In particular, Hitler in December 1941 proposed to "cleanse" the Crimea and Southern Ukraine from "undesirable nationalities" that were to be destroyed. These lands were to be mastered by the German colonists, and they were part of the German Empire.
Local residents (Russians and Russian-Ukrainians) were treated as "subhuman". In 1943, Erich Koch spoke of his mission:
"We are masters of our craft, and we must remember that the most insignificant German worker is a thousand times more valuable than the local population in racial and biological terms."
Part of the inhabitants of Ukraine was subject to physical liquidation, part of the deportation to the eastern regions of the USSR with the prospect of death from hunger, disease and cold. Some were planned to be Germanized, de facto turned into slaves by German masters, colonists, and taken to work in Germany. The destruction of "subhumans" was carried out not only by direct methods (concentration camps, executions, gallows, etc.), but also by indirect ones. With the help of restricting access to medical services, food supply of cities, the most severe exploitation of workers, mass executions and punishments. During the occupation, a third of the population of the Reichskommissariat was destroyed.
To facilitate the process of colonization and future Germanization of the "Ukraine", the Nazis carried out a partial Ukrainization of the occupied territories of the Ukrainian SSR. In particular, the Ukrainian language was recognized as official, Russian was persecuted, it was forced out of the press, institutions and education; the monetary unit of the Reichskommissariat was introduced - karbovanets; and also the Ukrainian auxiliary police was created, etc.
The entire territory of the Ukrainian SSR and the RSFSR, captured by the Germans and located east of the Reichskommissariat, was under the control of the Wehrmacht. Galicia became part of the General Government, created in 1939 in the occupied Polish territories. Bukovina and part of the Odessa and Nikolaev regions up to the Dnieper-Bug estuary were transferred to Romania. Romania included these areas in its kingdom under the name of the Governorate of Transnistria. The capital of Transnistria was in Odessa.
Thus, the Germans had several parallel powers in Ukraine. The civil and military structures of the Reich still competed with each other, pursued their own policy in the occupied lands. So, the Abwehr armed Bandera, and the civil administration tried to disarm them. As a result, a conflict occurred, which the current independentists portrayed as a "war with Hitler."
100 karbovanets 1942. Front side
Bandera power
The areas of action of Bandera were mainly in the territories that were included in the Ukrainian SSR in 1939 as a result of the Polish campaign of the Red Army. In other regions of Ukraine, they were almost non-existent at that time.
The Germans simply could not physically control the vast occupied lands of the General Government (Galicia) and the Reichskommissariat. The main formations of the Wehrmacht were connected by battles at the front. Therefore, in rural areas for tens of kilometers there could not be a single German soldier or SS man. Polish power in the areas annexed to the USSR in 1939 was eradicated, and the Soviet one had not yet had time to establish itself. Therefore, after the evacuation of the Soviet authorities, the withdrawal of the Red Army and the arrival of the Germans in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, a period of anarchy began. This allowed Ukrainian nationalists and their supporters to emerge from the underground they had been in in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, Bandera enjoyed the support of a part of the local population opposed to the Poles and Jews.
As a result, Ukrainian nationalists began to control large areas of western Ukraine, especially in rural areas. In the village they created their own totalitarian statehood. They had a rigid planning system. In the villages, a task was given in advance, who and what should grow, prepare and hand over. The entire economic service in the village was led by the gospodarchiy. In the role of the head of the collective farm was the stanitsa, who was in charge of all affairs. Everything harvested was brought to well-prepared and disguised forest caches. All material resources were strictly accounted for, records were kept of receipts and expenditures.
At the village-village level there was a swarm (platoon). His supply was handled by the stanitsa. The population was divided into two parts - female and male. Each part had its own gospodarchy and stanitsa. Women were engaged in washing, sewing and repairing clothes, caring for the wounded. Political workers of the OUN were engaged in the education of the population, separately for men, women, boys and girls. Uniate priests also participated in the ideological work, who said in their sermons that one must obey their defenders, since they bring them freedom and the right to land.
The next level of organization of the OUN-UPA was the village, an association of three villages. The stanitsa was led by the stanitsa, who was in charge of the accommodation, billeting and supply of hundreds (100-150 fighters), and the gospodarchiy, who was in charge of economic activities. In each village there was already a cell of the security service (SB) of 10-15 people. The security service was carefully concealed, in appearance its members did not differ from the local residents. At the level of the subdistrict and district in the UPA, kosh and kuren were kept - battalions and regiments numbering from 300 to 2 thousand people.
Terrorists
The power of the OUN was based on the most severe terror. The slightest disobedience was followed by the brutal murder of a disobedient, often members of his family (mutual responsibility).
Bandera gangs were well armed. Part weapons been hidden since the days of the Civil War. A lot of weapons and equipment remained and were captured from the Polish army that fled in 1939. The Red Army, retreating under the onslaught of the Wehrmacht, also left a large amount of weapons and ammunition in the countryside. In some places, warehouses and arsenals have survived in the locations of military units. Echo of war. This weapon would be enough to equip several divisions. In addition, the Germans themselves formed police battalions of nationalists, some fled to the OUN together with their weapons.
At first, the OUN was mainly engaged in the formation, supply, training and preparation of their detachments. Of course, there were some skirmishes between the OUN-UPA militants and the Germans. But there was no serious systematic "fight against the invaders".
For example, Soviet partisans on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR waged a real fight against the Nazis. Since the autumn of 1941, a detachment of A. Fedorov operated in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, which destroyed about 1 thousand enemies, hundreds of pieces of equipment, 5 echelons with manpower and equipment, etc. before winter. S. Kovpak’s detachment was active in the same area and S. Rudnev. A partisan detachment of A. Saburov operated at the junction of Chernihiv, Sumy and Oryol regions. During the first half of 1942, Saburov's partisans destroyed 1,5 thousand Nazis, defeated 32 echelons, blew up 32 bridges, etc.
Our partisans also actively fought in Kiev, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Rivne and other regions of the Ukrainian SSR. As of May 1, 1942, the Soviet command had information about 766 partisan detachments in Ukraine, numbering over 26 thousand fighters and 613 sabotage and fighter groups. The partisans during the first half of 1942 destroyed more than 30 thousand Nazis and their accomplices, defeated 13 enemy garrisons, several headquarters, derailed 85 echelons, etc. In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Ukrainian SSR partisans defeated 35 enemy garrisons, headquarters, commandant's offices , police stations, derailed 158 echelons, etc. With their actions, the partisans fettered German troops with a total number of up to 120 thousand people.
"National heroes" of independent Ukraine
And what did the “fighters for Vilna Ukraine” do? They performed the most vile deeds for the Nazi occupiers. So, the first executions in Babi Yar began even before September 29, the first victims were captured officers and political workers of the Southwestern Front, whom the German command, enraged by unexpectedly large losses near Kyiv, ordered to be destroyed as carriers of enemy ideology. The executions were carried out by Pyotr Voinovsky's Bukovinian hut, which consisted of OUN members. And in the "independent Ukraine" they are now considered "national heroes."
A few days later, the Ukrainian Nazis began the extermination of the Jewish population of Kyiv. They were killed by Bukovinians dressed in SS uniforms, who were given help from the Kyiv hut of Peter Zakhvalynsky, formed from the same “ideologically reliable” personnel, who became the commandant of the Kiev police.
Babi Yar during the years of occupation became the main place of executions in Ukraine, and Ukrainian nationalists (Shutsmans) played the main role in this terrible deed. For exemplary work, the Bukovinian and Kyiv Kureni were transformed into the 115th and 118th SS police battalions. The 118th battalion later became famous for the destruction of the Belarusian Khatyn, which, together with Babi Yar, became a tragic symbol of the crimes of the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. There was a lot of menial work, so the Germans formed a number of SS police battalions from the Ukrainian Nazis.
By the end of 1942, the OUN-UPA gangs had become stronger in western Ukraine and moved on to ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and Galicia. First, the Russians and the pro-Soviet element, who came from the eastern part of the Ukrainian SSR and the RSFSR, were killed. Then they thoroughly set about Jews and Poles (the first pogroms and a wave of murders took place at the very beginning of the war). Mixed families were also destroyed. As a result, 80 Poles were slaughtered in Volhynia alone.
So, in the spring of 1943, 2 thousand people were killed in Dubno, Rovno, Lutsk, Zdolbunovsky, Kremenets districts and in Polesie. On July 11, 1943, Bandera detachments, with the help of local residents, blocked and attacked 167 settlements at the same time. The massacre began. Poles were shot, chopped with axes, stabbed with pitchforks and knives. Those who tried to fight back in their homes and churches were burned alive. In July-August alone, 17 thousand people were massacred. They attacked individuals and small groups, small settlements and large settlements. In the latter case, whole operations were carried out.
They attacked suddenly, often at dawn and at night, when all the inhabitants were at home. First, the village or town was surrounded, those who tried to escape were shot. Those who remained were herded into barns or schools, where they were killed. It came to torture, atrocities, murders with particular cruelty, when the victims were put on a stake or sawed up with saws. The Poles, trying to escape, fled to large settlements, creating self-defense units there, or hiding in forests and swamps. It happened that they turned to the Germans with requests for protection. The Nazis, taking advantage of the helpless position of the Polish population, drove the able-bodied and young to work in Germany.
Thus, the OUN-UPA militants did not fight the German invaders, but together with them they destroyed everyone who resisted, exterminated "subhumans", and the Ukrainian Nazis also "cleansed" the country from Russians, Poles and Jews. And these murderers, terrorists and bandits were made heroes in the current "independent Ukraine".
Fighters of one of the bandit formations of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on a halt
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