16_Between Hitler and Stalin

This is the sixteenth #generalhistory note, following 15_Interwar Years.
Disclaimer: This is not a comprehensive overview of the Second World War. While it will reference broader developments within the war, its primary focus is on how the conflict affected Ukraine and its people. As such, some general statements—such as "In the early years of the war, the ruling dynasties and imperial power appeared to be gaining support."—are presented in a simplified and declarative manner to serve as context for analyzing Ukrainian-specific developments.

Lebensraum vs Socialist Fortress

• Hitler and Joseph Stalin had different visions for Ukraine:
  • Stalin's vision was laid out in the last document and amounted to Ukraine becoming a model republic of the Soviet Empire. He needed Ukrainian soil and agriculture to create a blossoming Socialist Utopia.
  • Hitler laid out his vision in Mein Kampf. The gist of it was that Germany needed to provide the Aryan race with Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe to fight the Jewish cabal's takeover of the world. For that, he needed to wipe out the existing population and settle the fertile land with German colonists. Ukraine was a prime target due to its reputation as a breadbasket and its high concentration of Jews.
• Both were prepared to use force to achieve their ends, and their clash would heavily impact Ukraine. Between 1939-1945, it would lose 7 million citizens (1 million of them Jewish). Only Belarus and Poland would incur higher proportional losses.

Molotov-Ribbentrop

• World War II began with a German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. Hitler and Stalin agreed on the partition of Poland based on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
• Stalin delayed Soviet entry into the war, as he was concerned by the British and French response, as well as his ongoing conflict with Japan over Mongolia.
• This prompted Hitler to threaten the deployment of the Ukrainian card, announcing that Germany would have no choice but to establish new states in the territories designated for the Soviets.
• Stalin obviously wanted to prevent that and sent his forces into the territory under the pretext of defending the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples.
• By early October 1939, the Polish army was gone. While most of its officers were massacred by the Soviets in Katyn, civil society initially seemed to tolerate the occupying forces.
  • Red Army soldiers were often poorly armed, indoctrinated, and unsophisticated.
• After the Red Army took Galicia and Volhynia, they transferred them over to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
• Initially, the authorities launched a Ukrainization campaign, allowing Ukrainians to enter positions they had been denied under Polish rule. They also turned Polish-language schools, universities, and theatres into Ukrainian-language ones.
• This initial warmth came to an end when Soviet authorities targeted the main source of Ukrainian identity in the newly acquired provinces, the Greek Catholic Church. They confiscated its landholdings and tried to limit its role in public life.
• Following that, members of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine were targeted and detained by Soviet secret police due to suspicions of nationalism. The same fate befell Ukrainian cadres who had previously been promoted to high positions.
• The NKVD also went after OUN members, including Stepan Bandera, who mostly fled to the German-occupied part of Poland.
• Germany's successful takeover of Paris in June 1940 alarmed Stalin and put him in a position of fearing a German break of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Thus, he began preparations, purging potential fifth columnists and taking over the territories assigned to his sphere. These included the Baltic states as well as parts of Romania. The parts of Romania that had previously belonged to the Ukrainian People's Republic were given the same treatment as Galicia and Volhynia (initial Ukrainization, clampdown, and arrests).

Operation Barbarossa

• Hitler's backstab came a year earlier than Stalin expected, in 1941.
• The Reich needed Ukrainian resources, including wheat and coal, as quickly as possible to keep up his war against Britain.
• While his main economists objected, the military brass convinced Hitler to go forward with Operation Barbarossa.
• The planners aimed to defeat the Soviets and drive them beyond the Volga in three months. Hitler wanted to take Leningrad first, then the Donbas coal mines, and then Moscow.
• Operation Barbarossa began in the early hours of June 22. Germany attacked along with its allies, Hungary and Romania, who together fielded some 3.8 million soldiers. The Luftwaffe knocked out Soviet airplanes in a surprise attack.
• While the Red Army had a similar number of troops and more equipment, their equipment was worse, their experienced soldiers had been purged by Stalin, and they had no time to fortify the new positions taken as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
• In three weeks, the Wehrmacht managed to advance eastward 300-600 kilometers. More than 2,500 Soviet tanks and some 2,000 Soviet airplanes were destroyed.
• Even worse, countless Red Army soldiers were encircled and imprisoned, more than 660,000 in the Kyiv pocket alone. Altogether, around 3.5 million Red Army soldiers and officers were in enemy hands.
• The retreating Red Army used a scorched earth policy.

German Occupation

• Many Ukrainians welcomed the German army, as they hoped for a benign occupation under the model of the First World War in exchange for liberation from the Stalinist regime. Some expected that "national socialism" was true socialism or that the new administration would bring better living standards, perhaps even pave the way for a future Ukrainian state.
• Those expectations were proven dead wrong. They might have been fulfilled under Alfred Rosenberg, who was initially in charge, but he lost the political fight to Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring. They were eager to fully apply their racial ideology and squeeze the newly acquired territories for all they could give.
• Ukrainian territories were carved up into three zones:
  • Galicia was lumped in with the Warsaw region into an entity called the General Government.
  • Most of Ukraine from Volhynia to Zaporizhia along with southern Belarus became the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
  • Eastern Ukraine from Chernihiv to Donetsk was assigned to military command.
• This reflected a German perception of Ukraine warped around the Russo-Austrian border in place before World War I.
• The first to be disappointed was the OUN. It had split after Bandera was released from prison, with him controlling the largest faction. In February 1941, he made a deal with German military intelligence to form two battalions of special operations forces from their members.
• One of these, Nachtigall, helped in the capture of Lviv on June 29. Afterwards, it participated in the proclamation of Ukrainian independence by the Bandera faction of the OUN.
• This prompted a swift response from the Germans, who arrested several members, including Bandera. Bandera himself was told to denounce the declaration of independence, but he refused and was sent to a concentration camp.
• Bandera's faction now turned against the Germans. Andrii Melnyk's more moderate faction tried to take advantage of that conflict and establish better connections. That failed when Nazi police shot hundreds of OUN members in Kyiv and across the country. By early 1942, both factions of the OUN were opposed to Germany.
• The next warning signal to the Ukrainian population was how the Nazis treated POWs. Those who weren’t shot on the spot weren’t given the rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention of 1929 (like food and medical assistance), as Stalin hadn’t signed it.
• They were also sent to concentration camps through forced marches. Those who didn’t make it were shot on the way.
• As expected from the ideological portrayal of Slavs as subhuman, their treatment in the concentration camps was horrific. More than 60 percent of POWs on the Eastern Front died in captivity.
• Ukrainian soldiers were treated better than Russians, as were other ethnic minorities. They were considered a lesser threat, and thus allowed to leave captivity together with Balts and Belarusians in a directive issued in September 1941. The policy was reversed in November.
• Non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union were more likely than Russians to be recruited into police battalions and used to secure Eastern European territories.
• Some of these forces were also sent to guard concentration camps in Poland later in the war.
• The Nazis turned initial victims into perpetrators. Soviet POWs were the first to die to Zyklon-B in Auschwitz. Later, guards recruited from POW camps helped conduct arriving Jews to the gas chambers.
• Survival in the camps often meant participation in further crimes against others.
• Ukraine was a large-scale model of that, meaning that the line between collaboration and resistance became increasingly blurred, though not indistinguishable. Most suffered from survivor’s guilt after the war ended.

Holocaust

• Most Ukrainian Jews never made it to Auschwitz. Heinrich Himmler's Einsatztruppen, along with local police, often gunned them down at the outskirts of their cities.
• The shooting began in the summer of 1941. By the time the Wannsee conference happened in January 1942, 1 million Jews had been killed by Nazi Death squads.
• Every sixth Jew that died in the Holocaust died in Ukraine. The best known massacre with the highest amount of victims took place in Babyn Yar on the outskirts of Kyiv. There 33,761 Jews were murdered by the Nazis. This policy of annihilation was instituted "in retaliation" for acts of sabotage by Soviet agents. The Nazis made the link that the entity behind all Soviet resistance was the Jew.
• While Babyn Yar stands out as the first attempt to wipe out an entire Jewish community of a major urban center, numerous massacres preceded and followed it:
  • In late August, a German battalion shot 23 000 Jews
  • In October, 12 000 Jews of Dnipropetrovsk were shot in a ravine outside the city
  • In December, 10 000 Jews of Kharkiv met a similar fate
• Ukrainian Jews under Romanian occupation did not fare much better. In October 1941, he ordered the massacre of 18 000 Jews in "retaliation" for sabotage. Altogether 115,000–180,000 died during the occupation of Odesa, while 100 000-150 000 perished in Bukovyna.
• Most Galician Jews died during 1942. After spending months in Ghettos, Ukrainian police rounded them up and sent them to extermination camps.
• The Holocaust in Ukraine differed from the Holocaust in central and western Europe. Not only those that tried helping the Jews were killed, but also their entire families.
• Many still tried to save their neighbors. To date, Israel has recognized some 2 500 Ukrainian citizens as "Righteous among the Nations" for sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. The list is incomplete and still growing.

Exploitation

• The severity of occupation for Ukrainians differed in the different regions:
  • The Romanians never wanted Odesa and simply robbed southern Ukraine of everything they could.
  • The General government, encompassing formerly Austrian territories had somewhat milder policies, with the same applying to the territory administered by the military.
  • The Reichskommisariat Ukraine suffered from the worst treatment
• Some of the worst crimes committed during Nazi occupation came from Reichskommissar Erik Koch. He was tasked with exploiting and depopulating the territory.
• In the fulfilment of that task, he adopted the mindset of European colonizers in Asian and African territories:

"No German soldier will ever die for that n:gger people"-The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 272, quoting Erik Koch

• He did not want Ukrainians progressing beyond fourth grade of elementary school and shut down universities. During his reign, some 60 000 more victims were added to the Babyn Yar grave.
• Koch established his capital in Rivne, Volhynia.
• Kyiv was now witnessing its first famine since 1933, as the Nazi vision of Lebensraum included the elimination of major urban centers, most easily doable through a blockade of food.
• Starting in January 1942, Germany not only exploited Ukraine's agricultural products, but also its labour force. Many Ukrainians were lured by false promises of opportunity. Once the so called Ostarbeiter arrived though, they were treated as subhuman by both the authorities and the population.
• Once Ukrainians found out about these conditions and refused to go voluntarily, they were compelled with force. In total, up to 2.2 million Ukrainians were sent to Germany. Many died of malnutrition or disease and those that survived until Soviet "liberation" were treated as traitors and often sent to the Gulag.
• Overall, Ukrainians constituted some 80 percent of all Ostarbeiter.

"Liberation"

• In September 1943, Hitler ordered his troops to retreat behind the Dnieper defensive line. The next week, the Soviets breached the Dnieper north of Kyiv, breaching the line for the first time.
• The Germans retreated from the area in the spring of 1944.
• Advancing Red Army soldiers were celebrated as liberators by the survivors of Nazi Occupation. Soviet officials had doubts about their sincerity, and faced several challenges:
  • Ukrainians had lived and survived long enough under foreign rule that they came to doubt stalinism
  • Orthodox believers had become accustomed to the freedom of worship under Hitler
  • Those that didn't think of themselves in ethno-national terms did so after occupation by a system where ones ethnicity determines life or death
• Until the 1980's Soviet citizens would fill out numerous forms that included questions about whether they or their relative had lived in German-occupied territory. These questions were often next to those about one's criminal record.

Reclaiming Ukraine

Insurgency

• The battle over Ukraine was difficult and bloody, costing the Soviets around a million soldiers. Germany lost around half a million, and the civilian death toll wasn’t counted.
• Another aspect of the fighting was partisan warfare behind German lines. The main insurgent groups conducted their operations in the woods and countryside, as the terrain was well-suited for it. Fighters were united by Ukrainian nationalism and hatred of the Nazi occupiers.
• There was one major divide in partisan groups:
  • Partisans west of the former Soviet-Polish border were led by nationalists
  • Partisans east of the former Soviet-Polish border were led by communists
• The Soviet secret police organized the communist guerrillas, who began their activities with attacks on the Germans in 1942. At first, they had around 5,000 fighters, but this number increased almost tenfold by 1944.
• German forces were insufficient to fight off the threat, so they used local police battalions to do the job. This created an interesting dynamic, with locals on both sides of the fight severely punishing each other. As the tide of the war turned against the Germans, policemen began switching over to the partisan side. These factors combined to create an environment in which it was sometimes difficult to distinguish collaborators from resistance fighters.
• As they advanced, Soviet forces met stiff resistance from Ukrainian nationalists. Most of them were part of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), with Soviet authorities referring to them as “Banderites.” This term was misleading because:
  • Not all UPA fighters were part of the OUN or even shared its radical nationalist ideology
  • Stepan Bandera had no operational control over the UPA, as he spent this time in a Nazi concentration camp. His leadership was symbolic at best
• At its peak, the UPA had 100,000 fighters, primarily focused on disrupting Soviet forces behind the front lines through ambushes and communication sabotage. Many of its commanders had German training and arms, acquired during earlier collaboration with the Nazis. The most prominent example was Roman Shukhevych, who had previously commanded the Nachtigall Battalion.
• Many like him abandoned the Nazis in early 1943. At that point, they began military actions against the Germans, as well as Polish militants and Soviet partisans.
• A long history of animosity between Ukrainians and Poles triggered a wave of ethnic cleansing against Polish villages in Western Ukraine. Ultimately, this resulted in the deaths of around 15,000 ethnic Ukrainians and 60,000 ethnic Poles.
• With the advance of the Red Army in 1944, the UPA shifted focus primarily to attacking Soviet forces. One of their major successes was the assassination of General Nikolai Vatutin.

Split Loyalty

• During World War II, Ukrainians served on multiple sides:
  • The absolute majority, around seven million, served in the Red Army. Many were captured in the first phase of the war, later released by the Germans, and then redrafted by the advancing Soviets. These men were often treated as expendable, as they had “betrayed” their nation.
  • The Germans refused to enlist people from captured territories as regular soldiers, instead incorporating them into auxiliary forces. Approximately one million former Soviet citizens joined the Hilfswillige, with Ukrainians accounting for about a quarter of them.
• German policy changed after they began running out of manpower following their loss at Stalingrad in early 1943. The newly formed non-German units were incorporated into the Waffen-SS. Units were recruited from almost every European nationality, including Ukrainian.
• Over the course of the war, close to 20,000 Ukrainians served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, known as Division Galizien.
• The name choice, and the fact that only Galicians were recruited, reflected that the German authorities saw Galicians as more trustworthy due to their past as subjects of the Habsburg Empire. It also revealed that the Germans did not want to make any reference to the broader concept of Ukraine.
• Recruitment efforts sparked dissent both in the nationalist underground and in mainstream Ukrainian discourse:
  • The OUN-B, Bandera’s faction, was vehemently opposed
  • The OUN-M, Melnyk’s faction, supported it
  • Some mainstream figures, such as Catholic bishops, supported it because they remembered how a Ukrainian legion in the Austrian army during WWI had trained experienced fighters later used in the struggle for independence
  • Few in Ukraine liked Nazi rule, and even fewer supported Nazi ideology. The main uniting factor—aside from ruthless calculation—that brought German authorities and Ukrainians together was their shared anti-communism
• Whatever their reasoning, most who joined soon regretted their choice. The majority of the division—9,500 out of 11,000 men—were either captured or killed at the Battle of Brody in 1944.
• Afterwards, the remains of the division were sent first to Slovakia and then to Yugoslavia to fight local partisan movements.

New Boundaries

• After the capture of Kyiv in November 1943, Nikita Khrushchev was tasked with reintegrating former Soviet territories into the Ukrainian SSR, while new territories were still being conquered.
• Lviv was retaken on July 27, 1944. This raised the contentious issue of who would administer it:
  • The Polish government-in-exile, backed by the West, wanted a Polish city government loyal to them
  • The Soviets wanted to keep it
• By March 1944, Soviet troops had crossed the prewar border, and in October they took control of Transcarpathia. Official propaganda hailed this as the full “reunification” of Ukrainian lands.
• The contention over Lviv was, of course, representative of the broader contention over all of Poland. Stalin created the Polish Committee of National Liberation, staffed with functionaries loyal to him, to replace those in London.
• Next, he got his committee to agree to future Polish borders, which would roughly follow the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. His main argument was that Nikita Khrushchev, representing the Ukrainians, wanted far more land, and Stalin would support that if they didn’t accept the compromise.
• In September 1944, the communist Polish government and the government of the Ukrainian SSR signed an agreement on the new boundaries, as well as ethnic transfers:
  • Ethnic Poles would be relocated to Polish territories
  • Ethnic Ukrainians would be relocated to Ukrainian territories
• At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Western leaders legitimized the new boundaries. Stalin also secured Ukraine and Belarus a place in the United Nations with their new western borders.
• The Potsdam Conference of summer 1945, after Germany’s defeat, granted Stalin new eastern German territories, which were transferred to Poland as compensation. To align with ethnic boundaries, the Soviets expelled 7.1 million ethnic Germans and resettled Poles into those areas.
• A quick overview of other deportations:
  • Around 780,000 Poles were moved west of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, most into the former German territories
  • Between 1944–1946, half a million Ukrainians were moved east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line
  • 180,000 Ukrainians were deported from western Ukraine to Siberia for alleged collaboration with the nationalist underground
• As a result, the formerly ethnically diverse borderlands between Poland and Ukraine became more homogenized, and Ukraine—historically very diverse—was reshaped into a Ukrainian-Russian condominium.
• Stalin did not move populations to appease nationalists but rather to weaken them and cement his control. Both internal and external boundaries were hardened in anticipation of a future conflict with the capitalist West.
• The Second World War crushed the Ukrainian dream of joining with Europe. Nazi Germany had been a bitter disappointment, and the Soviets exploited this:
  • Ukrainian nationalists were constantly linked with Nazi occupation by being referred to as “German-Ukrainian nationalists”
• All institutional ties to the West were cut. For example, the Ukrainian Catholic Church was merged with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to prevent Vatican influence.

Challenges

• The incorporation of new territories into the Ukrainian SSR presented Soviet leadership with multiple challenges:
  • These lands had long-standing traditions of autonomy, parliamentary democracy, and communal and national self-organization—absent in the central and eastern regions
  • Radical nationalism, represented by the UPA and its insurgents, haunted the authorities well into the 1950s
  • The territories still needed to be collectivized and industrialized, and the local youth had to be indoctrinated with Marxist doctrine
• As a result, the new territories were subject to different policies than the reclaimed ones for decades.
• Ukrainization was applied, as it legitimized Soviet rule while preparing the ground for future measures.
• This slowed down the policy of Russification in the rest of Ukraine.
• Together, these policies, combined with different historical experiences and the memory of the UPA, ensured that western Ukraine became the center of national culture and political activism for the next few decades.

Continuation

Continues in 17_Ukraine in the Soviet Union.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 259-288).

Related Notes

• Unraveling Bandera_A leftist point of view