I was prompted to write this retrospective by an argument in the comments with an illiterate Ukrainian nationalist who carefully hides his attitude to Stepan Bandera and denies the existence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
All excerpts are taken from wikipedia and have links to archival documents
I was pleased to refresh my memory of the chronology of those events, hopefully it will be a learning experience.
Stepan Bandera
On 23 June 1941, one day after the German attack on the Soviet Union, Bandera sent a letter to Adolf Hitler arguing the case for an independent Ukraine. On 30 June 1941, with the arrival of Nazi troops in Ukraine, the OUN-B unilaterally declared an independent Ukrainian state ("Act of Renewal of Ukrainian Statehood"). The proclamation pledged a cooperation of the new Ukrainian state with Nazi Germany under the leadership of Hitler. The declaration was accompanied by violent pogroms.
Bandera's expectations that the Nazi regime would post facto recognize an independent fascist Ukraine as an Axis ally proved to be mistaken. The Germans forbade Bandera to move to the recently conquered Lvov, limiting his residence to occupied Krakow. On July 5, Bandera was taken to Berlin, where he was placed in honorary captivity. ... Bandera was free to move about the city, but could not leave it.
On September 28, 1944, Bandera was released by the German authorities and placed under house arrest. Soon after this, the Germans released about 300 OUN members
He used false identification documents that helped him to conceal his past relationship with the Nazis.
A September 1945 report by the US Office of Strategic Services said that Bandera had "earned a fierce reputation for conducting a 'reign of terror' during World War II". Bandera was protected by the US-backed Gehlen Organization but he also received help from underground organizations of former Nazis who helped Bandera to cross borders between Allied occupation zones
The US thought Bandera was too valuable to give up due to his knowledge of the Soviet Union, so the US started blocking his extradition under an operation called "Anyface". From the perspective of the US, the Soviet Union and Poland were issuing extradition attempts of these Ukrainians to prevent the US from getting sources of intelligence, so this became one of the factors in the breakdown of the cooperation agreement
The Bavarian state government initiated a crackdown on Bandera's organization for crimes such as counterfeiting and kidnapping. Gerhard von Mende, a West German government official, provided protection to Bandera who in turn provided him with political reports, which were relayed to the West German Foreign Office.
According to historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, "Bandera's worldview was shaped by numerous far-right values and concepts including ultranationalism, fascism, racism, and antisemitism; by fascination with violence; by the belief that only war could establish a Ukrainian state; and by hostility to democracy, communism, and socialism. Like other young Ukrainian nationalists, he combined extremism with religion and used religion to sacralize politics and violence." Historian John-Paul Himka writes that Bandera remained true to the fascist ideology to the end.
Historian Per Anders Rudling said that Bandera and his followers "advocated the selective breeding to create a 'pure' Ukrainian race", and that "the OUN shared the fascist attributes of anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism, and anti-communism, an armed party, totalitarianism, antisemitism, Führerprinzip, and adoption of fascist greetings. Its leaders eagerly emphasized to Hitler and Ribbentrop that they shared the Nazi Weltanschauung and a commitment to a fascist New Europe."
Historian Timothy Snyder described Bandera as a fascist who "aimed to make of Ukraine a one-party fascist dictatorship without national minorities". Political scientist Andreas Umland characterized Bandera as a "Ukrainian ultranationalist", and also told Deutsche Welle that he was not a "Nazi", commenting that Ukrainian nationalism was "not a copy of Nazism".
Historian David R. Marples described Bandera's views as "not untypical of his generation" but as holding "an extreme political stance that rejected any form of cooperation with the rulers of Ukrainian territories: the Poles and the Soviet authorities". Marples also described Bandera as "neither an orator nor a theoretician", and wrote that he had minimal importance as a thinker
Marples says that Bandera "regarded Russia as the principal enemy of Ukraine, and showed little tolerance for the other two groups inhabiting Ukrainian ethnic territories, Poles and Jews". <...> his organization, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, was involved in a massacre of Poles in Volhynia. In early 1944, ethnic cleansing also spread to Eastern Galicia. It is estimated that more than 35,000 and up to 60,000 Poles, mostly women and children along with unarmed men, were killed during the spring and summer campaign of 1943 in Volhynia, and up to 133,000 if other regions, such as Eastern Galicia, are included.
Norman Goda wrote that "Historian Karel Berkhoff, among others, has shown that Bandera, his deputies, and the Nazis shared a key obsession, namely the notion that the Jews in Ukraine were behind Communism and Stalinist imperialism and must be destroyed."
Attitudes in Ukraine towards Bandera
The glorification and attempts to rehabilitate Bandera are growing trends in Ukraine.
FC Lviv soccer fans at a game against FC Shakhtar Donetsk. The Ukrainian banner reads "Bandera – our hero".
Bandera continues to be a divisive figure in Ukraine. Although Bandera is venerated in certain parts of western Ukraine, he, along with Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev, is considered in surveys of Ukraine as a whole among the three historical figures who produce the most negative attitudes.
Ukrainian National Army
The Ukrainian National Army was a World War II Ukrainian military group, created on March 17, 1945, in the town of Weimar, Nazi Germany, and subordinate to Ukrainian National Committee.
The primary purpose of creation of the Ukrainian National Army was to integrate all the Ukrainian units fighting the Soviets under a single command. The intended size of the army, encompassing all the Ukrainian units subordinate to Oberkommando des Heeres was 220,000. However within the two months left till the end of the war, Shandruk was able to gather about 50,000 soldiers.
consisted of the following units:
- 1st Galicia Division (formerly, 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), however, there is no proof to demonstrate that the renaming was done formally) ...
The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) commonly referred to as the Galicia Division, was a World War II infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the German Nazi Party, made up predominantly of volunteers with a Ukrainian ethnic background from the area of Galicia, later also with some Slovaks
The idea of recruiting Ukrainians into the Waffen-SS was first proposed by Gottlob Berger, the head of the SS Main Office, as early as April 1941. His request was rejected by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler because of racial reasons.
It was not brought up again until 1942 by Otto Wächter, who had been appointed as the second German governor of Galicia in August 1941. Wächter sympathized with the Ukrainian population, many of whom initially saw the Germans as liberators after the previous years of Soviet oppression, and believed that Germany could work with them against the Soviets.
The Galicia Division was supported by Andriy Melnyk's moderate faction of the OUN, who saw it as a counterweight to the extremist Banderite-dominated UPA
On 12 March 1945, Alfred Rosenberg issued a decree stating that the German government recognized the Ukrainian National Committee as the sole representative of the Ukrainians in Germany. Formed in late 1944, the organizers of the committee included Andriy Melnyk, Stepan Bandera, and Volodymyr Kubiyovych, the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee, which had been evacuated to Germany as the Red Army advanced. The National Committee appointed Pavlo Shandruk as the commander of its Ukrainian National Army. On 14 April 1945, the German government agreed to transfer control of the 14th Waffen-SS Division to the Ukrainian National Committee.
R. Shukhevych also said he respected the decision of anyone who joined the Galicia Division and considered them to be Ukrainian patriots.
The "Monument of the 1st Galicia Division and UNA" in Lviv (Ukraine). Members of the Plast at a reunion (Lychakivskiy Cemetery), April 2008
Polish and German commissions in the 2000s found it guilty of war crimes. In 2003, the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation found that the 4th battalion of the 14th division was guilty of war crimes. In 2005, the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences confirmed the Polish findings of war crimes committed by the 4th battalion of the 14th division.
Members of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, were volunteers and members of the SS. The 4th battalion of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division was itself found guilty of war crimes by the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, and the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
Elements of the Waffen-SS Galizien worked alongside one of the most brutal units of Nazi Germany, the SS-Sonderbattalion Dirlewanger, which had carried out brutal anti-partisan activities in Belarus and Poland, and had taken part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. The Waffen-SS Galizien destroyed several Polish communities in western Ukraine during the winter and spring of 1944. Specifically, the 4th and 5th SS Police Regiments have been accused of murdering Polish civilians in the course of anti-guerilla activity. At the time of their actions, those units were not yet under Divisional command, but were under German police command.Yale historian Timothy Snyder noted that the division's role in the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia was limited, because the murders were primarily carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Members of another SS-Galizien sub-unit also participated in the execution of Polish civilians in Palykorovy, located in the Lwów area (Lviv oblast) near Pidkamin (former Tarnopol Voivodeship). It is estimated that 365 ethnic Poles were murdered, including women and children.
In his study of the Holocaust, Dieter Pohl had come to the conclusion there is a "high probability" that in February 1944 at Brody men from the 14th SS assisted in rounding-up Jewish people. On 4 March 1944, 14th SS men and German gendarmé conducted pacfication operations at the village Wicyń (Vitsyn) in Poland. On the same day, 600 villagers were murdered in the villages of Czernicy, Palikrowy, and Malinska. In April 1944, the 14th SS burned the Polish villages of Budki Nieznanowskie in Kamionka Strumiłowa, Iasenytsia Polsk in Kamionka Strumiłowa, and Pawłów in Radziechowsk. 22 villagers were murdered in Chatki, in the district of Pohajce by "deserters" from the 14th SS
One of the stone tablets of the monument which lists the names of Poles killed at Huta Pieniacka.
Polish witness accounts state that the soldiers were accompanied by Ukrainian nationalists (paramilitary unit under Włodzimierz Czerniawski's command), which included members of the UPA, as well as inhabitants of nearby villages who took property from households. The NASU Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine concluded that the 4th and 5th SS Galizien Police regiments did kill the civilians within the village, but added that the grisly reports by eyewitnesses in the Polish accounts were "hard to come up with" and that the likelihood was "difficult to believe". The institute also noted that, at the time of the massacre, the police regiments were not under 14th division command, but rather under German police command (specifically, under German SD and SS command of the General Government). The Polish Institute of National Remembrance stated: "According to the witness' testimonies, and in the light of the collected documentation, there is no doubt that the 4th battalion 'Galizien' of the 14th division of SS committed the crime"
In 2016, the Polish parliament classified the crimes of the division's soldiers against the Polish population as genocide!
Fans of the FC Karpaty Lviv football club honoring the Waffen-SS Galizien division, Lviv, Ukraine, 2013
The division is honored by the far-right in Ukraine and by some organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. In 2020, the Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled that symbols of SS Division Galicia do not belong to the Nazis and were not banned in the country.
The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) is today honored by many Ukrainian nationalists. On 28 April, an annual march is organised locally in Lviv to celebrate the anniversary of the division's foundation. On 30 April 2021, after the march was held in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated: "We categorically condemn any manifestation of propaganda of totalitarian regimes, in particular the National Socialist, and attempts to revise truth about World War II." The march was condemned by the German and Israeli governments.
The division's insignia is classified as a Nazi and hate symbol by the Freedom House and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union
On 22 September 2023, Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of the division, was invited to the Parliament of Canada along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where they both received standing ovations from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and most MPs. ... The Ukrainian National Federation of Canada defended Hunka and stated that there was nothing wrong with Canadian Parliament applauding a man "who fought for his country"
In 1987, former 14th Waffen SS veteran Peter Savaryn was awarded the Order of Canada. He served as Chancellor of the University of Alberta and was president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and Ukrainian World Congress. After the Hunka scandal, Governor General Mary Simon apologized the awarding of Savaryn.
In a 1989 article for the Ottawa Citizen, community activist and journalist Sol Littman said that "the All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group of the British House of Commons found that screening was virtually 'non-existent' for Ukrainian SS veterans who entered Canada in 1950." He added that entry into Canada was based on "false assurances" from the U.K. that they were not war criminals. It was discovered that in 1947 the Foreign Office lied to parliament, that the SS men had undergone "an exhaustive screening process". In a 1997 interview with 60 Minutes, Irving Abella stated that getting into Canada for SS members was as easy as just showing their SS blood type tattoo which indicated that they were reliably anti-communist
No evidence or witness testimony from organizations and victims where the alleged crimes took place in Eastern Europe was taken or used in the investigation. Rabbi Marvin Hier, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the commission, "did not go far enough" and added "not to pursue investigations against individuals merely for being members of the Galicia Division did not necessarily mean the individual veterans were all innocent
See also Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany
Ukrainians, including ethnic minorities like Russians, Tatars and others,[5] who collaborated with the Nazi Germany did so in various ways including participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft, in the German military, or as guards in the concentration camps.
In 1939, during the German-Polish War, the OUN was "a faithful German auxiliary"
Ukrainian women dressed in national costumes salute German high command during the parade in Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk)
According to Timothy Snyder, "something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s
The elimination of Jews during the Holocaust in Ukraine started within a few days of the beginning of the Nazi occupation. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, which formed mid August 1941, assisted by Einsatzgruppen C, and Police battalions rounded up Jews and undesirables for the Babi Yar massacre, as well as other later massacres in cities and towns of modern-day Ukraine, such as Kolky, Stepan, Lviv, Lutsk, and Zhytomyr.
During this period, on 1 September 1941, the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote, in an article titled Zavoiovuimo misto" (Let's Conquer the City):
“All elements that reside in our land, whether they are Jews or Poles, must be eradicated. We are at this very moment resolving the Jewish question, and this resolution is part of the plan for the Reich’s total reorganization of Europe.” "The empty space that will be created, must immediately and irrevocable be filled by the real owners and masters of this land, the Ukrainian people"
And the Jewish president - a puppet of the West, not at all an argument that there is no Nazism in Ukraine!