History of Ukraine during World War II

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

German-Soviet Invasion of Poland (September 1939)

The history of Ukraine during the Second World War particularly describes the period of the history of Ukraine from September 1, 1939, when the Second World War began with the German attack on Poland , until the early post-war period. With the Soviet attack on Eastern Poland on September 17, 1939, the country was divided between the two states, which was already provided for in secret additional protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact .

prehistory

The present Ukraine is made up of parts that were the former territory of the following states in the interwar period: Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland on the one hand, and the main part of the Soviet Union . The current expansion of the Ukraine was only to take place after the Second World War in the form of the Ukrainian SSR.

This is particularly important in view of the different development of the population. In the western areas that were not under the rule of the Soviet Union in the inter-war period, parties and associations were founded that had a national Ukrainian character and which often had the aim of founding their own independent nation-state. The implementation of this plan did not seem possible in the eastern areas, which made up the majority.

The willingness to collaborate with the Germans should also be seen in this context . Strictly speaking, this term should not only be used to support the German occupiers, because the Soviet Union, at least in the western parts, was also viewed as alien. The term “collaboration” in itself is difficult to define or use, as is resistance , because it could be directed against both the Germans and the Soviet Union.

In Poland, the Ukrainians, to whom officially 13.9% of the population belonged in 1931, found access to democracy and thus to the formation of groups that could coordinate their actions, which also defined their goals. There was a longer political tradition here, which came from the Habsburg monarchy , with which Ukrainian parties could quickly establish themselves. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( OUN ), which emerged from the Ukrainian Military Organization ( UVO ) founded in 1920 and a federation of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth in Vienna in 1929, should be mentioned as an example . This is worth mentioning because this party stands for the resistance against the politics of Poland on the one hand, but was also significant in the time of the Second World War.

At the highest level, a rapprochement could take place from 1926 onwards, but in Galicia a radicalization occurred, as a result of which around 250,000 Ukrainians emigrated mainly overseas. During this time, nationalism grew stronger and the aforementioned organizations gained in importance and strength through the influx of young people. This was also expressed in terrorist attacks on Polish property as well as high-ranking politicians and sometimes rocked up in violence and counter-violence. There were also individual pogroms , which laid the foundation for what was to come in the interwar period.

In Romania, organizations and newspapers of the Ukrainians were banned and a policy of assimilation was pursued, making the life of national minorities similar to that in Poland. In Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, Carpathian-Ukraine was guaranteed autonomy, which meant that Ukrainian culture could also benefit. But when the state was divided up in 1938/39, this area did not achieve the desired independence, but was placed under Hungarian administration.

Second World War

Along with Belarus and the Baltic States, the Ukraine was one of the main theaters of war in World War II, as witnessed by millions of dead and devastated areas. There were not only clashes between the regular troops of the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht and their allies, but also Waffen SS associations and partisans .

One of the Germans' plans to later resettle 20 million Germans in Ukraine was not to be implemented.

Resistance in general

The resistance in Ukraine was directed against Poles, Communists or the Red Army and / or the Germans during the Second World War, in historical or chronological order . The main problem here is that, in some cases, due to the coupled appearance of the enemy troops, a ranking had to be made and in some cases strange alliances were created, as well as the struggle of individual organizations that ultimately took place in parallel against all, i.e. Russians, Poles and Germans , proceeded.

Resistance to the Soviet Union

Referendums were held as early as October 1939, i.e. immediately after the western Ukrainian territories were conquered. These had the result, for example, that an “elected” “West Ukrainian National Assembly” “asked” to join the USSR , which was finally passed by law. This should also represent the legal basis for the later annexation in 1944.

If Soviet rule was initially perceived as an improvement by the Ukrainian population in the formerly Polish areas, this changed in the course of 1940. There was a collectivization of agriculture, which met with little approval from the peasants, which arose resistance. Other Soviet actions included bans on Ukrainian organizations, numerous deportations , which are estimated to affect between 125,000 and 150,000 people, and mass shootings. This fueled the hatred and the will to resist.

By the end of 1939, around 30,000 Ukrainians who were anti-Soviet decided to flee to the areas occupied by the Germans.

In the rest of the country, the Ukrainian population hoped for an improvement in the situation and liberation from Soviet rule and Polish tutelage, also due to the civil war and the Stalinist terror that followed. As a result, there was a fundamental sympathy for the German Reich.

The only Ukrainian institution that spoke out against the new Soviet rulers was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Two units organized by the OUN worked alongside Wehrmacht troops in the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 and marched into the Soviet part of Ukraine.

When the German Reich attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Volga Germans and around a quarter of the Black Sea Germans who were in the “old” territory were deported further inland. Around 300,000 so-called Ukrainian Germans stayed behind. The majority welcomed the invasion of German troops. Some of them were hired by the German authorities, some of them joined the Wehrmacht or the SS, with which they participated in the mass murders of Jews. When the Wehrmacht withdrew, they too had to flee, but were largely overtaken by the Red Army and finally deported to other parts of the Soviet Union.

The time under German occupation

With the rapid advance of the German armed forces into the Soviet Union in 1941, Ukraine's desire for independence and statehood was also reinforced. Many now saw this point in time, with which a separate state was proclaimed in Lviv on June 30th by members of the OUN, above all Stepan Bandera and Jaroslaw Stezko . However, this should not be tolerated by the German side, with which these founders were arrested a few days later and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

After the hopes of the Ukrainians, who initially had a positive attitude towards the Germans, not only did not come true, but for most of them even presented a worse position than under the Soviet Union, the will to resist the German occupying power was also opened up within the population.

The areas with Ukrainian population were divided into individual administrative districts with different rulers. Galicia became part of the Generalgouvernement , Bukovina , Bessarabia , Transnistria and the area between the Dniester and the southern Bug including Odessa (referred to as " Transnistria ") Romanian and finally a separate Reichskommissariat Ukraine was created for the rest , which Erich Koch together with East Prussia was led. The easternmost areas, which were close to the front, were administered directly by the German military. Thus, this meant that despite the principle of unification of all Ukrainians, this did not happen under a common rule.

In the first few months in particular, many Ukrainians took part in the pogroms against Jews as auxiliary police officers or because they were incited. These were perpetrated after the Red Army withdrew. This was intensified after the invasion of the SS and the security police, and a scheduled killing could take place with the help of the Ukrainians. The first major pogrom took place in the summer with an estimated 5,000 murdered Jews in Lviv. This number of dead should be in the massacre of Babyn Yar near Kiev on 29./30. September 1941, where over 30,000 Jews perished.

The SS, which immediately acted behind the advancing Wehrmacht and thus relatively close to the front, had the task of selecting the Jewish residents after each conquered settlement and, if possible, liquidating them. After just a few months, an estimated 850,000 Jews were murdered.

Members of the anti-Jewish OUN also took part in such actions. At this point, the regional difference should be emphasized, because in Galicia more Ukrainians were active in the state administration, but also in the police, which means that their participation in the Holocaust was significantly higher than in the east until the end. It is worth mentioning that in 1943 alone, around 80,000 Ukrainians recruited as volunteers, 17,000 of which were combined in the SS division “Galicia” and fought for the Germans.

This anti-Semitism was by no means a sudden phenomenon, but had a centuries-old tradition, just like the aversion to the Poles, which had connected the Ukrainians with the Germans and was therefore conducive to collaboration. This emerged in actions directed against Poles and Jews. Certain apparent autonomy , at least administration and jurisdiction, existed under the Ukrainian Central Committee, which was founded in Krakow in 1940 and was responsible for the Ukrainians in eastern Poland. This anti-Semitism was not only lived out by the Ukrainians, but also by the Soviet Union, which also deported Jews.

With the conquest of the Ukraine by the German Reich, the exploitation and oppression of the population by the Germans and their allies began. The Ukraine had the status of a colony that had to deliver agricultural products (including grain, meat, cattle) to the Third Reich. The differentiation and classification according to the Nuremberg Race Laws , according to which Slavs are “ sub-humans ”, also played an important role. This meant that many Ukrainian prisoners of war found their deaths, mostly caused by starvation, epidemics and mistreatment.

During the occupation of Ukraine by the Germans, over a million Ukrainians were also sent to the Reich for forced labor and worked as industrial or agricultural workers. These transports were carried out even during the retreat of the German Wehrmacht.

These measures, which the Germans had taken, fueled the will of the Ukrainians to resist, which resulted in the establishment of the Ukrajinska Powstanska Armija (UPA) in 1942, which was founded by members of the OUN. Thus began a partisan war in Polesia and Volhynia , which was directed against Poland, the Soviet Union and Germany. In 1943/44 more and more of the defensive struggle developed and a broad partisan movement developed, which openly fought against the German occupiers: However, the resistance was by no means united, instead there were communists in addition to the nationally Ukrainian-minded people who in turn were in the West found no support. After all, the UPA would continue to fight the Soviet Union after World War II until the 1950s.

In the east the partisans also worked with the Red Army, but among the resistance fighters who sympathized with communism, besides Russians and Belarusians, there were significantly fewer Ukrainians. These were constituted in 1944 in the "Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council" founded by UPA leaders.

Deportations

Deportations affected some national ethnic groups and included Jews, Ukrainians, but also Germans and, in later episode, just as numerous Poles. As a result, there was high fluctuation in this area.

The Hague Land Warfare Regulations were already in effect during the Second World War and Articles 42 to 56 set out the powers. Article 46 states that the occupiers were obliged to protect the rights and property of citizens in the territories they occupied and that collective punishment was prohibited (Article 50). Expulsions were incompatible with this. For this reason, actions of this kind carried out by Germans were condemned as war crimes and “crimes against humanity”.

The first deportations concerned the newly conquered territories as early as 1939 after the Soviet Union attacked Poland at almost the same time. The old leadership structures were very quickly dissolved or banned, but their representatives were also arrested and shipped to the east of the country. This mainly affected Poles, but also Jews and Ukrainians. Many were to follow in the rest of the war.

As early as the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Curzon Line was established as the western border of the Soviet Union and, with changes, was also implemented after the Potsdam peace negotiations . This enabled the creation of today's border with Ukraine, but this also served as a basis for the deportations from 1944.

Resettlements in Eastern Europe took place primarily on the basis of a Polish-Soviet agreement concluded on September 8, 1944, which was intended to legitimize the deportations and primarily affected Poles and Ukrainians. Numerous use were made of this and these “resettlements” are to be described or regarded as “ethnic cleansing”. For example, around one million Poles were primarily expelled to the west of what is now Poland, where the Germans had previously lived. In addition, around half a million Ukrainians were resettled in the formerly Polish areas who came from other areas of Poland that had been shifted to the west. The Lemken were initially excluded from these "resettlement actions", but this changed in 1947. After an attack, they were deported to formerly German areas of Poland based on an order in the so-called " Operation Vistula " and this operation involved around 150,000 people and withdrew their support from the Ukrainian partisans operating underground.

Likewise, between 1946 and 1949 there were on the one hand hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who were deported to Siberia and on the other hand the beginning of a wave of Russian immigration.

In the international law that applies today, forced relocations are prohibited and are only permitted temporarily in exceptional cases, for example for compelling military reasons or to protect the population through evacuation. (Article 49 of the IV. Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Times of War of August 12, 1949) For this reason, too, these expulsions of the population in 1945, formerly or future areas, are also to be regarded as illegal, if not even, because they to be regarded as war crimes, although still on a smaller scale, already occurred during the world war.

Ukraine after World War II

The territory of today's Ukraine was liberated by the Red Army from the German armed forces and conquered by October 1944 , which enabled the Yalta conference to take place on the Crimean peninsula in February 1945 , which dealt with the reorganization of Europe. As in earlier meetings ( Tehran 1943 and in the summer of 1945 in Potsdam) the Curzon Line, which arose from the secret additional protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement of August 1939, was negotiated. Ultimately, the westward shift of the interwar Poland with deviations from the Curzon Line was implemented, with which the current borders of Ukraine to its western neighbors could arise. This deviation also affected the Carpathian Ukraine, which originally became Hungarian territory again, but became Soviet territory for the first time in 1944. For the first time, almost all Ukrainians were united in one state.

Thus, in several conferences, such as in Tehran, Yalta and finally in Potsdam, the future borders of Germany, but also Poland and thus also the territorial fate of Ukraine, were discussed and finally decided. However, this should only be recognized later. Since the negotiating partners were well aware of the consequences of these decisions, the expulsions should be carried out in a “regulated and humane” manner. Historical reports from eyewitnesses, most of whom can undoubtedly be believed, prove that this did not happen. Actually, these resolutions were just another legitimation for the looming misfortune that was to continue. Due to the planned deportations, the potential returnees were repeatedly impeded by the Polish and Soviet authorities, and this also represents an expulsion.

Immediately after the recapture or "liberation" of the Ukrainian territory, the Soviet Union practiced integration and conformity , which was supposed to be established through an outwardly apparent autonomy in order to win over the population and so the Ukraine was next Belarus also founding member of the United Nations. Stalin hoped that the individual republics of the Soviet Union would gain greater power within this organization. This increased the number of voters who would almost certainly be loyal to his side because foreign policy remained within the competence of the Soviet Union.

Domestically, action was taken against the nationally-minded Ukrainians, who pursued aspirations for autonomy and mainly resided in the west of the country, as well as against the Uniate Church . So the latter were forced to revoke the recognition of the Pope as their ecclesiastical head. Its believers were now subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church, but could continue to operate underground.

In addition to these measures, which were directed directly against the population, there were still campaigns by the Central Committee from 1946 against “bourgeois Ukrainian nationalism” and against “the hostile bourgeois national ideology”. This primarily affected intellectuals, i.e. historians, composers, literary scholars and writers, and action was taken against them. The aim of these actions was to intimidate, bring into conformity and, in some cases, consciously accept the destruction of this population group. Around 10,000 members of these elites, including Jews, were arrested and deported to Siberia. Many of them fell victim to the recent Stalinist purges. Likewise, in place of Soviet patriotism, a sole Russian nationalism was set, which meant that the Ukrainian national consciousness that had slowly developed in the west of the country in the interwar period could not gain a foothold. This culminated in praise for the “great Russian people” and the lessons were only in Ukrainian in the elementary school.

The fight against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which numbered tens of thousands of men, was clearly more difficult and noticeably more obvious . This continued to be active in the west of the country after the end of the war, and acts of sabotage and assassinations were carried out on officials of the Soviet Union, killing thousands. These massive problems for the Soviet Union could not be resolved quickly either because this organization could count on the help of the Ukrainian civilian population. As a result, the resistance in the Galician and the Carpathian forests was able to hold up successfully and action against the Soviet Union could continue. Finally, from 1948 onwards, this resistance was successfully broken. “Resettlement campaigns” were also helpful for this. A year earlier, the Lemks , who referred to an ethnic group of Ukrainians living in Poland, more precisely in the Carpathian Mountains, and made up of around 150,000 people, were deported. This withdrew important support from the Ukrainian partisans operating underground. In addition, the UPA commander Roman Schuchewytsch fell during the resistance struggle in 1950 , which further weakened the partisans. Nevertheless, the disputes could continue for several years. Thus, although most of the Ukrainians were united in one state, they were not free.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, pp. 306–309.
  2. ↑ a b Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 206.
  3. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 209.
  4. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 309.
  5. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 213 f.
  6. ^ A b Britta Böhme: "Borderland between myth and reality - real and idea history of the Ukrainian territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 345.
  7. ^ A b Britta Böhme: "Borderland between myth and reality - real and idea history of the Ukrainian territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 341.
  8. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 216.
  9. ↑ Ernst Lüdemann Ukraine. CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 57.
  10. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine , CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 216.
  11. ↑ Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine , CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 217.
  12. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine , CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 220.
  13. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 217.
  14. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 57.
  15. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 218.
  16. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 57.
  17. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 218.
  18. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 221.
  19. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 58.
  20. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 219.
  21. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 58.
  22. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 221.
  23. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of the Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 342.
  24. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 58.
  25. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between myth and reality - real and ideological history of the Ukrainian territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 343.
  26. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 219.
  27. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 219.
  28. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 58.
  29. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 223.
  30. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 222.
  31. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 57.
  32. ^ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 59.
  33. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 222.
  34. ^ A b Alfred-Mauris de Zayas: Notes on the expulsion of Germans from the East, W. Kohlmaier, Stuttgart 1993, p. 212.
  35. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 215.
  36. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 347.
  37. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 224.
  38. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 226.
  39. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 347 f.
  40. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 224.
  41. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of the Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 346.
  42. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of the Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 339.
  43. ^ Alfred-Mauris de Zayas: Notes on the expulsion of Germans from the East, W. Kohlmaier, Stuttgart 1993, p. 120.
  44. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 223.
  45. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 348.
  46. ↑ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 225.
  47. ↑ Ernst Lüdemann: Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 60.
  48. ^ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 227.
  49. ↑ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 225.
  50. ↑ Andreas Kappeler: Little History of the Ukraine, CH Beck, Munich 1994, p. 225 f.
  51. ↑ Britta Böhme: "Borderland between Myth and Reality - Real and Idea History of Ukrainian Territory" Berliner Debatte Wiss.-Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 347 f.