The SS Volunteer Galicia Division

In spring 1943, after the stunning German defeat at Stalingrad, Nazi authorities belatedly decided to recruit non-German “easterners” into their forces. Consequently, Otto Wächter, the Governor of Galicia, approached the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) with a proposal to form a Ukrainian division in the German army. The head of the UCC Volodymyr Kubiiovych and his associates agreed to that proposal as they hoped that the formation of Ukrainian division in the German army would improve the treatment of Ukrainians in Galicia. They also hoped that the division could be used in the future as the basis for the creation of Ukrainian military forces which would fight for independent Ukraine. The OUN-M supported the idea of creating the Galician Division, but the OUN-B was against it. Their leaders considered the division as a competitor attracting youth who could otherwise join the UPA.

    The idea of the division was met with great enthusiasm among Galicians. When the UCC called for volunteers in June 1943, over 82,000 men responded to fight against Ukraine’s “most terrible enemy - Bolshevism.” Of these, 13,000 eventually became members of the SS Volunteer Galicia Division. The entire divisional command was German.

    It should be noted, however, that the name SS in this case did not mean that Ukrainians accepted the Nazi ideology or became an elite fascist military unit. They were an ordinary military division which was just subordinated to the SS command and were officially called the Volunteer Galicia Division of Waffen SS (which meant SS subordination). In 1944 the Division was almost destroyed in its first fight against the Soviets at Brodyin Western Ukraine. Out of 13,000 only 3,000 escaped. Then, after replenishment, it was used against partisans in Slovakia (1944) and Yugoslavia (1945).The division surrendered to the allies (US and British troops) in May 1945 in Austria.

    The men of the Galician Division were not the only Ukrainians in Hitler’s armies. Of the approximately 1 million former Soviet citizens who wore German uniforms in 1944 about 250,000 were Ukrainians (most of the others were Russians). About 6 million Ukrainians fought on the Soviet side and large numbers also fought in Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, American, and Canadian forces. Such was the fate of a stateless people. It is interesting to note that practically all Ukrainians and many Russians know about the SS Galicia Division while only a few people know about two Russian SS divisions in the German army.

 

The Cost of the War

The Second World War had brought a lot of suffering to Ukraine and its inhabitants. About 5.5 million, or one of six inhabitants of Ukraine,[14] perished in the conflict. An additional 2.3 million had been shipped to Germany to work as slaves. Over 700 cities and towns (40% of all Soviet cities and towns destroyed in the war) and 28,000 villages were destroyed. The inhabitants of 250 Ukrainian villages were totally executed as hostages. That was the result of collective responsibility tactics used by Germans to punish Soviet partisans and their helpers. For comparison, only one village with its inhabitants was destroyed in France and one in Czechoslovakia.[15]

    Ukraine suffered more than any other nation in WWII. According to official statistics Ukraine lost 5.5 million of civil population (according to different data, from 850,000 to 2,25 million of them were Jews[16]), meanwhile as Belorussia lost 2.2 million, Russia – 1.8 million, Lithuania – 666,000, Latvia – 644,000, Estonia – 125,000. Ukraine’s military losses (2.5 million) were less than those of Russia (3-4 million). But if we count the total number of Ukrainians perished in the war, the number will amount to approximately 8 million. That is by 2-3 million more than Russia and by 2.5 million more than Germany.

Questions

 

1. Evaluate Soviet policy in Western Ukraine in 1939; elicit its pluses and minuses.

2. Explain why it was possible for a huge Soviet Army to suffer such heavy losses at the beginning of the war.

3. What was the attitude of Ukrainians toward the Germans at the start of the war?

4. Tell about cooperation between Germans and OUN leaders at the beginning of the war.

5. What were the relationships between the OUN-B and the OUN-M?

6. What problems did the OUN expeditionary groups face in Eastern Ukraine?

7. Characterize Nazi policy in Ukraine.

8. What serious mistake did the Nazis make concerning Soviet military prisoners?

9. Why was Soviet partisan movement very weak at the beginning of the war?

10. Explain why the UPA often tried to avoid direct anti-German actions and even sometimes protected German communications from Soviet partisans. Give reasons for military cooperation between the UPA and Wehrmacht in 1944.

11. Who is responsible for the Ukrainian-Polish massacres? What was the attitude of Germans and Soviet partisans to these events?

12. What plans did Galicians and Germans have concerning the SS Volunteer Galicia Division? Whom did the division fight against?

13. Tell about the tragic pages of the 1943 battle over the Dnieper.

14. What were Ukraine’s losses in World War II. Compare them with other nations’ losses.

 

 

TOPIC 8

FROM THE POST-1945 SOVIET ERA TO THE PRESENT TIME