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 leader 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 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 Brody in 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 nation.

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,²⁵ perished in the conflict. An additional 2.3 million had been shipped to Germany to work as slaves.²⁶ 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 the Nazis to punish Soviet partisans and their helpers. For comparison, only one village with its inhabitants was destroyed in France and one in Czechoslovakia.²⁷

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 Jews²⁸), meanwhile as Belarus 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.

Ukraine, as an integral part of the USSR, made a great contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and came out victorious in the Great Patriotic and the Second World War.

1 One fifth (20%) of the deported from Western Ukraine were ethnic Ukrainians, the predominant majority were Poles. Paradoxically, as a result of Soviet policy of repressions and deportations, Lviv became a ‘Ukrainian city;’ before 1939 Ukrainians formed only one-fifth of its population.

2 Stalin planned to attack Hitler first.

3 In 1941 Germans took into captivity 3.8 million Soviet soldiers while the whole German army fighting against Soviet troops had 3.3 million soldiers.

4The ration card system was introduced in the time of war.

5 Konovalets was given a box of candies with Ukrainian ornament. (He had a sweet tooth). In reality, it was an explosive which torn the OUN leader to pieces.

6 These units consisted of former members of the Carpathian Sich, who were taken prisoner by Hungarians, but then released.

7 Protectorate means a country that is controlled and protected by a more powerful country

8 “Wehrmacht” is a word for German ground forces.

9 The conditions of their staying there were quite tolerable. They lived in a separate barrack for important politicians. They were not supposed to work. Their food was normal and it was allowed to receive parcels and meet visitors.

10 In the fall of 1943 R. Shukhevych was also appointed the UPA commander, thus combining the highest positions in the OUN and the UPA.

11 They were reorganized into a single battalion and served in Belarus until the end of 1942, when the unit was dissolved and most of its Ukrainian officers were arrested.

12 Assured of absolute power, Hitler took the title of Der Führer, “the Leader.”

13 When Hitler was asked whether he wanted all Jews killed, he said: “No, of course not. If all Jews were destroyed, we would have to invent them.”

14 Some Jewish historians say that about 1.4 of 2.4 million of Ukrainian Jews were killed.

15 German Einsatzgruppen, Ukrainian Cossacks of the Bukovynsky Kurin, Kyivsky Kurin, and units of Ukrainian auxiliary police took part in the executions in Babyn Yar. In general, over 100,000 Soviet citizens of different nationalities were executed in Babyn Yar during the war.

16 According to different data, 200,000 or 300,000 of them decided not to return to the USSR after the war because they feared repressions. They settled in Western Europe and North America.

17 The aim of this limited literacy was dictated by necessity to understand announcements posted on walls.

18For political reasons Soviet historians gave exaggerated numbers: 200,000 or even 500,000.

19 Nazis burnt 250 Ukrainian villages.

20 Later he was replaced by Roman Shukhevych.

21 Some patriotic historians give other numbers such as 100,000 or even 300,000. The majority of historians consider these numbers highly exaggerated and politically motivated.

22 Roman Shukhevych (Taras Chuprynka) was the former commander of Nachtigall.

23 Some Polish historians give extremely politicized and unrealistic data such as 200,000 or even 600,000. Ukrainian historians usually write about 35,000 killed.

24 The Soviet losses were as a rule much higher than those of Germans during the course of the war (ten to one). One Russian historian sadly admitted that “Our military strategy boiled down to burying the enemy under the bodies of our men and drowning him in our blood.”

25 The equivalents for Germany, France and Britain were one in fifteen, one in seventy-seven and one in a hundred and twenty-five.

26 One million of them decided to return. For many of them it was a bad decision: 300,000 former Osterbeiters continued their slave work in the Gulag.

27 Only Belarusian villages suffered more: 686 Belarusian villages were burnt with their inhabitants as punishment for Soviet partisan activities.

28 Jewish historians usually tend to exaggerate the number (over 2 million) to show the extent of the Holocaust and to justify the restoration of Israel in 1947. Independent historians calculated that from 850,000 to 1 million Jews perished in Ukraine in WW II. Jews made up a quarter of Soviet Ukraine’s city population in 1926; in the 1960-70s – 3-4 percent. Western Ukraine lost almost all her Jewish people as a result of the war.

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