Ukrainians in The German Armed Forces During The Second World War

Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces
During the Second World War

OLESYA KHROMEYCHUK
University of East Anglia
Abstract
During the Second World War large numbers of inhabitants of central, eastern and
southern Europe joined the German Armed Forces. Among them were around 250,000
soldiers who identified themselves as Ukrainian. They served in the Wehrmacht, as well
as the Waffen SS; a considerable number of them also served in the auxiliary police. They
were motivated to join the German Armed Forces by a combination of different factors.
This article aims to shed some light on the broad range of circumstances that facilitated
the recruitment of thousands of Ukrainians to fight on the side of the Third Reich. It
discusses several well-known formations that were comprised of Ukrainians, such as the
Nachtigall and Roland battalions and the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division, as well as other
units that have not been widely discussed in an academic context.
2 July 1943
I was on a tram, carrying saccharin. German schutzmanns had set a trap.
They caught me too . . . I was going to be sent to work in Germany. They
asked me what work I could do. I answered: all sorts. I can be an engineer, a
manager, a scholar. They appointed me to look after pigs in some Prussian
village.
3 July 1943
. . . In the morning I said that I want to volunteer for the Ukrainian
Division. They let me go at once. I went to the Military Board . . . .
‘Do you have documents?’
‘None. I only have my photograph; here it is!’
The Director . . . looked at the picture and at me.
‘That is the same man. Everything is in order. You are recruited.’1
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. An early draft
of this article was presented at a conference organized by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Initiative
in partnership with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Potsdam) 27–30 June 2011.
1
Iurii Tys-Krokhmal’uk, Shchodennyk natsional’noho heroia Selepka Lavochky (Buenos Aires, 1954),
<http://lib.galiciadivision.org.ua/selepko/part1.html>, paragraphs 1–2 [accessed 2 Jan. 2015]. All
translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.

C 2016 The Author. History
C 2016 The Historical Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
OLESYA KHROMEYCHUK 705
T his absurd description of the unintended recruitment of a

Ukrainian Švejk-like soldier into the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division
comes from a satirical ‘Diary of a national hero’, written by a
former ‘Galicia’ Division member.2 It ridicules the accidental nature of
events that were far from humorous, and paints the unfathomable reality
of life of a Ukrainian fighting in a German uniform. While Selepko
Lavochka, the Ukrainian incarnation of Švejk, tells an incredible story
of sleepwalking into the German army, his story is not as implausible
as it seems at first sight. Many real-life ‘Selepkos’ found themselves in
German uniforms through a series of (un)fortunate coincidences. Others,
however, joined the ranks of the German Armed Forces consciously and
enthusiastically.
During the Second World War large numbers of inhabitants of
central, eastern and southern Europe joined the German Armed
Forces. Among them were Bosnians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Russians,
Serbs, Slovenes, Ukrainians and others.3 Hitler’s own view was that
‘only Germans should carry weapons, not Slavs, Czechs, Cossacks,
or Ukrainians’.4 Nevertheless, in October 1944, the Eastern Troops
commander General Ernst Köstring estimated that there were over
800,000 ‘Eastern volunteers’ in the German Army, and 100,000 in the Air
Force and the Navy.5 Over 400,000 of them self-identified as Russian;6
at least 150,000 were of Polish origin,7 and Ukrainians comprised about
250,000 of these Eastern soldiers.8 Ukrainians served in the Wehrmacht,
as well as the Waffen SS; a considerable number of them also served in
the auxiliary police. Although their numbers are large enough to provoke
the curiosity of scholars, and generate sensationalist material for popular
history, most studies to date have focused on a relatively small percentage
of all self-identified Ukrainians who served in German uniforms during
the Second World War: those who comprised the battalions Nachtigall
2
Tys-Krokhmal’uk, Shchodennyk natsional’noho heroia.
3
See Wolfdieter Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the Reich: The 14th Waffen Grenadier
Division of the SS’, in Hans-Joachim Torke and John-Paul Himka (eds), German–Ukrainian Relations
in Historical Perspective (Edmonton, 1994), pp. 138–62, at p. 138.
4
Hans Werner Neulen, An deutscher Seite: Internationale Freiwillige von Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS
(Munich, 1985), cited in Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the Reich’, p. 138.
5
Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia v zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny (1939–
1945) (L’viv, 2003), p. 583.
6
Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, ‘Ukraintsi, rosiiany i poliaky u Zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny u 1939–1945
rokakh: porivnial’nyi analiz’, in Mykola Lytvyn (ed), Ukraina–Pol’shcha: istorychna spadshchyna i
suspil’na svidomist’ (L’viv, 2012), pp. 71–91, at pp. 84–7.
7
This figure refers to those recruits who came from Upper Silesia (Górny Ślask). ˛ See Ryszard
Kaczmarek, ‘Niemiecka polityka narodowościowa na Górnym Śląsku (1939–1945)’, Pamięć i
sprawiedliwość: Pismo Instytutu Pamieci˛ Narodowej 2/6 (2004), pp. 115–38. For a detailed analysis
of Polish participation in the Wehrmacht see Ryszard Kaczmarek, Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Kraków,
2010).
8
Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 583. See also Bolianovs’kyi, ‘Ukraintsi, rosiiany
i poliaky’, pp. 84–7.

706 UKRAINIANS IN THE GERMAN ARMED FORCES
and Roland, and the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division. The members of these
formations are usually remembered in Ukraine and beyond either as
freedom fighters or as traitors; the discussion of the complex motivations
which led these men, as well as other Ukrainians who belonged to less
well-known military groups, to join the German Armed Forces is left
out of the simplified memory wars. The lack of academic literature on
Ukrainians who fought in German uniforms makes these overgeneralized
discussions and the myths that they perpetuate harder to dispel. This
article aims to shed some light on the broad range of circumstances that
facilitated the recruitment of thousands of Ukrainians to fight on the side
of the Third Reich. As well as analysing other units that have not been
widely discussed in an academic context, the article will discuss the better-
known groups as, in spite of their relative numerical inferiority, members
of these groups have formed a certain generic idea of a ‘Ukrainian Nazi
collaborator’, an image which requires contextualization.
The majority of the Ukrainian soldiers who chose to fight on the side
of the Reich were what Christopher Browning has called ‘ordinary men’,
motivated by a combination of different factors.9 In his study of the
participation of the local people in the Holocaust in Belarus and Ukraine,
Martin Dean outlines some of the motives that might have played a part
in encouraging the local population to collaborate:
Whilst anti-Semitism clearly formed a very important motive and was
linked to some extent in people’s minds with revenge for communist
excesses, indoctrination and propaganda do not appear sufficient to explain
the killing of former neighbours.
The other motives which spring to mind are those of personal enrichment
and advancement, obedience to authority and group behaviour (peer
pressure) . . . . Those who carried out German orders eagerly and efficiently
could expect promotion and rewards.10
Another factor that is often emphasized in accounts of Ukrainians who
served in the German Armed Forces is the opportunity for state-building
that collaboration supposedly presented, an objective that ‘overshadowed
all other considerations’.11 Both pragmatic, individual choices and
nationalist, ideological motivations will be examined in this article. At the
same time, the discussion of the choices that the collaborators made must
include an acknowledgement of the role of ‘the corrupting environment
engendered by the German occupation’ and the fact that ‘the behaviour of
occupied populations throughout Europe was in large measure “occupier
9
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men (London, 1998).
10
Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine,
1941–44 (New York, 2003), p. 102.
11
Taras Hunczak, ‘OUN–German relations, 1941–5’ in Torke and Himka (eds), German–Ukrainian
Relations, pp. 178–86, at p. 178.

driven”’, as Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin argue,12 though

they also acknowledge that the occupied populations ‘were not necessarily
left without any power of their own’.13 In the Ukrainian case, the question
of agency is particularly complicated by the fact that Ukrainians were
a stateless group, and because the territory in which they lived had
experienced a collapse of state institutions (Polish or Soviet) and, in some
parts, double occupation (first Soviet and then German). Timothy Snyder
describes the dangers of such a situation:
A single occupation can fracture a society for generations; double

occupation is even more painful and divisive . . . . When foreign troops
left, people had to reckon not with peace but with the policies of the next
occupier. They had to deal with the consequences of their own previous
commitments under one occupier when the next one came; or make choices
under one occupation while anticipating another.14
Ukrainians who fought on the German side can be separated into

two main categories: those who were recruited under duress (mostly
former Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Germans,
usually from territories of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, formerly under
Soviet rule) and those who joined voluntarily (Ukrainian nationalists,
mainly from the lands of the Generalgouvernement which until 1939
were part of Poland). The early phase of the formation of the Ukrainian
units that fought on the German side is strongly linked to the question
of nationalism and aspirations of state-building. The legacy of the
state-building attempts of the early twentieth century, when the lands
populated by Ukrainians were part of the Romanov and the Habsburg
empires, is thus crucial for our understanding of the events that unfolded
during the Second World War. In the aftermath of the First World War,
‘[t]he fast changing revolutionary governments envisioned very different
Ukraines’, explains Serhy Yekelchyk.15 The national projects popular in
the turbulent post-war period included ‘autonomy within a democratic
Russia, an independent socialist Ukraine, a conservative Ukrainian
monarchy, [and] a nationalist military dictatorship’.16 Often mutually
exclusive, they were similar in their ultimate aim: Ukraine as a sovereign
entity.
12
Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin, ‘Collaboration in eastern Galicia: the Ukrainian police
and the Holocaust’, East European Jewish Affairs, 34/2 (2004), pp. 95–118, at p. 96.
13
Ibid., p. 97.
14
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London, 2010), p. 190.
15
Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford, 2007), p. 67.
16
Ibid. See also Torke and Himka (eds), German–Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective,
especially chapters by Andreas Kappeler, ‘Ukrainians and Germans in Southern Ukraine, 1870s to
1914’, pp. 45–68, and Jaroslav Pelenski, ‘Hetman Skoropadsky and Germany (1917–18) as reflected
in his memoirs’, pp. 69–83.

I
During the First World War, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were
conscripted to fight in the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Among
them were a number of key figures who facilitated Ukrainian nationalist
cooperation with Germany in the years leading up to the Second World
War. One such figure was Ievhen Konovalets, who went on to become
the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiia
Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN) in 1929 and remained in this position
until his assassination in 1938. At the start of the First World War he
served in the 19th Regiment of the L’viv Regional Defence, and in 1915
was taken prisoner by the Russians.17 During his internment he had
contact with other former Ukrainian officers of the Austro-Hungarian
Army such as Andrii Mel’nyk and Roman Sushko, both of whom went on
to play prominent roles in Ukrainian nationalist circles during the Second
World War. The First World War signalled for Ukrainians an opportunity
to achieve sovereignty while the empires around them were weakened by
the conflict. With the collapse of the Hapsburg empire, Ukrainian men
and women who had formerly belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Army
joined the military units of the army of the short-lived Ukrainian state:
Ukrainian People’s Republic (Ukrainska Narodna Respublika, UNR).18
The experience of participation in the ranks of the Austrian army and
the army of the UNR, in spite of the failure of the UNR, was of great
importance to Ukrainians at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Sensing the possibility of another war and drawing parallels with the
events of the First World War, former officers such as Konovalets’, Sushko
and Mel’nyk encouraged their younger nationalistically inclined fellow
Ukrainians to join forces with Germany in the 1930s for another chance
to fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty.19
In what is now western Ukraine, much of the younger generation in
the 1930s was already united into nationalistic groups such as the OUN,
eager to fight against both Poland and the Soviet Union. Snyder notes
that: ‘[f]ollowing the lead of Dmytro Dontsov, the young generation
of the 1930s preferred ideology to history and dreamed of a violent
revolution that would establish a Ukrainian state’.20 The political and
socio-economic situation in the region where the nationalist movement
17
See Taras Hunchak [Hunczak], Ukraina: Persha polovyna XX stolittia (Kyiv, 1993), pp. 98–111.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was a political activist organization that often employed
terrorist techniques in order to make its voice heard in eastern Poland. It gained a monopoly on the
nationalist political scene in eastern Galicia (now western Ukraine) in the 1930s–1950s. See Oleksandr
Zaitsev, Ukrains’kyi integral’nyi natsionalizm (1920–1930 roky): Narysy intelektual’noi istorii (Kyiv,
2013).
18
See Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–
1999 (Yale, 2003), pp. 133–53.
19
See Anatolii Kentii, Zbroinyi chyn ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv, 1920–1956, 1 (Kyiv, 2005).
20
Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 143. The ideology of the OUN has been described as
that of Ukrainian integral nationalism, influenced by Dmytro Dontsov’s concept of the ‘nationalism
of the deed’ (chynnyi natsionalism). See Zaitsev, Ukrains’kyi integral’nyi natsionalizm.

was formed played an important part in its ability to generate enough

support for their cause. After the brief independence of 1918–21, the
territory of contemporary Ukraine was separated into four parts, which
were under Soviet, Polish, Czechoslovak and Romanian rule. Throughout
the 1930s, Soviet Ukraine, encompassing the largest territory, underwent
industrialization, collectivization and the subsequent famine, known as
the Holodomor.21 The situation in the western lands of what is present-day
Ukraine was also problematic. From 1919, territories with a large number
of Ukrainian residents, including western Volhynia and eastern Galicia,
were under Polish rule. The relationship between the Polish authorities
and Ukrainian nationalists worsened throughout the 1920s and grew into
an open conflict that became particularly intense in the 1930s.22 In his
memoir, Teodor Koliasa, a former Galicia Division member, quotes a
popular saying of the 1930s: ‘a Ukrainian who has not been to prison for
politics is not a true Ukrainian’.23 The idea of a military formation that
would stand against the ruling authorities and for the independence of a
Ukrainian state was more than timely. ‘The very word [sic] “Ukrainian
Army” simply electrified our patriotic youth’, explains Koliasa. ‘Every
young man had an invincible desire to fight for the statehood of his people
in the ranks of a Ukrainian Army.’24 The war that was to follow presented
an opportunity to turn these desires into reality.
II
In 1939, as Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union
occupied eastern Poland up to the Curzon line. Ukrainians who were
citizens of Poland east of the Curzon line were now under Soviet
rule, while those residing west of the Curzon line found themselves
under German occupation. A number of Ukrainian nationalist leaders,
especially those in the German-occupied territories, were in close contact
with German political and military circles. Snyder argues that ‘[b]ecause
the Ukrainian state had to be created . . . Ukrainian nationalists had
a political motive to collaborate with the Germans and to encourage
Ukrainian youth to join Nazi organs of power’.25 Koliasa remembers
the early days of the war: ‘[People] were glad to witness the chaos
of the flight of the Polish soldiers to the East. The [Ukrainian] youth
collected the weapons left behind by the Polish military in case there
21
See Hiroaki Kuromiya, ‘The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered’, Europe-Asia Studies, 60/4
(2008), pp. 663–75; ‘The famine of 1932–1933’, in David R. Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating
National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest, 2007), pp. 35–78.
22
See Zaitsev, Ukrains’kyi integral’nyi natsionalizm, pp. 241–59.
23
Teodor Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’ zakatovanym Druziam Zemliakam: V 20-tu richnytsiu trahedii
sela Malnova, 1940–1960 (1960), p. 9 (author’s private archive).
24
Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’, pp. 21–2.
25
Timothy Snyder, ‘The ethnic cleansing of western Ukraine (1939–1945)’, in The Reconstruction of
Nations, pp. 154–78, at p. 160.

would be an order to join the ranks of one’s own army.’26 When the
Nazis allowed a Ukrainian Central Committee (Ukrіains’kyi tsentral’nyi
komitet (UTsK), Ukrainischer Hauptausschuß) to operate in Krakow as
a relief organization, Ukrainians also used it as ‘the quasi-official centre
of Ukrainian political life’.27 Finder and Prusin state that the Ukrainian
nationalists’ idea of Ukrainian sovereignty ‘based on ethnic homogeneity’
was rooted in the feeling of ‘a deep and hopeless sense of oppression’
and the powerful, but largely imagined, idea of the alleged Jewish
cooperation with the Soviet regime.28 For some Ukrainian nationalists,
ethnic cleansing operations (directed against both Jews and Poles) were
treated as an unavoidable part of the state-building process. Snyder
argues that ‘Ukrainian members of the Central Committee wished to use
German power to remove Poles and Jews from Ukrainian “ethnographic
territory”’, and saw Germany as an ally in the struggle for independence.29
Iaroslav Hrytsak suggests that Ukrainians who looked towards
Germany for cooperation were acting in the context of ‘an extreme
situation’, in which one’s ‘consciousness relies not on new solutions, but
on familiar schemes.’30 Believing that ‘Ukrainians and Germans were
natural allies against Poland, the Entente, and the Versailles Treaty’,
nationalist Ukrainians followed the channels of collaboration familiar
from the First World War.31 One such figure was the already mentioned
Roman Sushko, a member of the OUN who served as an important link
to the Abwehr. In the summer of 1939, Sushko was preparing a group
of 600 men in Wiener-Neustadt (Austria) to act as an auxiliary to the
Wehrmacht in its approaching attack on Poland. This military group was
intended to become the nucleus for an armed force which would take part
in an uprising leading to the independence of Ukraine.32 Two battalions
(known in German as Bergbauernhilfe, ‘Mountain Peasant’s Help’
and in Ukrainian as Viis’kovi viddily natsionalistiv, ‘Military Units of
Nationalists’) were formed by the Abwehr under the command of Major
Hans Dehmel and Colonel Roman Sushko. These battalions consisted of
OUN members who were mostly students in Austria and Germany; some
were also former soldiers of the Carpathian Sich, a military formation of
the Subcarpathian Autonomous Region within Czechoslovakia and the
short-lived Carpatho-Ukrainian state that proclaimed independence in
March 1939.33 These battalions took part in the Polish campaign as part
26
Koliasa, Na vichnu pamiat’, p. 11.
27
Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 158.
28
Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in eastern Galicia’, p. 99.
29
30
Iaroslav Hrytsak, ‘Svoiu dol’u dyviziinyky ne vybyraly . . . ’, Visti Kombatanta, 3 (2007), pp. 63–5,
at p. 64.
31
Frank Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish–Ukrainian and German–Ukrainian
Relations in Galicia’, in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds), The Shoah in Ukraine: History,
Testimony, Memorialization (Bloomington, IN, 2008), pp. 114–55, at p. 121.
32
See John Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism (New York, 1963), p. 42, and Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the
armed forces of the Reich’, p. 139.
33
See Mykola Vehesh, Velych i trahediia Karpats’koіi Ukraіiny (Uzhhorod, 2007).

of the 14 Army Group South. Their duties mainly consisted of helping

with the organization of local administration in the territories populated
by Ukrainians, informing the civilian population of the existence of the
‘Ukrainian legion’ and recruiting new soldiers. After the end of the
German–Polish war and following the signing of the Treaty of Non-
Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union the battalions were
disbanded and their soldiers joined other formations such as Werkschutz,
Bahnschutz, Hilfspolizei.34
On 24 April 1941 Gottlob Berger, Chief of Staff of the Waffen SS,
suggested to Himmler the formation of a Waffen SS unit consisting of
Ukrainians. On 3 May 1941 Himmler rejected Berger’s idea due to the
racial policy of the Nazis.35 Nevertheless, on 25 February 1941, the head
of the Abwehr Admiral Wilhelm Canaris issued an order to form a
new Ukrainian legion out of Ukrainian nationalists.36 In his Roads to
Extinction, Philip Friedman states that ‘[a]fter the outbreak of World
War II, the Germans constantly favoured the OUN at the expense of
more moderate Ukrainian groups’.37 Snyder explains that ‘[t]he OUN
counted on German help, since in the grand endeavour of building
a Ukrainian state from Polish, Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Romanian
territories, Germany was the only possible ally’.38 ‘In the first weeks and
months of their rule, the Germans gave Ukrainians the false impression
that the Ukrainian nationalist movement would be tolerated’, argues
Wendy Lower.39 Leaders of the German Supreme Command of the
Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) were glad to use
radical anti-Communist east European forces in their campaign against
the Soviet Union.40 The eagerness of the OUN to cooperate with the
German authorities is partly explained by Taras Hunczak:
The German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941 brought about a
moment of deliverance in the view of the Ukrainians and particularly the
OUN. Finally, they thought, the archenemy of the Ukrainian nation would
be destroyed, thus creating an opportunity for the Ukrainian people to re-
establish a sovereign Ukrainian state.41
34
Werkschutz was formed in the Generalgouvernement in October 1939. It consisted of a number of
local Ukrainians, mostly former residents of the Carpathian region, Galicia and Volhynia. In spring
1940 the unit had almost 1,000 members, half of them OUN supporters. See Mykola Klymyshyn, V
pokhodi do voli: Spomyny (Detroit, 1984). Snyder points out that many of the Hilfspolizei men had
served as militiamen under the Soviet regime since 1939. See Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations,
p. 159. Ukrainian Hilfspolizei are described by Finder and Prusin as ‘the institutional epicentre of
Ukrainian collusion with the Nazis’. See Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in eastern Galicia’, p. 96.
35
George H. Stein, Hitler’s Elite Guard at War: The Waffen SS 1939–1945 (Ithaca, NY, 1966), pp.
185–6.
36
Bolianovs’kyi states that Canaris ‘personally knew and valued’ Konovalets, see Bolianovs’kyi,
Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 23.
37
Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction (New York, 1980), p. 179.
38
39
Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), p. 38.
40
See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 570.
41
Taras Hunczak, ‘OUN–German Relations, 1941–5’, in Torke and Himka, German–Ukrainian
Relations, pp. 178–86, at p. 178.

In the meantime, the OUN split into two factions: the OUN-M,
supporting Andrii Mel’nyk as their leader, and the OUN-B, seeking a
more radical course of action and thus choosing to follow a younger
and more radical leader, Stepan Bandera. The German military authority
decided to base the Ukrainian legion on the members of the OUN-B.42
III
In April–June 1941 two Ukrainian battalions, mentioned in the
introduction to this article, were organized by the Abwehr: Sondergruppe
Nachtigall and Organization Roland, together known as the Legion of
Ukrainian Nationalists (Druzhyny Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv, DUN).43
The soldiers of Nachtigall were commanded by Lieutenant Hans Albrecht
Herzner and Captain Roman Shukhevych. The formation of these units
is characteristic of one of the trends of recruitment of Ukrainians into the
German Armed Forces. A Nachtigall officer, Myroslav Kal’ba, explained
why he joined the unit:
we did not volunteer to join Nachtigall, we were appointed by the
Organization [OUN] to join Nachtigall as people who had sworn loyalty
to Ukraine and the Organization and who, according to the first point of
the Decalogue, had promised to ‘Achieve the Ukrainian State or die fighting
for it’. We were happy and proud to be the first ones to take up arms in the
battle for an Independent Ukraine.44
Kal’ba argues that for the OUN men participation in the German Armed
Forces was voluntary and desired, as it was viewed as part of serving
the OUN rather than the German command. As the rest of the article
demonstrates, the situation was more complex for other soldiers in the
German army.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Nachtigall was attached
to the 1st Battalion of the Regiment Brandenburg-800 and became part
of the 1st Mountain Infantry Division whose order was to march on
L’viv. Nachtigall reached L’viv on 30 June 1941 and occupied the city’s
strategic positions (industrial warehouses, prisons, and a radio station).45
As the Soviet regime was withdrawing its forces from western Ukrainian
lands, rather than transporting their political prisoners east, they decided
to execute them en masse.46 It is thus unsurprising that ‘[a]fter two
years of Soviet rule, many had some reason to receive the German
42
Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 51.
43
See Ivan Patryliak, Lehiony Ukrains’kykh Natsionalistiv (1941–1942): Istoriia vynyknennia ta
diial’nist’ (Kyiv, 1999).
44
Myroslav Kal’ba, Nakhtigal’ v zapytanniakh i vidpovidiakh (L’viv, 2008), p. 19.
45
See Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the Reich’, p. 140, and Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki
viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 58.
46
Shukhevych’s brother was among those executed, see Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the
Reich’, p. 140.

invasion of the Soviet Union as a liberation’, especially, as Ukrainian

battalions were entering western Ukrainian lands together with the
German forces.47 The new occupying regime blamed the Jews for Soviet
killings of Ukrainians. Snyder details the immediate retaliation actions
against the Jewish population by the new regime and their local supporters
following the NKVD executions of prisoners:
In Kremenets, where more than a hundred prisoners were found murdered,
some 130 Jews were killed in a pogrom. In Lutsk, where some 2,800
prisoners were found machine-gunned, the Germans killed two thousand
Jews, and called this revenge for the wrongs done to Ukrainians by Jewish
communists. In Lviv, where about 2,500 prisoners were found dead in the
NKVD prison, Einsatzgruppe C and local militia organized a pogrom that
lasted for days.48
The L’viv pogrom took place in the first few days of the Nazi
occupation of the city. During the time of the pogrom the Nachtigall
battalion was on a week-long leave from duty and although individual
members of the battalion might have participated in the pogrom, there
seems to be a consensus among a number of scholars that the unit as a
whole did not partake in the atrocities in L’viv.49 The arrival of Nachtigall
coincided with the proclamation of the restoration of an independent
Ukrainian state by Stepan Bandera’s deputy, Iaroslav Stets’ko. This
proclamation was condemned by the Nazi officials and resulted in the
arrest of Bandera, Stets’ko and the self-proclaimed government.50 This
episode demonstrates that Ukrainian nationalists had their own motives
in cooperating with the Germans. It also shows that while the Germans
were keen on using the willing Ukrainian manpower to their advantage,
they were not prepared to accept their political ambitions and grant them
independence or even autonomy.
47
Snyder also points out that those who perceived the German invasion as a lesser evil included the
Jewish population of the region: ‘in summer 1941 some Jews imagined that German rule could be
no worse than Soviet. It is possible that Soviet deportations had, proportionally, touched Jews more
than anyone else.’ Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, p. 157. Finder and Prusin state that ‘[a]mong
Polish citizens deported into the interior of the Soviet Union, 30 per cent were Jews, even though Jews
constituted only 10 per cent of the population of Soviet-occupied south-eastern Poland’. Finder and
Prusin, ‘Collaboration in eastern Galicia’, p. 99.
48
Snyder, Bloodlands, pp. 195–6.
49
Among others see John-Paul Himka, ‘Be wary of faulty Nachtigall lessons’, Kyiv Post, 27 March
2008. For an opposing view see Sol Littman, Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion: The Ukrainian 14th
Waffen-SS Division (London, 2003), p. 30. It is often assumed that those Ukrainians who were among
the perpetrators of the pogrom in L’viv as well as in other parts of western Ukraine were the so-called
riffraff (shumovynnia). However, in his research of Ukrainian participation in the implementation of
the Holocaust, John-Paul Himka argues that ‘these were not simple thugs, but members of the militia
organized by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists’. See John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews
and the Holocaust: Divergent Memories (Saskatoon, 2009), p. 21. See also ‘Making genocide possible’,
in Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, pp. 69–97.
50
See Ivan Dereiko, ‘Ukrains’ki dopomizhni voienizovani formuvannia nimets’koii armii i politsii
v heneral’nii okruzi Kyiv u 1941–43 rr.’, in Natalia Makovs’ka (ed.), Arkhivy okupatsii 1941–1944, I
(Kyiv, 2006), pp. 796–804, at p. 797.

The Roland battalion, formed also of OUN-B supporters, has enjoyed

less attention than Nachtigall. It trained in total secrecy in Saubersdorf
(Austria). The commander of the battalion was the former Polish Army
officer, Ievhen Pobihushchyi. Just like Nachtigall, Roland was disbanded
after the proclamation of independence in L’viv in 1941.51
Andrii Mel’nyk’s OUN also cooperated with the German authorities.
A Ukrainian unit, Sonderkommando PuMa, was organized in June 1941
consisting of members of the OUN-M: 100 Ukrainians belonging to the
unit had higher education and good knowledge of the German language.52
Puma was expected to secure local administration, prepare warehouses
with ammunition, food and accommodation for the Wehrmacht, but it
was not expected to participate in front line combat. According to Ivan
Dereiko, it used its ‘“legitimate” position to conduct nationalist work on
the occupied territories of Ukraine’.53 Puma was disbanded following the
disbandment of Nachtigall and Roland.54
IV
During the course of the German advance in July 1941, Ukrainian units
were being formed by the German military authorities throughout the
territory of contemporary Ukraine. The territory itself was not treated as
a single entity: the Galicia district was part of the Generalgouvernement,
while the territories of the Ukrainian SSR were divided into several
administrative units, all together known as Reichskommissariat Ukraine
(RKU). The attitude of the occupying authorities in these regions
towards the civilian population differed significantly. While Ukrainians
in the western territories had their own representative body (the already
mentioned UTsK), the RKU was seen as nothing but a colony by the
Nazis and its people were little more than the slaves.55 Reichskommissar
Erich Koch’s proudly ruthless leadership is evident from his infamous
remark: ‘[i]f I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table
with me, I must have him shot’.56 This did not prevent the recruitment
of Ukrainians, including those from the RKU, into the German Armed
Forces.
Andrii Bolianovs’kyi estimates that by the end of 1942 there were
‘over 150 so-called Eastern Battalions, at least 70 of which consisted
partly or mostly of Ukrainians’.57 These Ukrainian units could be
51
See Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 41–74.
52
See Ivan Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia nimets’koi armii ta politsii u raikhskomisariati ‘Ukraina’
(1941–1944 roky) (Kyiv, 2012). pp. 21–2.
53
Ibid., p. 25.
54
Bolianovs’kyi gives a very detailed account of Puma’s activities in Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia,
pp. 74–87.
55
Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge,
MA, 2004), pp. 1–6.
56
Ibid., p. 37.
57

separated into Hilfswillige (Hiwis) (indigenous auxiliary volunteers)

and Schutzmannschaft Bataillons (guard battalions). Hiwis were often
comprised of former Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war (POWs) who
had volunteered to serve in the auxiliary units.58 Large numbers of Red
Army soldiers were being imprisoned by the Germans, many of them were
from pre-occupation Ukrainian SSR. Karel Berkoff offers some figures
relating to Soviet POWs:
German Army Group South counted 103,000 captured near Uman, south
of Kiev (early August); a staggering 665,000 near Kiev (by September 26);
100,000 by Melitopol and Berdiansk, near the Sea of Azov (by October 10)
and another 100,000 at Kerch in the Crimea (by November 16).59
Snyder confirms Berkhoff’s estimates saying that ‘[n]ever before in modern
warfare had so many prisoners been taken so quickly . . . By the end
of 1941, the Germans had taken about three million Soviet soldiers
prisoner.’60 Soviet POWs were experiencing extremely poor conditions
which often led to death by starvation. Snyder describes the POW camps
as ‘the site of death on an unprecedented scale’.61 Browning argues that
Nazi officials ‘visited the POW camps and recruited Ukrainian, Latvian
and Lithuanian “volunteers”’ and offered them ‘an escape from probable
starvation, and promised that they would not be used in combat against
the Soviet army’.62 It is thus not surprising that a significant number of
these Soviet POWs joined German formations as an alternative to POW
camps.
Describing the Hilfswillige, Berkhoff states that ‘[b]ecause Hitler hated
the notion of “Russians” in army service, these Hiwis remained an
open secret, without official duties or rights, until as late as October
1942’.63 They performed guarding duties at military warehouses and
were occasionally employed in action against Soviet partisans. Usually,
however, they were not armed.64 Berkhoff cites a figure of 200,000 Hiwis
recruited by the spring of 1942 and about 310,000 a year later.65 At first
these volunteers received no remuneration. By mid-1942, they started to
be paid between thirty and forty-two reichsmarks per month. The supply
of uniforms or rations of soap was not compulsory, which ‘produced a far
from uniform appearance of the volunteers, who . . . comprised up to 10%
of the whole German army in the East’.66
Schutzmannschaft battalions, also known as Schuma, were organized
by the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police). Their members were chosen ‘from
58
Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 35.
59
Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, p. 91.
60
Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 175.
61
Ibid.
62
Browning, Ordinary Men, p. 52.
63
64
65
66
Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, pp. 49–50.

the local militias that had sprung up under the military occupation and
from the screening of acceptable racial groups among the POWs, first and
foremost the Volksdeutsche and then the Ukrainians’.67 Finder and Prusin
state that members of the Ukrainian police ‘represented all strata of
Ukrainian society. Peasants, workers and Lumpenproletariat constituted
the bulk of the rank and file, while more educated individuals from the
middle class filled the officer ranks.’68 Thirty-five thousand Ukrainians
are estimated to have served in fifty-eight of the Schutzmannschaft
battalions.69 Most of these units consisted of Ukrainian volunteers
from eastern and central Ukraine. Schuma 201, 203–208 and 212
comprised Ukrainians from the Galicia region. Former DUN soldiers
were organized into Schuma 201 led by Pobihushchyi and his deputy
Shukhevych.70 This is another example where the racial policy of the Nazi
commandments went against the reality they faced in the course of the
war.
Arriving in a new locality, the occupation regime often found a network
of OUN’s people’s militia. Finder and Prusin argue that ‘[f]rom the
perspective of the Ukrainian leadership, a competent Ukrainian police
force in the region was essential to prospective Ukrainian autonomy’.71
The Ordnungspolizei, however, ‘could not accept the existence of the
nationalist formations, which were carriers of the enemy ideology’.72
These nationalist groups were thus often incorporated into the German
structures and used by the Germans to their own ends. In some regions
the formations simply changed names but the people remained the same,
and so did their loyalty to Bandera or Mel’nyk. The nationalists unwilling
to cooperate were executed by the German authorities.73
In June 1942 Himmler voiced the need for the political training of
the Schutzmannschaft. Together with Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister
for the Occupied Eastern Territories, they ‘outlined the goals of the
indoctrination program, with an emphasis on “stirring up the strong
67
Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 90.
68
Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in Eastern Galicia’, p. 104. It is estimated that in eastern Galicia
alone by July 1943 there were 4,047 NCOs/rank-and-file and 86 officers in the Ukrainian police. See
DALO, f. P-58, o. 1, spr. 30, ark. 11, in Finder and Prusin, ‘Collaboration in eastern Galicia’, p. 106.
The estimates for Reichskommissariat Ukraine in 1942–3 suggest that there were 15,665 Ukrainian
Schutzpolizei and 55,094 Ukrainian Gendarmes. See Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the
Reich’, p. 141.
69
70
While this issue requires further investigation, a number of scholars have pointed out the likelihood
of the Schuma 201’s involvement not only in fighting the Soviet partisans but also in murdering
Jews and Belarusians while they were stationed in Belarus in February 1942. See Marples, Heroes
and Villains; Himka, ‘True and false lessons’; Per Anders Rudling, ‘Szkolenie w mordowaniu:
Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i Hauptmann Roman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku’, in
Bogusław Paź (ed.), Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych: Przykład
ludobójstwa na kresach południowej-wschodniej Polski w latach 1939–1946 (Wrocław, 2011), pp. 191–
212.
71
72
73
Ibid., p. 65.

instinctual anti-Semitism of the eastern peoples” by drawing attention

to “the Jewish face of Bolshevism”’.74 The ideological position of the
programme was relayed in an essay Das neue Werden im Osten Europas
(The New Development in Eastern Europe) which emphasized that ‘[t]he
Jews brought Bolshevism to power through a tyranny of terror, hunger,
crime’ and stressed that ‘[t]he current war being led by the Germans
and Italians will mean the destruction of Bolshevism and with it the
liberation of the people of Eastern Europe’.75 Thus the war on the
side of the Reich was presented to Ukrainians as the war of liberation
and against ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’. This only added fuel to the already
evident anti-Semitic attitudes among Ukrainians in general and the
OUN members in particular.76 Finder and Prusin argue that ‘traditional
Ukrainian anti-Judaism, the Ukrainian association of Jews with the
despised Soviet occupation of 1939–41, and the pro-German orientation
of the Ukrainian national movement’, together with ‘ethnic irredentism
and affinities between Nazi ideology and extreme nationalism’ facilitated
German engagement of Ukrainians in the destruction of the Jews.77 Anti-
Semitic indoctrination further enabled Ukrainian military participation
in the implementation of the Holocaust.
Discussing the case of Volhynia, Snyder argues that the share of
Ukrainians in the actual killing was small, but they ‘provided the labor
that made the Holocaust possible’.78 In his assessment of the role of the
Ukrainian and Belarusian police in the implementation of the Holocaust,
Dean argues that the significance of these groups ‘can be seen from the
fact that in these predominantly rural areas at the time of the massacres
in the summer and autumn of 1942 they outnumbered the Gendarmes
by between five and ten to one’.79 The very presence of the locals thus
enabled the completion of the massacres: ‘the rounding up and escorting
of large numbers of Jews would have been difficult without the active
support of the local police units’.80 Wendy Lower’s assessment points
to similar conclusions: ‘thousands of Ukrainian policemen provided the
commissariat officials with the necessary manpower and local information
about the population and terrain. Hundreds in the mobile battalions
(108, 109, 110) and stationary SS-police units participated directly in the
74
75
Ibid.
76
See John-Paul Himka, ‘The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Ukraine’, in John-Paul
Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic (eds), Bringing the Dark Past to Light (Lincoln, NE, 2013), pp. 626–
62, at pp. 629–30. See also Taras Kurylo and Ivan Khymka [John-Paul Himka], ‘Iak OUN stavylasia
do ievreiv? Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra V’iatrovycha’, Ukraina Moderna, 13 (2008), pp.
252–65; and Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, ‘The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
and its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets’ko’s 1941 Zhyttiepys’, Harvard Ukrainian
Studies, 23/3–4 (1999), pp. 149–84.
77
78
79
Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, p. 101.
80
Ibid.

killing of Jews.’81 Lower also states that ‘[i]n the SS and police hierarchy,
the Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the bottom of the chain of command
structure. Mostly Ukrainians filled the ranks of the rural auxiliaries.’82 She
highlights the precariousness of the German choice to use the Ukrainian
help and explains that there was no consistent policy which would place
the Ukrainian police in the role of executioners:
in general the Germans were wary of arming Ukrainian police auxiliaries
in the occupation administration, many of whom had not been carefully
screened. The Germans realized that a Ukrainian aide might misuse his
weapon or desert his post and join the partisans (and many did). Moreover,
armed Germans were not inclined to give over their primary source of
power – the gun.83
Intelligence reports by the Ukrainian nationalist resistance corroborate
Lower’s assessment: ‘those recruited into the SS are given weapons and
immediately in that same village receive military training; at night their
weapons are taken away and they are carefully watched in case they decide
to flee’.84 Dean states that ‘[t]he policy with regard to arming of the militia
depended essentially on how much they could be trusted’.85 The German
authorities were thus in a position where they had to rely on Ukrainians
whose loyalty they could not trust; this mistrust further alienated their
local recruits.
V
Formations that consisted of Ukrainians were highly fragmented. They
were not recognized as Ukrainian and not united into a separate
structure until 1943 when they were formally integrated into the
nominal Ukrainian Liberation Army (Die Ukrainische Befreiungsarme
or Ukrains’ke vyzvol’ne viis’ko, UVV).86 It was officially headed by
former officers of the UNR Army Colonel Ivan Holub and Colonel Petro
Kryzhanivs’kyi. This ‘army’ had no political influence and the German
officials made it clear to the Ukrainian leadership of the UVV that there
would be no tolerance of any attempts to gain political independence for
Ukraine. Bolianovs’kyi estimates that,
[i]n February, 1943 there were approximately 100,000 Ukrainians in units
of the Eastern Troops. The majority of them was organized in the
81
82
Ibid., p. 131.
83
Ibid., p. 136.
84
Report by Dovbak, 22 May 1944. Halyzevyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bezpeky Ukrainy (HDA
SBU), F. 13, Spr. 376, T. 28, Ark. 86.
85
Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, p. 30.
86
The name of the Ukrainian Liberation Army mirrored that of the Russian Liberation Army
(Russkaia Osvoboditel’naia Armiia, ROA) led by General Vlasov. ROA also encouraged Ukrainians
to join its ranks, promising to support a formation of a sovereign Ukraine ‘once the victory over
Bolshevism has been achieved’. See Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, pp. 51–2.

UVV (about 75,000 soldiers). Its units gradually were created mainly in
Ukraine’s regions of Dnipropetrovs’k, Zhytomyr, Kamianets’-Podil’s’kyi
(now Khmel’nyts’kyi region), Kyiv, Poltava, Rivne, Stalino (now Donets’k),
Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and some in the Crimean peninsula.87
The UVV units had no communication with each other, yet they had a
common oath:
As a faithful son of my Homeland, I enter the ranks of the Ukrainian
Liberation Army and solemnly swear that I will fight honestly for the good
of my people against Bolshevism. In this fight, that will occur on the side
of the German and Axis armies against the common enemy, I swear loyalty
to Adolf Hitler as the leader and Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation
Armies. For the fulfilment of this oath I am ready at any time to give my
life.88
In October 1944 the UVV numbers reached 190,000 men.89 The lack of
desire of the German authorities to give real power to the UVV led to
many desertions. In March 1943 about 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers from
Schuma joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka
Armiia, UPA).90 The UVV leadership had close links with the UPA; partly
because of this, in January 1944 the UVV staff was disbanded.91
VI
Another opportunity to form a separate Ukrainian formation came
after the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943. The head of
the Civil Administration in the Krakow and Galicia districts in
Generalgouvernement, Otto Gustav Wächter, was authorized in March
1943 to form a Ukrainian division within the Waffen SS.92 The title
87
Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 576–7.
88
Ibid., p. 577.
89
Some units of the UVV were sent to Belgium or Denmark and performed guard duties. Some
were sent to France to fight the French Resistance. Two Ukrainian battalions joined the French. See
Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 583–4.
90
UPA was the largest Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary resistance group during the Second
World War. It was established by the OUN-B. Former Captain of Nachtigall and Schutzmannschaft
Bataillon 201, Roman Shukhevych, became Commander-in-Chief of the UPA. For a variety of
views on the activities of the UPA see Ivan Patryliak, Peremoha abo smert’: Ukrains’kyi vyzvol’nyi
rukh u 1939–1960 rr. (L’viv, 2012); Grzegorz Motyka, Od rzezi wołyńskiej do akcji ‘Wisła’: Konflikt
polsko-ukraiński 1943–1947 (Kraków, 2011) and Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960 (Warszawa, 2006);
Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi, Orhanizatsiia ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv i Ukrains’ka povstans’ka armiia
(Kyiv, 2005).
91
Apart from the units of the UVV, Ukrainians could also be found in Croatian, Cossack (Helmut
von Pannwitz Cossack Division, Kuban Cossack Army, Don Cossack Army) Russian and other
formations cooperating with the German army. Ukrainians also served in the 369th Croatian
Regiment and as part of this regiment participated in the attack on Stalingrad. See Bolianovs’kyi,
Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, pp. 578–9.
92
The ‘Galicia’ Division underwent a number of name changes. The names most often used are 14.
Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) and 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS
(ukrainische Nr. 1). See Wolf-Dietrich Heike, Sie wollten die Freiheit: Die Geschichte der Ukrainischen
Division 1943–1945 (Dorheim, 1973).

‘Galicia’ was chosen in order to limit any Ukrainian nationalist feelings

that the recruits might have had. This did not prevent 80,000 volunteers
from seeking to enlist. Out of these, 13,000 reported for duty.93 By
the end of 1943 General Fritz Freitag was nominated as the Division’s
commander, with Major Wolf-Dietrich Heike as the Chief-of-Staff. Two
Ukrainian officers attained the rank of major: Ievhen Pobihushchyi,
formerly of Organisation Roland, and Mykola Paliienko. ‘Galicia’ became
one of over thirty Waffen SS divisions formed after 1941.94
The Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ entered combat as a division in July 1944
in what has become known as the battle of Brody, where it suffered
great losses. It had to be reformed from around 3,000 survivors, reserve
personnel and recruits from other military formations. Once reformed,
the ‘Galicia’ participated in anti-partisan operations in Slovakia and
Slovenia.95 Thus, as Snyder points out, ‘Ukrainian nationalists hoping to
build a Ukrainian state left their own country at the orders of foreigners
to suppress the analogous strivings of others.’96 The division then fought
the Red Army on the Austro-Slovenian border before surrendering to the
Western Allies in May 1945.97
Hitler’s view of the ‘Galicia’ Division was recorded during the night of
23–24 March 1945: ‘[a]t the moment I can’t even create new formations
in Germany because I have no weapons. Therefore it is idiocy to give
weapons to a Ukrainian division which is not completely reliable.’98 Hitler
explained why, in his opinion, the unit could not be trusted (and here the
legacy of the First World War is evident once again): ‘If it is composed of
Austrian Ruthenians, one can do nothing other than immediately to take
away their weapons. The Austrian Ruthenians were pacifist. They were
lambs, not wolves. They were miserable even in the Austrian Army.’99 This
confusion as to the exact origin and national identity of the Ukrainians
in German uniforms proved to be critical in the eventual civilianization
93
See ‘Report on Recruitment’, in Michael James Melnyk, To Battle: The Formation and History of
the 14th Galician Waffen-SS Division (Solihull, 2002), p. 325.
94
The Waffen SS also contained Albanian, Belgian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Estonian, French,
Hungarian, Latvian, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian and other non-German divisions. See
Marc J. Rikmenspoel, Waffen-SS Encyclopaedia (Bedford, PA, 2004).
95
See Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 149–95, and Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoria (L’viv,
2000), pp. 270–81.
96
97
For more information on the division’s military engagements, see Melnyk, To Battle; Bolianovs’kyi,
Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’; and Heike, Sie wollten die Freiheit. Since the end of the Second World War
the ‘Galicia’ men have been accused of having participated in war crimes such as the destruction
of the village of Huta Pieniacka. In 1986, the Deschênes Commission in Canada, where many of
the former members of the division settled after the war, cleared the division of participation in war
crimes. However, while the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ as a division might not have participated in war crimes,
there is a high probability of individual war criminals’ presence in the ranks of the division. For
information on the war crimes allegations and the post-war screenings of the ‘Galicia’ division see
‘War Crime Allegations and Investigations’, in Olesya Khromeychuk, ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians:
Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division (Oxford, 2013), pp. 61–90.
98
‘Abendlage von 23. Marz 1945 in Berlin (Fuhrerwohnung)’, Hitlers Lagebesprechungen, in George
Stein, The Waffen SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War, 1939–1945 (Ithaca. NY, 1984), pp. 194–6.
99
Ibid., p. 195.

of the ‘Galicia’ division men.100 Their statelessness was crucial in both

driving them to form a Ukrainian army, and preventing such an army
from being formed other than within another state’s armed forces.
Shortly before its surrender, the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ came closest to
fulfilling the desire of the Ukrainian nationalists who wanted to set up a
Ukrainian army and use a formation of the German Armed Forces as a
nucleus for that army. In the spring of 1945 the Nazi leadership took the
most radical step in relation to Ukrainians. ‘On 12 March the formation of
the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) within the German Armed Forces
was announced.’101 General Pavlo Shandruk, Lieutenant-General of the
former UNR Army, was appointed as Commander in Chief of the UNA.
Shandruk symbolically reorganized the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ into the 1st
Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army (1st UD UNA).
The 2nd division of the UNA started to be formed in early 1945. The
division consisted of former UNR Army soldiers and officers, as well
as former Red Army soldiers and members of Schuma and other units.
One of its brigades was the anti-tank brigade ‘Free Ukraine’, officially
known as Panzerjäger Brigade Freie Ukraine. Dereiko estimates that the
brigade consisted of over 1,800 persons.102 Simultaneously, an infantry
brigade, commanded by the former chief of the Lemberg (L’viv) district
Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian auxiliary police) Volodymyr Pitulei,
was being formed. By early April 1945 the brigade consisted of 3,400
persons.103 The main difference between the units of the 2nd UD UNA
and all other German formations comprised of Ukrainians was that the
2nd UD’s commanders were Ukrainian rather than German. Out of the
estimated 250,000 Ukrainians scattered across numerous Eastern Troops
towards the end of the war, 38,000 joined Shandruk’s UNA.104 Thus, as
Snyder puts it, the ‘Galicia’ Division eventually became ‘an institutional
embodiment of Ukrainian goals’.105
VII
While the older generation were of much importance to the formation
of the initial Ukrainian units, towards the end of the war the German
command also started recruiting the Ukrainian youth, with the plan to
transfer them to the ‘Galicia’ division as officers once they reached the
age of eighteen. Available estimates suggest that 6,547 boys and 1,121 girls
from Galicia were recruited, but some scholars suggest that their numbers
100
See Khromeychuk, ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians, pp. 91–146.
101
Dereiko, Mistsevi formuvannia, p. 107. The Ukrainian National Army (UNA) and the Ukrainian
Liberation Army (UVV) were different entities.
102
103
Ibid., p. 108.
104
105

were higher.106 Volodymyr Salamakha, who with his brother, Bohdan,

joined the German Armed Forces as young men, remembers:
In June 1944 I was not even 15 and my brother Bohdan was 17. UPA did not
want to recruit us because we were too young. On 26 April 1944 we left L’viv
to be trained in Czechoslovakia. Among the youth there were Ukrainians
from Galicia, eastern Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, young men from
the Baltic States.107
The drive to train the youngsters was increasing with the losses of the
German army. Another solution to the shortage of military personnel
was ‘wild’ mobilization. During 1944 more and more Ukrainians were
recruited into German units; many of them were drafted under duress.
Evidence of ‘wild mobilization’ of Ukrainian men, similar to that
described by the fictional Selepko Lavochka, can be found in memoirs
as well as the documents produced by the UPA:
I am writing to inform you that since the start of May [1944] in the zone
near the frontline the Germans have started to capture men in villages and
forcibly take them to the German Army. These people-traps have taken
place in a number of regions . . . The captured men are herded into one
place where brief individual protocols are made, stating where the man was
born, where he resides, what he does for a living. Once the protocol is made
the captured man is offered a chance to join a German SS unit, and if he
refuses he is threatened with being taken to ‘Arbeitsabteilung’, to the front
line to dig trenches, and so people are forced to join the SS.108
Those who were mobilized forcibly towards the end of the war without
even the façade of ‘volunteering’ were not always able to join the
units comprised of Ukrainians. There were some who ended up in the
30th Grenadier Division Russian No 1, 1st Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,
2nd Das Reich, 3rd Totenkopf, 5th Wiking, 9th Hohenstaufen, 10th
Frundsberg, 12th Hitler Jugend, 18th Horst Wessel, 22nd Volunteer
Cavalry Maria Theresia, 29th Grenadier Division and 31st Grenadier
Division Wallonien.109
VIII
The path to the German Armed Forces differed radically for many
Ukrainians. There are nevertheless certain patterns of recruitment, which
106
See Michael Paziuk, Victim of Circumstance (Wrexham, 1993); P. Pilkiv, ‘Ukrainian Youths in the
Division’, Visti Kombatanta, 2 (1995) and Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viis’kovi formuvannia, p. 584.
107
Volodymyr Salamakha, ‘Spomyny brativ Volodymyra i Bohdana Salamakhiv iz sluzhby v
iunakakh protypovitrianoi oborony’, Visti Kombatanta, 2 (2007), p. 85.
108
Report by Dovbak, 22 May 1944. HDA SBU, F. 13, Spr. 376, T. 28, Ark. 86. See also Michael
Roman Hrycyszyn, God Save Me from My Friends, and from My Enemies, I’ll Save Myself Alone: A
Ukrainian Memoir (New Cambridge, 2011).
109
See Ievstakhii Len’ko, Piat’ rokiv u riadakh Vermakhtu (Ternopil’, 1999); Ievstakhii
Zahachevs’kyi, Spohady frontovyka (Munich, 1952).

this article has tried to detail. Analysis of the wider circumstances that
facilitated the employment of supposedly racially inferior people into
the many parts of the German army and the varied motivations that
drove Ukrainians from all parts of contemporary Ukraine to serve on
the side of the German Reich, is vital both for the deeper understanding
of the specificities of the Ukrainian case as well as the larger issue of
collaboration of the local population on the occupied territories.
This article is only able to offer an overview of the participation of
Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces. The subject requires a more
detailed research. Being highly controversial, the issue of Ukrainian
participation in the German Armed Forces often attracts those who seek
to condemn these people as war criminals as well as those who justify them
as Ukrainian patriots fighting for independence. The most unfortunate
consequence of this dichotomous discussion is that basic information
about the role of the Ukrainian population during the Second World
War gets distorted, and this distortion is reproduced and popularized by
the media and individuals with set political agendas. The consideration
of the wide variety of motivations for serving on the side of the Reich
immediately complicates the habitually simplified traitor/hero dichotomy.
For instance, the choice of the Red Army soldiers to fight on the side of
the Reich was usually based on their wish to save their lives. At the same
time, this does not suggest that all of them lacked ideological persuasion to
fight against the USSR. As noted by Bihl, ‘the call for a “struggle against
Bolshevism”, and the belief that National Socialism was a lesser evil than
communism or Stalinism, led many Slavs to apply to join the armed forces
of the German Reich, despite their experience of German occupation and
German treatment of prisoners of war’.110
Ukrainian nationalist volunteers were frequently driven by the
nationalist idea of state-building, which for many involved the desire to
create an ethnically pure state, hence the support some of them had for
Nazi anti-Semitic policies. Some joined because of the potential career
prospects within a regular army, and others because they wanted to
provide relative security for their families, whom they had left in German-
occupied villages and cities. Many were mobilized forcibly.
The level of knowledge on the range and complexity of the different
kinds of participation of Ukrainians and other non-Germans, especially
those from eastern Europe, in the German Armed Forces continues
to suffer from a lack of open debate. Discussing the present-day
consequences of the distortion of the controversial history of the Second
World War in Ukraine, Marco Carynnyk explains that the ideals and
collective understanding of the ‘other’ held by parts of Ukrainian
society during the war ‘continue to rule in the era of integration and
social pragmatism. Hence the emergence of desire for heroization or
stigmatization where simply a sober assessment and unbiased truth is
110
Bihl, ‘Ukrainians in the armed forces of the Reich’, p. 138.

needed.’111 It is only through such an assessment of the circumstances

in which these ‘ordinary’ men joined the ranks of the German Armed
Forces that we will be able to understand better why the Reich found its
supporters among those it branded as racially inferior.
111
In Dmytro Rybakov, ‘Marko Tsarynnyk [Marco Carynnyk]: Istorychna napivpravda hirsha
za odvertu brekhniu’, lb.ua, 5 Nov. 2009, <http://society.lb.ua/life/2009/11/05/13147_marko_
tsarinnik_istorichna_napivp.html>, paragraph 23 of 24 [accessed 8 Jan. 2015].


Ukrainians in The German Armed Forces During The Second World War

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Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces

During the Second World War

T his absurd description of the unintended recruitment of a

driven”’, as Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin argue,12 though

A single occupation can fracture a society for generations; double

Ukrainians who fought on the German side can be separated into

was formed played an important part in its ability to generate enough

of the 14 Army Group South. Their duties mainly consisted of helping

invasion of the Soviet Union as a liberation’, especially, as Ukrainian

The Roland battalion, formed also of OUN-B supporters, has enjoyed

separated into Hilfswillige (Hiwis) (indigenous auxiliary volunteers)

instinctual anti-Semitism of the eastern peoples” by drawing attention

‘Galicia’ was chosen in order to limit any Ukrainian nationalist feelings

of the ‘Galicia’ division men.100 Their statelessness was crucial in both

were higher.106 Volodymyr Salamakha, who with his brother, Bohdan,

needed.’111 It is only through such an assessment of the circumstances

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