The OUN and Nazi Germany

Ukrainian integral nationalists greeted the German attack on the USSR with enthusiasm, viewing it as a promising opportunity to establish an independent Ukrainian state. But although the OUN and Germans shared a common enemy, their goals and interests were far from compatible.

The tenuous relationship between the OUN and Nazi Germany had other complications. Among the Germans there were strong differences of opinion regarding the OUN: the Abwehr (military intelligence) of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, which had ties of long duration with the OUN, favored cooperating with the OUN, but the Nazi party apparatus, headed by Martin Bormann, contemptuously refused to treat them as a serious political factor. Moreover, those Germans who wished to deal with the integral nationalists had the problem of deciding which faction to support – the relatively moderate yet weaker Melnyk wing (OUN-M) or the dynamic, more numerous but recalcitrant Bandera supporters (OUN-B). Competition for German support fueled the rivalry between the two factions: each sought to establish itself as the sole representative of the Ukrainian people.

A product of German/OUN collaboration was the creation, shortly before the invasion of the USSR, of a Ukrainian military unit in the German army called the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists. Composed mainly of pro-Bandera Ukrainians recruited in German-occupied territories, this force consisted of about 600 men divided into two units that bore the code names Nachtigall and Roland.

Within days of the German entry into Ukraine, the conflict of interests between the integral nationalists and the Germans came to the fore. In an audacious move, which verged on the foolhardy, the OUN-B (supported by members of the Nachtigall unit) decided – without consulting the Germans – to proclaim, on 30 June 1941, the establishment of a Ukrainian state in recently conquered Lviv. Bandera’s close associate, Iaroslav Stetsko, was chosen to be premier. The OUN-B gambled that the German military commanders would accept this action as an accomplished fact, rather than risk a confrontation with Ukrainians at the outset of the invasion.

The OUN-B not only bypassed the Germans but also attempted, with some initial success, to convince the confused Ukrainian populace that its actions had the support of Berlin. The aged and bedridden Metropolitan Sheptytsky was manipulated into issuing a statement of support for the proclamation. Although the OUN-B had not been far off the mark in its prediction of the indecisive manner in which the German military would react to its bold move, it completely miscalculated the response of the Nazi political leadership. Within days of the proclamation, Bandera and his associates were arrested by the Gestapo and incarcerated. Meanwhile, the OUN-M, which had been careful not to antagonize the Germans, sought to benefit from its rival’s misfortune. However, within several months, it too ran afoul of the Nazis.

As part of the strategy to confront the Germans with accomplished facts, both OUN factions – again without German agreement – planned to organize and control the local administration in the newly conquered parts of Ukraine. For this purpose they assembled about 2000 of their members, most of whom belonged to OUN-B, divided them into “expeditionary groups” (pokhidni hrupy), and instructed them to follow the advancing Germans into Ukraine. In each locality these groups were to search out nationally conscious Ukrainians and build a local administration around them.

But after the hasty departure of the Soviets, East Ukrainians usually did not need the OUN groups to prod them into action. Because German military authorities were relatively civil in their treatment of the populace during the early months of German occupation, many Ukrainians spontaneously established local administrations. Expecting the Germans to liquidate the hated collective farms and to redistribute the land to individual owners, peasants brought in the harvest under exceedingly difficult conditions. Teachers organized schools and workers often ran factories on their own.

Priests who had somehow managed to survive the 1930s emerged to serve mass and baptize children and young adults en masse. With the religious revival came church politics. The Orthodox church of Volhynia split into two entities – the Autonomous and Autocephalous churches – which then extended their influence into central and eastern Ukraine. The former was more traditionalist and, while not breaking its links with the Moscow patriarchate, supported ecclesiastical autonomy for Ukraine only as long as the patriarchate remained under Soviet rule. The latter revived some of the traditions of the UAOC (Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church) of the 1920s, supported the independence of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, and tended to attract the more nationally conscious Ukrainians into its ranks.

Over 100 non-Communist newspapers appeared throughout Ukraine. In large cities, especially Kiev, Ukrainian literary, scholarly, and social groups sprang up in great numbers. There were even attempts at political organization. In October 1941 in Kiev, members of the OUN-M, who had recently established themselves in the city, took the initiative in forming a Ukrainian National Council, composed largely of East Ukrainians, in hopes that it might become the central governmental body in Ukraine. Civic organizations also appeared in Kharkiv and Dniepropetrovsk. In short, as Soviet rule disintegrated, a spontaneous upsurge of Ukrainian social, cultural, and economic activity occurred, fueled by the expectation that the Germans were about to establish a Ukrainian state.

The Nazis had different plans, however. Annoyed that the integral nationalists had failed to draw the proper conclusions from their liquidation of the OUN-B attempt to establish a government on 30 June 1941 in Lviv, the Nazi political administration, which had arrived to replace the military authorities, resolved to repeat the lesson more forcefully. In September 1941, SS police units arrested and executed many members of the OUN-B ”expeditionary groups.” About two months later, the Gestapo turned on the OUN-M, concentrating on the influential group in Kiev. Over forty leading members of OUN-M, including the poetess Olena Teliha, were shot, and the popular newspaper, Ukrainske Slovo, was shut down. The Kievan press was turned over to pro-Russian groups who obediently followed German instructions. Nazi authorities then executed the Ukrainian mayor of Kiev, Volodymyr Bahazy, and purged outspoken Ukrainians from the administration, police, and press. The Ukrainian integral nationalists went underground; it was clear that their brief honeymoon with the Nazi regime was over.