43 Ukrainian Lands during World War II, 1941-1944

The era of German-Soviet “friendship” did not even last two full years. On June 22, 1941 Nazi Germany launched a full-scale attack against the Soviet Union. The invasion, called Operation Barbarossa, included forces consisting of 150 divisions of the German Army (Wehrmacht) and totaling about three million men.

43.1 The devasting meaning of World War II for one of the estimated 4.1 million civilian casualties in Ukraine: a dead mother and her grieving son swept up by Nazi German invasion near Zhytomyr, June 1941.

MAP 43 UKRAINE, 1941-1944

Nazi Germany was joined by its allies Romania and Hungary in the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. As a reward for its participation, Romania got back northern Bukovina and all of Bessarabia, which only a year before it had lost to the Soviets. Then, as a result of an agreement with Nazi Germany on August 30, 1941, Romania was allowed to administer an entirely new territory called Transnistria, between the Dniester and Southern Buh rivers that included as well the Black Sea port of Odessa. Ethnic Romanians comprised only 10 percent of Transnistria’s 2.3 million inhabitants, but they were viewed as the vanguard of a Greater Romania that was to include lands eastward beyond the Dniester River. To assure the success of its expansionist policies, the Romanian government opened in Transnistria Romanian-language schools, a Romanian Scientific Institute, and a Romanian Orthodox Mission to promote the use of Romanian in church liturgies.

Nazi Germany’s other ally, Hungary, gained no territorial spoils from its participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union, but it was allowed to retain Transcarpathia (Carpatho-Ukraine), which it had annexed from Czechoslovakia in two stages in November 1938 and March 1939. In Hungary’s “regained” territory, named simply Subcarpathia (Karpatalja), the local Ukrainophile movement was suppressed and many of its activists arrested or forced to flee to the Soviet Union, which until June 1941 bordered the region. Subcarpathia’s population as a whole was left undisturbed, however, and the Rusyn, or Uhro-Rusyn orientation that supported the idea of a distinct fourth East Slavic nationality was promoted through Rusyn-language instruction in schools, in publications, and in the work of a research institute.

43.2 In the face of the Nazi German invasion, Soviet authorities order the dismantling and evacuation eastward of factories, such as this one in Zaporizhzhia, July 1941.

The remaining and vast proportion of Ukrainian territory was administered directly by Nazi Germany. The German sphere was divided into three distinct regions: (1) the Generalgouvernement Polen; (2) the Reichskommissariat Ukraine; and (3) the military zone. Each of these regions was treated differently by the German authorities, and only in the first two were civil administrations set up. The Crimea, which was occupied by German troops in October-November 1941, was technically part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine but de facto remained in the military zone.

The Generalgouvernement had come into being in 1939 following the destruction of Poland (see Map 42) and it was incorporated into Greater Germany. In the wake of the Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, the Generalgouvernement was extended as far as the Zbruch River.

43.3 Hans Frank (third from left), governor-general of Nazi Germany’s Generalgouvernement, reviewing in L’viv Ukrainian volunteers for the Galicia Division, June 1943.

Galician Ukrainians initially placed great hopes in the German invasion. Both factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) lent support to Germany’s military campaign, while Banderites (OUN-B) went so far as to proclaim in L’viv the existence of a sovereign Ukrainian state (June 29, 1941). This unilateral action, supported by the city’s leading Ukrainians, angered the Nazis, who arrested the instigators of the proclamation. From then on neither Nazi Germany’s military or civil authorities were willing to work with what they considered extreme Ukrainian nationalists, regardless of which faction (Banderite or Melnykite) they represented.

43.4 Germany’s Führer, Adolf Hitler (second from left), at his Werwolf headquarters just north of Vinnytsia, meets with Erich Koch, chief Nazi official in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, summer 1942.

The German authorities in the Generalgouvernement did, however, allow the establishment of a Ukrainian National Council, Ukrainian-language schools, several cooperatives, and the popular-education Prosvita Society reading rooms that recently had been abolished by the short-lived Soviet regime. Ukrainians were also allowed to enter the lower ranks of the German civil and administrative apparatus, and in April 1943 a volunteer Ukrainian military unit (Galicia Division / Division Galizien) was created to fight alongside the German military on the Eastern front.

The situation in the second Nazi German region, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, was much different.

During the first few months following the Nazi German invasion, both Banderite and Melnykite OUN activists followed the German military into the Soviet Ukraine, where they hoped to encourage local Ukrainians to support the idea of statehood. Initially, there was a revival of non-Soviet Ukrainian cultural and political activity in Kiev and other cities and an expansion of both the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic Church into former Soviet territory. Such Ukrainian cultural and political activity was brought to an abrupt end, however, following the arrival of Erich Koch in November 1941 as head of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Koch ordered the closure of all cultural societies, cooperatives, and publications as well as Ukrainian-language schools above the fourth grade.

43.5 Soldiers of the Nazi German Army at rest, being served by young Ukrainian bootblacks.

Soviet Ukraine, after all, was considered part of the Nazi Lebensraum, that is, territory where a racially pure German master race (Herrenvolk) would live and where the local “subhumans” (Untermenschen) would at best play a subordinate role or, at worst, be deported and/or killed. Ethnic Ukrainians, like all Slavs, were classified in the Nazi German racial scheme as Untermenschen, and, therefore, they had no need for higher forms of civic or cultural life. At best, Ukrainians were accorded the right to work. Therefore, the former Soviet collective and state farms were simply maintained as “communal farms” in which the workers were forced to fulfill German-imposed grain quotas as before they had to fulfill the quotas fixed by the Soviet Five-Year Plans.

Nazi German rule altered radically the ethnic composition of Ukrainian lands. During the era of German-Soviet “friendship” (1939-1941), over 250,000 Germans living in western Volhynia, eastern Galicia, northern Bukovina, and southern Bessarabia were resettled in Germany (in the so-called Wartheland/Warmia annexed from western Poland). Then, when Hitler’s armies began invading the Soviet Union, about twenty thousand Germans from Ukraine’s steppelands south of the Dnieper River and from the Crimea were forcibly deported eastward because of their alleged potential threat to the Soviet war effort. Those Germans who were not displaced (including some Mennonites) were accorded special privileges and encouraged to work in the Nazi administration.

43.6 Ukrainians from the Cherkasy region being deported in 1942 to Greater Germany as forced laborers in the Ostarbeiter program.

The Jews in Ukrainian lands, regardless of whether they were in regions administered by Nazi Germany, Romania, or Hungary, had no role in the New Order. Like the Gypsies/Roma, Jews were not even considered sub-humans (Untermenschen) in the Nazi social hierarchy. Hence they were slated for extermination—the Final Solution being the euphemism adopted in the spring of 1941 to describe a policy inspired by Hitler and implemented in all territories under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies. Along with the German military came special extermination task forces (Einsatzgruppen), whose job it was to kill all undesirable groups, which in Ukrainian lands meant Communists, the Polish intelligentsia, eventually Ukrainian nationalists, and, especially, Jews.

43.7 Traditionally pacifist Mennonites, now as favored ethnic Germans ready to serve the Nazi regime, parade past SS leader Henrich Himmler at their native village near Zaporizhzhia in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, November 1942.

In general, Jews in eastern or former Soviet Ukraine were brought to a secluded place and shot, the ravine of Babyn Iar on the outskirts of Kiev being the most infamous location. In western Ukrainian lands they were shipped by railroad to death camps in or near the Generalgouvernement (Auschwitz, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Chelmno) where they were gassed. Between 1941 and 1944 the Nazis were able to kill an estimated 850,000 to 900,000 Jews in Soviet Ukraine. As well, perhaps as many as 100,000 Jews were killed in Romanian-controlled Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Transnistria; and 116,000 were deported to death camps in the Generalgouvernment from Hungarian-ruled Transcarpathia. Jews who served in the Red Army and civilians who in 1941 were evacuated with the Soviet administration eastward before the advancing German Army did manage to survive, but the centuries-old Jewish presence with its vibrant cultural and religious life in cities, towns, and villages throughout Ukrainian lands effectively came to an end as a result of the Holocaust of World War II.

43.8 German officers in the special extermination task force (Einsatzgruppen) executing a Jew before a mass grave near Vinnytsia in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.