UPA-German Relations

One of the most sensitive issues in the reinterpretation of UPA's role dur­ing the war is its relationship, and that of the OUN before it, with the Ger­mans. In order to illustrate the change of direction, some examples of the ear­lier narrative need to be demonstrated.

Further support for the theory of a sustained alliance between the UPA and the German forces is derived from archival documents from both the Germans and the KGB. Between 1988 and 1991, this interpretation constituted the offi­cial Soviet line, but already it was coming under fire. One source cites an inter­view with Robert Rupp, a German who worked for the SD, and served as a conduit between the UPA and the Germans.

Thus writer Volodymyr Kosyk, author of a book called Natsional-sotsia- lists’ka Nimechchyna i Ukraina, comments categorically that with the excep­tion of a few individuals, mainly associated with the Ukrainian Central Com­mittee in Krakow, “no Ukrainian organization collaborated with the Ger­mans.” Those who cooperated with the occupation authorities were either of German pedigree or “Volksdeutsche.” Though Soviet historiography often wrote about the collaboration between the Nazis and the OUN, German documents testify that the OUN-B “struggled actively” against the Fascists. In the winter of 1942, the OUN-B began to organize armed units, and by April 1943 these units were turned against the Nazi forces in Polissya, Volyn', and Zhytomyr regions.⁶² Omitted in this approach is the formation of Ukrainian battalions in German occupied territory, as well as the creation of the SS Di­vision Halychyna in 1943, to say nothing of the extensive contacts of both wings of the OUN with German forces prior to the outbreak of the German- Soviet conflict.

The prolific Stanislav Kul'chyts'kyi has written frequently on the most sen­sitive topics of the Stalin period, including the Famine-Holodomor and OUN- UPA. He provides an interesting example of how an historian has made the metamorphosis from writing Soviet-style polemics to one who has slowly but clearly adopted something closer to the nationalist narrative. In a 1997 article, he asks the question: was the UPA a force that was collaborating with the Germans? His answer is that the relationship between OUN-UPA and Nazi Germany was far too complex to be dismissed simply as collaborationist. Western Ukrainians, having suffered ruthless NKVD reprisals prior to the Soviet retreat from their territory, “were not appalled” by the arrival of the Germans. The OUN tried to use the Germans for their own ends, i.e., the es­tablishment of an independent Ukrainian state. The failure of the Germans to satisfy OUN aspirations in the long term led to the creation of the UPA. Kul'chyst'kyi provides some examples of the UPA fighting the Germans, but notes that with the approach of Soviet Partisans and the Red Army, the na­tionalists began to perceive the Germans as the lesser evil. Local agreements were made with German army units, but the Germans considered the UPA unreliable and did not seek any long-term commitment. Nevertheless, the greatest danger for the Ukrainian people was National Socialism, and the So­viet Army was the only force that could defeat the Germans. Therefore by not fighting the Wehrmacht, the UPA was working against the interests of the Ukrainian people, even though the Red Army presence signified a return to totalitarianism.⁶⁴

In an article written two years later, Kul’chyts’kyi elaborates his views.

An attempt to find a middle ground between anti-OUN and anti-Soviet po­lemics was made by historian Mykhailo Koval’, in his 1999 book on Ukraine during the Second World War. Koval’ correctly separates links between the OUN and the Germans, and those of the UPA and the Germans. In the case of the former, he observes that the OUN SB was organized by and modeled on the German secret police. Almost all its leaders were graduates of the German military school in Zakopane, Poland, in 1939-40. The SB’s objective was to sentence and punish members of Soviet Partisan forces, Communists, Soviet and collective farm activists, so-called “easterners,” and other “enemies of the Ukrainian people.” The OUN strategy changed after the German defeat at Stalingrad.

OUN-UPA contacts with the Germans, however, occurred somewhat later, starting in February 1944 and continuing until the summer of that year. According to documents of the German administration, as cited by Koval', the OUN-B wished to remain outside the Soviet-German conflict, but sought assistance from the German side. The eventual outcome was that the OUN-B would trade information about the presence of Red Army troops in return for weapons. Koval' comments that the “indisputable fact” of the OUN-B-UPA leadership conducting negotiations with the Germans was something about which Ukrainian historians in the Diaspora preferred to remain silent. Soviet historians, on the other hand, chose to emphasize it, since it depicted the OUN-UPA as collaborators. The Soviet authorities dis­covered evidence of the talks between the OUN-UPA and the German oc­cupiers only in April 1945. The Ukrainian NKVD informed party secretary N. S. Khrushchev in a special memorandum it had obtained after removing the Germans from the city of L'viv. However, and conversely, the docu­ments discovered also revealed that the Germans had questioned OUN-B leaders as to why its earlier actions had been directed against the German occupying forces. Though after April 1944 they agreed to unite against a common enemy, such amity had not always been the case. Thus the rela­tionship was essentially a tactical one, and opportunistic in character.

The tactical issues of the later war years need to be measured alongside the more overt collaboration with the Germans in the prewar and early years of the war, at which point the German Reich was the obvious agent for change. Nevertheless the OUN espoused extreme policies similar to those of Euro­pean dictatorships, not least those of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. Again, a key question is whether OUN-B ideology changed during the course of the war as its adherents claim, or whether it was moderated to appeal to residents of other parts of Ukraine, or for that matter to the Western allies, which—the Ukrainian nationalists reasoned—would sooner or later become embroiled in a new war with Stalin's USSR. That all these events oc­curred within the broader context of the most brutal war between Germany and the USSR should never be forgotten. But nor should it be overlooked that, as Timothy Snyder has pointed out, the war brought to the fore, through a combination of circumstances, “led by immature and angry men,”⁶⁸ the most fanatical wing of the most extreme faction of Ukrainian nationalism, one that in a democratic setting could not have hoped to win the support of the major­ity of the population. That it collaborated with Hitler's regime in order to win independence for Ukraine seems quite clear; but whether the anticipated in­dependent state would have satisfied the aspirations of most residents of a free Ukraine is another issue.