Allied Intelligence and the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists
"Newly released Army and CIA records have many thousands of
pages on Nazi collaborators during and after World War II. The records are
especially rich concerning Allied relationships with Ukrainian nationalist
organizations after 1945.
This section focuses on the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists under Stephen Bandera and the exile representation of the
Ukrainian underground government (ZP/UHVR), which was dominated by Bandera’s
one-time followers turned-rivals, including Mykola Lebed. The level of detail
in the new records allows a fuller and more accurate picture of their
relationships with Allied intelligence over several decades. 1
Background
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded in
1929 by western Ukrainians from East Galicia, called for an independent and
ethnically homogenous Ukraine.
Its prime enemy was Poland, which then controlled the
ethnically mixed regions of East Galicia and Volhynia. The OUN assassinated
Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Among those tried,
convicted, and imprisoned for the murder in 1936 were young OUN activists
Stephan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. The court sentenced them to death, and the
state commuted the sentences to life imprisonment. 2 The convicted Ukrainians
escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Collaborators
After the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 awarded Eastern Galicia
and Volhynia to the USSR, the OUN turned its hopes toward the Germans. In late
1939 the Germans housed OUN leaders in Krakow, then the capital of the
German-occupied General Government. In 1940 the OUN split over political
strategy. The older wing under Andrei Melnik (OUN/M) aimed to work closely with
the Germans while waiting patiently for Ukraine’s independence. Bandera’s wing
(OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization that wanted Ukrainian independence
immediately.
After the Germans invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941,
Bandera’s teams moved into East Galicia. On reaching the East Galician capital
city of Lwów on June 30, 1941, his closest deputy Jaroslav Stetsko proclaimed a
“sovereign and united” Ukrainian state in the name of Bandera and the OUN/B.
Stetsko was to be the new prime minister and Lebed, having trained at a Gestapo
center in Zakopane, the new minister for security.
Determined to exploit Ukraine for themselves, the Germans
insisted that Bandera and Stetsko rescind this proclamation. When they refused,
they, along with other OUN/B leaders, were arrested. Bandera and Stetsko were
held initially in Berlin under house arrest. After January 1942 they were sent
to Sachsenhausen concentration camp but in comparatively comfortable
confinement. Administrative and senior auxiliary police positions in western Ukraine
went to Melnik’s group. 4 German security police formations, meanwhile, were
ordered to arrest and kill Bandera loyalists in western Ukraine for fear that
they would rise against German rule.
After Lebed escaped, he assumed control of the OUN/B in
western Ukraine, which now operated underground. Eventually the OUN/B dominated
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a guerrilla force originally formed in 1942
to engage all political and ethnic enemies including Germans and Soviets.
Eastern Ukrainians later claimed that the Bandera’s group took over the UPA by
assassinating the original leaders. 6 By 1944 the terms “UPA” and “Baderovsty”
became interchangeable, though not all UPA fighters came from the OUN/B. The
OUN/B relationship with the Germans in western Ukraine was complicated. On the
one hand, it fought German rule, and the Gestapo put a price on Lebed’s head.
On the other, it pursued its own ethnic cleansing policies complementing German
aims.
A Banderist proclamation in April 1941 claimed that “Jews in
the USSR constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime
and the Collaborators vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” 7
Stetsko, even while under house arrest in July 1941, said that “I…fully
appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping
Moscow to enslave Ukraine….I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and
the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
8 In Lwów, a leaflet warned Jews that, “You welcomed Stalin with flowers [when
the Soviets occupied East Galicia in 1939]. We will lay your heads at Hitler’s
feet.” 9 At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that
Jews “have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the
Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.” 10 Indeed
pogroms in East Galicia in the war’s first days killed perhaps 12,000 Jews. 11
Back in Berlin, Stetsko reported it all to Bandera. Nazi authorities mobilized Ukrainians into
auxiliary police units, some of which cleared ghettos. Few such auxiliary
police belonged to Bandera’s group, which operated independently. But Banderist
guerrillas in western Ukraine often killed Jews. Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that Banderists “killed all
the Jews they could find,” surely “many thousands” in all. Moshe Maltz, a Jew living in hiding in Sokal,
heard from a friendly Polish contact “about 40 Jews who were hiding out in the
woods near his home … the Bandera gangs came and murdered them all.” - Breitman, Richard and Goda, Norman J.W., Hitler's Shadow published by the National Archives, p.73
Wow,
and now those years of good learning from the Nazis are dragging
American Jews into mass murder. Here is Madeline Albright
explaining that it was "worth it" to murder 500,000 Iraqi children
under false pretenses.
Click the picture to listen to her saying exactly that. Let's see,
Madeline (6,000,000 divided by 500,000 = 1/12 of the mass murders, so
not a holocaust)