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The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 is remembered as Hitler's most catastrophic military mistake. But in 1941 it didn't seem to be a mistake at all. "Everyone thought at the beginning that the war will result in the complete defeat of the Soviet Union," said Aleksey Bris, who was an 18-year-old Ukrainian student in 1941. "When the war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union, the population thought that things would change for the better. There was a feeling that the Soviet Union might collapse. The collapse that happened in the 1990s could have happened at that time."
Far from being frightened by the arrival of the Nazis, Bris and his friends welcomed them. "Ukrainians could see a different way of life. They saw they could go to dances and have different clothes and that there was free communication between people."
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When I heard Bris say these words, as he sat in his small house near his home village of Horokhiv, they opened up for me a sudden vision of what might have been. Maybe he was right, maybe the whole course of the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union could have been different.
But then, after a moment's reflection, I realized that this could never have happened. The whole nature of Nazism meant that after the initial euphoria of their "liberation" from Soviet rule wore off, Ukrainians were destined to experience the Nazis as some of the cruelest conquerors in history.
Consider the words of Erich Koch, Reich commissioner of the Ukraine and one of Hitler's closest and oldest comrades: "We are a master race that must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." Bris soon found out just what those words meant. He found a job translating for the Nazis, and even struck up a friendship with a German secretary. But within months he had a conversation with his boss that proved to be a turning point. Bris asked to go to a university and improve his education, but was told, "We don't need you Ukrainians as doctors or engineers. We need you as people to tend cows."
Bris's joy at the arrival of the Nazis was suddenly replaced by bitterness. And over the next few weeks his anger toward the Nazis grew so great that he felt "on the edge of a mental collapse." Finally, one day in fall 1942, came the moment that changed his life. While walking through his village he saw a German policeman hit a Ukrainian villager with a cane. Bris grabbed the policeman's arm and pushed him away. "The emotions come first," he said, "and you don't think about the consequences…?. I just hated that our nation was brought to slavery. When you feel that the whole nation is being humiliated you have to do something whether you like it or not, so I was ready to strike them."
Pursued by the police, Bris fled to the safety of the forest. For the next two years he fought in one of history's most brutal partisan struggles. With the nationalist Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) he fought the Germans as well as Soviet partisans. No prisoners were taken on either side in this shadowy war and atrocities were commonplace. The Soviet partisans, in particular, were infamous for cutting out the tongues of some of the Ukrainian Insurgents they captured. By comparison, Bris remembers, the Germans "just" hanged prisoners, and didn't usually torture them beforehand.
Aleksey Bris was fortunate enough to live to see the dream he once thought the Nazis would fulfill: Ukraine finally became an independent state in 1991.
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The Ukrainians were no better than the Soviets. After the fall of Poland, a number of Polish soldier were in the process of escaping into Hungary. When the Ukrainians captured any, they typically tortured them to death. When the Nazis arrived, even they were appalled at the scenes. The Ukrainian torturers were hanged for crimes against military personnel. Even though the Nazis had no use for the Poles, they considered the Ukrainians even lower.
Generalizing is not a good practice Larry. Every conflict has many complicated dynamics. The "Polish Blue Police" are another example.
Broad generalizations such as yours illustrate an ignorance of history or mere foolishness at best. As with any conflict there are complicated dynamics. Their are misguided loyalties and there are exceptions to status
quos. Poland had both the Home Army and the (Granatowa Policja) Polish
Blue Police. Norway had Vidkun Quisling as well as an underground. There was American born
William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) Oswald Mosley and the British Union Of Fascists.
France had both the Maquis and Marshall Petain. Germany itself had the obvious vs Martin Neimoller on the religious front (Pearrenot Bund)
along with Henning von Treskow, Moltke, Beck and countless others in the
military.
The vatican is on both sides of this controversial coin with Pope Pius XII vs Monsignor Hugh O Flaherty.
Even the Jews of WWII Europe ranged from the the Warsaw Ghetto fighters
to the sometimes questionable Judenrats andJewish Order Police Services.
The dark side too has different shades of evil. Shiro Ishi & Unit 731
of the Japanese Imperial Army sometimes made Josef Mengele and Auschwitz-Birkenau pale in comparison.
And to cap it all off after 1945 some of this was overlooked in programs
like Operation Paperclip, because the Cold War was on and the
polarizations and turning a blind-eye for the sake of perceived general goods was
starting all over again.
Nelson, you got that right
Broad generalizations such as yours Larry illustrate an ignorance of history
or mere foolishness at best. As with any conflict there are complicated dynamics. There are misguided loyalties and there are exceptions to status quos.
Poland had both the Home Army and the (Granatowa Policja)
Polish Blue Police. Norway had Vidkun Quisling as well as an
extensive underground. There were American born William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.
France had both the Maquis and Marshall Petain. Germany itself had the obvious vs Martin Neimoller on the religious front (Pearrenot Bund) along with Henning von Treskow, Moltke, Beck and countless others in the millitary.
The Vatican is on both sides of this controversial coin with Pope Pius XII vs Monsignor Hugh O Flaherty.
Even the Jews of WW II Europe ranged from the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters to the sometimes questionable Judenrats and Jewish Order Police Services. The dark side too has different shades of evil.
Shiro Ishi & Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army sometimes
made Josef Mengele and Auschwitz-Birkenau pale in comparison.
And to cap it all off; after 1945 a great deal of this was overlooked
in programs like Operation Paperclip, because the Cold War was beginning and the polarizations and turning a blind-eye for the sake
of perceived general goods were starting all over again.
As Ukrainian living in Ukraine right now I’d like to say this.
If in 1941 any other army would invade Soviet Union, it would be doomed. Only because Germans came here with Nazi ideology, with whole generation of the young soldiers and officers educated in the spirit of the most outrageous intolerance, this scenario didn’t happen.
In the beginning of the German invasion Wehrmacht was met by the local population as the liberating force. Don’t forget: in every Ukrainian city piles of corpses were founded by Germans. These were traces of the last work of the N.K.V.D. units. They had order to kill everybody in the detention centers without respect to the fact were or not investigation on every case over.
Soviet Union captured from Poland territory called now Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia less than two years before German invasion. In this short period about 1 million people were killed, sent to prison camps, just disappeared without trace only in the Western Ukraine.