The Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia, or UPA, was formed October 14, 1942 in Volyn. Its commander in chief was Roman Shukhevych, alias Taras Chuprynka. The UPA was the military branch of the Oganization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN. The goal of the UPA was nothing less than an independent Ukraine, free of all foreign occupation. However, the UPA was caught between the world's two largest totalitarian regimes- Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The two were fighting each other during this time, and neither was going to give up Ukraine's fertile land and many natural resources without a fight.
The UPA was a guerrilla army, and unlike many other guerrillas armies in WW2 and since, the UPA never received any outside help from foreign powers. The UPA's weapons were mostly guns and ammunition captured from the Nazis or Soviets. Their uniforms were a mixture of everything from captured enemy uniforms (without the insignia, of course) to whatever they had at home. The UPA did have some training schools for officers, but most training came from "on-the-job" experience.
Another interesting aspect of the UPA was that people of many different nationalities could be found within the UPA. The UPA had thousands of Russians, Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, Germans, Italians, and Tartars. The UPA also frequently made leaflets addressed to Red Army soldiers, calling on them to join the UPA against Stalin. Many Jews could be found in the UPA, as doctors and medical orderlies. Stories of Jewish UPA doctors fighting it out with Nazis or Soviets to the end to protect their patients were not uncommon. People of many different nationalities owe their lives to the UPA, who would frequently rescue prisoners during raids on enemy convoys, deportation centers, railway systems, and from Gestapo, SS and NKVD custody. At its peak in 1944, the UPA had around 500,000 men and women from various nationalities within its ranks, working as soldiers, medics, informants, saboteurs, etc. Two men who were assassinated by the UPA were Chief of Staff of the Nazi SA Viktor Lutze, as well as Red Army Marshall Nikolai Vatutin.
After the Soviet re-occupation of western Ukraine in 1944, the NKVD quickly began a campaign to root out the UPA freedom fighters on an immense scale. Entire villages were deported and destroyed, family members threatened by the secret police, and there were large-scale battles between the UPA and Soviet forces. Some UPA units were ordered to go west and tell the world about their struggle against the Soviet Union, such as Company 95, which fought its way from Ukraine to West Germany and made it to freedom in September of 1947. Out of more than 100 men in Company 95, only 36 insurgents made it to West Germany.
Roman Shukhevych, the brave leader of the UPA, was in his hideout in the Lviv suburb of Bilohorshka recovering from a long illness when his house was surrounded by Soviet MVD troops. Fighting it out to the end, Shukhevych killed himself and several nearby Soviets with his last grenade. He died March 5, 1950. Coincidentally, Stalin died March 5, 1953, exactly three years after Shukhevych died.
The UPA’s last official military engagement occurred in October 1956, when some UPA survivors fought bravely on the Hungarian border to assist the Hungarian anti-Communist revolt.
We can NEVER forget the sacrifices of so many of Ukraine's bravest sons and daughters. Their wish for an independent Ukraine finally came August 24, 1991.

After reading this, you should be able to understand the complex situation Ukraine was in during World War Two. This essay is divided into 12 chapters for clarity.
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UKRAINIANS IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-Table of Contents-

I- German invasion
II- Germans are welcomed
III- Hatred of the USSR
IV- The patriots
V- Ukraine under Nazi Rule
VI- The Galicia Division
VII- The camp guards
VIII- Ukrainians save many people
IX- Losses in World War Two
X- The Red Army
XI- John Demjanjuk
XII- CBS lies
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I- German invasion
In the early morning of June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked his former ally, the Soviet Union in an all-out attempt for lebensraum (living space) in the East, as well as to finally destroy the "Bolshevik menace.” This attack, code-named Operation BARBAROSSA, was the single largest invasion in history. Over 3 million soldiers, organized into 146 divisions, attacking along the entire 1,800-mile long front, supported with 2,770 aircraft and 3,350 tanks. The German onslaught was immense- on the first day alone, over 1,000 Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground. German tanks broke through the Soviet lines in no less than a dozen places. Through these gaps German tanks encircled entire Soviet divisions and armies. These encircled Soviet pockets were quickly shattered. Soviet armies near Uman, Ukraine and Minsk, Belarus were annihilated. The Germans saw Ukraine's many natural resources and decided they must occupy it. For this phase of BARBAROSSA, Army Group South under von Rundstedt was given the task of sweeping through Ukraine. Soon enough, the Wehrmacht (German army) conquered all of Ukraine with their successful blitzkrieg tactics. In what Hitler called “the greatest battle in the history of the world,” five Soviet armies totaling 665,000 troops, including 886 tanks and 3,718 artillery pieces, surrendered in Kyiv on September 26. This remains as the largest surrender in military history.
It was Stalin’s fault alone for not being ready for the attack. He disregarded all of the many warnings of the coming attack from his own spies, who were spread out all over the globe collecting intelligence. The fact that the Germans violated Soviet airspace over 20 times, and that Red Army frontline troops could hear German tanks rumbling into position did not change Stalin’s thinking. When a German deserter defected to the Soviets several days before attack and told them of the coming attack, Stalin had the deserter shot for “spreading lies.”

II- Germans are welcomed
In Ukraine, the German soldiers were astonished to see the native population welcoming them. The Ukrainians cheered them on and proclaimed the Germans their liberators from Soviet communism.
Here's the question: Why did the Ukrainians welcome the Germans at first? Well, it's pretty simple. Besides finding joyful Ukrainians, the Wehrmacht found hundreds of mass graves, as well as city jails that were filled with dead, mutilated bodies. In Lviv, 3,500 corpses were found in the prison. In all of Ukraine, 19,000 executed prisoners were found in their cells. Priests were crucified, pregnant women had their babies torn from their wombs, and others were castrated, dismembered, beheaded, and eyes gouged out to name a few of the ghastly tortures. Some cells were filled to the ceiling with dead bodies. In other prisons, the ears, eyes, and tongues of prisoners covered the floor. Who committed these murders? The fleeing Soviet secret police, the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) mercilessly slaughtered the prison population so that they wouldn't be freed. The mass graves were either from the 1930s, or more patriots that were caught and shot. The Germans quickly realized why they were so welcomed. You must realize that Hitler's mass-murder in the camps didn't begin until mid-1942, if not later. At this time in 1941, the Germans were still busy conquering territories. After more than 200 years of Russian, and then Soviet rule, the Ukrainians were glad the Russians were out.

III- Hatred of the USSR
The Ukrainians rightfully hated the Soviets. They didn't forget how the Soviets invaded and eventually conquered the Ukrainian National Republic after it declared independence in 1918. Later, in the 1930s, thousands of Ukrainian artists, poets, and writers were imprisoned or executed as part of Stalin's plan to erase the Ukrainian population and culture. In 1930, 259 Ukrainian writers were publishing in Soviet Ukraine- in 1938, only 36 of them continued to publish.
The Ukrainians also didn't forget how Stalin tried to murder the entire Ukrainian population in the 1930s by starvation. Stalin sent Khrushchev and thousands of other ruthless communists to take care of the Ukrainian problem. Stalin tried to exterminate the Ukrainians just as Hitler tried to kill all of the Jews. In two years of Stalin's man-made famine, between seven and ten million Ukrainian men, women, and children starved to death. The Soviet government ordered ridiculously high quotas of grain to be collected. Then in 1932, they ordered that amount increased by 44%. Soviet law required that the all of the grain for the quota must be delivered to the government before the peasants could get any. The result was mass starvation. While millions were slowly dying, Moscow exported 1.7 million tons of grain onto the world market. The entire Ukrainian SSR was sealed off from the rest of the Soviet Union. All foodstuffs were loaded on trains and shipped out of the country- in other places, the food was simply left to rot in immense piles guarded by Soviet troops. Anyone trying to escape the country was shot dead on the spot at the border, or shipped off to Siberia. The bodies of the dead were transported out of the country by trains, or buried in mass graves. In all towns and cities, children begged for food and people of all ages collapsed and died on the streets. 25,000 people died a day during the time of the famine. People ate almost anything imaginable- pets, rats, tree bark, leaves, and garbage. Signs were posted throughout Ukraine: “Eating your children is an act of barbarism.” A system of internal passports and barricades throughout the countryside kept the peasants within their own villages. Stealing a handful of grain, travelling without the passport, and cannibalism were all punished with immediate exile to Siberia or execution. One Soviet official called the famine-genocide a “great success” because it “showed the peasants who was in charge.” Even though western journalists traveled throughout Ukraine and reported on the Soviet-made famine, Moscow vehemently denied all accusations of genocide.
Stalin wanted to deport the entire Ukrainian population of 40 million, but he complained that "Ukrainians, unfortunately, are too numerous to be deported to Siberia." The Ukrainians saw the Soviets as barbarians and animals, and at first saw the German conquerors as civilized human beings. At first, many Germans sympathized with the Ukrainians. The Germans saw that some Ukrainians could be useful, and used some of them in their cause.

IV- The patriots
You must realize that not all Ukrainians welcomed the Germans. The OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) led by Stepan Bandera, resented all foreign control of Ukraine. These patriots then started a guerrilla war against the Wehrmacht. Even though the Germans killed 100 people for each murdered soldier, the Ukrainians kept fighting. When the OUN proclaimed an independent western Ukrainian state led by Yaroslav Stetsko, the Gestapo retaliated by imprisoning the top leaders. Stepan Bandera spent time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp; the Nazis murdered his two sons. Ultimately, Bandera was later murdered by a Soviet agent in Munich in 1959.
In 1942, the OUN formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with Roman Shukhevych as its supreme commander. Most of the Ukrainian partisan groups operated in western Ukraine in the regions of Halychyna and Volyn. At its peak in 1944, the UPA had around 500,000 men and women of various nationalities, working as soldiers, medics, informants, etc. Two men assassinated by the UPA during WW2 were Head of the Nazi SA Viktor Lutze, and Red Army Marshall Vatutin. The army died off after the war when the Soviets concentrated all of their effort to destroy the insurgents. Some UPA units fled west, such as Company 95, which fought its way from Ukraine to West Germany and made it in 1947. Out of more than 100 men in Company 95, only 36 insurgents made it to West Germany. Shukhevych was killed during a shoot-out with NKVD troops outside of Lviv in 1950.

V- Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Hitler stated in "Mein Kampf" that both Jews and Slavs were Untermenschen (sub-human). According to Hitler, Slavs (including Ukrainians) were only fit to be ruled by the Aryan master race. Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe were to be turned over to German colonists whose task would be to eradicate and/or enslave the Ukrainians. After conquering Ukraine, it was divided into three parts. The areas closest to the front, eastern Ukraine, were put under direct military rule. The western Ukrainian areas of Halychyna and Volyn were put under occupied Poland, renamed the General-Government. Gauleiter (Governor) Hans Frank ruled this territory from the city of Krakow. Frank stated in January of 1941 that he could not care less about the fate of the people in his territory, and said that "mincemeat can be made of the Poles and Ukrainians and all others" in the General-Government. The rest of Ukraine was put under Gauleiter Erich Koch, and renamed Reichskommissariat Ukraine. From his "capital" of Rivne, Koch carried out all of his brutal acts against Ukrainians. Koch, the self-proclaimed "brutal dog," openly expressed his beliefs that Ukrainians were half-monkeys who "must be handled with the whip like the negroes." Koch stated that "no German soldiers would die for these niggers [Ukrainians]." Koch once said, "If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with me, I must have him shot." It was Koch who presided over the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to slave labor in Germany.
Hitler not only wanted to enslave Ukrainians, but also wanted to destroy the Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Ukrainians would be given only the crudest education, so as to be able to communicate with the ruling Germans. Hitler closed down all schools above the fourth grade and also all universities throughout the country. SS chief leader Heinrich Himmler held the same beliefs as those of Bormann and Goering: "the entire Ukrainian intelligentsia must be decimated." Ukrainians were also shipped to Germany as slave laborers in war factories and V-2 rocket plants. Out of a total of 3 million slave laborers in Nazi Germany, no less than 2.5 million were Ukrainians. This number of course does not mention all of the Ukrainians who ended up in the concentration camps side-by-side with Jews and other undesirables.
On January 27, 1945, journalist Edgar Snow wrote for the Saturday Evening Post: "This whole titanic struggle, which some are apt to dismiss as 'the Russian glory' has been, in truth and in many costly ways, first of all a Ukrainian war... No single European country has suffered deeper wounds to its cities, its industry, its farmlands and its humanity."

VI- The Galicia Division
Now you will hear about the Ukrainians that fought with the Germans. In 1942, the 14th SS Grenadier Division was established in Halychyna. (A.k.a. Galicia) The division fought the Soviets in tough battles such as Brody in 1944. The Galicia Division never fought the western Allies, and never committed any atrocities against civilians. Canadian and British courts investigated the accusations, among them that the division helped put down the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1994, and found the division innocent of all accusations.
You still might wonder why a Ukrainian division was established and how it got its recruits. The men joined for different reasons. Most joined because they hated the Soviets, and knew that their military experience would help form the nucleus of a future Ukrainian army after both the Soviets and Germans were defeated. In 1943, the Soviets had the upper hand. By joining the weaker Germans, the division had the chance for both sides to be equal in strength and further weaken each other. With the two superpowers weak, a Ukrainian state could be established. Other recruits were actually UPA men who joined so that they could acquire guns, ammunition, and training that the UPA desperately needed, and hand them over to their patriot brothers. Still others joined because there was no other line of work. Most of the men in the division resented the Germans and Soviets.

VII- The camp guards
There is also the story of the Ukrainian concentration camp guards. Some Ukrainians were guards, yes, and for the acts of this minority many Ukrainians are called anti-Semites. First of all, the people in the camps weren't only Jewish- people of all nationalities could be found in camps. Why did some Ukrainians do this? Some hated the communists, other joined because there was no other way to get pay and food, and still others were forced at gunpoint to work for the Germans. I admit some Ukrainians were genuine anti-Semites, but it is ridiculous to condemn all Ukrainians for the acts of a small group of only a few thousand people. According to Israel's War Crimes Investigations Office, 11,000 Ukrainians took part in some sort of anti-Jewish activity, such as execution or deportation. Now if we take into account Ukraine's wartime population of 36 million, then we get a figure of 0.0307%- an extremely small amount of Ukrainians. Every country in Europe that was occupied by the Germans had some collaborators, and each had different reasons for joining the Germans. Ukrainians had proportionately the smallest number of conspirators of all of the fourteen eastern European countries, and most were caught and executed at the end of the war.
Ukraine, however, never had an anti-semitic or fascist political party like other European countries. While Vichy France, Bulgaria, Romania, and other countries had collaborationist governments, Ukraine did not.

VIII- Ukrainians saved many people
There are many examples of Ukrainians helping people who were hunted down by the Germans, including Allies soldiers, political prisoners, and even Jews. The UPA rescued many downed Allies pilots and helped them get back safely. Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Catholic Church is credited with hiding thousands of Jews from the SS and Gestapo. 1609 Ukrainians are honored in the Yad Vashem garden in Israel, which dedicates a tree to any person who saved Jews in the war. (Ukrainians make up the fourth largest number of rescuers, after Poland, the Netherlands, and France.) Of course there were countless Ukrainians that were shot for helping wanted people from the Germans. It was much harder to save Jews in Ukraine compared to western occupied countries. Jews in western Europe were much fewer in number compared to the immense Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Slavs were targeted for destruction like the Jews, therefore making it much harder to hide Jews from Nazi authorities. Did you know that the Jewish Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was saved from death by a group of Ukrainians that hid him from the Germans?

IX- Losses in World War Two
Ukraine saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war on its soil in large-scale battles for Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and Sevastopol. It also suffered under Stalin's, and then Hitler's scorched-earth policy- everything valuable was to be destroyed by the fleeing army. The devastation of 16,000 industrial centers and 28,000 collective farms meant the destruction of a majority of Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural infrastructure. 700 Ukrainian towns and cities, as well as 28,000 villages were destroyed in the war. 42% of the urban centers destroyed in the USSR during the war were in Ukraine; 19 million Ukrainians were made homeless. Kyiv’s population dropped by 60% during the war years. Kharkiv’s prewar population of 700,000 was reduced to less than 500,000, with 120,000 being deported to Germany, 80,000 starved by the Germans, and 30,000 executed. For every village that was destroyed in occupied France or Czechoslovakia, such as Oradour and Lidice, 250 Ukrainian villages and their inhabitants were obliterated. In all of World War Two, ten million Ukrainians died. Remember that in all of the war, some 50 million people died, including the 20 million Soviet dead. In 1945 for the Red Army magazine Red Star, Guard Colonel Vladimir Mochalov estimated that the war in Ukraine caused over $100 billion dollars worth of damage- and this is a 1945 estimate. Imagine what that sum would be in today's terms. On June 22, 1944 Stalin's Secret document No. 078/42, with the support of NKVD chief Beria, Marshal Zhukov and Federov proposed exile to Siberia of "all Ukrainians who had lived under the German occupation". Since all of Ukraine was under German occupation this meant that every Ukrainian could be exiled except those who had escaped to Russia in 1941.

X- The Red Army
Four and a half million Ukrainians served with the Red Army, but many of them were forced into service. Stalin still hated Ukrainians, and always made sure the Ukrainians were in the heaviest fighting. At least 350 Soviet generals and marshals were Ukrainian, including Zhukov, Voroshilov, Konev, Yeremenko, Timoshenko, Malinovsky, Maoskalenko, Rudenko, Grechko, Koshoviy, Fedorenko, Leliushenko, Cherevichenko, Kostenko, Kirponos, Vasilevsky, Kravchenko, Apanesenko, and Admiral Basisty. Ukrainians helped win battles such as Stalingrad, Leningrad, and even Berlin, and liberated Auschwitz. Zhukov boasted that he would capture Hitler, put him in a cage, and parade him through Kyiv before Moscow. The Soviet search party that found Hitler's remains was led by a Ukrainian lieutenant general named Klimenko. Besides producing famous generals, the famous and highly successful Soviet T-34 tank was designed and built in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

XI- John Demjanjuk
To this very day, many people and organizations (including CBS) still claim that Ukrainians are an anti-Semitic ethnic group. Besides the Galicia Division, there are two other famous cases of false accusations and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.
The more famous case is John Demjanjuk of Cleveland, Ohio. Many people believed that he was a camp guard at Treblinka known as "Ivan the Terrible." Demjanjuk claimed that he was a soldier in the anti-Communist army known as the Vlasovites, under Russian general Andrei Vlasov. An Israeli district court found him guilty and sentenced him to death, but his case was appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which found him innocent. His Jewish lawyer, Yoram Sheftel, claims there was a conspiracy to convict Demjanjuk. Believe it or not, a new case is being put against Demjanjuk by the OSI (Office of Special Investigations). The OSI claims that Demjanjuk was a camp guard at Sobibor and Flossenberg. Demjanjuk might have to go to court again, this time in the United States.

XII- CBS lies
The second case is more important but not as well known. In 1994, CBS aired a 60 Minutes that was called 'The Ugly Face of Freedom.' 17 million Americans viewed the short 15-minute segment. The show claimed that Ukrainians were 'genetically anti-Semitic.' The show also presented five other ridiculous lies. The second lie said that before the Germans entered Lviv, the Ukrainians murdered 3,500 Jews. Historical records prove the fleeing NKVD murdered 3,500 Ukrainians. A third lie was a deliberate misinterpretation of the word "zhyd," or "Jew" in Ukrainian. CBS interpreted the word as "kike," a racist term for a Jew. Lie number four said that the Galicia Division committed atrocities, even though records clearly show the division didn't even exist yet. The fifth lie said that the ultra-nationalist UNA UNSO is a major force in Ukraine. This organization is small and not mainstream at all, and its influence in Ukraine can be compared to the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. The sixth and final lie accused Plast, the Ukrainian scouting organization, of being a Neo- Nazi group because they wear uniforms and march around. This is no different to what American scouts do.
Remember that 17 million Americans saw this huge lie. The Ukrainian community immediately took CBS to court for these lies and won the case. CBS was forced to pay the Ukrainian lawyers' fees in the settlement. CBS and Mike Wallace actually said it was acceptable to distort the facts, and admitted to lying. The FCC (Federal Communication Commission) ruled in favor of the Ukrainians and condemned CBS for distorting the truth. CBS apologized for hurting the Ukrainians, but never actually apologized for viewing the show. It was a big victory for Ukrainians, but unfortunately CBS never made a formal announcement to America that they lied, so most of America still believes CBS.

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This is merely the tip of the iceberg. It is time for the world to know the truth about Ukraine and Ukrainians in World War Two, and to stop believing the Soviet and communist lies that continue to live on to this day.