World War II: Ukranians Joining the Germans


Figure 1.--This German World War II snapshot shows two Ukrainian youth who volunteered to serve in the Luftwaffe, presumably as ground crews or other support staff. The photograph is undated, but was probably taken in 1941 or 42.

Some Ukrainians joined the Whermacht. Hitler was opposed to this. Some units assigned to Barbarossa accepted Ukrainian volunteers quietly without forming specialized units. These were mostly volunteers in the field and not recruited POWs. We do not at this time have information on just how many Ukrainians joined the Whermacht and other German formations. The recruited POWs were commonly used to form units. We do not know of German Ukrainian units at this time comparable to the Russian Liberation Army. Trawniki was a German concentration camp where anti-Soviet men, many from the Ukraine, w ere trained as Hiwis (Helpers) for the Whermacht. We do know of Ukrainian police units formed by the SS to aid in the Holocaust and partisan suppression operations. SS and police officials inducted, processed, and trained some 2,500 auxiliary police usually used as guards (Wachmänner). They were also known as Trawniki men. The camp was thus an important cog in the German camp system and the Holocaust killing process. The Wikipedia page on this subject calls these people 'Collaborationists'. We think that with the possible exception of the Trawniki men, Wikipedia simplifies the situation by using the Collaborationist term. The Ukrainians were in the unfortunate position of other Eastern Europeans, caught between two brutal totalitarian powers. I think it is unfair to put them into the same category as the Western Europeans who collaborated with the Germans. The Ukrainians experienced more than a decade a Stalin's brutal rule and repression under the NKVD. Stalin's engin eered Ukrainian famine was one of the great crimes of the 20th century. It is true that Hitler had even a worse fate for the Ukrainians planned as part of Generalplan Ost, but the Ukrainians who joined the Whermacht did not know that. And do not forget, Stalin himself joined with the NAZIs in the Non-Aggression Pact (August 1939). This Wiki page significantly over simplifies the choices available to the Ukrainians and the decisions that they made. Many of the Ukrainians who signed up to fight with the Germans did so in 1941 before the German attitude and policies toward the Slavs, including the Ukrainians was clear. Some authors suggest that the killing of Jews also affected Ukrainian thinking, positing that the Ukrainians asked themselves, "If the Germans kill the Jews today, what will prevent them from killing us tomorrow?" It was a sound question and in fact, Generalplan Ost was a plan to do precisely that.







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Created: 9:42 PM 12/25/2013
Spell checked: 2:19 AM 12/26/2013
Last updated: 2:20 AM 12/26/2013