The outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict recalls an ulterior 1980 years of Ukraine's dark history
The author has seen the news taken out of context these days with a lot of Internet celebrities (in order to follow the trend of rubbing heat?). If you don't ask for a confusing comment or interpret The Russian-Ukrainian relationship, you will find it funny and interesting.
The history of Ukraine is quite complex, involving the mutual struggle between the Mongols, Poland, Russia and Turkey, as well as the Ukrainian national movement, etc., which cannot be understood in two words or in a short time.
Why do European and American countries support Ukraine in diplomatic occasions and the media, but once the conflict breaks out, Poland, Germany, France and Lithuania are silent, while the United States also supports but does not send troops to help?
In fact, this has historical roots, and if anyone who has studied European history and international relations in depth can probably understand what this means. Also, Poland's impression of Ukraine is not so good (?). ）
Maybe you've heard of the Nazi concentration camps of Ossinwitz, SS, Chedonic or Ustasi, terms that were known for stink during World War II, but maybe you don't know that ukraine has a more stinky force that is still hailed as a martyr hero by Ukrainian racists, called the Ukrainian Rebels.
Ukrainian rebels "Украинская повстанческая армия", a nationalist paramilitary organization in Ukraine, a radical Ukrainian nationalist "Орга⩧ The armed forces of theзация украинских националистов", Ukrainian rebels and nationalists in the name of Ukrainian independence, during the second world war, did not even dare to compliment the Germans.
For ease of reading, Ukrainian rebels are referred to as UPA, radical Ukrainian nationalists are referred to as OUN.
■ OUN originated in the Banjla Movement, Степан Андрійович Бандера) whose father led various anti-communist forces during the Tsarist and Soviet eras, and was later killed by the Russian army.
Beginning in the 1920s after the October Revolution in Russia, Ukrainian nationalism grew in 1930 and peaked in 1940 with the outbreak of the German-Soviet War, and the swelling OUN subsequently split into moderates and radicals, with radicals led by Banjera particularly tough on ethnic attitudes.
In fact, as early as 1939, before the outbreak of the German-Soviet War, some OUN radicals led by Banjella had begun to cooperate with Germany, about 800 Ukrainians were trained in German intelligence, and Germany also assisted Ukraine with about 5 million Reichsmarks to let OUN carry out espionage and sabotage activities in the Soviet Union.
However, oun's aim is to create a pure Ukrainian state, a clean Ukraine will not tolerate Poles, Slavs, Germans, Jews, Cossacks and all other foreign races, impure hybrids are not worthy of being Ukrainians and are not eligible to live in Ukraine, Ukrainians must eliminate all foreign races in the country.
The most foreign "polluted" area is western Ukraine, because western Ukraine has changed hands several times in history, has been occupied by Poland, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire and other countries, and is also the area that Ukrainian nationalists hate and desire "purification".
In 1940, OUN carried out several anti-Soviet rebellions in western Ukraine, during which OUN also took the opportunity to kill many Poles and Jews, and OUN was eventually suppressed by the Soviet Union. In December 1940, the Soviet NKVD arrested more than 1,000 OUN members, dealing a big blow to OUN. According to NKVD records, between 1939 and 1941, a total of 16,500 OUN members were arrested or killed in western Ukraine.
In order to avoid total annihilation, OUN's activities became more low-key, many members evaded pursuit, crossed the border into Germany to cooperate with the Germans, and nationalist sentiment continued to grow in the hearts of Ukrainians. Nazi Germany and OUN only used each other, Germany needed OUN's underground activities to weaken the Soviet Union, and OUN needed Germany as an ally to help them establish Ukrainian independence.
After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War on June 22, 1941, OUN cooperated with Abwehr, the German Intelligence Service, and with the Germans entered Ukraine, OUN formed a "Marching Corps" (Походные группы ОУН), which was tasked with occupying the cities and towns of Ukraine, Poland, Crimea and Russia, establishing Ukrainian self-governing institutions and expelling non-Ukrainian residents.
At the same time, OUN also distributed leaflets to the Ukrainian front, advocating that Ukrainians evade Soviet mobilization and rebel against soviet forces, and many Ukrainians joined OUN.
On June 30, 1941, OUN issued the Declaration of Independence of the State of Ukraine "Акт провозглашения ⥧краинского государства", announced the establishment of the State of Ukraine and cooperation with Germany. It is clear from the Declaration that racism has been carved into its marrow, such as:
- The nationalists, at the will of the Ukrainian people and under the leadership of Banjra, proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State, a move made important to every generation of Ukrainian descendants.
- During the decades of bloody Moscow-Bolshevik enslavement, the Ukrainian people had to fight tenaciously for freedom. We call on all Ukrainian people to take up arms until the establishment of the Ukrainian State in all territories belonging to Ukraine.
- In the western lands of Ukraine, it is necessary to establish an armed force belonging to Ukraine, which belongs to the State of Ukraine, and the nascent Ukrainian National Government will establish the capital in Kiev.
- The rising State of Ukraine will work closely with the great National Socialist Germany (referring to the Third Reich), which, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler, will create a new order in Europe and the world and help the Ukrainian people free from Soviet exploitation.
- Long live the State Sovereignty Commission of Ukraine! Long live the Ukrainian nationalist organization! Long live The Ukrainian nationalists and heads of the Ukrainian People's Organization, Banjra! Glory belongs to Ukraine!
However, for oun's declaration, Germany was divided into two factions, with officials led by the Military Intelligence Agency believing that "popular sentiment is available" and could be used to attack the Soviet Union by the hands of the Ukrainian state, and Admiral Kanaris, the head of the German intelligence service, who believed that "the Germans can defeat Russia only after the Ukrainians have established the Ukrainian state."
■ The top brass of the Nazi Party, such as Martin Baumann, refused to cooperate with the Ukrainian state of OUN, because for the Nazis, Ukrainians were also a second-class nation, and Ukraine was only one of Germany's eastern colonies, and there was no reason to give ukrainians so much power.
On July 3, 1941, OUN and Germany began negotiations in Krakow, the negotiation process was not ideal, OUN refused to compromise, so on July 5, Banjella and a cadre of OUN executives were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Berlin under house arrest.
On July 21, 1941, the German Foreign Office officially announced that the declaration announced by the State of Ukraine on June 30 had no legal effect. On August 1, Germany officially announced the incorporation of Ukraine into the administration of the German Viceroy, which meant that Germany ultimately refused to recognize and support the establishment of the Ukrainian state.
■ Germany's decision made Ukrainians extremely dissatisfied with OUN, anti-German sentiment gradually increased, many Ukrainian armed groups cooperating with the German army began to be out of German command, and these troops began to cause trouble and were suppressed by the German army. In this environment, the most brutal national armed group in history, UPA, was born.
UpA was formally formed around the beginning of October 1942, and after absorbing Red Army deserters, anti-communists, non-Nazi collaborators and former Ukrainian auxiliary police, the number of UPA reached nearly 150,000 in May 1943 and grew to 300,000 in early 1944 (there are also 50-1 million claims, but this is generally not recognized by Ukrainian historians). The most correct number is generally determined by scholars to be the 250,000 people proposed by the American scholar Peter Sodol "Peter Sodol" (at the end of 1943).
In addition to fighting soviet partisans, upa openly confronted the Germans and Soviets, and ethnically cleaned non-Ukrainians, especially Poles and Jews, and brutally killed them. Banjra once said, "The liberation of Ukraine was not a guerrilla war, but a 'racial revolution.'"
UPA's intention was to watch Germany and the Soviet Union attrition and weaken in the Great Patriotic War, and after Germany and the Soviet Union weakened, the Ukrainians could establish their own independent state. On October 7, 1942, the German army banned the UPA as an unreliable organization, and many Ukrainians who defected from the German vassals also joined the UPA, and these German-trained soldiers also became the combat force of the UPA.
In 1943, upa drove the Nazis out of Volyn (a city in northwestern Ukraine) and established the OUN government, which lasted only from April to November, but in just 8 months, Warren's Poles, Jews, and pro-Russians were slaughtered, especially Poles, boys and girls, brutally tortured to death, and even the atrocities of burning everyone in a barn or church to save bullets, and Polish priests would be crucified and bleed to death.
The UPA's order reads: "Remove all traces of the Poles." Destroyed the walls of all Catholic churches and other Polish chapels. The trees in the orchards and courtyards were destroyed so that there was no sign of any local life. ...... It should be noted that when anything in this land has anything to do with Poland, the Poles have an excuse to reoccupy it."
Under the influence of UPA and OUN, Ukrainians in the Warren region also spontaneously launched a persecution of Poles and Jews, and the killing peaked in July and August 1943. Yesterday, friendly neighbors rushed into the house at night with axes and cut off the heads of children in front of their parents, or husbands killed Polish wives and children, because the children were mixed with the unclean blood of Poles, and the swaddled babies were thrown into the fire, and the pregnant women were either stabbed to death or forcibly killed by caesarean section.
Ukrainians in many villages organized their own troops and went door to door with sticks, axes and pitchforks to kill any Poles and Jews they saw, and most of the victims were cut off hands and feet, noses and ears, eyes or tongues. After the night's killing, Ukrainians would go to the forest for the night and return to the village the next morning to check and mutilate the remaining living mouths.
If a Ukrainian is reluctant to do anything to a Polish neighbor or lover, it means that he is "not patriotic at all" and will be executed on the spot for treason. 384 Ukrainians were killed by the UPA for this reason. And during the massacre, there were at least 1,341 cases of Ukrainian civilians helping Polish neighbors (a study published in 2007 by Romuald Niedzielko, a scholar at the Polish National Memorial Society).
"Bloodshed is necessary, terror is necessary, we don't have to be ashamed of murder, arson, robbery, war is inherently immoral," Banjera said. There should be no Poles in the Warren area."
German soldiers once recalled passing through a destroyed village and found 500 bodies, half of them children, and all Polish-related items were destroyed, including houses, churches, schools, books, road signs, and even Pole trees. In addition, many foreigners who were neither Poles nor Russians were killed by the UPA because they could not speak Ukrainian.
There are no complete statistics on the number of victims of the Holocaust in the Warren area, which are still being studied by historians, but historians estimate that a total of about 100,000 Poles were killed by UPA and OUN elements (there are also 200,000-300,000 claims). Historians also estimate that the massacre of 1943 reduced the Polish population by at least 10 percent in the Warren district.
Norman Davies, an Anglo-Polish historian, commented on the holocaust: "The perpetrators cannot be sure of the future of Ukraine. But at the very least, they can be sure that there will be no future for poles here."
Soviet partisans also reported to the Soviet Union on May 25, 1943, that they were witnessing a massacre and stressing in their report that "instead of shooting poles, Ukrainian nationalists killed poles with knives and axes, regardless of the age or gender of the victims."
In 1944, when the Soviet Union liberated Warren, the Poles complained to Stalin that the Ukrainians were persecuting the Poles on a large scale, which was exactly in stalin's heart, and Stalin did not want to see a Ukraine that was too national, so on September 9, 1944, he signed a treaty with the Polish National Liberation Committee (later the Polish Communist Government) and Soviet Ukraine (one of the earliest Soviet unions) to move 1.6 million Ukrainians from western Ukraine to other regions, reducing the proportion of the Ukrainian population in the region.
After the Soviet Union and OUN entered Ukraine, the UPA and OUN were completely defeated by the Soviet army, devastated and turned underground, and officially disbanded in 1949, but their related organizations and forces continued to operate until the 1950s.
Oun and UPA leader Banjra was released in 1944 and lives in Germany, but was assassinated in Munich on October 15, 1959 by Soviet KGB agents. In 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Andreevich Yushenko posthumously awarded Banjra the Order of Ukrainian Hero (Герой Украины), which was unanimously opposed internationally, and finally Banjera's medal was cancelled in 2011 under international pressure.
In Ukraine, however, 14 percent still agree with what UPA did with Banjera. In addition, due to the deterioration of relations between Russia and Ukraine in recent years, UPA and OUN have been widely publicized by Ukrainians as heroic deeds, UPA veterans have been praised as war heroes, and OUN figures have been praised as national heroes. Many Ukrainian troops also began to use the upa era logo and title, and Ukraine is now the second spring of fascist racism.
Incidentally, about the Warren Massacre, the Poles made a movie "Warren" in 2016, which is very realistic, if you still don't know much about Ukraine, Poland and German-Soviet relations after reading this article, you can find this video to see.