Verbunkowa run for the “Galiczyna” division as a manipulation technology
In order to recruit adequate recruits for the SS division, the occupying authorities of Galicia and their Ukrainian collaborators resorted to a number of manipulation techniques. With their help, they created an illusion among young Galians that the 14th division would fight for Ukraine's independence, although the organizers never straight promised.
“We will take distant all that is better in another nations,
taking their children, if necessary, and raising them among us”
Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, 24 October 1943.
82,000 people. So many volunteers came in just 1 period after the announcement of recruitment to the division of SS “Galiczyna”. How can we measure specified a large number of Ukrainians who agreed to service the German occupiers?
The Communists claim that this is simply a conclusive proof of the “fascist” attitudes of all Galicia residents. Division apologists usage this to item how strong the thought of an alliance with the 3rd Reich was in Galician society in the fight for Ukraine's independence. But both camps are wrong.
Indeed, eighty 1000 willing to fight under Hitler in the country that occupied and plundered is simply a phenomenon that cannot be unsettled. However, it is worth a closer look to see whether the volunteers truly sought Nazi service so sincerely? possibly individual helped them form this desire.
A more detailed analysis of the Verbunkov run shows that Initiators of the formation of the division utilized certain manipulation techniques to form the affirmative perception of the thought of joining the German Army itself in possible recruits.
Manipulation Public
First, let's find what was the mark group of the run to join SS troops.
During the war the occupiers separated our Piedmont from the remainder of Ukraine from the border and made it the 5th territory of the General Government (GG) - part of occupied Poland. This is due to the fact that Hitler considered Galicia to be the erstwhile state of Austria. The Germans understood that any recruitment of SS troops even in neighboring Volyn, not to mention the remainder of Ukraine, was doomed to failure.
Therefore, on 28 April 1943, the politician of Galicia Otto Vechter and the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) announced the establishment of a fresh division of SS troops on the perimeter. Recruitment points besides appeared on another GG lands where Ukrainians lived.
Later, in an interview with the Minister of Land occupied by Alfred Rosenberg on 19 May 1943, Adolf Hitler stated: "The successful results of the run to recruit volunteers for the Galicia division cannot be a strong proof of the Ukrainians' willingness to cooperate with Germany, since the recruitment of Galician Russians concerns only the erstwhile Austrian Galicia that it has nothing to do with Russian Ukraine It’s okay. ”
Following the Führer on 14 July, Himmler sent a secret order: "In mentioning the Galician division, I forbid always to talk of the Ukrainian division or the Ukrainian people".
Notice of the commencement of the ‘Haliczyna’ division organisation and speech by Otto Vechter .
Note: Although the division was formed as part of the SS front troops (Waffen-SS), until June 27, 1944 it did not find any reflected in its name. Volunteers were simply invited to the “Sagittarius SS Division” or “The Volunteer SS Division”.
In Galician lands under the Austrian regulation of Otto Wechter, the business government was more gentle than the neighboring Reich Commission “Ukraine” in which the fierce Ukrainianist Erich Koch ruled.
"Vechter presented a task to make a combat unit that would contribute to the defence of the “separate” issue of the Galician region in Berlin," he writes. Adria Bolyanovska in the book "Hallaic Division. History".
A characteristic fact: until mid-1943 there was no guerrilla movement in Galicia, neither russian nor nationalist. There were no tens of burnt villages, bloody criminal expeditions like Koryukivka, or bombings from the air, as in another Ukrainian areas.
It was not until October 1943 that Vechter introduced a state of emergency into the county, which was characterised by increased panic — captures, hostage executions, village burning and population looting.
Galicia politician (1942 — 1944), Brigadier-fuhrer SS Otto Vechter, was the chief ‘lobbyist’ to establish the Galicia division from the German side
Since the largest national minorities (Jews, Poles) lived rather isolated from the Ukrainian majority, Nazi panic against them had small influence on Ukrainians. This can be seen clearly on the example of the Stanisławski circuit (now Ivano-Frankivsk). During the years of the occupation, the Nazis murdered almost 224 1000 of its inhabitants, most of whom (57%) were Jews.
Therefore, the local Ukrainians did not plan the Holocaust themselves, which affected their overall attitude towards the German authorities.
Thus, isolation from the remainder of Ukrainian lands and a comparatively milder business government contributed to the fact that many layers of Galicia's population were tolerant of the German authorities.
The reverse situation occurred in the perception of russian power. Communist governments were short-lived, but left an incredibly bloody memory behind. It's time to talk about the arrests of national elites, exiles to Siberia, anti-religious policy, processes of the members of the CNS that took place from 1939 to 1941.
It is adequate that in the first weeks of the German-Soviet war the retreating NKVD organs shot prisoners in prisons in all circuits of western Ukraine. In total, any 22,000 people were killed who had not yet received a single judgment.
The Nazis have utilized it full for their own propaganda. Entering all city, German troops opened prisons filled with corpses of mediocre people and allowed people to look for their loved ones. Without exaggeration, mass executions from the summertime of 1941 became the main origin of anti-communist sentiments in Western Ukraine.
They formed the fear of the return of communists in Galician society. Fear that Nazi propaganda actively fueled throughout the period of occupation. Volunteers of the Galician division, aged 15-18, came to witness the 1941 massacre – a century in which specified impressions are received peculiarly severely.
Therefore, erstwhile the Red Army began to recapture the Kharkiv region in early 1943, the anticipation of returning russian power to Galicia began to seem real. And with it — and the anticipation of repeating the horror of the first weeks of war on a much more bloody scale. Under specified conditions, it was not hard for the Nazis to present themselves as the only ones who could prevent it.
Thus, due to nonsubjective historical factors, the thought of creating a Ukrainian military unit on the side of Germany had favorable grounds. The Nazis and their collaborators only had to cultivate the land properly.
Manipulation No. 1. An analogy with the Ukrainian Army
And in this field, the organizers of the 14th division of the SS troops did a good job. They declared the German-Soviet war a continuation of liberation fights from 1917 to 1920. The action of creating divisions in the German armed forces was presented as nothing little than a repetition of the past of the Legion of Ukrainian Sichen Rifles in the Imperial-Royal Austro-Hungarian Army.
There was no peculiar request to invent here - the abbreviations USS and SS disagree only in 1 letter. What were the differences between the liberal monarchy of the Danube and the totalitarian 3rd Reich with its ideas of "lifespace" and the division into "übermensch" and "under-mensch", of course, not mentioned. The name of the coordinating body of the creation of the ‘Galiczyna’ division — Military Administration (VU) only reinforced the analogy with the pee shooters due to the fact that it resembled the same SSS Combat Administration (1914-1918).
In addition to the similarities with the SSS, agitators virtually named the division of SS troops "Haliczyna" the revival of the Ukrainian Galician Army. Let's start with the fact that 10 of the 14 members of the Military Administration were its veterans.
The board was straight headed by Colonel Alfred Byzants, his deputy being Seweryn Baigert. During the years of liberation fighting, they served as commander and chief of staff of the 7th Lwowska UGA Brigade.
“Why should we enjoy specified a hard time of war? Because... we have the chance to make a shooting division. And that is to resurrect the Ukrainian Galician Army, that is to impose our military tradition... This is the only way to regain freedom “ — He preached Fr Vasyla Elba in the Lviv Cathedral of St. George on 28 April 1943, immediately after the formation of the division. In it Laba led the chaplain's service.
A Honorary president of the Military Administration, Chetar General UGA, Viktor Kurmanovich, addressed his erstwhile colleagues in the paper “Ownland”: “Officers And UGA shooters! Honorary service in the Galician SS firearm Division is not only an chance but a duty. Entering our time in the ranks of the heroic UGA, we swore to fight until the final triumph over our eternal enemy. Then we did not finish it; present we can, so we must."
Speaking at a convention of actors of the Lviv Opera, Andrij Palij, a associate of the VU, called the listeners to “following the best traditions of the Ukrainian Legion of Sciences and Ukrainian Academy of Sciences” .
Historian Andriya Bolyanovskyi cites any very distinctive examples of the impact of specified propaganda on the population.
On 29 April, the day following the announcement of the formation of the division, in Kamionka-Strumylov (now Kamionka-Buzka) the local priest gave the UGA typical the flag of the athletics Society "Sokil", on which UGA gunners took an oath from 1918 to 1919. On 2 May, the people of Mostyska handed the USS Legion flag to the volunteers “with the hope that it will become the flag of the future Ukrainian division ” .
Manipulation number two. The engagement of authorities
The participants in the 1914-1920 liberation struggles took an active part in the run of recruiting volunteers by the Military Administration and the Ukrainian Central Committee.
On 2 May 1943 they gathered at a solemn gathering at the Institute of People's Art in Lviv. Among those present was the USS Cornet Olena Stepaniv. The gathering ended with the Usus march "O, on the meadow of the red kalina", after which the head of the WU office, veteran of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, UGA and the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic Captain Nawrocka gave the place of registration of volunteers.
At the aforementioned University of Kamianki-Strumylów veterans of UGA represented centurion Kulczycki, quartermaster Sokił and quartermaster Jarymowicz.
UCC besides applied a spectacular PR move. As the first application for admission to the division was made not by anyone else, but by the president of the committee himself, and in the past by Lieutenant UGA Volodymyr Kubiowych. He risked nothing: a 42-year-old prof. was most likely called up due to his age and health. However, his action had the intended effect: he said that the originator of the division did not retreat from the verbund, so you young men, go.
Support for the thought of the division was declared by: actor of the Ukrainian Army Engineering Corps Opyp Hirniak, “father of Ukrainian physical education” and activist ZUNR Ivan Boberskij, erstwhile commanders of UGA Hnat Stefaniv and Mikhail Omeljanov-Pawlenko and another veterans.
By 11 May, about 300 erstwhile UGA soldiers and the URL Army reported to reporting points in Lviv. There are over 400 in Tarnopol. Most of them failed medical examinations due to their age and condition. But they set an example for those for whom they were moral mention points.
This method is widely utilized in advertising and PR. A popular and authoritarian individual convinces to buy something, go somewhere, vote for someone. This method is peculiarly frequently utilized in modern Ukrainian politics. In the spring of 1943, in Galicia it came actual 100%.
Finally, it was time to find a Galician household in which individual did not fight either in Usus or in UGA or in the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Veterans of liberation fighting among Ukrainian society themselves deserved respect.
“The fact that I will be in someone’s uniform does not scare me at all. I took this as an obligation, especially since my father was a UGA soldier" – said the gunman Roman Wysocki .
In the interwar Galicia, memory of UNR and ZUNR's armed conflict for independency was cultivated. It was 1 of the ways of preserving identity in conditions of assimilation policy of the Second Republic.
The tradition of fighting for statehood was personified by surviving veterans. As for the dead, there was a grave worship in society. Youth organisations “Plast”, “Sokil”, “Lug” (not to mention UVO and the CNS) have raised their affiliation with the tradition of liberation fighting.
The column of the first liberation war participants is to registry in the division “Galiczyna”.
Moreover, many Ukrainian veterans were besides successful during peace. They became celebrated businessmen, lawyers, writers, scientists, activists of public life and culture, they were elected to the Polish Parliament.
For Galician youth they were undisputed authorities, surrounded by heroic aura of fighters for Ukrainian independence. The support of these individuals for the formation of the German division was interpreted as the fact that the “Disvision of the S.S. Galicia Rifles” is simply a continuation of the tradition of their fighting from 1914 to 1920.
Manipulation No. 3. Regular Army vs. "banditism"
Another motive on which the KC propaganda and the Military Administration played was the opposition of the regular army to the guerrilla fight. By attracting Galician youth to the German division, the Ukrainian Central Committee and the WU removed it from the CNS(b) and prevented the future replacement of anti-German insurgent troops.
As we know, the banders condemned the Galician division's organization and conducted propaganda against recruiting it. The Ukrainian liberation movement considered Kubiowych and his associates to be the largest competitor for the young generation of Galicia. Division propaganda portrayed Ukrainian rebels as rear destroyers whose anti-Hitler conflict only helped Stalin.
Historian Andriya Usach gives a list of epithets which the division propagandists have given to the national movement: "They were called "internal anarchy", "forest waters", "studlers", "black spirits-anarchists," etc. .
The investigator quotes Kostya Pankiwski, head of the KC Business Branch of Ukraine in Lviv: “No 1 will gain in Ukraine’s forest. There is not a hero in the forest, but he who persists in his position, in government, cooperatives, etc. The bazaar, Kruty, is not the time of our glory, they just gave people cannon meat. The Banders are coming to Krut and Bazar today, wanting to exterminate the youth."
It is not a fact that this poster is related to the “Galiczyn” division, but the opposition of SS soldiers to guerrillas illustrates well
In order to coordinate the ideological conflict of nationalists in the field, the business administration convened for 4-5 March 1944.
"Unfortunately, any Galician youth have strayed from this 1 and the right path. Before you [is the task] fight for the soul of this youth, prove to them that who at specified a time is simply a traitor to his own nation, that gangs are nothing won and that in the end these young people have accepted the function of those dark forces that have repeatedly wreaked havoc and damaged your origin in your history.” – the event was instructed by politician Vechter.
Reichsführer SS Himmler, speaking to divisional officers on 16 May 1944, stressed the difference that exists between those who go into the forest alone (UPA) and those who “go to the front to fight as a division”. According to him, “any fool can shoot from behind a bush and throw insults from behind a bush”.
By creating an image of the Ukrainian insurgent as an eternally hungry, dirty and overtly unarmed anarchist robber, Nazi propaganda opponents opposed him as a civilized soldier of the regular SS division, full equipped with uniforms, food, weapons and ammunition.
Furthermore, recruiters promised that all “Galiczyna” division soldier would receive a wage and his household would receive state aid. The branch service allowed us to get out of prison, avoid forced labor, and release the arrested relatives.
This emphasis on the material benefits of the service in the Galicia division could not have affected the decisions of many volunteers. After all, fewer people will quit comfort, social guarantees and income for surviving in the forest, full of difficulties and inconvenience!
Manipulation 4. nonsubjective blur
Behind this full trinket was the actual intent of creating a division. In post-war publications, both organizers and veterans of the division agree that the division was appointed to fight for Ukrainian independence. However, if you carefully analyse the messages that were sent to volunteers from 1943 to 1944, the image emerges somewhat differently.
"Without considering the Ukrainians as possible politically credible allies, Hitler and Himmler refrained from making any political promises and guarantees to the Galician people regarding the formation of the division," writes Bolyanovskyi .
Therefore, politician Vechter recommended that officials of the government of the occupying administration of Galicia "they avoided making political statements about their future in speeches addressed to Ukrainians".
Therefore, in the agitation and propaganda of the KC and the University of Ukraine from those years there are absolutely no expressions specified as “a fight for independence”, “a fight for the Ukrainian state” or “an independent Ukraine”.
Take, for example, Kubiowych's programme appeal “The road to a bright future”, printed on the front page of the paper “Golos Podkarpacki” on 9 May 1943. The goal for which Ukrainian volunteers were to fight was as follows:
“The time has come for our people to take arms. Together with the heroic army of large Germany and the volunteers of another nations of Europe, we stand in a sacred fight against our top national enemy and the deadly threat to all civilized humanity. ”
Not a word about fighting for Ukraine, about her independence, about her own country. The fight for Ukrainian independency was not mentioned in Otto Vechter's speech of 28 April 1943 on the occasion of the formation of the division (see his text in the paper Stanislawskie Slowo).
In the same way, the honorary chief of the WU Gen. Kurmanowycz in a speech to the elder officers and gunmen of the UGA (the Stanislaw word, part 20 of 16 May 1943) spoke of everything ("the fight against the eternal enemy", "revenge for the blood of millions of tired brothers" , “defeating the red monster”, “laying foundations for the future of your own nation” ), but not about the fight for independency of Ukraine or the creation of the Ukrainian state.
Nazi propaganda proclaimed that the Ukrainians would defend their right to a place in “New Europe” in the ranks of the “Galiczyna” division. No space was found for the word “Ukraine”.
"...in the ranks of the SS Galicia firearm Division is trained for future fights against fierce judaic Bolshevikism," wrote an anonymous author of the article "Galichya arrogant of volunteers" in the paper "Ukrainian Volunteers" dated October 16, 1943.
Article “Years of historical event. The emergence of the SS firearm Division “Galiczyn” ends with a paragraph: “The Ukrainian-Galician Volunteers...will go with their sword into a bloody conflict against the Jewish-bolshevik hordes, proving to the full planet that the Ukrainian people have the full right to occupy 1 of the leading places in the ellipse of nations of the fresh Europe, as its avant-garde in the east” (O ., part 2 of 4 May 1944 ) .
Even erstwhile participants in the armed conflict for the independency of ZUNR and UNR consistently avoided any mention of this independence! In the appeal “Volunteers, Ukrainian Youth!” 40 signatories stated:
“... Ukrainian volunteers of the Halic firearm Division fight for the first time against Bolsheviks, the cruel enemy of the Ukrainian people... Volunteers of the Galician firearm Division zealously fight for the better destiny of their people and Europe as a full .
As can be seen, the recruits were not given any circumstantial targets another than abstractions, specified as the fight "with (Jewish) Bolshevikism", "with an eternal enemy", "a place in fresh Europe", "the destiny and will of the people", "revenge for the blood of millions," etc.
None of these objectives are consistent with the fight for Ukrainian statehood. The organizers of the “Galiczyn” division deliberately misled tens of thousands of young men to direct their patriotic zeal in the Nazi desired direction.
Andrij Bolanowski is forced to admit that "The German side's political concessions to the Galician Ukrainians came down mainly to the fact that during the admission of volunteers to the Galician division, the Ukrainian blue-yellow flags were not disturbed".
Eventually, all those who tried to support the Ukrainian National Liberation Movement were repressed. For example, the commander of the 6th Company of the 30th Fyodor Baranenko Regiment, who assisted in the transition of division officers to UPA, was sent to a concentration camp in Dachau.
It should not be added that among the commanders of the “Galiczyna” troops were besides declared enemies of Ukrainian independence.
The 14th Company of the 29th Regiment of the 14th Division was commanded by Waffen-Ober-Sturmführer Opyp Czuchkewicz, an SD agent who arrested the president of the Ukrainian State Board Jarosław Stetski in July 1941.
What came of it?
Thus, the following conclusions appear from the analysis of the Verbunkowa run to the division of SS “Haliczyna” branches.
Galician volunteers were neither ideological national socialists nor pathological killers or bloodthirsty sadists. These were nationally aware young men who grew up in the traditions of the Ukrainian Army from 1914 to 1920 and experienced the failure of Ukrainian statehood.
They fantasized about the ability to repair the harms of their parents' generations and avenge enemy harms. But the historical circumstances created by planet War II made the Ukrainian occupiers and political riotists cynically exploit these noble motives in their own interests.
In order to recruit adequate recruits for the next SS division, the Galicia business authorities and their Ukrainian collaborators utilized a number of manipulation techniques. With their help, they created an illusion among young Galians that the 14th division of SS troops would fight for Ukraine's independence, although the organizers never straight promised.
The fall of these illusions was presented by the celebrated author Ivan Bagryana, the author of superb anti-communist works “Tigers”, “Gethsemane Garden”, “Why do I not want to return to the USSR?” etc. In the communicative of The ringing of Fire, Division Officer Roman speaks to his brother Peter as shortly as they sensed gunpowder close the Beards in July 1944:
- I'm sorry. I had a good home in my heart... The home that they built for me embroidered "uncles" of my butcher from "follows"...
“Kozachenki” went to “herca for a walk” with “Vorizhenka”. Meanwhile... Look! Lord, how far from what our uncles and ladies in embroidered outfits have been feeding us since we were young! Meanwhile, there must be no candy “witches” and no candy “Cossacks” and no candy souls stuffed with our kidnapped, sweet, dreamy primitive!
Instead of learning modern sciences, this “mathematics”, how to defeat the enemy, since we have been singing about charming “crazy” who themselves vanish “like dew in the sun”...
The formation of the “Haliczyna” division resembles large deception, akin to those which flourished in the 1990s in the russian space. In these “pyramids”, fraudulent organizers have become rich at the expense of impoverishment of many thousands of depositors.
The creators of the 14th division thus utilized the sincere patriotism of Galician youth for their own military and political benefit. At the cost of the death of the flowers of young Ukrainians for the interests of others.
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ps.
The text comes from the Ukrainian website ]]>www.istpravd]]>And for any errors in translation, I sincerely apologize.
