In 2010, two Ukrainian historians proposed a “new conceptual view” of the World War II. It’s now official, but there are many interesting details you (maybe) don’t know — the main points from the study

Berlin and Moscow "save" Ukraine

In the 1930s, Ukrainians were often mentioned in the government offices of Central and Eastern Europe. The largest nation on the continent without its own state, with millions of people in the Soviet Union, Poland, and significant diasporas in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary, could not simply be ignored. Public statements sympathetic to the fate of Ukrainians were often made — that they lived in poverty and suffered from repression in the USSR, or, conversely, that part of the people needed to be freed from bourgeois oppression.

The real motives of European government officials were different. Adolf Hitler, saying on April 1, 1933, that he “could not calmly watch the Bolsheviks enslave the noble Ukrainian people”, sought to win the sympathy of Ukrainians in Poland and Czechoslovakia and to undermine the local authorities. Joseph Stalin wanted to spread communist power westward, and the Ukrainians seemed like a convenient tool. Warsaw also had plans to create a Ukrainian state on the left bank of the Dnipro River as a protective buffer against Soviet Russia. These dreams were the first to be dashed.

Hitler perceived all the lands of Eastern Europe as lebensraum, “living space” for a state of 250 million Germans. But before capturing the USSR to the Urals, the Reich planned to occupy or neutralize the Western European democracies — and while this was happening, there had to be peace on the eastern border. To this end, Berlin began negotiations with Moscow, which ended with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, 1939.

On the same days, negotiators from France and Britain also traveled to Moscow — they proposed creating an anti-Hitler coalition. But since the USSR’s plans were to expand westward, Stalin considered Hitler’s war with Paris and London profitable, because this would weaken Europe and make it easier to conquer. At the last moment, Stalin abandoned the Franco-British treaty, guaranteed Germany’s security — and a week later Hitler launched an invasion of Poland. Just over two weeks later, on September 17, 1939, Moscow did the same.

The Soviet offensive began precisely under the slogan of protecting ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians from lawlessness — after all, the Polish state was supposedly completely destroyed and could not offer national minorities sufficient protection. In 12 days of the operation, Soviet troops occupied 195 000 square kilometers of territory, losing 996 people dead.

Local Ukrainians often rejoiced at the arrival of the USSR, but not so much out of love for Moscow as out of hatred for the Poles. A positive effect was produced by the fact that part of the Soviet military formations was called the Ukrainian Front, which was led by an ethnic Ukrainian Semen Tymoshenko. On the first day of the invasion, Soviet forces distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets among the locals with the appeal “Long live the great free Ukrainian people”, and specially dubbed the propaganda film “Schors” about the Soviet military leader into Ukrainian for distribution in the newly annexed lands.

However, myths about the Soviet Ukrainian paradise were shattered immediately upon meeting Soviet soldiers. A resident of Lviv describes his first meeting with the Red Army in 1939 as follows: “The soldiers were malnourished, small, emaciated, sad, exhausted, blackened (it seems from hunger), dressed in bad uniforms, armed with bad weapons.”

Soviet military equipment — cars and tanks — was more respected. However, not for its quality, but for its sheer quantity". Conversations with soldiers disappointed Ukrainians even more — so the military was forbidden to communicate with locals without the presence of a political commissar.

On October 22-23, the Soviet authorities held so-called elections to the Peopleʼs Assembly — the local council — in the new territories. Their results resembled “referendums” in the temporarily occupied territories of modern southern Ukraine: turnout was 92.8% and almost everyone voted for the official list of “communists and non-party members.”

The majority of the list was made up of people little known to the locals, but ready to vote in the interests of Moscow. At the very first meeting, the participants of the meeting unanimously supported the establishment of Soviet power in the region, accession to the Ukrainian SSR, and the nationalization of the largest enterprises. A week later, the elected participants of the meeting were greeted in Moscow at an emphatically pompous reception, but the new authorities proposed to the less loyal ones the “self-dissolution” of all political parties, except the communist one, the liquidation of trade unions, and the organization of 19 new prisons.

Resettlement or trials became a mass phenomenon in Western Ukraine. The former usually concerned national minorities. For example, in the winter of 1939-1940, 550 thousand people, mainly Polish settlers, were deported from the territory of Western Ukraine to Siberia and Central Asia. Due to the harsh conditions of transportation and the harsh winter, about 40% of the resettled died. The trials concerned pro-Ukrainian resistance figures. The sentences were remarkably harsh: out of more than 30 thousand people arrested, every tenth person was shot, and more than 12 thousand received from 5 to 10 years in prison.

In a sense, events were developing positively for Ukrainians — the share of their population in cities was growing, schools and new publications were opening in the region. But teachers for these schools were imported from parts of Ukraine that were already oppressed by communism, and the periodicals were also typical Soviet propaganda press, just in Ukrainian.

The collapse of the USSR

Inspired by the ease of occupying Galicia, the Soviet Union opened its mouth to other lands with a significant share of the Ukrainian population — in particular, Bessarabia and Bukovyna, which belonged to Romania. Through blackmail, threats of war, and negotiations with Berlin, the USSR obtained these lands — although only northern Bukovina, with its center in Chernivtsi.

Vyacheslav Molotov, who was responsible for foreign affairs of the USSR, explained the seizure by protecting the interests of the Ukrainian people, who needed unity. He was lying, there were many ethnic Ukrainian lands outside the borders of the Ukrainian SSR: Transcarpathia, Lemkivshchyna, Kholmshchyna, Pidliashcha, Nadsyannia, Marmoroshchyna, Beresteishchyna, Starodubshchyna, part of Slobozhanshchyna, and Kuban. Moreover, the last four regions were within the USSR, simply in other republics.

France surrendered to the Germans too quickly and easily, which disappointed Moscow. Berlin was alarmed by the way the USSR annexed Romanian territories in violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The dictators tried to reach an agreement: Stalin would not touch Europe, and Hitler would not prevent the USSR from expanding its influence in the territories towards the Indian Ocean. The negotiations ended in nothing, and the countries began to prepare for war with each other.

It had long been obvious that the Soviet Union was preparing for a major war. Back in 1938, Moscow introduced work books that tied workers to an enterprise without the right to be fired. Lateness was punished by a salary cut of half or three-quarters, systematic lateness was followed by eviction from housing or even imprisonment. In this way, the authorities tried to increase production, especially military production, since most enterprises were also capable of producing military products.

Since 1938, the country has been implementing so-called mass defense measures — workers were taught to shoot at targets and throw grenades. There was specialization of enterprises: some trained workers to be sappers, others to be machine gunners. The quality of this training was questionable, and since it took place at the expense of the workers’ already insignificant free time, it did not add to their sympathy for the authorities. At the same time, living conditions in other areas also deteriorated. For example, the Kremlin, contrary to the constitution, made secondary and higher education fee-paying, reduced the area of household plots, and liquidated farms.

By the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union was already ready to attack the Reich and concentrated its troops on the so-called Lviv and Bialystok “balconies” — the western salients of Soviet territory. From there, it was easier to reach Warsaw and threaten Berlin. Instead, the Germans concentrated their troops between the “balconies” and were the first to launch an offensive on June 22. It turned out that the Soviet shock troops were not coping well with the task of defense. That the soldiers did not want to fight, and the local residents, having tasted Soviet life, were happy for the German troops.

The actions of the USSR were illogical and poorly coordinated. At first, the troops even received orders to advance towards Warsaw. Later, the tank units received orders to search for German infantry, wasting days and tons of fuel on the futile pursuit of much faster troops. This did not help to eliminate the German breakthroughs. The USSR also stationed aircraft at airfields near the border, which caused the Red Army to lose over 1 800 of them on the first day of the war. The Germans were rapidly advancing eastward, and Soviet soldiers were losing confidence in the authorities.

By July 6, 1941, the Red Army had lost about 850 000 soldiers — 85 000 killed, 260,000 wounded and sick, and 515 000 prisoners and deserters. The losses in equipment amounted to 11 700 tanks, 6 293 aircraft, and over 20 000 guns and mortars.

The Germans suffered 92 000 casualties, and lost 503 tanks, 807 aircraft, and 1 806 guns and mortars. The Wehrmacht covered a third of its needs from captured Soviet fuel depots.

Soviet troops during the German offensive, 1941.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

German troops move towards Dvinsk, now Daugavpils, Latvia.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Captured Soviet soldiers, 1941.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Initially, the Ukrainian population actively joined the Soviet army. In the first week, the number of volunteers reached 200 000. However, seeing the chaos in the Red Army and civilian authorities and how quickly the Germans were advancing, the civilians lost enthusiasm.

The authorities organized the evacuation of Ukrainian industry to the east — 550 of the best Ukrainian enterprises became the basis of the military-industrial complex in the eastern part of the USSR, most of which were not returned after the war. The Soviet authorities also destroyed what they could not take out. For example, without warning the locals, they blew up the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) — thousands of people died due to flooding.

“In Dnipropetrovsk, a bread factory was blown up together with the workers. In Odesa, retreating, the Red Army flooded the seaside neighborhoods together with the residents, and the wounded Red Army soldiers were thrown into the sea together with ambulances. Hundreds of representatives of the intelligentsia were taken out of Kharkiv to be burned in a closed house,” the authors quote the modern Ukrainian historian Yuriy Shapoval.

The rapid advance of the Germans was stopped only in mid-July near Kyiv — one of the German military leaders wrote on July 16 that “it was the first difficult day”. In response to the mass desertion and surrender, the Soviet leadership decided to tighten the screws — first, it intensified repressions against the military, and later equated the prisoners with “evil deserters”, whose decisions were punished by their relatives.

Stalin also forbade military leaders to use defensive tactics with a retreat, which resulted in the slogan “Not a step back!” All this increased losses among the Soviet military, and therefore among the Ukrainians. However, despite the fact that closer to the fall of 1941, the German troops began to slip at the front, underestimating the size of the Soviet military machine and the country’s rear reserves, the following year the Germans occupied the entire territory of modern Ukraine.

Good from Reich

The Reich had two views on the development of new territories. The first was to create national ersatz states that, while carrying out the will of Germany, would still satisfy the local populationʼs desire for self-government. The second approach, which ultimately won out, was to turn the new lands into colonies both economically and politically, preparing the way for the future settlement of the local cities by representatives of the dominant nation, the Germans.

"When we populate the Russian expanses, the imperial peasant will live in extremely beautiful settlements. German institutions and officials will receive wonderful buildings, and governors receive palaces. Everything necessary for life will be built around the administrative centers. And around the cities, at a distance of 30-40 kilometers, we will lay a ring of very beautiful villages connected by the best roads. Behind these villages will begin a completely different world, where we will settle the Russians. Let them live as they wish, but we will rule over them. And in the event of a rebellion, we will simply drop a couple of bombs on their settlements — and that will be the end of it. Once a year, a crowd of Kyrgyz can be brought to the capital of the empire, so that they can see with their own eyes the power and grandeur of its stone statues... If only I could inspire the German people with what this space will mean to them in the future!” Hitler dreamed in July 1941.

Ukrainians did not immediately learn about these plans. German troops skillfully played on national feelings. For example, in the first days after the conquest of cities, they opened prisons and invited local residents to identify the bodies of prisoners murdered by Soviet security forces: many of them were killed immediately before the retreat.

Taking advantage of the period of interregnum, Ukrainians began to actively revive their culture and church. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church actively opened branches in central and eastern Ukraine. Teachers rejected the Soviet program and focused on the Ukrainian view of history.

At first, Reich actively supported the publication of Ukrainian newspapers, believing that in this way he would gain the loyalty of the local population. Over 300 publications appeared in a short time. They published, among other things, previously banned texts by Ukrainian writers and materials about the communist-inspired famine of the 1930s.

This did not last long. In 1942, the Nazis began to worry that the consciousness of Ukrainians was growing, so many publications were closed, and Ukrainian figures were shot. Schools were closed for other reasons — in the Nazisʼ opinion, the aborigines only needed basic writing and arithmetic skills, so instead of full-fledged schools, four-year literacy courses would be enough. Those schools that still offered full-fledged education worked on the enthusiasm of teachers, often despite the danger.

The Germansʼ intentions were fully manifested through economic policy. The Germans preserved the collective farm system. Food rations for the townspeople were even more modest than under the Soviet Union — and they were often not given out. Hunger and alcoholism were not a problem for the occupation authorities — rather, a tool to reduce the number of the local population to an acceptable size.

In the first days of the invasion of the USSR, Hitler said: "In a country where it would be possible to get great profits with even a little work, people have barely enough to call their own only a jug in which they cook, and they live in poor shacks, neglected, shabby, and sloppy. In the Soviet ʼparadiseʼ there really is slavery, the most disgusting of all that has ever existed in this world: millions of people intimidated, enslaved, neglected, half-dead from hunger."

By the end of 1941, neither he nor Reich were generally concerned that Ukrainian cities were again dying en masse from starvation. That winter, about 300 000 townspeople died.

Wartime Germany was in dire need of food, and thanks to Ukraine, the Hitler regime in 1942 covered 80% of its needs for bread, 83% for meat, and 74% for fats. During the occupation, 23 million tons of grain and flour, 2 million tons of potatoes, vegetables, and fruits, 320 million eggs, 7.6 million cows and bulls, and almost 60 million poultry were exported from Ukrainian territory.

Tens of thousands of tractors and combines were exported. Individual extortion also flourished, resulting in more than 11 million food parcels from German officials stationed in Ukraine to their homes. The Romanian authorities also actively seized food in their own occupation zone in southern Ukraine.

The war dragged on, and the problems of the Germans in the rear became obvious. The Reich began to need labour — and launched an agitation campaign in the occupied territories. Locals were advertised high social standards, good salaries, and the opportunity to experience refined European culture. For example, here is the text used in January 1942 to advertise a trip to Germany in the newspaper "New Ukrainian Word": "Ukrainian men and women! The Bolshevik commissars destroyed your factories and workplaces, depriving you of wages and bread. Germany gives you an opportunity for useful and well-paid work. In January 1942, the first train transport leaves for Germany. During the move, you will be provided with everything, and in Kyiv, Zdolbuniv, and Przemyśl you will receive hot meals. The salary in Germany will also be decent: you will receive money according to the tariff and labour productivity. Your families will be taken care of the whole time you are in Germany.”

The truth turned out to be different: working conditions depended heavily on where the Ostarbeiters ended up, and wages were almost always significantly lower than the local wage. The flow of volunteers quickly dried up, and workers began to be recruited forcibly. By the end of the occupation, more than 2.4 million people had been deported from Ukrainian territory. The worst was for workers in industry — towards the end of the war, German enterprises often became targets for shelling by both the Allies and the Soviet troops.

Campaigning for work in Germany.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Getty Images / «Babel'»

In addition to the workforce, the Germans actively exported historical and cultural monuments from Ukraine. Paintings from museums in Lviv, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk were stolen in boxes — as well as porcelain, sculptures, and antique furniture. The entire collection of antique weapons was taken from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra — 4 000 items, originals of the universals of Ukrainian hetmans, engravings, and old prints. In total, we are talking about 330 thousand exhibits, of which only a few dozen returned to Ukraine after the war.

Against this background, the Germans were surprised by how passively the Ukrainian population reacted to pressure and repression. The partisan movement became truly massive only in western Ukraine — and its goal was the liberation of Ukraine from both German and Soviet rule. Historians recall a popular saying at the time that summarizes the attitude of Ukrainians towards the occupiers on both sides: “If only these go somewhere, and those who gone will not return.” But they did return.

The end of "national communism"

As soon as the Soviet Union began to retake Ukrainian territories, one noticeable feature appeared in its policy: the brutal mobilization of locals, sometimes even teenagers. The Moscow authorities perceived Ukrainians as guilty of the fact that the Germans had so easily captured these territories, considered the resistance insufficient, and the experience of life under occupation destructive. Teenagers were often thrown to cross the Dnipro River — during this operation, the Soviet troops lost 1.5 million people.

The authors cite an entry in the diary of the director Oleksandr Dovzhenko from December 28, 1943: “Today V. Shklovsky told me that many civilians mobilized in Ukraine are dying in battles. I think they are called chornosvytnyks. They fight in their home clothes, without any training, like penal servitude. They are looked at as guilty. Viktor told me that one general looked at them in battle and cried.”

The Battle of the Dnipro River resulted in such heavy losses due to the rush and lack of watercraft. Army commanders were forced to search for planks in riverside villages to cross at least on something. There was no time to build pontoon bridges.

The authors of the book mention that Stalin could have ordered the crossing of the Dnipro River higher, in the territory of modern Belarus, where the river is much narrower. But the Soviet dictator wanted to reach the Balkans and the Black Sea as soon as possible, so that they would be a zone of Soviet influence. An even greater risk for the dictator would be if the territory of modern Ukraine began to be liberated by the Western allies. Because of this, the victims were not taken into account.

To liberate the Ukrainian lands, the army lost about three million people, 60% of whom were from Ukraine. During active offensive operations, 60-70 thousand people died per day, and due to active repression and pressure, it was impossible to express disagreement with the actions of the commanders.

The relaxation came from another side: fighting for the liberation of Ukraine and, for example, Belarus, the communist command considered it inappropriate to promote proletarian internationalism. The slogan “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” on the front pages of Soviet publications was replaced by “Death to the German occupiers!”.

The very name of the war — the homeland — also hinted at the need to defend one’s own territory, and not ideology. This was important, in particular, because of the geopolitical games of the USSR on the eve, because of which the population often did not understand who was the enemy, who was a friend, and who attacked whom.

On the third day of the German invasion, poems in Ukrainian suddenly appeared in the newspaper Pravda: “We Are Going to Battle” by Pavlo Tychyna, “Word of Anger” by Maksym Rylsky. The next day, on June 26, an article by Ukrainian playwright Oleksandr Korniychuk “The Ukrainian People Rises” was published there. It stated that the peoples of the Soviet Union would destroy the “vile fascist barbarians”.

The local authorities generally used wording that a few months ago would have earned them a death sentence. In official appeals of the Ukrainian SSR, the “great Ukrainian people” were called upon to defend “our national state”. Such zeal was needed both for mobilization and for readiness to evacuate and work without days off or holidays.

In 1942–1944, the radio stations "Soviet Ukraine" in Moscow and "Name of Taras Shevchenko" in Saratov successfully operated. Historical research flourished: historians were given the freedom to talk about prominent Ukrainian figures of the past who inspired people to fight. The authorities rehabilitated the topic of the Ukrainian Cossacks, giving Volodymyr Sosyura the Stalin Prize for the poem "Love Ukraine". There were even plans to make Pavlo Tychyna, not a communist, the Minister of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, and Oleksandr Dovzhenko the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the republic. The republic began to show signs of a full-fledged state — foreign policy and defense departments.

However, in mid-1944, when it became obvious that Ukraine would remain in Moscow’s orbit of influence, all these concessions became unnecessary. One of the main enemies again became “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”, and the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR Nikita Khrushchev sensing the changing situation, called “all those who do not love the Russian language” enemies.

The myth of the “Great Patriotic War”, which the Soviet authorities themselves invented, cemented the main truths: Germany was a long-standing treacherous aggressor, Ukrainians managed to free themselves from the Nazis with the help of the “great Russian people, the leading force of the Soviet Union”, the policy of the Soviet government was always correct, and the common experience of the war is the basis for the creation of a new historical community — the “Soviet people”. This myth proved to be tenacious.