Fighting for the Right to Be

In researching and presenting the Ukrainian nation’s struggle against the German occupiers, it is essential to focus on the tried-and-true principles of objectivity, truthfulness, impartiality, and neutrality.

Clearly, our knowledge of historical processes is far from absolute or established for all time. Yet this knowledge should evolve independently of individual scholars’ preferences or the current political situation, and must be expanded with previously unknown facts. This is especially true when dealing with such a complex, multifaceted, and contradictory phenomenon as war. We must bear in mind the fact that numerous documents relating to the events of 1939—1945 were (and many still are) part of closely guarded military and government secrets. As they are declassified and introduced into scholarly discourse, we can supplement or modify our understanding of the course of certain events. But this should be done only by researching new information from reliable sources and not by distorting, hiding, or tampering with historical facts.

Truthfulness is essential when relating the multitude of facts that constitute the history of the Ukrainian nation’s struggle against the fascist aggressors in 1939—1945. There is a fair amount of validity to the statement about the need to deromanticize all wars as a phenomenon that involves violence, tremendous casualties, destruction, and physical and moral suffering. Mankind strives for peace, calm, and the resolution of conflicts without bloodshed. However, the phenomenon of deromanticizing war should not be accompanied by deflating the heroic status of the life and deeds of those who were forced under certain historical conditions to fight aggressors and defend themselves and their nation from humiliation and extermination.

The Second World War, which engulfed Ukraine from the very outset, was imposed on the planet by German Nazis, Italian fascists, and Japanese militarists. Its root cause was a strategy aimed at expanding the living space for the so-called European and Asian Aryans. “We are overpopulated and our country does not yield the food we need...The final solution lies in an extension of our living space and the sources of raw materials and food supplies of our nation,” reads Hitler’s August 1936 memorandum on preparations for the war. Hitler wrote openly: “We will stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east.”

Despite all the shortcomings of the policies pursued by the USSR (the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), the Western nations (the 1938 Munich Agreement, etc.), Poland (its complicity with Hitler in carving up Czechoslovakia and the invasion of its Cieszyn district in the fall of 1938), it is an undeniable and established historical fact that World War II was unleashed by the German Nazis and Italian fascists, who were the chief masterminds.

To achieve their goal, the Germans considered it necessary, among other things, to invade and plunder the Ukrainian lands, destroy most Ukrainians, and turn the survivors into docile slaves. The very existence of the Ukrainian ethnos was threatened. Under these conditions Ukrainians were left with no other choice but to defend themselves and repel the attack with force to save their families and the whole nation from extermination. We owe eternal remembrance and profound respect to those who heroically shielded our motherland from the aggressors and paid the ultimate price. We owe respect to each one of the millions of Ukrainian soldiers, officers, generals, marshals, partisans, and underground resistance fighters, who confronted the German, Romanian, and Hungarian occupiers.

The prominent Ukrainian poet Vasyl Symonenko painted the horrors of war in his poem about a real person, an old woman by the name of Baba Onysia from his native village of Biyivtsi in Poltava oblast, who had lost her husband and three sons to the war: Baba Onysia raised three sons,
Only to lose them one at a time.
Winter has descended on her hair,
Frosted with gray.
I have seen much misery in this world,
But there’s no greater misery
Than that of a mother facing old age
Alone in her home.

The poet appeals to us always to remember and respect those who sacrificed their lives for their fatherland and those who raised such heroes.

Determining specific dates of historical events is crucial. A scholarly periodization of Ukraine’s involvement in the global military confrontation of 1939-1945 is also fundamentally important. Many publications that focus on this period traditionally acknowledge that the Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941, and was part of World War II. At the same time, the Ukrainians’ involvement in hostilities between 1939 and June 22, 1941, is studied outside the context of the patriotic war. Others bend over backwards to prove that Ukrainians did not fight a patriotic war of their own, discussing the Ukrainians’ involvement only within the context of World War II, or the Soviet-German war.

The facts suggest that the term “patriotic war” has been used to describe a just armed struggle that was undertaken by nations to defend themselves and their lands from foreign aggressors. In such a war both the regular army and civilians confront the aggressors: this means that the war becomes a nationwide cause, with the entire population fighting the enemy by all means possible. The army is no longer closed in nature, and regular forces fight alongside various formations: the militia, partisans, underground resistance fighters, etc. Thus, a patriotic war is waged not only by individual governments and their structures, but by entire nations that use various forms of resistance. In a patriotic war, hostilities take place both at the frontline and in the enemy’s rear, and the targets of such warfare are the enemy’s forces and weapons, as well as infrastructure, production facilities, warehouses, etc. A patriotic war is prolonged, persistent, and bloody in nature, with troops fighting long and hard for every inch of their native land.

This was the nature of warfare involving the nations that became the targets of fascist aggression during World War II (1939—1945). For the victims of the aggressors, World War II was also a patriotic war from the start. This fact is recorded in documents and speeches of government leaders of the time.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain immediately discerned the popular, just, and patriotic nature of the war against fascism. In his radio speech in connection with Germany’s attack on the USSR, he said: “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last 25 years. I will unsay not a word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, even follies, and its tragedies, flashes away...I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land guarding the fields their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes, where mothers and wives pray — ah yes, for there are times when all pray — for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of their breadwinner, of their champion and their protector...I see 10,000 villages of Russia where the means of existence was wrung so hard from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens love and children play...I see advancing upon all these in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents, fresh from the cowing and tying down of a dozen countries...I see also the deadly, drilled, docile brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts... I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and safer prey. And behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who planned, organized and launched that cataract of horrors upon mankind...We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime...This is no class war. This is a war in which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged without distinction of race, creed or party...[It] is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.” Much like the other leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition, on many subsequent occasions he emphasized his readiness to wage a liberation war with full strength and energy until Hitlerism was completely eradicated.

The fact that the Soviet leadership used the term “patriotic war” is no reason to deny that the war waged against fascism by Ukrainians and other nations was also patriotic in nature.

Ukrainians began a just and genuinely patriotic liberation war in defense of their land back in 1939, when on March 14 Hungarian fascists invaded Carpathian Ukraine with Hitler’s backing. During this war our countrymen were not defending a certain dictator or regime, but their own land and the right to exist and live freely.

The fiercest fighting took place on March 15 in Krasne Pole, a valley on the Tisza River’s right bank outside Khust. Here the Hungarian aggressors encountered resistance from nearly 2,000 Sich national fighters and as many Czech soldiers. Among the defenders were many high school students brought there by a teacher named Holota. The Hungarians had an advantage over the Ukrainians, as they were attacking from the mountains and were better armed and trained. The Sich fighters were no match for them in strength and weapons, but put up a defense on level ground. Fierce battles lasted throughout the day, with the Ukrainians putting up a desperate fight to win time for the parliament to meet in session.

On the night of March 18 the aggressors occupied all of Zakarpattia and reached the Polish border, where they were warmly received by Polish forces, which were ready to assist the occupants if necessary. With Hitler’s blessing the Silver Land (a poetic name for Zakarpattia) was trampled by the bloody boot of Horthy’s fascist regime backed by Poland and Romania. The latter handed the Sich fighters detained on its border over to the Hungarians, who immediately executed them and dumped their bodies into the Tisza.

During the March 1939 battles in Zakarpattia, over 5,000 Ukrainians were killed defending their homeland. Subsequently, the Ukrainians of Zakarpattia, flying both red and blue-and-yellow banners, waged insurgent and partisan struggles against the occupiers until 1944. We celebrate Ukraine’s Liberation Day when Zakarpattia was liberated in October 1944. It would also be logical to start reckoning the beginning of the Ukrainian people’s Patriotic War from the time that our Zakarpattia countrymen began their struggle against the aggressors. This is a heroic page in our history. Here Ukrainians clashed in mortal combat with the fascist warmongers of World War II, against the oppressors of our homeland.

When the Polish-German war broke out, many Ukrainians rose to the defense of their lands and the government under which they lived. Ukrainian political parties represented in the Polish Sejm officially declared the need to fight the German aggressors.

According to various estimates, between 150,000 and 200,000 Ukrainians fought in the Polish ranks against the German Wehrmacht in September 1939.

Regardless of their status and military rank, Ukrainians fought heroically against the Nazis outside Warsaw, Westerplatte, Modlin, near the River Bzura, in the vicinity of Zamoscie, Tomaszow, Krasnostaw, Kocko, and other places.

In bloody battles against the Germans, Ukrainians who were fighting as part of the Polish army defended their native Lviv, which came under attack by the Wehrmacht on September 12, 1939. Violent battles and the siege of the city lasted until September 21. The brave defenders lost nearly 400,000 troops (killed and wounded). Nazi bombardment and shelling took a heavy toll on civilians. On September 14 the city’s water and natural gas supply were cut off. Power was cut on September 20. But the Nazis failed to break the Ukrainians, Poles, and fighters of other nationalities who defended the Ukrainian city of Leo, and they inflicted on the German Wehrmacht its first defeat in World War II. It is now time for the leaders of independent Ukraine and friendly Poland to commemorate the heroic deed of the people of Lviv. Although the system of state awards in Ukraine no longer includes a hero title for cities, Ukrainian and Polish military decorations awarded to Lviv would be a somewhat belated, albeit well- deserved, homage to those valiant soldiers.

Overall, 7,800 Ukrainians died a hero’s death during the September battles, and twice as many were wounded. Selected survey data suggests that some 1,500-2,000 natives of Lviv oblast who fought in the Polish army were killed in action. Nearly 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers (100,000 according to other estimates) were taken prisoner. The mortality count was increased by those killed by German bombs dropped in September 1939 on the territories of Lviv, Volyn, and Ternopil oblasts.

That the Ukrainian nation was among the first to suffer from Nazi aggression and launch a patriotic war against the invaders in 1939 was discussed at the 1945 Yalta Conference of the Big Three. Explaining the need for Ukraine’s participation, along with Belarus and Lithuania, in founding the United Nations Organization, Molotov said in Stalin’s presence: “These republics suffered the heaviest losses during the war and were the first territories to be invaded by the Germans.” This wording met with no objections from US President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill and could refer only to the year 1939, when the fascists invaded Ukrainian Zakarpattia and Lithuanian Klaipeda in March 1939, and western Ukraine and western Belarus in September 1939. Meanwhile, on June 22, 1941, which is generally believed to be the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, aside from the lands mentioned above, the Germans had already invaded the territories of Russia, Moldavia, Karelia, etc.

Thus, it follows from the facts and historical documents cited above that the Ukrainian nation’s patriotic war against Germany began in 1939. It would therefore be appropriate to name this period in Ukraine’s history the 1939—1945 Patriotic War of the Ukrainian People against the Fascist Aggressors.