Ukrainian collaborationism with the Axis powers.

25-01-2017

During the military occupation of modern-day Ukraine by Nazi Germany, the new territorial divisions of World War II included District Galizien and Reichskommissariat Ukraine administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch   , overing both, the south-eastern territories of the Second Plosh Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic across former borders. After the war Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a year later. Koch die in prison 12-11-1986, age 90. Many Ukrainians welcome German troops as liberators. German soldiers were treated to impromptu welcome celebrations by villagers just like this one: this German soldier carries a tower of sliced bread  a welcome treat for him and his comrades    surrounded by pretty young Ukrainians.

The shootings, hangings, and deportations came later to cure the locals of their pro-German feelings once and for all. In two days in late Sep 1941, 33,771 Ukrainians were killed by Germans. Original reasons for collaboration included Ukrainian political aspirations for regaining independence, resurgent nationalism, but also widespread anger and resentment against the Russians over the genocide by famine engineered in Soviet Ukraine only a few years earlier.

  

These sentiments were coupled with rampant racism towards other ethnic groups (such as Jews, Tatars, Roma people, and Poles) as well as the prevailing notions of anti-Semitism. However, the absence of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupier, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers, soon led to a dramatic change in the attitude of some collaborators.y the time the Red Army returned to Ukraine, a significant number of the population welcomed its soldiers as liberators. More than 4.5 million Ukrainians joined the Red Army to fight Nazi Germany, and more than 250,000  served in Soviet partisan paramilitary units.

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