RE: Twisting History
They were adversaries, but cooperated and fought on occaision, mostly leaving one another alone where possible.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
No matter how much Ukrainians use their newfound "information warfare" capabilities, they will not be able to change the fact that the UPA spent most of its time mass-murdering Jewish and Polish civilians in present-day Western Ukraine, while it was under German administration.
To compare the UPA to say the AK or the Yugoslav partisans, would be rather insulting to the latter two groups. There was overlapping membership between the OUN/UPA and collaborationist units, whether S.S., police or other auxiliaries.
However, to claim that Ukraine was more collaborationist than say the French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians and Danes, would be inaccurate, given the sheer number that fought as Soviet partisans and in the Red Army. Whereas the Balts, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Romanians and Russians who served with the Wehrmacht could try to claim that they were "justifiably" resisting Stalin's genocidal tyranny, the other nations had no such "excuses".
Postwar, it was heartening to see KGB mass murderers killing UPA mass murderers until the early 1950s. When the East Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians revolted against the Communists in the late 1980s, there was no "light at the end of the tunnel" in the form of NATO protection or subsidies and job opportunities from Western Europe. The Maidan revolution in 2013-2014 took place in a very, very different context.
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