COMMENT: Before delving into “Austerity Equals Fascism, Part II” it may be useful to highlight an instructive article from the german-foreign-policy.com newsletter, which feeds along the bottom of the front page of this website.
The competition for the European football (soccer) championship, leading up to the World Cup, is underway in the Ukraine. The location for this event has aggravated tensions between Poland and the Ukraine over the massacres of Polish nationals committed during the Second World War by the OUN/B, a Ukrainian fascist organization that allied with the Third Reich.
Supplying personnel to the Einsatzgruppen (mobil death squads) and the 14th Waffen SS Division (Galician), the OUN/B has etched a bloody name into history running from the period between the World Wars, through World War II and the covert operations of the Cold War and its aftermath.
In particular, the organization has been deeply involved with covert operations and figures into the investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the de-stabilization of the Soviet Union during the climactic phase of the Cold War. With a profound presence in the GOP’s Ethnic division, as well as the contemporary Ukrainian political infrastructure, the OUN/B is anything but an historical relic.
It is in the context of the OUN’s promotion of ceremonies and awards that celebrate and distort the organization’s fascist past that the Polish protest of OUN-related activities is to be examined.
The Ukraine is considering declaring July 11 to be a commemoration of OUN/B military actions against Polish citizens during the war, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Poles!
In the past we have noted that Ykaterina Chumachenko, head of the OUN/B’s leading front organization in the U.S. and Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Director of Public Liaison, went on to marry Viktor Yuschenko and become First Lady of the Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution.”
With the Yuschenko regime in power, OUN/B founder Stephan Bandera was named a hero of the Ukraine [1]. As we see below, Roman Shukhevych was also granted that honor. Shukhevych lead the OUN/B‑staffed Einsatzgruppe “Nightingale” in its liquidation of the Lvov Ghetto! (Lvov has also been known as Lemberg and Lodz at various times in its recent history.)
(Worth noting in passing is the fact that the SS leader of the Nightingale group in its liquidation of the Lvov Ghetto was Theodor Oberlander, who became a West German Minister, in charge of the “expellees”–vertriebene groups. Forced to resign after his role in the Lvov massacre became public, Oberlander was deeply involved with recruiting Muslim combatants who had fought for the Third Reich on behalf of the Federal Republic’s intelligence services, as we saw in FTR #721 [2].)
Oberlander also joined General Charles Willoughby [3]’s International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture, an international fascist intelligence network [4] that included Nelson Bunker Hunt of the ultra right-wing Hunt family. (Hunt was involved with attempting to corner the silver market in the early 1980’s, a gambit in which he conspired with Ali bin Mussalim, who managed the Al Qaeda account [5] at Bank Al-Taqwa, an account that had an unlimited line of credit. ICDCC founder Willoughby was Douglas MacArthur’s top intelligence officer and was a German-born fascist and admirer of Francisco Franco.)
“Between Moscow and Berlin (IV)”; german-foreign-policy.com; 6/06/2012. [6]
EXCERPT: Just a few days before the Soccer World Cup is scheduled to open, a reminder of massacres, carried out by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, has created dissonance between the Ukraine and Poland. In Warsaw, government politicians are demanding that Kiev finally put a stop to public commemorations of Ukrainian militia fighting on Nazi Germany’s side. They were responsible for gruesome murders of Poles in World War II. One of those referred to, is the Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose militia, for example, attacked a total of 99 Polish villages, massacring countless inhabitants on July 11, 1943. Bandera is honored with numerous memorials, particularly in western Ukraine, where the imprisoned ex-Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko has her electoral backing. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, the OUN, founded with Berlin’s support in 1929, evolved into the main Ukrainian nationalist political organization. On several occasions following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it sought statehood for a secessionist Ukrainian nation under German dominion. The massacres were carried out against the Polish population, especially Jews. Most recently, the memory of numerous Ukrainians’ collaboration with the Nazis was re-awakened by the German trial against the former Ukrainian concentration camp guard, John Demjanjuk
Massacre of Poles
As the governing PSL party’s parliamentarian in the Sejm, Franciszek Stefaniuk explained, the Ukraine should face up to the commemorations of anti-Polish massacres by numerous Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in the Second World War. This is in reference to crimes, such as the murders on July 11, 1943, when Ukrainian militia engaged in a coordinated offensive against 99 Polish villages, killing thousands of inhabitants, says Stefaniuk.[1] Stepan Bandera, one of the commanders of the militia, is still celebrated today in the West Ukraine with numerous memorials. Warsaw demands that a stop be put to this. Declaring July 11, the day in 1943, when the Poles were slaughtered, an official day of commemoration is now being considered. This would refurbish the memory of Ukrainian collaborationist activities, for example, of the OUN, the most important of the organizations seeking Ukrainian statehood at the time.
The Spirit of the Leadership
The founding of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in Vienna in early 1929 had been prepared at a 1927 Ukrainian nationalists’ conference in Berlin. The Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was also a participant at the Berlin conference. The UVO had its headquarters in Berlin and had undergone several clandestine training programs provided by the German Reichswehr.[2] In the 1920s, it had repeatedly engaged in terrorist campaigns and carried out attacks in Poland. According to the Polish intelligence service, six German soldiers were also present at the OUN’s founding conference.[3] Throughout the years of its existence, while, according to one of its commanders, “the democratic spirit” was replaced by “the spirit of leadership and the adulation toward the authority of the leadership,”[4] the OUN remained loyal to the Nazi government, even though the latter was occasionally forced to publicly distance itself from the former, for example after OUN terrorists assassinated the Interior Minister of Poland June 15, 1934. In any case, in 1939, the OUN had very close relations with the German Wehrmacht and organized a small unit of exiled Ukrainians for their engagement in the invasion of Poland. They were disappointed at not being allowed by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to march into Lwów (which had been Lemberg and later Lviv). The OUN began instead to repeatedly massacre Polish civilians throughout the war. These massacres are today the subject of Polish protests.
Hero of the Ukraine
Once the Germans invaded the Soviet Union June 22, 1941, OUN’s Ukrainian militia, or at least its “Nightingale Battalion,” could make good on not having been able to march into Lwów. Under the command of Theodor Oberländer,[5] who later was a West German minister, the Nightingale Battalion participated not only in the invasion of that town, but was also involved in the deadly pogroms against Lwów’s Jewish community. That German/Ukrainian massacre left thousands dead. Nazi anti-Semites could count on the support of their collaborators. As soon as the Germans occupied Poland, the OUN declared “open season” on the Jewish population. “Alongside the German authorities, our militia is now arresting numerous Jews,” the OUN propaganda office in occupied Lwów reported to Berlin, July 28, 1941. “The Jews are using all means to defend themselves from liquidation.” The OUN and its troops continued anti-Semitic massacres in the following years.[6] The memory of the common front with the Germans in the war is still alive, at least in the western Ukraine. October 12, 2007, the pro-western president Viktor Yushchenko declared post-mortem the “Nichtingale” commander, Roman Shukhevych, a “Hero of the Ukraine.”
Under German Protection
The veneration that the OUN continues to enjoy in sectors of the western Ukrainian population can be also be explained by efforts to achieve Ukrainian statehood on the territory of the occupied Soviet Union under German hegemony — exactly as it was attempted back at the end of World War I.[7] . . . .