Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret

[jakeXT]

Yaroslav Stetsko, an OUN leader during World War II, meets George H.W. Bush.

...


Your book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party exposed the deep involvement in the Republican Party of Nazi elements from Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukrainian, dating back to World War II and even before. As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded in the last few weeks there have been scattered mentions of a fascist or neo-fascist element, but somehow that never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. I can’t think of anyone better to shed light on what’s not being said about that element. The danger of Russian belligerence is increasingly obvious, but this unexamined fascist element poses dangers of its own. What can you tell us about this element and those dangers?

..

The Captive Nations Committee in Washington DC for instance was run by the person who headed the Ukrainian organization of nationalists, that was true in a number of places. In my hometown area near Detroit as well, they played a major role. In the early 50s, when they were resettled in the United States, there was at least 10,000 of them that were resettled, when you look at all the nationalities. They became politically active through the Republican national committee, because it was really the Eisenhower administration that made the policy decision in the early 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these campaign organizations, every four years they would mobilize for the Republican candidate, whoever it would be, and some of them like Richard Nixon, in 1960, actually had close direct ties to some of the leaders like the Romanian Iron Guard, and some of these other groups.

...

I did publish an op-ed in the New York Times about two weeks after the election was over, and I think that was the last time anybody said anything publicly about it that got any kind of forum. I think they were allowed to just die and wither away, that is those leaders. The Republican idea was probably to bring in another generation of people who were born in the United States as these émigré’s died off, but they never did anything about this history that Richard Nixon had bequeathed them with. The Reagan White House had really made deep political commitments and alliances with them, they didn’t want to look like they turned their back on them; and Bush wanted them for his reelection campaign, so he wasn’t going to turn his back on them either.

If you want an anecdote, I know that 60 Minutes was working on a piece that Bradley’s team was working on, and Nancy Reagan herself called the executive producer and said that we would really like it if you would wouldn’t do this story, and they killed it. Because, basically, it’s not just about Nazis and the Republican national committee were Nazis in the White House, it inevitably raises the question of who are they how did they get here, who sponsored them and it goes back to the intelligence agencies at that point. And some people don’t like treading there, if it’s tied to an intelligence agency, they prefer to just stay away from the subject. So, some people at 60 Minutes were frustrated by it, but that’s what happened. I think that they were able to effectively kill the story when people tried to cover it. They were able to persuade news managers to not delve into it too much.

..

http://fpif.org/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-secret/

[Igel]

1. Sloppy.

The Banderists refused to join with the Germans. They'd have to give up too much authority. They were the nastiest of the group. They fought the Red Army--sort of de facto enemy/allies of the Germans--while the Red Army was on Ukrainian territory. Then they turned around and fought the Germans. When the Germans were pushed out by the Red Army, the Red Army bore the brunt of their attacks.

The Banderists helped round up Jews and ethnically cleansed Poles. For Russians that are old enough, "Ukrainian nationalist" = "Banderist." In case they forgot, the Russian media uses the term interchangeably with "fascist" when dealing with Ukraine.

They were old-school "Nazis" at first. Such groups are still around in Eastern Europe and Central Europe and take some rethinking of traditional terms. These "Nazis" are throwbacks to the kinds of "national" or "popular socialist" extent when Adolf H. was a teen or 20-something. They wanted a "national revival" (which may be something as innocuous as when Mexicans want to fight against the Americanization of their culture and economy, or as evil as rounding up people and executing them en masse). The so-called Nazis in the '20s and '30s were also very "anti-capitalist" and "anti-corporatist" in that they wanted extreme privatization of government, with the ownership distributed to individuals (if the establishment is very small) or to collectives (if the establishment is large). This is vaguely socialist Some such "Nazis"!

Then there were the groups that participated and worked with the Germans. They had their own set of rules. The Germans called them "Galician" since "Slav" was an inferior race. They could have priests with their troops. They also were dedicated to just fighting the Russians and were told they'd never have to fire a shot against the Western troops. When the Germans lost in Ukraine they retreated and surrended to the first Western armies they found.

These were regular troops. In Ukraine it was a different branch that rounded up Jews and such. Most of the troops engaged in few atrocities; none have been reliably proven.

The OP confuses the various factions. The group that only fought Russians and didn't engage in ethnic cleansing; the rabid nationalists who engaged in serious ethnic crimes and refused to work with the Germans. And the idea that they were primarily German allies in order to help Germany, when the information in the OP itself fairly clearly points ot Ukrainian nationalism of a rather extreme stripe. Even the name "Svoboda," "freedom," is a paranoid, hypervigilant recollection of the colonial policies under the tsars and the genocidal policies under the kind "communists," all of which, when viewed through the lens of ethnic identity translates into "Russian."

Adopting the Russian view that every Ukrainian nationalist is a fascist does justice neither to history nor to the people in the Ukraine, Galicia, and Ruthenia. Any more than calling MEChA, which is openly Mexican nationalist, means they're (all) fascist, or the liberation groups in Africa driving out the white colonialists were fascist. The result is to deepen divisions and distrust, to offend one side and let the other feel justified in its ethnic condescension and hatred, rather than work towards a solution.

The various Ukrainian organizations had been radicalized to some extent by the way their "homeland" was divided up by the Great Powers. Note that in Ukr this is "fatherland," bat'kivshchyna, which is exactly parallel to the Russian word typically translated "motherland", otechestvo, but which as clearly has the word "father" in it (Russian otets) as the Ukrainian does (bat'ko). There were Ukrainian "freedom fighters" that fought the Red Army after the Revolution. Nobody cared. The result was persecution and, when push came to shove, better to starve the agrarian Ukraine and the Kuban than to let the CPSU power base, urban proletarians, go hungry. These weren't fascists. But after the way they were treated, some clearly went that way. Others were moderate nationalists, but that's a hard sell for people who long for extreme polarization. Note that the Ukrainian flag goes back to one of the two flags under the briefly independent Ukraine after the Revolution, before Lenin's "fraternal" empire with the Russians as the "big" or "older brother" swallowed it up again.