Field Report from the Eastern Territories to Gerhard von Mende,
Director of the Department of Affairs in the Occupied Eastern Territories,
Ministry of the Third Reich, November 2, 1944
In the interest of realizing its objectives, the UPA - beginning in 1944 - has launched a growing initiative to link its plans to the local units of the Wehrmacht. At the same time, orders were given to its units to support the activities of the Wehrmacht and to cease attacks on individual German soldiers or smaller units of the army for the purpose of obtaining firearms or other supplies. The adequate preparation of the groundwork among the Ukrainian population and the removal of the political obstacles against military cooperation with the Germans have resulted in a unique type of general cooperation between the UPA and the Wehrmacht in August 1944.
Regarding the extent and the means of conducting this cooperation, evidently serious contentions have arisen between the directorate of the OUN and that of the UPA because various military necessities arising from the battles with the Red Army did not always fit the politics of the OUN. That organization has kept itself in the background, and it matters a great deal to it that its military cooperation with Germany, and in particular with the Wehrmacht, does not come to light.
Just as the relationship of the UPA to the Germans, so too have its relations to the Poles and the smaller nationalities of the Soviet Union remained under the influence of the political concepts of the OUN. While a war of extermination had been declared against the Poles because of the age-old tensions between these two nations, regarding other nationalities of the Soviet Union, a policy of coalition has been embarked upon based on the foundation of a mutual war of liberation to be waged against the Soviet Union, or rather, Russia, which found its expression also in the organizational phase (by incorporating individual units of these nationalities into the UPA)....
The UPA conducted its activity on three levels:
a) anti-German
b) anti-Polish
c) anti-Soviet
Ad b) Under the battle-cry of "revenge" for the Polish policy of extermination in the years 1918-1939 and hostile disposition under first the Soviet and then the German occupation, the OUN-UPA began a campaign of annihilation of the Poles, which released all those instincts associated with vengeance stemming from age-old animosities and whose object was the wholesale physical destruction of all that was Polish in this territory. Irrespective of the stated reasons for this war ("Poles are the Soviet agents of destruction," "Poles are setting the Germans against the Ukrainians," and the like), one cannot deny that the objective of the leadership of the OUN-UPA was to cleanse the Ukrainian territory of everything which was Polish, or at least to destroy that which the Poles had achieved in this territory in the years 1918-1939. The canvas of the map of nationalities, and foremost in Wołyń, is bound to change fundamentally as a result of this war.
Source: Bundesarchiv-Abteilungen Potsdam, R6, No. 150, pp. 6, 11, quoted in Leon Popek, Tomasz Trusiuk, Paweł Wira, and Zenon Wira, comps., Wołyński testament (Lublin: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Krzemieńca i Ziemi Wołyńsko-Podolskiej, 1977), pp. 168-69.
Director of the Department of Affairs in the Occupied Eastern Territories,
Ministry of the Third Reich, November 2, 1944
In the interest of realizing its objectives, the UPA - beginning in 1944 - has launched a growing initiative to link its plans to the local units of the Wehrmacht. At the same time, orders were given to its units to support the activities of the Wehrmacht and to cease attacks on individual German soldiers or smaller units of the army for the purpose of obtaining firearms or other supplies. The adequate preparation of the groundwork among the Ukrainian population and the removal of the political obstacles against military cooperation with the Germans have resulted in a unique type of general cooperation between the UPA and the Wehrmacht in August 1944.
Regarding the extent and the means of conducting this cooperation, evidently serious contentions have arisen between the directorate of the OUN and that of the UPA because various military necessities arising from the battles with the Red Army did not always fit the politics of the OUN. That organization has kept itself in the background, and it matters a great deal to it that its military cooperation with Germany, and in particular with the Wehrmacht, does not come to light.
Just as the relationship of the UPA to the Germans, so too have its relations to the Poles and the smaller nationalities of the Soviet Union remained under the influence of the political concepts of the OUN. While a war of extermination had been declared against the Poles because of the age-old tensions between these two nations, regarding other nationalities of the Soviet Union, a policy of coalition has been embarked upon based on the foundation of a mutual war of liberation to be waged against the Soviet Union, or rather, Russia, which found its expression also in the organizational phase (by incorporating individual units of these nationalities into the UPA)....
The UPA conducted its activity on three levels:
a) anti-German
b) anti-Polish
c) anti-Soviet
Ad b) Under the battle-cry of "revenge" for the Polish policy of extermination in the years 1918-1939 and hostile disposition under first the Soviet and then the German occupation, the OUN-UPA began a campaign of annihilation of the Poles, which released all those instincts associated with vengeance stemming from age-old animosities and whose object was the wholesale physical destruction of all that was Polish in this territory. Irrespective of the stated reasons for this war ("Poles are the Soviet agents of destruction," "Poles are setting the Germans against the Ukrainians," and the like), one cannot deny that the objective of the leadership of the OUN-UPA was to cleanse the Ukrainian territory of everything which was Polish, or at least to destroy that which the Poles had achieved in this territory in the years 1918-1939. The canvas of the map of nationalities, and foremost in Wołyń, is bound to change fundamentally as a result of this war.
Source: Bundesarchiv-Abteilungen Potsdam, R6, No. 150, pp. 6, 11, quoted in Leon Popek, Tomasz Trusiuk, Paweł Wira, and Zenon Wira, comps., Wołyński testament (Lublin: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Krzemieńca i Ziemi Wołyńsko-Podolskiej, 1977), pp. 168-69.