By Mike Melnyk[1]

Good question regarding the situation vis a vis the Ukrainian partisans in WWII.

The answer – to such a straightforward question – is very hard to find.

Firstly, to familiarise yourselves with the background I would recommend you read
“ARMSTRONG John A: Ukrainian Nationalism 1939-45, 2nd revised edition, Littleton, Colorado: Ukrainian Academic Press, 1980.

This book is probably the best in the English language on this subject.

1944, in Ukraine there were:
Communist loyal partisan groups (not everyone suffered under Stalin in Ukraine, and several groups were made up of former Red Army soldiers)
Ukrainian “Nationalist Partisans” – that is affiliated with one of the two main factions of the “Organisation of Ukrainians Nationalists” (OUN)
Regular Red Army units advancing westward
Regular Wehrmacht units retreating westwards

The 14 Galician Division was deployed on the Eastern Front as part of XIII.AK, in the vicinity of Brody (Galicia – or Western Ukraine) in mid July 1944. Here for about 10 days it engaged the forces of the First Ukrainian Front and suffered devastating losses in the process. Ukrainian “Nationalist Partisan” units from the UPA (Ukrainian Partisan Army) were active. During the course of the battle the Soviets fought the Germans, whilst the Ukrainian partisan units also took part in very minor operations against the Soviets. However, after the surviving remnants of the Galician Division (which was made up primarily of western Ukrainians from Galicia), started to retreat from the encirclement in which they had been caught, many came into contact with the Ukrainian Partisans who were operating in the same vicinity. Contact between the “Ukrainians in German uniform” and the Ukrainian partisans were not always cordial. While I found no evidence of outright gunfights, there were many instances of partisan units attempting to “disarm” the Galician soldiers as they made their way westwards. These confrontations were always resolved but not always as pleasantly as you might think.

In my study on the Galician Division I have quoted from the experiences of a Ukrainian from the Galician Division, who had such a confrontation with the UPA units. For a descr1ption of a similar meeting between UPA members and soldiers of the Division from a German perspective see Erich Kern, ‘Der Grosse Rausch, Russlandfeldzug’, 1941-1945, Zuerich, 1948, p. 148.

So here we have Ukrainians engaging the Soviets, (ie; both the Galician Division and the Nationalist partisans) and the partisans not always seeing eye to eye with the Ukrainians from the Galician Division. Certainly although their own countrymen may have been spared, German soldiers from the Galician Division and other units involved in the fighting would probably have not. Hence my guess is that there was armed conflict on a small scale between the Ukrainian Nationalist partisans and the Germans who were retreating from western Ukraine. There is plenty of evidence concerning the Nationalist Partisans then engaging the newly occupying Soviet forces with the German weaponry they had just acquired.

Even if this does not answer your question it may provide a small insight into the complexities of the situation in Ukraine in 1944. “Line swapping” was in some cases endemic and there must have been many occasions when it was hard to determine “whose side are you on”.

To finish off here is one true example of a veteran of the 14 Galician Division, whom I personally knew for many years as he was a close friend of my father (they both came from the same village) and whom I interviewed several times. He died in 1990.

Mr STEPHAN SADIWSKYJ from the village of Koropec (Galica – western Ukraine) was a former member of the Red Army who had fought in defence of Moscow in 1941 and later at Stalingrad. Here he was captured by the Germans shortly after their arrival in the city. He was transported by cattle truck and was luckily to survive the journey to a German POW camp near Minsk in Central Russia. He escaped from this camp and together with a Polish soldier over the course of several weeks made his way across the war front on foot back to his home village whereupon he joined a local UPA unit to avoid capture by the local German police. He remained with the UPA until June 1944 whereupon because of a lack of weaponry and chronic shortage of food supplies, several men from his group enlisted into the Galician Division. Wounded twice during his service with the Division, he survived the war was taken prisoner by the British and settled in England.

[1]Michael James Melnyk

My father was Petro Melnyk, born in KOROPEC, Ukraine. He was a veteran of the Galician Division.

He was conscripted at gun point by the retreating Germans on 28 June 1944.

I wrote a history of the Division which took 15 years to research.

It is entitled ‘To Battle’, the formation and history of the 14 Galician Division of the Waffen SS and was published last year by Helion and Co.