Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiya: The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Part 1: The History (1942−1949)

Above photo: (Left) Vasyl Kuk was the last commander of the UPA. (Right) An OUN operative armed with a captured German MP40 submachine gun.

Organizational methods were borrowed and adapted from the German, Polish and Soviet military, while UPA units based their training on a modified Red Army field unit manual. Unlike many of the WWII partisan groups, UPA personnel often wore uniforms to distinguish them from the Soviet partisans and criminal gangs that often operated in the same territory. In addition, numbers of women served with the UPA in administrative, medical, communications and combat roles.

Former policemen constituted a large proportion of the UPA leadership, and they comprised about half of the UPA membership in 1943. In terms of UPA soldiers' social background, 60% were peasants of low to moderate means, 20 to 25% were from the working class (primarily from the rural lumber and food industries), and 15% members of the intelligentsia (students, urban professionals). The latter group provided a large portion of the UPA's military trainers and officer corps. With respect to the origins of the UPA's members, 60% were from Galicia and 30% percent from Volhynia and Polisia and included personnel from the Caucasus and Central Asia who had deserted from the Red Army and joined the Ukrainians.

The UPA's anti-German actions were limited to situations where the Germans attacked the Ukrainian population or UPA units. Indeed, according to German General Ernst Kostring, UPA fighters "fought almost exclusively against German administrative agencies, the German police and the SS in their quest to establish an independent Ukraine controlled by neither Moscow nor Germany." Because the UPA was also fighting Soviet and Polish partisans it has been reported that Wehrmacht units often declined to support Nazi police and SS anti-partisan campaigns.

The UPA conducted hundreds of raids on police stations and military convoys. In the region of Zhytomyr, insurgents were estimated by the Germans to be in control of 80% of the forests and 60% of the farmland. From July through September 1943, there were over seventy clashes between German forces and the UPA during which the Nazis lost more than 3,000 men killed or wounded.

In 1941, the Germans created the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) from Ukrainian volunteers to maintain order in occupied areas of the Eastern Front, especially against Polish partisans.

For many who joined the police force, enlistment served as an opportunity to receive military training and access to weapons.

The OUN-B leadership on March 1943 issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined the Nazi auxiliary police to desert with their weapons and join with the military detachment of OUN (SD) units. In the Spring of 1943, approximately 10,000 police deserted and joined the ranks of the future UPA. In some places this involved engaging in armed conflict with German forces who tried to prevent desertion.

The leaders of UPA saw the German-Soviet war as a favorable time for a revolution that would lead to the liberation of Ukraine. On the political level, Germany was considered to be an enemy, as it was an invader and the UPA fought the Germans until they left in 1944. The losses inflicted upon German forces by UPA came close to those inflicted by Soviet partisans.

As the Germans withdrew ahead of the advancing Soviets, the UPA, who saw the Soviets as just as bad, if not a worse threat than the Nazis, began attacking Red Army units. UPA commanders avoided outright confrontation with the vanguard of the Red Army, choosing instead to lie in wait to attack rear-echelon authorities as they attempted to reestablish political control over newly “liberated” Ukraine.

The centuries of Ukrainian/Polish animosities and conflicts came to a head in 1943 when Ukrainians, including some UPA units, began a campaign of what is today known as "ethnic cleansing" against the Polish minority residing in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. It has been reported that up to 100,000 Poles were killed or forced to flee the region by 1944.

Taras Bulba-Borovets, the commander of the Ukrainian Peoples' Revolutionary Army, which sometimes cooperated with the UPA, condemned the anti-Polish campaign and did not let his members take part in them.

Retaliation was hardly less fierce. Warnings to Ukrainians made in 1943 stated that every Polish village burned would result in two Ukrainian villages being razed, and for every Pole killed, two Ukrainians would be killed. Orders issued in February of 1944 by the Polish Home Army said only children would be spared; however, a month later a massacre by Polish partisans occurred in Kholm killing 1,500 most of whom were women and children.

UPA forces targeted state police and paramilitary units along with any Ukrainians they considered pro-Soviet. Moscow’s propaganda painted the faction as fanatical Nazi-friendly holdouts and hunted them without mercy.

In the summer of 1944, the Soviets detached a force of 30,000 NKVD troops to Volhynia to quell a large-scale UPA uprising there. Some estimates peg Soviet losses at 2,000.

By the end of the summer, the UPA had driven the enemy out of large areas of western Ukraine. The movement was at the height of its power, controlling an area roughly the size of Greece with a population of 10 million citizens and UPA forces enjoyed virtual freedom of movement over the area. But this independence would be short lived.

There has been much controversy as to whether or not the UPA took part in the Holocaust. Historically there was a strong strain of anti-Semitism in most Eastern European societies and the SS took advantage of this by using Russian, Baltic and Belarussian "volunteers" to help them massacre Jews.

There were numerous cases of Jewish participation within the ranks of the UPA, some of whom held high positions. According to journalist and former fighter Leo Heiman, some Jews fought for the UPA, while many were included among the UPA's medical personnel. These included Dr. Hawrysh, who headed UPA-West's medical service, Dr. Maksymovich, who was the Chief Physician of the UPA's officer school, and Dr. Abraham Kum, the director of an underground hospital in the Carpathians. The latter individual was the recipient of the UPA's Golden Cross of Merit.

According to Phillip Friedman many Jews, particularly those whose skills were useful to the UPA, were sheltered by them. It has been claimed that the UPA sometimes executed its Jewish personnel, but Friedman evaluated such claims as either uncorroborated or mistaken. (Source: Tys-Krokhmaliuk, Yuriy. UPA Warfare in Ukraine. Society of Veterans of the UPA. New York. 1972. Pages 94 - 95)

It now appears that many of the accusations of anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis leveled against the UPA are the result of Soviet propaganda aimed at destroying the UPA's reputation both during and after WWII.