Having read Per Anders Rudling’s article ‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited, I am reminded why, a half century ago, I chose to study Engineering rather than the “Humanities” to which my aptitude tests should have steered me. Even at that tender age I understood the lack of objectivity, truth and reality in the Humanities. I knew that my marks would always depend on currying favor with professors; and being a born contrarian, that was never going to happen.
The article in question purports to be a scholarly review of the Ukrainian volunteer Division within the German armed forces in WW2. Having been schooled in the Scientific Method it is clear to me that the subject article is far from scientifically rigorous or even truthful, although, having been written by a schüler, it must of course be considered scholarly. Schoolboys in science class learn techniques of how to achieve the “correct” answer in experiments by “adjusting” their observations to fit the necessary result. Engineers laughingly refer to this technique as Cook’s variable constant. That is far from the Scientific Method. In the Humanities, wordsmithing is a technique that is used to achieve such a desired result, stubborn facts be damned. Words are lovingly selected, not to convey stark information, but to elicit the appropriate desired response. The less rigorous the meaning of a word, the better. The more a word elicits unthinking response, the better it is for the art of the smear. George Orwell touched on this subject in his work 1984. As an example, Mr. Rudling as well as many other authors use the term Nazi Germany to describe a participant in WW2, but oddly one never reads Democrat America or Tory Britain as being their opponents. Individual soldiers are Nazis but never Democrats or Tories. There is a reason for that.
Myroslav Petriw Vancouver, British Columbia
In Per Anders Rudling’s article ‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited, the author has chosen a conclusion and has carefully selected sources that support that conclusion. He employs the art of the smear, and the appeal to the gut to achieve his desired result. Laudably, he does not even try to hide his prejudice. In his comparison of two recent presidents of Ukraine and their attitude to the Waffen SS Grenadier Division Galicia (Dyviziia Halychyna), he clearly sides with discredited fugitive President Victor Yanukovych against President Victor Yushchenko.
The third president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010) embarked on an ambitious campaign of nationalist myth making. He designated the far-right Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), its leader Stepan Bandera, its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and its commander Roman Shukhevych official ‘heroes of Ukraine.’ While Yushchenko did not explicitly mention the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans, he also designated as heroes of Ukraine ‘other military formations, parties, and organizations and movements, dedicated to the establishment of Ukrainian state independence,’ which some have interpreted as an indirect recognition.
[…] While Yushchenko’s successor Viktor Yanukovych has revoked the hero status of Bandera and Shukhevych and largely put an end to the state cult of the ultra-nationalists, in Western Ukraine, apologetics for the Waffen-SS Galizien is entering the mainstream.
Yanukovych’s role in recent Ukrainian history seems to have been the preparation of the country for its eventual reincorporation into the folds of that Muscovite Empire, known as the Russian Federation.[1] He extended the Russian lease on its base in Sevastopol - a Guantanamo on steroids, by an additional 25 years. He appointed Russians or pro-Russians as Ministers of Defense (Lebedyev) and Director of the Security Services of Ukraine, the SBU (Yakymenko). The loyalties of each of these Yanukovych appointees are well illustrated by their biographies, and there is little doubt about what was being prepared:
On 21 February 2014, the day when the “Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine” was struck during the Euromaidan demonstrations, Lebedyev [the Yanukovych appointed Minister of Defense!] left Kyiv and moved to Sevastopol. [..] Lebedyev was present at the official Kremlin signing of the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea treaty by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Crimean leaders in Moscow on 18 March 2014.[2]
Similarly:
Soon after the election of Viktor Yanukovych as President of Ukraine in 2010, Yakymenko was appointed the head of SBU in Sevastopol and a year later the head of the SBU in Donetsk Oblast. During that time he was promoted to the rank of Major General of the Security Service of Ukraine. In 2012 Yakymenko was appointed the First Deputy Director of the SBU and in 2013 Yanukovych appointed him the Director of Security Service of Ukraine without properly introducing him to the Ukrainian parliament.
On February 19, 2014, on the website of SBU, Yakymenko announced that Security Service of Ukraine and Anti-Terrorist Center initiated an “anti-terrorist operation” against protesters of the Euromaidan. On February 20, 2014 on the streets of Kyiv appeared snipers and special assigned units of the MVS [Ministry of Internal Affairs] and the SBU.
On February 22, 2014 the Ukrainian parliament installed a parliamentary commissioner to check the SBU activities, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko who the next day announced that all leadership of Security Service of Ukraine quit. [..] A few days after the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution Yakymenko with about 15 former SBU top officials surfaced in Russia. Yakymenko is wanted by the General Prosecutor of Ukraine and his(sic) believed to be hiding in Russia. [3]
This ruthenophobic (a term I coined reflecting the ethnonym used for a millennium, namely Rusyn, commonly latinized as Ruthenian) prejudice of Mr. Rudling is reflected throughout his article.
Mr. Rudling goes to great effort to accuse the 14. Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1) of participating in a particularly brutal war crime, namely the burning of the village of Huta Pienacka in Ukraine along with most of its Polish residents in actions on Feb.23 and 28, 1944. An expert will immediately recognize that on those dates the 14.Waffen SS Division Galicia was still undergoing training in Heidelager (Poland), and was about to be transferred to a second training camp called Neuhammer in Silesia, so the Division was hundreds of kilometers away. A small, undertrained task force had been given anti-partisan duties at about this time, but it was in northwest Polish Galicia, also hundreds of kilometers away. [4]
Rudling (correctly!) blames the Huta Pienacka massacre on a “4th SS Police regiment” under the command of the German officer Sturmbannführer Siegfried Binz. Experts will recognize that there was no 4th regiment within the Division, as they were numbered 29, 30, and 31 ever since Oct. 22, 1943.[5] But Rudling is glad to stir confusion by referring to other sources that blame the 14.Waffen SS Division Galicia directly for the crime, and then he stirs the pot by writing of “the participation of units, linked to Waffen-SS Galizien ”. Linked, but not actually? This smear and innuendo will go unnoticed by most readers.
Now for some facts. When the formation of a Ukrainian division was announced in April 1943 by the German authorities, 82,000 volunteered. Out of these some 14,000 were selected as being suitable for an elite unit. The number that could become Waffen SS was limited due to overstrained training facilities for front line troops. The Germans did not want to waste the opportunity to utilize some of the remainder as police forces. The difficulty was that these potential volunteers cringed at the thought of being designated as police. Himmler found a solution in some wordsmithing of his own and created the 4th through 7th Galizische SS-Freiwilligen Regiments. The volunteers knew that the Waffen SS Division was to have 3 regiments, so numbering these police regiments starting with 4, gave the impression of continuity. However, their training and assignments would be police duties including guarding facilities and fighting partisans. They were not Waffen SS frontline troops. They were not under the direct command of the Wehrmacht as were all actual Waffen SS units, including the 14.Waffen SS Division Galicia, but were commanded by German police commanders directly under Himmler [Between 1943 and 1945 in various German-occupied European countries, 24 non-German units were formed and almost all of them designated Waffen SS divisions.]. Sadly, there was little difference in the uniforms that all these units would wear…
To be continued…
[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Yanukovych “Beginning in May 2017, Yanukovych was tried in absentia for high treason and abetting Russian aggression against Ukraine. The trial included testimony from several senior Ukrainian officials, including Pres. Petro Poroshenko, and Yanukovych’s lawyers attempted to characterize the prosecution as a politically motivated stunt by Poroshenko’s administration. Poroshenko, in turn, painted Yanukovych as an instigator of “Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine.” In January 2019 Yanukovych was found guilty of high treason…”
