Weren't there millions of Ukrainians who fought for the Red Army? Meanwhile, literal Nazis were committing literal genocide and literally had plans to enslave/kill/eradicate Slavs because they were seen as less human.
Yes, they absolutely did. And this group is letting current day conflicts turn them into bedfellows with those Nazis. All to defend the honour of this collaborator who they should be spitting on.
Weren't there millions of Ukrainians who fought for the Red Army?
Do you mean to imply that the Red Army didn't commit atrocities in Ukraine during WWII? A quick Wikipedia search suggests they committed war crimes too.
I'm not aware of a Soviet genocide plan for the region (at the time), but I don't think we'd want to honour vets of the Red Army in Parliament either.
No way, you mean the Red Army wasn't too happy fighting a country that literally thought Slavs were subhuman and that the only reason Slavs shouldn't all be dead is because they weren't done doing that to the Jews?
You must be joking...
Is not like the Ukranians should be in love with the Soviets when just a decade earlier this had happened:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
My point? I don't think we can really pin the bad choice of an army for an Ukranian in the '40s
The famine was caused by multiple factors and blaming it as if it were Stalin's genocidal policy is frankly revising history.
Due to collectivization (giving up owned land to join the collective farm), landlords were very unhappy. Many resorted to slaughtering their own livestock in protest and many wealthy landowners indicated that they were "disincentivized" from working to produce grain in similar quantities as in the past. In the beginning, many Ukrainian nationalists took to murdering workers at collective farms to hinder their productivity. Moreover, the import/export relationship to the rest of the Soviet Union was weak as Ukraine predominantly produced foodstuffs (that were produced in increasingly high quantities in the Eastern territories because of collectivization) and not machinery (which had to be imported) - Ukraine's exports lost value while their imports gained value.
I would recommend reading the works of Isaac Mazepa (a Ukrainian nationalist), Louis Fischer (an American journalist), and statements from both Stalin and the Politburo at the time. Stalin and the Politburo at large were aware that Kosior and Chubar were misrepresenting numbers, but not to what degree - thus, the aid they sent was grossly insufficient. Stalin butted heads with both Kosior and Chubar and was extremely critical of both of them. Both Kosior and Chubar were executed in the great purge under orders from Stalin.
Famine struck Ukraine at an incredibly inopportune time in Ukrainian politics and led to the regrettable death of millions. Famine also struck in conjunction with typhoid fever and the rise of the OUN (emboldened by Hitler's success in Germany). You can read more about the OUN through Dmytro Dontsov's writings.
You are losing the point here, all that history is great for you and me, now, go back and ask any Ukranian from 1935/1945 who was at fault, and let's see the responses. That is the information those young Ukranians had when they enrolled. Of course there would be many of them that were actual Nazis and supported the Holocaust and all that shit, and those need to be treated like any other Nazi, I am not saying not to that, I am only saying that, maybe, we could give this guys the benefit of the doubt considering the two options they had.
To join the Nazis? Fuck off.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought for the Red Army against a nation who's policy literally involved the eradication of the Slavic races because they were seen as subhuman. Have you read Mein Kampf? Do you know how many Soviets died in the concentration camps? Do you know how many civilians Nazi Germany starved by doing exactly what you claim Stalin did to the occupied Soviet territories?
Hell, half of the point of invading Ukraine was to capture the agricultural production, starve the Ukrainians, and use that to feed the German war machine.
You ask me if I have read "Mein Kampf" and I ask you: "would a 17 year old Ukranian in 1943 have read 'Mein Kampf'?"
I repeat, how much of what you said would a 17 year old Ukranian know in 1943?
You are using 2023 information to criticize a decision made by a 1943 teenage farmer. Would I ever join the Nazis not matter who they were fighting against? No way! I agree with you, but we are not talking about me.
That's my only point, to look at them on a per-case-basis and judge their actions, because they truly were between a rock and a hard place (I am not talking about Spanish, French, Italian, German and any other that joined the Nazis, this is very specific to Ukranians and maybe some neighbouring countries).
At the end of the day, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought for the Red Army because it was known policy at the time that the Nazis sought to eradicate the Slavic Untermensch and that they wanted to seize Ukrainian farmland to starve the Ukrainians and feed the Germans. This only became more evident as the war went on. Ukrainians who joined the Nazis are complicit in the deaths of their countrymen.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The incident drew widespread international criticism after it was revealed Hunka was a member of a mostly volunteer unit created by the Nazis to fight the Soviet Union.
Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political science professor at the University of Ottawa, says the actions of Hunka’s Waffen-SS Galicia Division have been “whitewashed” in Canada.
In 1950, the federal cabinet decided to allow Ukrainians living in the United Kingdom to come to Canada “notwithstanding their service in the German army," as long as they went through a security screening.
In response to questions about Hunka, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said Thursday that the people of present-day Ukraine, including its Jewish population, suffered successive occupations by “foreign empires and colonizers” going back centuries.
John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus and the author of a book about Ukrainians and the Holocaust, said many of the young men who joined the Galicia division in 1943 were motivated by the atrocities they witnessed under Soviet occupation, including the murder of thousands of political prisoners and mass deportations to labour camps.
Klufas blames the branding of Hunka as a Nazi on “Russian disinformation,” adding, “the fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.” He also said there was nothing wrong with Parliament applauding a man “who fought for his country.” However, he conceded that it “maybe wasn’t correct” in the circumstances, given that the people there didn’t fully understand the issue.
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