Disinformation: The OUN / UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists / Ukrainian Insurgent Army) were collaborators with the German Nazi regime.
Facts:
An image had been created that somehow, in contrast to WW1, the Second World War in Europe was actually a “good” war. Today we realize that in its essence this war was a conflict of two imperialist tyrannies: the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Other WWII combatants found themselves allied to one or the other side. Very few fighting forces can claim to have fought simultaneously against both tyrannies. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA, mobilized by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to fight for an independent state for the Ukrainian nation, was one such major force. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was the underground political organization that struggled for that same goal and, as such, maintained contacts with many states including England, Japan, Italy, Lithuania as well as Germany for a decade before the war. The June 30, 1941 Proclamation of the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and proposed anti-Soviet alliance was a surprise and a challenge to the Third Reich. It took the German leadership but a week to begin arresting the OUN leadership and participants in that Proclamation. Hitler was thus forced to show his hand much earlier in his campaign than he would have liked.
It was under German occupation that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was formed in 1942. Its operations were so effective that large swaths of the countryside became so-called “insurgent republics” free of foreign forces (eg. the Kolky, Antonivetska, Winter, and Proud Hutsul “republics”). To dislodge these UPA forces the Germans often resorted to the use of armour and aircraft. Researchers have calculated that the Germans and their allies lost over 12,000 men killed in battles with the UPA.
Disinformation: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) were "Nazi collaborators".
Facts:
At the height of the German occupaton of Ukraine (1942-1944) the UPA conducted 2,526 armed engagements against the Nazi forces. Nazi losses: 12,427 - killed; 2047 - wounded; 2448 - taken prisoner. UPA losses: 2,251 - killed; 475 - wounded; 534 - taken prisoner.
In some instances areas of Ukraine that were liberated and held by the UPA were called “insurgent republics,” and in many respects they functioned as mini “underground states.”
One of the best known was the “Kolky Republic,”which covered an area of roughly 2,500 square kilometers, located in the UPA-North military district, in the Volyn region. The “Kolky Republic” remained under UPA control until November 1943, when it was overrun by German troops using tanks, artillery and aircraft.
At the same time, the UPA was so effective that in 1943 the Nazis admitted that in western Ukraine they had no control over 75% of the arable land and 52% of the livestock. Hitler’s forces led many anti-insurgency campaigns against the UPA and in order to discredit the Ukrainian nationalist movement, German propaganda called the insurgent leaders “agents of Moscow.”
From July 1941 to the end of World War II on May 8, 1945, up to 10,000 members of the OUN were killed in their resistance against the Germans or perished in Nazi concentration camps. Total tally of losses of the OUN-UPA Ukrainian Resistance Movement: up to 13,000 dead and missing in action.
After the war, a number of survivors of the anti-Nazi resistance settled in Canada, the U.S.A. and other Western countries.
