This book is a definitive study of the much debated and still painful subject of the recent Ukrainian history: the youth who enrolled in the Waffen-SS “Galicia” (renamed in April 1945 the First Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division) and fought on the German side through the very bitter end. Created by German initiative in the spring of 1943 but with the blessing of collaborationist Ukrainian leaders and the connivance of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the 14,000-strong division underwent months-long military training and saw its first action at Brody at the eastern front in July 1944, where it was decimated. Having suffered casualties that amounted to more than half of its initial number, the Division was later complimented with other units manned by ethnic Ukrainians, mostly former policemen. In September-October 1944, the Division participated in the suppression of a Slovak communist-led uprising and later fought against Josip Broz Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. It surrendered to British and American forcess following German capitulation, who interned them in POWs camps but eventually released and allowed most of them to integrate in west European and North American societies.
The Division's creation was from the very beginning mired in controversies within the Ukrainian community, as leaders of both rival factions of the pro-independence Ukrainian Nationalist Organization, OUN-M and OUN-B, who suffered persecution at the hands of the Germans, opposed its formation. The OUN-B, which disposed of a substantial guerilla force known as UPA, considered volunteers to the Division as traitors to the cause, as they preferred German uniforms to membership in armed underground groups. The animosity between the Division and OUN-UPA veterans survived the war's end and has continued in contemporary Ukraine, where the latter group, together with their supporters, block proposals to honor Division veterans as freedom-fighters. The Division veterans’ own narrative portrays themselves as Ukrainian patriots who joined the division with the purpose of gaining military training and experience and to receive arms that they intended to use against both the Germans and the Soviets after both powers would have exhausted themselves at the battlefield. That scenario, which today looks completely fantastical, did not appear as such at the time the division was formed, as the memory of the previous World War, in which the disintegration of the Romanov and Habsburg empires offered Ukrainians a chance to fight for their independence, suggested the likelihood of such an eventuality. Although this calculation would prove wrong, the veterans argue, Division bravely fought against the sworn enemies of Ukraine, the Soviets, thus meriting the recognition of posterity.
Another major criticism the Division's veterans have faced is their supposed participation in the Nazi atrocities against Jews and other civilian populations. Although the participation of the Division as a whole in such acts was never proven, some units that were added to it after the catastrophe at Brody had indeed previously been involved in the anti-partisan warfare and the guarding of concentration camps. Some men who joined the Division at this time likely did so with the aim of hiding their participation in war crimes (286). In 2003, a Division veteran and writer living in the UK acknowledged having served as a guard at Trawniki concentration camp but denied ever participating in atrocities (274). This case aside, no other accusations against individual members residing in the west were ever proven. Whether that was due to their actual innocence or investigators’ inability to thoroughly check their past is a question that is unlikely to ever be sufficiently clarified.
Myroslav Shkandrij, a Canadian Ukrainian historian and son of a volunteer who joined the Division in Slovakia in late 1944, offers a remarkably balanced and deeply researched account of the Division's history, collective memory of its former servicemen, and debates over its record. Based mostly on memoirs, displaying a thorough knowledge of western, Ukrainian, and Soviet historiography, and using some newly available Soviet archival sources, the book takes largely a pro-Division position, agreeing that the primary motivating factor of the Division's volunteers was patriotism, a desire to get ready for the eventual armed struggle for independent Ukraine. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that some volunteers’ motives might have been less noble, such as avoiding compulsory labor duty or joining the forest gangs of UPA. Shkandrij does not shy away from elucidating more troubling aspects of the Division's record. His discussion of the veterans’ memoirs, fictionalized accounts, and commemorative practices is no less illuminating. One does not need to agree with all conclusions of the book to find it informative and intellectually stimulating.
