If Germany Had Embraced the Ukrainians in WW2

5fish

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One of Hitler's missed opportunities in WW2 was not embracing the Ukrainians as allies. When the German army enter Ukraine in 1941, they were greeted as liberators, but soon after, Hitler began his genocide towards Jews ang Slavs in Ukraine. The Ukrainians ended up serving in the millions in the Russian army after Germany's violence against the Ukrainian people. If Hitler would have embraced the Ukrainians, he would have had millions more willing to fight the Russians. Instead, he allow his racist motivates get the best of him and helped in defeating him against the Russians and the world.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Nazi-occupation-of-Soviet-Ukraine...

Initially, the Germans were greeted as liberators by some of the Ukrainian populace. In Galicia especially, there had long been a widespread belief that Germany, as the avowed enemy of Poland and the U.S.S.R., was the Ukrainians’ natural ally for the attainment of their independence. The illusion was quickly shattered. The Germans were accompanied on their entry into Lviv on June 30 by members of OUN-B, who that same day proclaimed the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and the formation of a provisional state administration; within days the organizers of this action were arrested and interned in concentration camps (as were both Bandera and, later, Melnyk). Far from supporting Ukrainian political aspirations, the Nazis in August attached Galicia administratively to Poland, returned Bukovina to Romania, and gave Romania control over the area between the Dniester and Southern Buh rivers as the province of Transnistria, with its capital at Odessa. The remainder was organized as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

This is the Ukrainian organization that supported Hitler at first...
OUN


Both factions expected that in the impending conflict between Germany and the USSR they would establish an independent Ukrainian state. Hence, each sought a tactical alliance with the Germans. Adolf Hitler's abandonment of Carpatho-Ukraine (where younger OUN members had helped create a defense force) to the Hungarians in 1939 aroused misgivings about the German alliance but did not discourage either faction. With German approval the OUN(B) formed two battalions of about 600 men, Nachtigall and Roland, which were intended as the nucleus of a future army (see Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists). Following the German invasion of the USSR the OUN(B) proclaimed Ukrainian independence in Lviv on 30 June 1941, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier (see Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood, 1941). The Germans, needing Ukrainian assistance against Soviet Russia, were expected to acquiesce in the fait accompli. Although elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they were overruled by Hitler, whose racial prejudice against Ukrainians precluded co-operation. Stepan Bandera and some of his associates were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Many OUN(B) members were killed outright, or perished in jails and concentration camps. Mykola Lebed assumed control of the organization and in May 1943 transferred his powers to Roman Shukhevych. Determined to build an independent state, both factions sent clandestine OUN expeditionary groups into Ukraine to set up local administrations with nationally conscious Ukrainians. Estimated at 2,000 men (mostly OUN(B) members), the groups were active in the larger cities. An OUN(M) group, which reached Kyiv in September 1941, published the newspaper Ukraïns’ke slovo and formed the Ukrainian National Council (Kyiv), consisting mostly of eastern Ukrainians and headed by Mykola Velychkivsky. Its members were arrested in December 1941, and over 40 of them, including Olena Teliha and their leader, Oleh Olzhych, were killed immediately or later, some of them in Babyn Yar. Andrii Melnyk was kept under house arrest in Berlin until January 1944, when he and other principal OUN(M) figures were arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
 
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rittmeister

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that wouldn't have worked in adolf's head - end of
 

5fish

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that wouldn't have worked in adolf's head - end of
True but what if... If Hitler would have waited until the Russians had been defeat than he could have done a coup on the Ukrainians like he di to the Italians...
 

rittmeister

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True but what if... If Hitler would have waited until the Russians had been defeat than he could have done a coup on the Ukrainians like he di to the Italians...
that's just not him - and any what if that changes him that far is just 'what if there was no second world war'
 

5fish

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The Japanese understand the people under Russian rule better than the Germans... The article is about more than one mistake...


During one of their rare mid-war conferences, Japanese diplomats expressed skepticism about the ability of Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, and suggested that the Nazi government should immediately declare the independence of countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine in an effort to mobilize further support for an anti-Soviet crusade. The subject peoples of the Soviet Union cared neither for the Bolsheviks nor for the Russians, and during the war fought in great numbers on the side of the Germans, even without promises of independence. As Samuel Newland argues, a war framed specifically as an anti-Bolshevik crusade might even have generated considerable support among ethnic Russians.

Germany’s fatal error was a misunderstanding of the strength of the Soviet state, as well as the increasing quality of Soviet military equipment. The assumptions that underlay the German war, and the arguments that justified it to the German public, made it nearly impossible to adopt the only strategy that might have had a chance of working. Knocking the USSR out of the war in the same way that they had knocked France out of the war was almost impossible given geographic reality. Yet, by the end of 1941, Germany faced an unbeatable Allied coalition that swiftly undercut its ability to wage total war in the East.
 

rittmeister

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The Japanese understand the people under Russian rule better than the Germans... The article is about more than one mistake...


During one of their rare mid-war conferences, Japanese diplomats expressed skepticism about the ability of Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, and suggested that the Nazi government should immediately declare the independence of countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine in an effort to mobilize further support for an anti-Soviet crusade. The subject peoples of the Soviet Union cared neither for the Bolsheviks nor for the Russians, and during the war fought in great numbers on the side of the Germans, even without promises of independence. As Samuel Newland argues, a war framed specifically as an anti-Bolshevik crusade might even have generated considerable support among ethnic Russians.

Germany’s fatal error was a misunderstanding of the strength of the Soviet state, as well as the increasing quality of Soviet military equipment. The assumptions that underlay the German war, and the arguments that justified it to the German public, made it nearly impossible to adopt the only strategy that might have had a chance of working. Knocking the USSR out of the war in the same way that they had knocked France out of the war was almost impossible given geographic reality. Yet, by the end of 1941, Germany faced an unbeatable Allied coalition that swiftly undercut its ability to wage total war in the East.
yeah - just for starters - to begin that nonsense in the first place
 

rittmeister

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What if Adolf had gotten sniped dead running messages during The War to End All Wars?
we'd probably talk about another nationalist idiot running a second world war on our behalf
 

O' Be Joyful

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we'd probably talk about another nationalist idiot running a second world war on our behalf
Röhm, der fat-ass Air Riechmarshall or the chicken farmer??? Inquiring minds wish to know your evaluation.
 

rittmeister

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Röhm, der fat-ass Air Riechmarshall or the chicken farmer??? Inquiring minds wish to know your evaluation.
none of the above - they are small fry with adolf shot through the helmet in 1917 (they both came to relevance because adolf was in münchen after world war one. i have no idea but i'm sure there was a good chance for some let's say pankraz hornung or whatever (maybe the guy who got shot instead of hitler in '17) - the himmler huhn would be the mainstay of your died and röhm gets shot in a pub brawl close to berlin's nollendorf platz.

edit: forgot, göring - same thing. he's not the war hero he's later made to be. his men hated him and his blue max is bogus (got it with 19 arial victory and one not confirmed - 20 were the requirement). if adolf is dead there is no hitler-ludendorff putsch, dear hermann doesn't get his balls shot off and probaly can live with that.

don't bring up his 'daughter' edda - that name is short for ewig dank dem adjudanten
 

5fish

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Looks like Lithuanian like the Germans at first... The Germans should have listened to Japan...

.

The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 to the end of the Battle of Memel on January 28, 1945. At first the Germans were welcomed as liberators from the repressive Soviet regime which occupied Lithuania prior to the German arrival.
 

5fish

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It seems Estonia greeted the Germans as Liberators too...


In the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany occupied Estonia in July 1941. Initially the Germans were perceived by most Estonians as liberators from the USSR and its repressions, having arrived only a week after the first mass deportations from the Baltic states. Although hopes were raised for the restoration of the country's independence, it was soon realized that they were but another occupying power.

It seems the Latvians greeted the Germans as Liberators...


After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states were under military occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans as liberators from the Soviet Union.

IT seems the Japanese were right...
 

O' Be Joyful

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IT seems the Japanese were right...

Among other things, they were quite most similar to the Nazis. :( And now, again the Russians.


I ask, how were the Japanese really different in their expansionist/dominant racial goals from the Nazis?
 
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5fish

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I ask, how were the Japanese really different in their expansionist/dominant racial goals from the Nazis?
I like this marketing campaign by the Japanese...


Policy theorists who conceived it, as well as the vast majority of the Japanese population at large, saw it for its pan-Asian ideals of freedom and independence from Western colonial rule. In practice, however, it was frequently used by militarists and nationalists, who saw an effective policy vehicle through which to strengthen Japan's position and advance its dominance within Asia.[2] The latter approach was reflected in a document released by Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare, An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, which laid out the central position of Japan within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,[3] and promoted the idea of Japanese superiority over other Asians.[4] Japanese spokesmen openly described the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity as a device for the "development of the Japanese race."
 
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