Hitler's Foreign Executioners

by Christopher Hale

  After his appointment as Governor of the ‘Distrikt Galizien’, Wächter was able to pursue his ‘mission’ on a much bigger scale. From his new headquarters in L’viv, he masterminded the liquidation of the last Jewish communities in his fiefdom. At the beginning of July, 1941, German troops and the Ukrainian ‘Nachtigall’ battalion had massacred thousands of Galician Jews. In December, the Germans had incarcerated the survivors in the L’viv ghetto, but in the summer of 1942, soon after Wächter had been appointed governor, he accompanied Globocnik to a meeting with Himmler to discuss Operation Reinhardt. When Wächter returned to L’viv, he authorised mass deportations to the Reinhardt camps. As the last train left L’viv for Treblinka, Wächter dispatched Ukrainian police battalions to flush out any survivors still hiding in the ghetto. Like all the SS top brass in the east, he had a great deal of blood on his hands.25

  Himmler valued Wächter highly. But the General Government was, like every other German administration, a political battleground. Hans Frank hated Himmler and the SS as much as he despised his Polish subjects, and he fought every SS incursion into his fiefdom. He accused the HSSPF Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger of trying to ‘build an SS state within a state’. By 1943, a succession of brutal skirmishes between Frank and the SS had begun to tear the General Government apart. The wily Gauleiter Wächter, who was also an SS-Brigadeführer, adroitly cultivated allegiances in both camps – and by spring 1943 he had a powerful card to play. His ‘Distrikt Galizien’ was the eastern ‘wall’ of the German General Government. If the Soviet armies ever managed to overrun the Commissariat Ukraine, then East Galicia would become the next line of defence. If that happened, the internal security of Wächter’s domain was a matter of overriding importance. If your enemies are already behind you, there is no point building a wall and shutting the fortress door. So far, Wachter had maintained friendly relations with the pro-German Ukrainian elite and successfully kept the lid on UPA activities in East Galicia. This was the Austrian way; according to his personal assistant Dr Heinz Georg Neumann, ‘we favoured the Ukrainians because of political expediency. Wächter therefore tried to carry out as much as possible the old tradition of Austrian policy in Galicia.’ Himmler commended him warmly:

  One thing I would like to point out … Galicia has remained quiet and in order. This is to your credit and can be attributed not least to your harmonious work with the brave [Friedrich] Katzmann [SSPF Lemburg] and … to the real cooperation of your administration with SS and police.26

  In short, Wächter had cleverly pushed all the right SS buttons. But as Stalin’s armies pushed westward, the security of the ‘Galician wall’ could never be taken for granted.

  When he met Himmler in March, Wächter’s main objective was to raise the delicate matter of recruiting Ukrainians and forming a new SS division. This, he argued, would bind the Ukrainians in East Galicia to the Reich and provide a means to attack and neutralise the partisans. As Wächter had anticipated, Himmler, who was the Reich’s Chef der Bandenbekämpfung (Chief Bandit Hunter), was obsessed with security. But he had to work hard to convince Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command to commit recourses to this shadow war.27 At the same time, Himmler exploited the Bandenbekämpfung to continuously expand the SS and its military and police forces – including non-German auxiliaries. It was this SS ‘war on terror’ that drove the dramatic expansion of non-German recruitment after the summer of 1942, and why in March the following year he listened attentively to Wächter’s proposal to begin recruiting in Galicia. He had long been fascinated by the racial ancestry of the Galician peoples and would soon come to believe that this fresh wave of SS recruitment provided another opportunity for ‘harvesting Germanic blood’.

  Nevertheless, Himmler still had to square the nationalist circle. In other words, although Galicians possessed some quantum of Germanic blood, many were ardent, indeed fanatical nationalists. Wächter knew very well that the main Ukrainian nationalist faction, the OUN, wielded a good deal of influence and power. Fortunately, from his point of view, the OUN was split between rival clans. Its radical wing, the OUN-B, led by Stepan Bandera, resolutely opposed collaboration with the Germans and fed recruits into the insurgent movement, the UPA, which threatened to become the most dangerous insurgent force in the General Government. But Andreas Melnyk’s rival OUN-M took a more conciliatory line. This more conservative wing of the nationalist movement traditionally leant towards Germany – and as historian Taras Hunczak admits, Wächter’s plan proved ‘easier and more successful than anyone could have possibly anticipated’.

  Why? One answer is that Himmler reaped what General Governor Frank and Wächter had already sown. Wächter was convinced, like Rosenberg, that in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Erich Koch had foolishly squandered the good will that Ukrainians had shown in 1941, when they greeted German troops as a liberating army. After visiting the Commissariat and observing at first hand what Koch’s rule meant in practice, Wächter wrote angrily to Martin Bormann. He did not pull any punches:

  The Bolsheviks have done useful preparatory work for us … They are hated and regarded as oppressors … Even if we only provide some relief for the population [in Ukraine], in contrast to the terror of the Soviet regime, then we will win them to our side. Unfortunately, we are not doing this.28

  Bormann is unlikely to have passed on Wächter’s letter to Hitler, who consistently backed Koch’s draconian methods. Certainly, Wächter never received a reply. But in any case, German administrators in the General Government had deliberately raised the status of Ukrainians and demoted Poles as well as Jews. Frank established a Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) chaired by the Ukrainian geographer, Professor Dr Volodymyr Kubijovych, and maintained good relations with its members. The UCC was analogous to the puppet ‘self-administrations’ in the Baltic states and its power was limited to welfare and cultural promotions. In his Galician fiefdom, Wächter cleverly exploited the UCC; he often reminded Kubijovych about the good old days under Austrian rule – and of the treachery of the Poles when they snatched statehood from the Ukrainians in 1919. He diligently cultivated the Melnyk wing of the OUN and the hyper reactionary Ukrainian ‘Front of National Unity’. He made sure the most compliant pro-German Ukrainians got the best jobs and excluded anyone suspected to be linked with the rival OUN-B. Wächter and Kubijovych had already begun discussions about an SS legion a few weeks before the meeting with Himmler. He did not, of course, reveal to his Ukrainian friends the real purpose of the proposed new SS division: ‘to be utilised as much as possible in the spirit of an introduction of the Ukrainian population of Galicia to the strategic concept of being Germanic.’29

  On 28 March Himmler wrote to Wächter informing him that Hitler had agreed to the formation of the proposed SS Freiwilligen-Division ‘in principle’.30 He went on: ‘we should proceed in stages as follows.’ First would come a kind of bribe: those Ukrainian farmers who had delivered quotas to his satisfaction in the spring would be permitted to buy their own land from the old Soviet style collectives that the Germans had retained. Those ‘not up to mark’, of course, would remain Reich property. After that, ‘your summons will be issued to the able-bodied youth of Galicia’. Wächter now had to get the Ukrainians completely on board. The biggest stumbling block was semantic. Ukrainians did not, of course, regard themselves as Galicians. For them Galicia had vanished along with the Hapsburgs. But Kubijovych readily agreed that his fellow Ukrainians should be persuaded to fight the Bolsheviks as German allies. He poured scorn on the idea of a Galician division and proposed instead a ‘Ukrainian legion’ modelled on the Latvian and Estonian ones. Wächter knew that Himmler would never tolerate any use of the term ‘Ukrainian’ so he proposed a compromise. If the proposed SS ‘Galizien’ division performed well on the battlefield, then he might consider offering some kind of Ukrainian self-rule in the Galician district of the General Government. It was the usual Faustian offer: non-specific autonomy in exchange for shed blood. Wächter sugared the pill by promising that the UCC
would have a primary role in the recruitment and formation of the division through a new military board, to be headed by Kubijovych himself. He promised to consider appointing Ukrainian priests to serve with the division. When Kubijovych continued to prevaricate, Wächter removed the velvet glove. He warned Kubijovych that if he could not secure an agreement, the UCC would be the only losers; as the occupying power, Germany would draft Ukrainians with or without an agreement. Kubijovych had few options and caved in.

  Now it was Himmler’s turn to prevaricate. Three days after the meeting with Kubijovych, Wächter met SS recruitment chief Gottlob Berger in Berlin to discuss the new SS ‘Galizien’. At this point, an unexpected difficulty emerged. Because the Waffen-SS had a chronic shortage of training staff, Berger proposed that the German Order Police (ORPO) take charge of the formation of the new Galician division and their training. Wächter knew that Berger’s plan would be anathema to the UCC, who vehemently opposed allowing Ukrainians to join another SS police battalion. Nevertheless, Berger informed Himmler that he had agreed with Wächter to ‘approach the Ukrainian population with a large scale call to arms’ and referred to ‘this new Ukrainian SS-Polizei-Schützen-Division’.31 Berger’s no doubt inadvertent reference to ‘Ukrainians’ immediately set off alarm bells. A few days after the Berlin meeting with Berger, Himmler’s adjutant Karl Brandt sent a telex to Wächter ordering him to ‘move slowly … do not yet issue the call to arms’. Why the cold feet? Wächter discovered that shrill and powerful voices had been raised against his idea of a Galician SS division. Kurt Daluege reminded Berger that, in 1918, Ukrainian nationalists had assassinated Field Marshall Erich von Eichorn, who had recruited and trained Ukrainians to fight the Red Army just as Himmler now proposed to do again. Surely it was certain that any Ukrainians recruited by the SS would once again turn their weapons on their new German benefactors? Commissar Erich Koch, fearing that Wächter’s scheme threatened his own Ukrainian kingdom, the Commissariat Ukraine, soon weighed in and scolded Berger so abusively that he complained to Himmler. Himmler was forced on the defensive. He knew that although Hitler had authorised the new division, he remained sceptical about the reliability of any kind of ‘Eastern’ recruits. Himmler defensively fell back on semantics: he reiterated that the new division was Galician not Ukrainian; he insisted that terms such as ‘Ukrainian division or Ukrainian nation’ must never again be used in any discussion or memorandum.32

  Back in L’viv, Wächter ignored the rumpus in Berlin and refused to apply the brakes. On 12 April, he chaired a meeting with SS and General Government officials to set a timetable for the recruitment of the SS Freiwilligen Division ‘Galizien’.33 Not a single Ukrainian delegate was invited. One of the keynote speakers was SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Jürgen Stroop, who had recently masterminded the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. His attendance emphasises that Wächter planned to use the new SS division as an ‘anti-bandit’ militia that would take over the work of auxiliary police battalions. In any case, Himmler had agreed to provide funds from the coffers of Kurt Daluege’s German Order Police, not the Waffen-SS, so the ORPO would be paying for the new division. This bond with the hated German Polizei would be concealed from Ukrainians ‘for psychological reasons’. Wächter and his SS henchmen agreed that for propaganda reasons, the public face of the new division would be the Wehrausschuss Galizien (Military Board), to be headed by Professor Kubijovych and staffed mainly by respected Ukrainian elders who had served with the Austrian army.

  Wächter was setting the same kind of trap that had already ensnared the Latvian collaborators. Also present at the meeting was Colonel Alfred Bisanz, who would become Wächter’s Trojan horse in the Ukrainian camp. He had excellent credentials: born in Przemyśl to German and Ukrainian parents, he had served in the austrian Army during the First World War. In 1918, he had led the Ukrainian Lemberger-brigade against the Soviet Red Army. After the German invasion of Poland, he joined the Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge department in the General Government to look after the welfare of ethnic Germans resettled in the east. Bisanz also ‘managed’ the ‘evacuation’ of 30,000 Jews from the Galician district in 1941 and the following year participated in the ‘March Action’ when the remnant Jewish population was dispatched to the Reinhardt camps.34 Bisanz had one disadvantage: he did not get on well with Himmler, who called him ‘a big pig’. But Bisanz was fervently anti-Polish and anti-Semitic and could strategically play up his Ukrainian credentials whenever needed. As the foolish Professor Kubijovych got to work on Wächter’s behalf, Bisanz quietly awaited his chance.

  Wächter set 28 April 1943 for a public proclamation (Festakt) that would officially inaugurate SS recruitment in the ‘Distrikt Galizien’. He knew he had to keep the pressure on Himmler, which he did through Berger. On 16 April, Berger telexed Himmler: ‘In line with orders, I have put myself in contact with [Wächter] and made the following discoveries …’ He emphasised that with increasing turbulence in the General Government, any ‘cessation of canvassing for the division would bolster resistance activities and give support to enemy propaganda’. This greatly reassured Himmler and matters now moved quickly. On 18 April, Kubijovych convened a conference of prominent Ukrainians in L’viv. He urged that they take advantage of Himmler’s offer and exploit a fresh opportunity to recruit a Ukrainian national army that would be trained by German officers. He pointed out that the German occupiers had already recruited tens of thousands of Ukrainians for their own ends; now they, the Ukrainians, had an opportunity to turn the tables. If Germany was defeated, and this was no longer out of the question, Ukrainians would need an army to combat the resurgent Bolsheviks and their Jewish lackeys.

  After listening to the impassioned Kubijovych, the other delegates agreed in principle to co-operating with Wächter. But Kubijovych drew up a list of ten demands to present to the Germans as follows:

  1 The division would be used exclusively against the Bolsheviks

  2 Its name and markings be Ukrainian

  3 Its officers be Ukrainians (attached German officers to act as liaisons with German high command staff)

  4 The division be provided with religious ministration by Ukrainian priests

  5 The division be attached to the Wehrmacht (that is the Heer or regular army)

  6 The division be considered as the first unit in the creation of the Ukrainian national army, into which it would be eventually incorporated

  7 That all Ukrainian political prisoners in German prisons and concentration camps be released under a general amnesty, including former officers of ‘Nachtigall’

  8 That all other Ukrainian military units be dissolved

  9 The division to be a fully motorised unit possessing a full range of weapons, including tanks

  10 Forced labourers who fled from Germany should be granted amnesty

  Wächter listened politely. But the Ukrainians failed to recognise that the Germans had no intention of genuinely negotiating. So Wächter agreed to just two of Kubijovych’s conditions, 1 and 4, neither of which would trouble Himmler. Wächter readily agreed to taking on a few priests.35 It was better to have them on side and on message rather than preaching against the Germans from the pulpit. He threw out every other proposed condition. But to let that useful idiot Kubijovych save a little face, he proposed appointing a balanced cadre of Ukrainian and German officers. Distracted by Wächter’s token concessions, the Ukrainians caved in. They even agreed to Bisanz’s proposal that the division use the old Austrian symbol for Galicia, the golden lion, rather than the Ukrainian national emblem of a trident.

  Wächter evidently possessed unusual powers of persuasion. Secretly he emphasised to his subordinates that recruitment must appear to be a Ukrainian led affair, not ‘simply as an organ of the German authorities’. But he stressed that ‘the formation of the division is to be utilised as much as possible in the spirit of an introduction of the Ukrainian population to the concept of being Germans [my italics]’.36 Wächter’s statement is powerful
evidence that Himmler’s recruitment of Ukrainians in the Galicia district fitted his master plan to Germanise the east.

  Wächter cunningly appealed to Ukrainian chauvinism. This is evident in the recruitment posters issued by the Military Board and now held by the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. These graphic images often show Ukrainian SS recruits bayoneting stereotypical ‘Jewish-Bolshevik’ soldiers. In Novi Visti, a Ukrainian bulletin board newspaper published in late 1943, the headline proclaims ‘To Arms’ next to a Galician golden lion. Against a background of long lines of eager Ukrainian recruits, a knight holding a shield emblazoned with SS Sig runes slays a Bolshevik dragon. The accompanying text exhorts recruits to ‘annihilate the Jewish-Bolshevik monster’; consecrate your freedom with the enemy’s ‘evil blood’. German ideology and Ukrainian nationalist aspirations coalesced around the figure of the ‘Jewish-Bolshevik’. As in the Baltic states, nationalist collaborators wished not merely to defend their nations against the Soviet aggression but to rid them of hated outsiders, above all Jews. It is this that connects the motivations of nationalist collaborators who joined forces with the SS during the first wave of genocide between 1941 and the end of 1942 and those who volunteered to join Waffen-SS divisions after the summer of 1942.

  On 28 April, at the Festakt in L’viv to launch recruitment, Wächter stood alongside German and Ukrainian dignitaries to make an emotional appeal for volunteers. For Goebbels, the beleaguered Minister of Propaganda, the new Galician division was very welcome news: he sent camera teams from Berlin to record events. In his speech, Wächter praised the determination of the Galician people to join the struggle against Bolshevism. The Führer had rewarded them by agreeing to form the new SS ‘Galizien’ division. All volunteers, he promised, would be on ‘equal footing’ with German soldiers and would be provided with priests of their confession and nation. ‘For centuries you stood on the side of Europe against the marauding Orient, prove yourselves now in this hour of destiny.’37 Professor Kubijovych then affirmed the wish of the Ukrainian people ‘to fight against Bolshevism with weapons in our hands’. After the main event, Wächter led the German delegation to the Cathedral of St George, where he was greeted by Rev. Dr Joseph Slipyj and Rev. Dr Wasyl Laba, who gave their blessing to the battle against Bolshevism. Himmler feared the influence of the Ukrainian church and its priests. So he arranged for Laba’s sermon to be tape-recorded and transcribed in Berlin. They noted that he had spoken of the resurrection of the ‘Ukrainian people’s army’ and alluded to the famous ‘Sich riflemen’ recruited ‘twenty years ago’ (during the First World War). Alarmed, Berger ordered Wächter to ‘remove this sore tooth’. But Wächter was already one step ahead. Now that recruitment was officially under way he could begin sidelining the Ukrainians. On the same day as the Festakt, he sacked Professor Kubijovych as head of the Military Board and replaced him, as planned, with Bisanz. The wretched professor had just sent a grovelling telegram to Governor General Frank thanking him ‘on behalf of the Ukrainian people of Galicia’ and passing on his ‘gratitude to the Führer’.38 Recruitment began immediately: ‘Everyone to the Division!’