User:Lvivske/Sandbox2

Polish-Ukrainian civil war
Part of World War II
Monument in memory of Polish citizens of Janowa Dolina, Volyn
Date 1942-45 Location Volhynia, Galicia, Lublin (Kholm region), all along the border
Belligerents
Pro Ukrainian forces UPA Local militias Armed peasants, SS Galizen in 1944	Pro Polish forces Armia Krajowa Polish self-defense groups; Polish soviet partisans, Polish Nazi collaborators/police
Commanders and leaders
Shukhevych
Strength
UPA = 20,000 est. in Volhynia ,	Polish Soviet partisans = 5-7,000, 1,200 Poles in german police (synder, restructuring, 172)
Casualties and losses
Military dead: X Civilian dead: 20,000 est.	Military dead: X Civilian dead: 35,000 est.

The Polish–Ukrainian Civil War of 1943-47 was a conflict between the forces of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Poles for the control over Eastern Galicia and Volhynia after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1941. Polish-Ukrainian conflict, endless cycle of mutual reprisals http://books.google.ca/books?id=Q2mq5C1CjgcC&pg=PR18&dq=shumuk+ukrainian+polish+volhynia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CddbT4-ZEILh0QHH-9ngDw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=shumuk%20ukrainian%20polish%20volhynia&f=false xvii

motyka calls it polish-ukrainian conflict

" Though he was a Polish partisan, Lotnik made it clear that atrocities could be attributed equally to both sides, ethnic Ukrainian and ethnic Polish"

" We retaliated by attacking an even bigger Ukrainian village and . . . killed women and children. Some of [our men] were so filled with hatred after losing whole generations of their family in the Ukrainian attacks that they swore they would take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. . . . This was how the fighting escalated. Each time more people were killed, more houses burnt, more women raped."

The real tragedy, as Tim Snyder has shown so remarkably well, is that rather than putting a stop to such senseless carnage, the early postwar Polish regime instead made ethnic cleansing a central part of its Ukrainian policy.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment13.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20181030174010/https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment13.htm

Background

The first of these occupational waves took place in the aftermath of the First World War. The attempted creation of nation-states in Poland and Ukraine carried with them the same transitional issues similarly situated European states endured.[1] In this transition away from an agrarian to a modern polity, cross-border friction over land ownership was only made worse by the authoritative policies of the Polish state at the time.[2] With the newly reformed Polish state no longer imperial in design, ethnic cleavages were especially pronounced in the voivodships within Galicia and Volhynia where Polish elite continued to rule as a minority of the population.[3] On a local level, first hand reports cite the killing of Ukrainians along the San River.[4] On an official level, Poles ruled heavy handedly from 1920-39.[5] In defiance of the League of Nations and its attempt to demarcate a border between two ethnic groups (known as the Curzon Line) Poland occupied and proceeded to divide Ukrainian lands with the Soviet Union.[6] Ukrainians considered Polish occupation to be thrust upon them, whereas Poles considered western Ukrainian lands to be a necessary possession for state security.[7] British commentary on government policy exclaimed that persecution provided Ukrainians with an “added consciousness and solidarity” and that Polish severity “increased the insecurity of the south-eastern frontier of the republic.”[8] The Polish narrative tends to ignore the behavior and consequences of its interwar government.[9] It should have come as no surprise, though, that the repressive policies of Jozef Pilsudski and the Polish colonization of Ukrainian territory fostered the growth of later Ukrainian insurgency.[10]

prelude:

Even prior to the “official” outbreak of ethnic cleansing by Ukrainians, massacres aimed at the Ukrainian population of Kholm had started as early as 1942. Often, even when no direct orders from the Polish government-in-exile were given, this had no bearing on impeding retaliatory measures, causing Ukrainians civilians in many cases to be killed indiscriminately and on sight. Retaliation also took place by proxy, whereby upon hearing new of killings in Volhynia, for instance, Poles in Galicia would take up arms against local Ukrainians.

[1] Chirs Hann, "Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe: Poles and Ukrainians beside the Curzon Line," Nations and Nationalis, 2, 3 (1996), p. 403.

[2] David R. Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine (Budapest, 2007), p. 211.

[3] Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine, p. 211.

[4] Ibid., p. 218.

[5] Jonathan Levy, The Intermarium: Wilson, Madison, & East Central European Federalism (Boca Raton, Fla., 2006), p. 237.

[6] Hann, "Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe: Poles and Ukrainians beside the Curzon Line," p. 394.

[7] Levy, The Intermarium: Wilson, Madison, & East Central European Federalism, p. 237.

[8] H.G. Wanklyn, The Eastern Marchlands of Europe (London, 1941), pp. 163-164.

[9] Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine, p. 224.

[10] Ibid., p. 209.

hash ntes

• " In all of these conflicts Poles took revenge on Ukrainian civilians. "