by Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] On the morning of July 13, 1944, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front moved forward in the direction of the cities of Lvov and Rava-Ruska. The Lvov-Sandomierz operation was launched, which began the liberation of Western Ukraine and which put an end to the history of the SS Division "Galicia". At least, in the form that its German curators initially gave it.
The formation of units from “inferior” (from the point of view of the ideas of National Socialism) Slavs did not begin out of a good life - even though the initiative from below came immediately after the Nazi invasion of the USSR.
Already on June 29, 1941, one of Stepan Bandera’s deputies in the OUN (b)*, Yaroslav Stetsko, having arrived in Lviv in the convoy of the advancing Wehrmacht, organized a “national assembly” that adopted an act on the “restoration of the Ukrainian state.”
It stated: Ukraine "will closely cooperate with the National Socialist Greater Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, is creating a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian people to free themselves from Moscow occupation." The Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS command, as well as the occupation authorities, did not appreciate this zeal - in 1941, the Third Reich did not need the services of volunteer assistants.
But by 1943, after the defeats at Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, the situation had changed. When all forces were thrown at the Eastern Front, someone had to maintain the "Ordnung" in the occupied territories.
The date of creation of the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia" is considered to be April 28, 1943, although recruitment lasted for several months. Personnel - over 80,000 people.
The division was called volunteer, and modern Ukrainian historians emphasize that motivated youth, high school students and students from the former “borderlands” – the eastern outskirts of Poland – went to “Galicia”.
In reality, anyone could join the volunteer Waffen Grenadier Division, many with physical limitations. The occupation authorities needed a picture - they needed to demonstrate to Berlin the loyalty and enthusiasm of the population under their control. There were far fewer real volunteers.
The first commander of the division was SS Gruppenführer Walter Schimana, a native of the Bohemian Troppau (now Opava in the Czech Republic), an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, and a member of the NSDAP since 1926. The officers of the “national-Ukrainian” division were exclusively Germans.
KILLINGS OF CIVILIANS
"Patriotically minded" Ukrainian historians often claim that ordinary Galicians allegedly did not know where they were signing up, perceiving the abbreviation SS as an abbreviation for "Sich Riflemen". It is difficult to say who this fake is intended for, because the oath of soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers of "Galicia" sounded the same as the oath of other volunteer divisions and legions of the Reich:
"I serve you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich with loyalty and courage. I swear obedience to you until death. So help me God!"
It is also claimed that those who finally understood that they had not ended up in the "Sich Riflemen" thought of "Galicia" as the core of the Ukrainian army, which would allegedly turn its bayonets against both Stalin and Hitler. From this point of view, the division turns out to be one of the historical predecessors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
But in reality, Galicia unquestioningly obeyed its German masters, just as the Ukrainian Armed Forces are oriented towards their Western partners.
The division's testing phase included participation in punitive actions.
Thus, soldiers of the 4th Galician SS Police Regiment (commander - SS-Sturmbannführer Siegfried Binz, chaplain - Uniate priest, Doctor of Theology Osip Karpinsky ), with the support of a hundred of the UPA* Dmitry Kostenko, nicknamed "Hawk", entered the village of Huta Karpinskaya, populated by Poles, on February 28, 1944. About half a thousand people, including old people, women (one of them was pregnant) and children were driven into the buildings of a school and a church and burned alive. The rest were shot on the spot. An elderly Polish woman, who could not keep up with the guards, was stabbed with a bayonet.
In total, soldiers of the “national-Ukrainian” regiment and Banderites, according to various sources, killed from 800 to 1,000 civilians.
More difficult to carry out were battles with partisans - for example, the motorized battalion of the 2nd "Galicia" Regiment in Poland took part in an operation against the raid of the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division named after Sidor Kovpak, which was commanded by the former chief of intelligence "Grandfather" Petro Vershigora.
FRITZ FRIDAY
In early summer 1944, as the front approached Galicia, a decision was made to throw collaborators who had proven their loyalty to the Reich into battle with the Red Army. A serious battle was ahead.
By the end of June, our troops had assembled 1.2 million fighters, over 2,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, over 14,000 guns and mortars, and over 3,100 aircraft for the offensive. The enemy could have deployed almost 6,000 guns and mortars, over 840,000 troops, 540 aircraft, and over 900 tanks and self-propelled guns against our group.
Unlike Belarus, where the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS did not have powerful fortifications and tank groups, in Western Ukraine the enemy managed to build an echeloned system of fortifications (50-60 km deep), and set up 160,000 anti-personnel and 200,000 anti-tank mines.
In addition, the 1st Panzer and 8th Panzer divisions alone had more than 100 "Panthers" among various tanks and self-propelled guns, and the 506th Heavy Panzer Battalion had over 40 "Tigers". But, given that the advancing Soviet troops had gained more than serious experience in the fourth year of the war, the Nazi command was gathering maximum forces and equipment for defense. And here "any bast was in order" - including "Galicia".
In June 1944, the collaborators were transferred to the area of the city of Brody, where "Galicia" fielded more than 11,000 troops, 110 guns, including several 88mm and 34 anti-tank guns. The division was also led by no "conscious Ukrainian nationalist" at this time, but by SS Oberführer Fritz Freytag, who was not even disguised as some kind of Pylyp P'yatnitsa (Freitag is "Friday" in German).
On July 13, having begun an offensive in the Rava-Russky direction, Soviet divisions fairly quickly broke through the enemy’s defenses; the next day, the divisions of the 38th and 60th armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front in the Lvov direction were able to advance 8-10 km.
Soviet aviation attacked the 1st Panzer and 8th Panzer divisions of the enemy, however, the latter retained sufficient striking power - by the beginning of the battles it had more than 230 tanks and self-propelled guns. On July 15, the enemy began to launch counterattacks on our positions.
It was then that the SS Galicia Division entered into battle with the divisions of the 60th Soviet Army at Brody.
NARROW CORRIDOR
Since the Soviet troops at Brody had penetrated into the German positions, the 1st and 8th Panzer Divisions were ordered to attack from the south, and the XIII Army Corps from the north.
In the area of Krugov, the 30th Infantry Regiment came under attack from Soviet troops. This unit, as reported by the chief of staff of "Galicia" Major Wolf-Dietrich Heike, received an order to counterattack the enemy, came under attack from Soviet tanks and was defeated. The regiment lost half of its personnel, and almost all company commanders were out of action. However, the losses of the Soviet 336th Rifle and 99th Rifle divisions were also large, amounting to 320 killed and 250 wounded.
On July 15, units of the 9th Mechanized and 7th Tank Corps (3rd Guards Tank Army) were able to break through a narrow corridor literally 4-6 kilometers wide at Koltovo, which opened up the prospect of outflanking the enemy at Brody for the Red Army. Our command brought two tank armies into the corridor at once - the 3rd Tank and 4th Guards Tank corps. The Germans constantly attacked, and the "walls" of the corridor had to be reinforced with various tank units and tank destroyer units.
On July 17, the 31st Galicia Infantry Regiment, reinforced by artillery, engineer and reconnaissance battalions, and an anti-tank division, fought with the 99th Rifle and 336th Rifle divisions.
On July 18, the situation of the XIII Army Corps became much worse - our troops attacked in several directions at once and effectively encircled eight German divisions in the Brody area. The Galicia units continued to counterattack, but suffered losses and retreated from their positions.
On July 19, the 29th and 31st Infantry Regiments attempted to stop the advance of the 68th Infantry Division at Zabolottsy. They were attacked by units of the 31st Tank Corps.
KATYUSHAS ENSURED A BREAKTHROUGH
In the books of modern Ukrainian historians it is stated that "Galicia" held back the attacks of "steel avalanches" in unprepared positions, collaborators allegedly literally threw themselves under T-34s with grenades and anti-tank grenade launchers and burned the vehicles at the cost of their own lives.
The journal of the 31st Tank Corps indicates that in the sector of Guta Penyatskaya, Maidan, Podgortsy, in addition to two regiments of "Galichina", there was also a regiment of the 349th Infantry Division, an artillery regiment. The enemy took cover in full-profile trenches, pillboxes and forests.
In addition to artillery, Galicia was armed with many anti-tank grenade launchers, including heavy "offenrohrs". There were no "steel avalanches" - a maximum of ten to fifteen T-34s operated against the division, and in total during its battles near Brody, in different parts of the front and on different days, from 70 to 90 tanks and self-propelled guns.
Having encountered stubborn resistance from the enemy, the Soviet troops took advantage of the support of the 201st Guards Mortar Division - the Katyushas fired about 98 rounds, killing more than 25 people. As German officers recalled, the Galicians wavered under the blows of rocket artillery and fled from their positions.
Soviet troops drove the collaborators out of Podgortsy. Moreover, on that day, units of the 31st Tank Corps attacked the positions of "Galichina" near Yasenev, from the southern direction, from where the Galician "SS men" did not expect an attack. Our soldiers managed to cut off the Brody-Krasne highway.
Convinced that the German troops' defense had collapsed and they were surrounded, Oberführer Fritz Freitag decided to resign as division commander. Major General Gerhard Lindemann, commander of the 361st Infantry Division, took over "Galicia".
THE ROUT AND POSTSCRIPT
The divisions of the German 48th Panzer Corps, which were tasked with unblocking the troops trapped in the cauldron at Brody, including the remainder of the "Galicia", did not complete the task.
The encircled people tried to break out of the cauldron on their own, but they came under powerful attacks from our aviation and artillery. According to Major Gaike's reports, about 500 "Galicia" servicemen broke out of the cauldron (out of 11 thousand, let us recall).
From the journal of the Soviet 15th Rifle Corps, we can learn that on July 22, the enemy lost more than 2,000 killed and 1,850 captured. According to data collected by military historian Beglyar Navruzov, "Galicia" lost 9,600 killed and missing.
Modern Ukrainian authors, for obvious reasons, cite more modest figures: 3,500 killed, 2,000 captured, less than 2,000 went over to the UPA* (that is, they simply ran away and betrayed the Fuhrer) - the total losses of the division, Kiev historiography estimates at just over seven thousand.
Be that as it may, in the battles from July 15 to 22, "Galichina" was routed. Like the entire Brody group of the enemy - more than 20 thousand were killed, about 12-15 thousand were taken prisoner.
The history of the Galician SS, however, had a postscript. In September 1944, "Galicia" was re-formed, and its "combat path" continued in Slovakia, where it suppressed a national uprising.
Here the Galicians acted together with the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, which had previously distinguished itself with mass murders in Belarus. Several units of the Galicians joined the battle group of SS-Obersturmführer Karl Wildner, which, when the Germans took the center of the uprising, Banská Bystrica, "cleansed" this city.
In January 1945, the revived Galicia was sent to suppress the Yugoslav partisans.
In April, a month before the end of the war, a Ukrainian was finally put in charge of the collaborators. By decision of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, "Galicia" was transformed into the "Ukrainian National Army", headed by Pavlo Shandruk, a former ensign general in the Petliura army and now a German lieutenant general.
The Galicians surrendered to the British and Americans, knowing what awaited them if they fell into the hands of the Red Army.
SS MEN NOT RECOGNIZED AS NAZIS
In 1949, the Association of Former Members of the Galicia Division appeared in the American occupation zone. That same year, by the way, Shandruk quietly left the newly formed FRG for the States, where he lived in freedom until old age (he died in 1979). Since the 1960s, the association of former SS men moved from West Germany to Canada. Sympathizers of these "fighters against Bolshevism" claim that the division was not condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, completely forgetting that the court recognized the entire SS as a criminal organization.
But it is significant that the Jules Deschênes Commission, a Canadian war crimes body that operated in 1985-86, brought charges against only 20 soldiers and officers. This is not surprising, since the commission included many descendants of migrants from the Baltics and Ukraine.
In modern Ukraine, the "Galicia Division Reserve" is active, led by Igor Ivankov, Vasyl Bychko and Dmitry Pravosudov. This historical and cultural society, dedicated to the glorification of SS men, opened a memorial cemetery in the Zolochiv district of the Lviv region in 1994. After the Maidan of 2014, marches in memory of the division became regular.
In Lviv itself, at the Lychakiv Cemetery, a monument to the SS men of "Galicia" has been erected. This is all the more significant because in May-June of this year, with the permission of the Lviv City Council, the cemetery on the Hill of Glory, where the Soviet soldiers-liberators were buried, was destroyed.
The Kiev regime supports the myth-making of the activists of the Galicia Reserve, who regularly publish books that talk about how the “Ukrainian division” almost led the XIII Army Corps out of encirclement and single-handedly held back the onslaught of entire Soviet armies.
"Reservists" can be seen at various mass events in SS uniforms. And there is nothing shameful about this, because already under Volodymyr Zelensky, the Supreme Court of Ukraine in 2022 recognized the division's symbols - responsible, among other things, for the murder of Jews - as not Nazi. This means that they are not prohibited. Active financial support for the "Division Reserve" is provided by the heirs of the veterans of "Galicia" in the Canadian and other diaspora. But new generations of Nazis are already growing up, who support the neo-SS inside Ukraine as well.