On 20 June 2017, a discussion on Germany's historical responsibility towards Ukraine was held in the German Parliament. The discussion was initiated by Marieluise Beck, the Speaker for Eastern Europe at Germany’s Green Party, featured a lecture by historian Timothy Snyder, and was followed by a discussion involving writers Jurko Prochasko and Katia Petrowska, historian Wilfried Jilge, and Marieluise Beck. Earlier, a discussion on the same topic was held in the Bundestag, during which Ms.Beck presented a draft resolution in support of Ukraine. We have transcribed the lecture of Timothy Snyder on Germany's historical responsibility towards Ukraine.
The frontier empire and slave labor
Why do we have the government that we have now? In some significant measure, it is because we Americans have failed to take historical responsibility for certain important parts of our own history. How can we have a president of the United States in 2017 who is irresponsible on racial issues? How can we have an Attorney General in 2017 who is a white supremacist? Because we have failed to deal with important questions of our own past. Not just the history of the Second World War. It might not come clear from this distance how radically the current Presidential Administration is revising the American attitude towards WWII.The American frontier empire was built largely by slave labor. It was precisely that model that was admired by Adolf Hitler.
But when our foreign policy is labeled "America first," we are referring to an isolationist and very often a white supremacist movement which was meant to keep America from entering the war against fascism.
And the answer that he gave, both in Mein Kampf, and in the second book, and in practice in the invasion of 1941, the answer was: the Ukrainians.
The result of the ideology of this war was that some 3.5 million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine, civilians, were victims of German killing policies between 1941 and 1945. In addition to that 3.5 million, about 3 million Ukrainians, inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine, died as soldiers in the Red Army, or died indirectly as a consequence of the war.
- Ukraine was the major war aim. Ukraine was the center of Hitler's ideological colonialism. But beyond that, in practice, all of Soviet Ukraine was occupied for most of the war, which is why for Ukrainians today, war is something that happens here, as opposed to elsewhere.
- Hitler never planned to conquer any more than 10% of Soviet Russia, and in practice German armies never occupied any more than 5% of Soviet Russia, and that for a relatively brief period of time.
German historical responsibility starts with Ukraine
Now, Russians suffered in WWII in a way that is unthinkable to West Europeans, in a way that is unthinkable even for Germans. But nevertheless, when we think about the Soviet Union, the place of Soviet Ukraine is very special, even by comparison to Soviet Russia. In absolute numbers, more inhabitants died in WWII than the inhabitants of Soviet Russia. And these are the calculations of Russian historians. Which means in relative terms, Ukraine was far, far more at risk than Soviet Russia during the war. In other words, it is very important to think of the German Vernichtungskrieg [war of extermination] against the Soviet Union, but at the center of it is Soviet Ukraine.So if we want to talk about German responsibility for Russia, very good - but that discussion must begin with Ukraine. Ukraine is on the way to Russia, and the greatest malicious intention and the greatest destructive practice of the German war was precisely in Ukraine. If one is going to be serious for German historical responsibility for the East, the word "Ukraine" must be in the first sentence. This also goes for the longest and the most earnest, and I think the most important discussion having to do with German responsibility in the East, and that is German responsibility for the mass murder of the Jews of Europe. That is another discussion that makes no sense without mention of Ukraine. As I was walking to this Parliament building, I passed on the street the famous picture of Willy Brandt kneeling, famously, before the monument to the Warsaw ghetto uprising.Hitler never planned to conquer any more than 10% of Soviet Russia
- Ukraine is the cause of the war. Had Hitler not had the colonial idea to fight a war in Eastern Europe to control Ukraine, had there not been that plan, there could not have been a Holocaust. Because it is that plan that brings German power into Eastern Europe where the Jews lived;
- The actual war in Ukraine brings the Wehrmacht [German armed forces during WWII], brings the SS and the German police to the places where they could be killed;
- The methods: it became clear to Germans in 1941 that something like a Holocaust could be perpetrated because of massacres in places like Kamianets-Podilsky, or, more notoriously, Babyn Yar on the edge of Kyiv. It was there that for the first time - not only in the history of the war, but for the first time in the history of humanity, tens of thousands of people were killed by bullets in a continuous large-scale massacre. It was events like this on the territory of Ukraine that made it clear that something like a Holocaust could happen.
Ukrainian nationalism and responsibility
Now, how do we evaluate the question of German responsibility? What about the Ukrainians themselves? Shouldn't Ukrainians themselves be carrying out discussions about what happened in occupied Ukraine during World War II? Isn't Ukrainian nationalism also a theme that should be discussed? Of course it is. I made my whole career writing about Ukrainian nationalism. That's why I can be introduced as a professor at Yale University - because I wrote about Ukrainian nationalism, about Ukrainian nationalists and the ethnic cleansing of Poles in 1943. Because I published the first article in a Western language about the role of the Ukrainian police in the Holocaust and how that led to the ethnic cleansing of Poles in 1943. Ukrainian nationalism is a real historical tendency and it ought to be studied judiciously, as some members of the audience here have done better and more recently than I. But if we are speaking not in Kyiv, but in Berlin, if we are speaking of German historical responsibility, we have to recognize that Ukrainian nationalism is one consequence of the German war in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian nationalism was relatively a minor force in interwar Poland. It was paid by the German Abwehr. Ukrainian nationalists in Polish prison were released precisely because Germany invaded Poland in 1939. When Germany and the Soviet Union jointly invaded Poland in 1939, destroying the Polish state, this also destroyed all the legal political parties, including the legal Ukrainian parties, which up until that point were much more important than Ukrainian nationalists. So, as I say, if we are in Kyiv, then we must discuss the role of Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and in collaboration. When I was in Kyiv in September to commemorate the 75th anniversary [of the massacre at Babyn Yar - ed.], that is precisely the point that I made. But if we are in Germany, it is very important that Ukrainian nationalism be seen as part of German responsibility. It's not something that can block German responsibility; it's not an excuse to avoid German responsibility. Ukrainian nationalism was part of German occupation policy, and when you occupy a country, you have to take responsibility for the tactics and policies of occupation that you choose. And so Ukrainian nationalism must not be a reason for Germans to not think of their responsibility. It is in fact one more reason to think of German responsibility. However, I've probably spoken long enough on that theme. It's very important that when we speak about Ukraine, we're not only speaking about nationalists. Nationalists are relatively a small part of Ukrainian history, they're a relatively small part of the Ukrainian present. When we think about the German occupation of Ukraine, we have to remember some very simple banal points that often escape our attention. Like for example, there was no particular correlation between nationality and collaboration. Russians collaborated, Crimean Tatars collaborated, Belarusians collaborated. Everyone collaborated; there is no, as far as we can tell, correlation between ethnicity and collaboration, with the partial exception of the Volksdeutsche, of course. But in general, there is no correlation between ethnicity and collaboration. Something else to remember: the vast majority of people who collaborated with the German occupation were not politically motivated. They were collaborating with an occupation that was there, and which is a German historical responsibility. Something that is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian communists collaborated with the Germans than did Ukrainian nationalists.This doesn't make sense, and so no one ever says it, but it is precisely the case. Vastly more members of the Communist Party collaborated with the German occupation than did Ukrainian nationalists. For that matter, very many of the people who collaborated with the German occupation had collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s. These points, although they're very basic, and they're completely obvious, if you think about them, are typical of Ukrainian history. They're typical of the fact that Ukraine was ruled first as part of the Soviet Union and then under an incredibly bloody and devastating German occupation. When we think about the way that occupation ended, we often overlook certain basic points, like this:Incomparably more Ukrainians died fighting against the Wehrmacht than fighting on the side of the Wehrmacht, which is not something that one can say about every country that's considered an ally.
Mental temptations left over by colonization
Where does this leave Germany, and why is this more complicated than it otherwise may seem to be? As a historian, I know the history of Ukraine is unfamiliar, and it can seem complicated, but this is not the only problem. Part of the problem, as I suggested when I mentioned to my own country in the beginning, has to do to habits of mind related to colonization, wars of aggression, to the attempt to enslave another people. The attempt to enslave another another people cannot be innocent even for the generations to come. The attempt to enslave another people, a neighboring people, will leave its mark, if not directly confronted. And to make matters worse, we are not in the environment in Europe today where these discussions can always take place dispassionately. We're at a very precise moment where German attempts to discuss responsibility are always simultaneously parts of a discussion carried out from elsewhere about responsibility. So when we ask: why are all these basic points not remembered?The attempt to enslave another another people cannot be innocent even for the generations to come
Why is it not always remembered that Ukraine was the center of Hitler's ideology, of German war planning, that Ukrainians were the intended slaves of Germany?
Why is it not always remembered that Ukrainians were understood racially, by Nazi ideology, that if we want to understand the Holocaust, we have to start with Ukraine?
Why is it not always remembered that 6.5 million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine died as a result of German occupation?
There are lots of reasons, but one of them is the mental temptations left over by colonization, the tendency to overlook a people, which was not regarded as a people. All of the language about Ukraine as a failed state, or Ukrainians not as a real nation, or Ukrainians divided by culture - in the German language, that is not innocent. That is an inheritance of an attempt to colonize a people not regarded as a people. Judgements about Ukraine where Ukraine is held to other standards (not that it's a beautiful wonderful place, in every respect, it's not), but the application of terms like there not being a Ukrainian nation, or there not being a Ukrainian state, if those things are said in German without a direct confrontation with the German attempt to enslave Ukrainians, those words are not innocent, those words have to be reflected historically in Germany. There's a particular problem with all of this, which I'm going to mention last briefly.The temptation for Germans to avoid responsibility, which is always a great temptation, is encouraged by precisely Russian foreign policy. It is Russian foreign policy to divide the history of the Soviet Union into two parts. There's the good part, which is the Russian part, and the bad part, which is the Ukrainian part.I can sum this up for you faster than the official memo of the Russian foreign policy does it: liberation - Russian; collaboration - Ukrainian.
Not to help Ukraine, but to help Germany
The point of remembering German responsibility for the 6.5 million deaths caused by the German war against the Soviet Union in Ukraine is not to help Ukraine. Ukrainians are aware of these crimes. Ukrainians live, the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, they live with the legacy of these crimes already. The point is not to help Ukraine, but to help Germany. Germany as a democracy, particularly in this historical moment, as we face Brexit, as we face election after election with populists, as we face a declining and decreasingly democratic USA, precisely at this moment, Germany cannot afford to get major issues of its history wrong. Precisely at this moment, the German sense of responsibility has to be completed. Perhaps up until now, Germany getting its history right was just a matter for Germans. Perhaps at the time of the Historikerstreit [“Historian’s quarrel”, an intellectual and political controversy in West Germany] in the 1980s, the history of the Holocaust was a only matter for Germans. It has to be done for Germans, but the consequences are international. Getting the history of Ukraine wrong in 2013 and 2014 had European consequences. Getting the history of Ukraine wrong now, when Germany is the leading democracy in the West, will have international consequences.Read also:
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