Thread by @mossrobeson__

(THREAD) Did you know? John A. Armstrong, whose 1955 book "Ukrainian Nationalism" remains the foundational history of the OUN/UPA, thanked the following Ukrainian Nazi collaborators & war criminals and German pals of theirs among "those persons … most helpful" to its production.

Volodymyr Kubiiovych helped create the Galician SS & led the Ukrainian Central Committee, "the most important Ukrainian collaborationist institution" in occupied Poland/western Ukraine. In 1941 he asked the Nazis to cleanse Ukrainian territories of "Polish and Jewish elements."

Fritz Arlt, an SS Obersturmbannführer (~Lt. Col) who facilitated the Galician (western Ukrainian) SS' unique surrender to sympathetic Brits at the end of WW2, was according to Edwin Black "the Reich's Jewish-population statistics wizard" and a colleague of Adolf Eichmann.

Riko Yari (aka Richard Yary), the OUN leadership-in-exile (Provid)'s treasurer, representative in Berlin, and alleged point person vis a vis the Abwehr (German military intelligence) during the 1930s, was the only member of the Provid to join Stepan Bandera's faction (OUN-B).

The rest of the Provid & a minority of the OUN in Galicia/western Ukraine remained loyal to Andriy Melnyk, who also got a shoutout from Armstrong. On May 2, 1938, Melnyk wrote Ribbentrop that OUN was “ideologically akin ... to National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy.”

Mykola Lebed, Bandera's wartime deputy turned postwar CIA-backed rival, was credited with having organized the OUN-B's secret police & was described by the USG as a "well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans" before the Agency smuggled him to New York. Buried in NJ, 1998.

Myroslav Prokop was an OUN chief and longtime leader of the CIA's Prolog Research Corporation in the US, which the Agency set up as a weapon of psychological warfare and the publishing arm of Lebed's "anti-Bandera" faction of the OUN-B to promote "nationalism" in Soviet Ukraine.

Ivan Hrinioch, Nachtigall chaplain, OUN-B leader, and Iron Cross recipient, in 1941 announced "independence" for Ukraine on Lviv's airwaves in Nazi garb. CIA docs say that in early 1945 Hrinioch gave the Galician SS "orders regarding the procedure to be followed after the war."

Acc. to CIA, Hrinioch "entered into negotiations with the German Intelligence" on behalf of OUN-B's Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1944, to rekindle collaboration between the Nazis and OUN-B disrupted 3 yrs prior. CIA made Hrinioch its principal agent in Ukrainian operations.

Hans Koch was 1 of 2 German officers to attend the OUN-B's June 30, 1941 "declaration of renewed statehood" in Lviv, proclaimed by Bandera's deputy Yaroslav Stetsko: "The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany..."

Yaroslav Stetsko, postwar president-for-life of the fascist Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), said Ukrainians were "the first people in Europe to understand the corrupting work of Jewry," and organized the OUN-B militia that spearheaded the July 1941 pogroms in Galicia.

Three years after Columbia University Press published "Ukrainian Nationalism," which glossed over the OUN-B's 1941 pogroms & UPA's 1943-44 ethnic cleansing - go figure! - John Armstrong sent a message of goodwill to the American Friends of the ABN and "my old friend Mr. Stetsko."

Gerhard von Mende, leading advisor in Rosenberg's Ministry, reorganized many of Rosenberg's "national committees" as ABN member-states by 1950. Scott & Jon-Lee Anderson described the ABN as the "the largest and most important umbrella for former Nazi collaborators in the world."

Georg Leibbrandt, a Nazi foreign policy expert, represented Alfred Rosenberg's Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories to the Wannsee Conference. A Nuremberg court charged him with the "involvement in the destruction of Jews" in 1950, but the case was quickly dismissed.

The list goes on (Paul Shandruk, Volodymyr Stakhiv, Gustav Hilger, who am I missing?) ... Can I get a(n) RT? @DefendingHistor @TarikCyrilAmar @I_Katchanovski @jaredgmcbride @jonathbruns @seansrussiablog @yashalevine @OurHiddenHistry pls read this thread, from a fan of yours.

Yaroslav Stetsko, May 2, 1981 in NYC: "Will the present leaders of the West learn from their past mistakes? Is history to be our teacher in life, particularly this year, when Ukraine is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the reestablishment of an Independent Ukrainian State?"

And where was Armstrong then? Reviewing Alexander Motyl's "Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins & Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919-1929." Today Motyl says "the Azov Battalion resembles the Black Panthers, and its leader ... could easily pass for Eldridge Cleaver"!

In conclusion here is the alleged “interlocutor between the Ukrainian far-right and their foreign sponsors," US-born chief of Azov's Civic Corps, Roman Zvarych, chairing a youth panel at the May 2, 1981 American Friends of ABN congress, which Armstrong regretfully missed in 1958.

One more thing, to be clear: Armstrong is the historian we have to thank for classifying Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators as “integral nationalists” and not “fascists.” From what I can tell no one has ever pointed out his problematic friendship with Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators.