so first things first. pogroms and volyn were terrible and seems like Ukraine is working through that.
the point i’m making here is that the binary “worked with nazis” leads nowhere, and we have to bring things into the historical perspective.
today we have the luxury of retrospective and know what fascism is and its dangers. which, ironically, doesn’t seem to stop us from sliding into it.
things were very different and slightly less binary in 1941. after all, the German American Bund (aka First US Nazi party) was dismantled only in December 1941. to make matters worse, germany, france and poland were all researching on the “re-settling” of jews to madagascar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
what makes a difference for me is that while the main nazis (germans, italians, japanese and soviets) were all about “we are better, let’s enslave the neighbor monkeys”, ukrainian nationalists in that time were about fighting against occupation. polish, soviet, nazi and then again soviet. in that order.
they lost, and as usual with history, it’s written by the winners but the fact that (the modern nazi) ruzzia appears to have inherited fear of bandera from the (fairly nazi) soviet union, tells me that it’s worth looking at him not only from the ruzzian perspective.
I think that’s all valid and well-thought-through, and I perhaps misinterpreted your original message. It seemed to me you were saying that because he was imprisoned for several years by Nazi Germany, he was de facto not a fascist, which would be a very dubious claim.
so first things first. pogroms and volyn were terrible and seems like Ukraine is working through that.
the point i’m making here is that the binary “worked with nazis” leads nowhere, and we have to bring things into the historical perspective.
today we have the luxury of retrospective and know what fascism is and its dangers. which, ironically, doesn’t seem to stop us from sliding into it.
things were very different and slightly less binary in 1941. after all, the German American Bund (aka First US Nazi party) was dismantled only in December 1941. to make matters worse, germany, france and poland were all researching on the “re-settling” of jews to madagascar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
what makes a difference for me is that while the main nazis (germans, italians, japanese and soviets) were all about “we are better, let’s enslave the neighbor monkeys”, ukrainian nationalists in that time were about fighting against occupation. polish, soviet, nazi and then again soviet. in that order.
they lost, and as usual with history, it’s written by the winners but the fact that (the modern nazi) ruzzia appears to have inherited fear of bandera from the (fairly nazi) soviet union, tells me that it’s worth looking at him not only from the ruzzian perspective.
I think that’s all valid and well-thought-through, and I perhaps misinterpreted your original message. It seemed to me you were saying that because he was imprisoned for several years by Nazi Germany, he was de facto not a fascist, which would be a very dubious claim.