The Anglo-American Empire and the Rise of Fascism IX

Letter to Horst von Wächter XII

Letters from Vienna #215

Letter to Horst von Wächter XII

The Anglo-American Empire and the Rise of Fascism IX

Dear Horst,

as promised, here is an extract from Appendic “C” of Sol Littman’s “Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion”:

Stefan Dshugalo: Soldier, Spymaster, Disillusioned Ukrainian Nationalist (An account of the Galician Waffen-SS Division as recounted by one of its veterans as told to Sol Littman, Lviv, June, 1989).

“Our first “combat mission” after basic training was to guard a group of Jews being sent to a concentration camp.”

Stefan Dshugalo, straight-backed, witty and fully alert at eighty-one, was a veteran of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division which fought alongside Hitler’s armies. Much of his personal history coincides with the history of the Division he joined soon after it was formed in August 1943. He continued in its ranks until the bulk of the Division surrendered to the British in May 1945.

“A few days after we had completed basic training and taken our oath to Hitler and the German swastika, we were awakened at 2 a.m., equipped with rifles and bayonets and deployed on both sides of the road leading to the railway station,” Dschugalo said in an interview in Lviv on June 19, 1989. “Twenty minutes to half hour later a large group of people – women. Children and old men, some 200 to 300 of them – were escorted to the railway station. It was our job to prevent any of them escaping.”

“Did you know who they were and where they were going?”

“Of course, we knew,” he replied. “We all understood that these were Polish Jews being sent to Dachau or some other concentration camp.”

Dschugalo, a highly popular teacher of gymnastics and music in the secondary school of Sokol in the Lviv region of Galician Ukraine, felt obliged to join his students in the ranks of the Division.

“There was considerable pressure on the students to join the Division,” he said. “The principal addressed them several times. As a result, the whole graduating class marched to the recruiting and signed up. I, as their physical culture teacher, was obliged to join them.”

According to Dschugalo, there was no spontaneous rush to join the Division. Although a German broadcast from Krakow boasted that 60,000 Ukrainians had rushed to volunteer as soon as the German occupation authorities announced its formation in March 1943, the former teacher attributed this claim to “German propaganda.”

“Few of us were eager to go,” he said. “People were pressured in various ways to sign up. For example, I was asked almost daily by the head of the gymnasium (secondary school) whether I had joined up yet. As an avowed Ukrainian Nationalist and – what would you call it? – yes, a role model to the younger generation, I was expected to lead the way. German gendarmes visited me twice at home to tell me what a fine contribution I could make to the cause. Finally, I thought it best to accompany my students.” Those who could afford to “buy their way out” were able to avoid service, he added ironically.

The Division – formally listed as the 14^th Grenadier Volunteer Waffen-SS Division (Galician No.1) – assembled for training at Heidelager, a camp near Krakow used exclusively to train Ukrainian SS men. The instructors were Germans and all orders were issued in the German language. The training period lasted five months, from August to December 1943.

Not all of the men received their training at Heidelager. Raised primarily as a police unit to combat partisan activities behind the German lines, sub-units received special training in military camps in France, Czechoslovakia and Germany. One group trained in France and participated in sweeps against the French Resistance which was engaged in the rescue of downed British and American airmen.

His basic training completed, Dschugalo was ordered to Breslau, Germany, for training as a non-commissioned officer. He returned to the Division in May 1944, but two or three months later he was seconded for officers’ training at a camp in Czechoslovakia.

During the time he was away, the members of the Schutzmannschaftsbattalion 201, consisting of former members of the Roland and Nachtigall Battalions, were transferred to the Division. These brigades had been recruited and trained by the Abwehr, the German Army’s secret service, as sabotage and espionage units. Both battalions were in the vanguard of the German forces when Hitler invaded the USSR and participated in the horrible pogrom of Jews and Polish intellectuals that followed on the heels of the German invasion. After their espionage and sabotage services were no longer required by the Germans, they were formed into the 201^st Police Battalion that committed numerous atrocities in White Russia in the name of “anti-partisan” warfare. By 1944, the Red Army had advanced so far westward that the 201^st could no longer perform as an anti-partisan unit. They were then placed in the ranks of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division.

The Division itself was now stationed in the Brody area east of Lviv. Each of the unit’s infantry regiments was commanded by a German officer, with at most two Ukrainian officers in subsidiary positions. “Each combat unit was under a German officer,” Dschugalo stated. “No unit was commanded by a Ukrainian.”

Careful not to say anything that would leave him liable to war crimes charges, Dschugalo stated that he was aware of actions taken by the Division but that fortunately he was away on a training course when they happened. For example, he had heard of the formation of a special anti-partisan strike force under the command of Major Beyersdorff that is reported to have devastated villages. “I heard talk about the formation of the Beyersdorff detachment but I don’t know too much about its activities,” he said “I also heard that the Germans gave instructions that a village named Huta Pieniacka should be destroyed. The village was in some contact with the partisans. Some of our combat units surrounded the village and murdered all the villagers.”

Best,

Michael