The hard-fought Italian campaign developed from the Allies’ growing strength throughout the Mediterranean. Contrary to expectations, the British held on to Malta and the sea route to Suez; and Anglo-American landings on the western
extremities of North Africa spelled mortal danger for the
Afrika Korps
. Operation Torch soon had the Axis bottled up in Tunisia, whence in May 1943 they were obliged to withdraw completely. Thereafter it was a relatively simple step for the Allies to cross the Sicilian Straits, and to attack the toe of the Fascist boot.
The invasion of Sicily began on 10 July 1943, when British and American troops landed simultaneously on the southern and eastern shores. German reinforcements arrived too late to prevent the rapid conquest of the whole island. From Sicily, the Allies jumped across to Calabria in September and began the arduous task of pushing northwards up the mountainous peninsula; in all, the task was to take them nearly two years. Yet the Allied toehold in southern Italy was to have important consequences. Once a major base was established at Brindisi, it permitted the projection of Allied air power onto a wide range of destinations throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland and Yugoslavia. It forced the German Command to commit ill-spared divisions to the occupation of southern France. Most importantly, it provoked the collapse of Mussolini’s regime. On 25 July 1943 Marshal Badoglio persuaded the King of Italy to dismiss the Duce and to accede to Allied overtures. The Duce was saved from arrest on the Gran Sasso in a sensational rescue by German paratroopers, and lived again to rule a German-sponsored Republic of Northern Italy from Milan. But the first major crack in the Axis fortress could not be concealed.
Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the gigantic German-Soviet War was moving to its climax. Having survived the disaster of 1941, the Soviet regime moved to tap the great reservoir of Russian patriotism. Stalin reopened the Orthodox churches which he had all but annihilated, and appealed like Lenin before him for the defence of Holy Russia. What seemed impossible at any time before 1941, millions of men went willingly to their deaths with ‘Za Stalina’ (For Stalin) on their lips. The Red Army’s prodigal use of its expendable manpower amazed and, to a degree, demoralized the German soldiery. Waves of infantry were used to assault fixed positions with no sign of artillery support. Through fields of mounting corpses, the hordes of ill-clothed and ill-armed ‘Ivans’ kept coming and coming, till the German machine-guns overheated and the gunners lost stomach for the slaughter. It was an accepted fact of the contest that the Soviet side could sustain casualties of three or four to one and still carry the day. The Red Army’s sacrifices were helped by the wilderness and the weather, and by the T-34, the best tank of the war. A brilliant military team led by Marshal Zhukov maximized the advantages of space and numbers.
In 1942 the Wehrmacht was drawn on and on. The constant series of local German successes concealed the fact that the elusive Soviet enemy was not now being trapped or encircled, and that the long lines of communication were growing ever longer. By the early autumn, as the weather deteriorated, neither the Volga nor the Caspian had been reached; and a dangerous salient was developing on the approaches to Stalingrad. A tactical withdrawal might have remedied the situation. But the Führer adamantly refused. Hitler must take the sole blame for the fateful order which told General von Paulus to hold his ground at all costs.
The Germans’ momentum eventually took them to the right-bank suburbs of ‘Stalin’s city’. Yet they were entering the head of a noose. Day after day, Zhukov’s forces inched round the German flanks, until, in one sudden movement, von Paulus was finally surrounded. Three months of desperate hand-to-hand fighting in icy, deserted ruins preceded von Paulus’s surrender on 2 February 1943. Stalingrad cost over one million lives. It was the largest single battle of world history. The invincible Nazi colossus was shown to be fallible.
News of Stalingrad flashed round the world, giving heart to anti-Nazi resistance movements all over Europe. Before Stalingrad, Resistance leaders had only been able to indulge in small-scale sabotage, or to run the clandestine escape lines for Allied airmen and prisoners. After Stalingrad, they began to dream of liberation.
In Western Europe, resistance was relatively uncomplicated. Prompted by the broadcasts of the BBC, and by the skulduggery of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), devoted cells of courageous men and women planned the sabotage and diversions which would eventually help the advance of the Allied armies. In Denmark, where the Nazis had hoped to create a model protectorate, the Resistance forced the Germans in August 1943 to declare martial law. In Norway, too, the Nazis abandoned the attempt to rule through the pro-Fascist government of Vidkun Quisling. Their one and only shipment of heavy water from the Norsk-Hydro Plant was sunk in the Tinnsjo fiord by Norwegian saboteurs. In ‘the Netherlands they were less disturbed, having penetrated the Dutch Resistance in a brilliant project called the
Englandspiel
, the ‘English Game’. In Belgium, France, Italy, and Greece, the resistance was increasingly influenced by communist elements. The French resistance came to life after 1942 with the German occupation of the Vichy Zone, where large numbers of patriots took to the
maquis
. At the same time the Italian partisans, whose achievements were still greater, concentrated their activities in the northern zone ruled by Mussolini, whom they eventually captured and killed.
Yet nowhere was popular defiance more determined than in tiny Luxemburg. In the plebiscite of October 1941, only 3 per cent of Luxemburgers voted for joining the Reich. Later, they organized the only effective general strike against Nazi rule, whilst sustaining a ceaseless campaign of obstructions and propaganda.
In Eastern Europe, Resistance was more problematical. German policies there were far harsher. Despite very different political colorations, the leading formations of the Underground—the democratic Polish
Armia Krajowa
(Home Army, AK), the undemocratic Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army (UPA), and the Serbian
Četniks
—were all caught in a painful political trap, where the pursuit of national freedom demanded resistance to Stalin as well as to Hitler. Co-operation with the advancing Red Army, or with communist partisans, who did not recognize the principle of ‘bourgeois independence’, involved at best abject surrender, more usually imprisonment and death, [
BUCZACZ
]
In Poland, for example, the largest and most senior of Europe’s Resistance movements faced an almost impossible task. It came into being in late 1939, when it treated both the Nazis and the Soviets as occupation forces. Its main formation,
the
Armia Krajowa
(AK), was a loose federation of ill-assorted groups. Its authority was respected by the numerous Peasant Battalions (BCh), but not by the semi-fascist (but violently anti-German) National Armed Forces (NSZ) or by the communist People’s Guard (GL). It had proper, if slight, relations with the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) in the ghettos—and bloody confrontations with the Ukrainians, the Soviet partisans, and the gangs of deserters, fugitives, and bandits with whom it shared the woods. It organized and ran an impressive ‘Secret State’—with clandestine intelligence, diversionary, educational, judicial, and political branches. But it did not survive the Soviet ‘Liberation’. Its democratic leaders ended up in a Moscow show trial. Honourable men, like the unbroken General Okulicki, the AK’s last Commander, deserve to stand amongst the heroes of the Allied cause. Instead, amidst the shameful silence of their comrades in the West, they were consigned to obscurity, dishonour, and an early grave.
115
In Yugoslavia, the problem was solved by a controversial and, some would say, disreputable decision of the Anglo-Americans. Yugoslavia, unlike Poland, layout-side the sphere of direct Soviet influence. But in 1943 it came within range of Allied support from Italy. London and Washington chose to back Tito’s communists. Thereafter, Tito’s rivals, the
Četniks
, were heaped with every form of calumny. Their leaders, including Mihajlovi, would eventually be executed by Tito’s courts for ‘treason’.
Such developments well illustrate the facile definitions of ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration’ which prevailed in Anglo-American circles. Nations who have never experienced foreign invasion rarely comprehend its complications. Of course, some people in continental Europe chose to serve the invaders from base motives of personal gain. Others, like Leon Degrelle’s Rexist Movement in Belgium, acted in accordance with principles developed before the war. But many were moved to collaborate in order to exert a moderating influence and to limit the harm done. In France, after Pétain’s fateful meeting with Hitler, the policy of collaboration may or may not have been misguided. But it was coined for reasons of patriotic necessity.
In the broad expanse of Europe that was successively occupied both by Soviets and by Nazis, the element of choice was largely absent. Both totalitarian regimes sought to enforce obedience through outright terror. For most ordinary civilians, the prospect of serving the Soviets posed the same moral dilemmas as serving the fascists. The only course of principled action for patriots and democrats was the suicidal one of trying to oppose Hitler and Stalin simultaneously.
After Stalingrad, the news from the Eastern Front continued to be disheartening for Berlin. In the spring of 1943, the Red Army moved to the general offensive for the first time in two years. In the opening stages of five mighty campaigns that would carry them all the way to Berlin, Stalin’s confident marshals began to roll back the Nazi enemy. On the open steppe near Kursk in July, the Germans’ strategic tank-force was smashed. Their capacity for large-scale attack was broken. The tide, to use Churchill’s metaphor, had turned.
BUCZACZ
T
HE DEACONRY OF BUCZACZ.
In 1939, this district was inhabited by 45.314 Poles. Among its 17 parishes, Barycz numbered 4,875, Buczacz 10,257. Koropiec 2,353, Kowalówka 3,009, Monasterzyska 7,175 … In Barycz, a couple of Polish families were murdered by Ukrainians in 1939 … One of the Biernackis had a leg severed … But the main attack took place on the night of 5–6 July 1944, when 126 Poles were killed. Men, women and children were shot, or hacked to death with axes. The “Mazury” ward of the town was burned down. The attackers were armed with machine guns and shouted
“Rizaty, palyty”
(kill, burn). The survivors fled to Buczacz, where they survived the winter in terrible conditions, in ex-Jewish houses without doors or windows…
The [Catholic] parish of Nowostawce, though sparsely inhabited, contained three Greek-Catholic parishes within its bounds. The ratio of Poles to Ukrainians was 2 : 3. In 1939 co-existence was still possible. But conditions worsened after the German Occupation. In 1944, when the German-Soviet front line passed through, nothing but ruins remained …
The vicar of Korościatyn reported an attack on his village on 28 February 1944. 78 persons were shot, smothered or axed in the vicarage cellar… Some ninety people had perished in an earlier attack in 1943. Then typhus carried off a further fifty. A curious thing occurred. The village had thirteen so-called “wild marriages”. All of them died except one.
In Koropiec, no Poles were actually murdered. But it was reported that the Greek-Catholic pulpits resounded to calls regarding mixed Polish-Ukrainian marriages: “Mother, you’re suckling an enemy—strangle it.’”
1
Forty years after the event, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland was still trying to document the wartime ‘ethnic cleansing’ perpetrated in the former eastern provinces of Galicia and Volhynia. Estimates of casualties range from 60,000 to 500.000.
2
Buczacz, or Buchach, was one of scores of districts which shared a similar fate. It lay in the Archdiocese of Lwow which covered all of Red Ruthenia (East Galicia) and beyond. Its pre-war population was made up of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews. All three communities were scourged by Soviet repressions at the start of the war. Then the Jews were killed by the Nazis and their local collaborators. After that, the Poles were attacked by Ukrainians. Finally, the returning Soviets destroyed anyone and everyone connected with independent organizations.
Ethnic cleansing in wartime Poland was started in 1939–41 both by the Nazis, who cleared several western regions for German resettlement, and by the Soviets, who deported millions from the East. After 1941, it was taken up by small factions of the Polish underground, who sought to drive out Ukrainians from central Poland, and on a far larger scale by the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army (UPA), who terrorized Poles. In 1945, the communists completed the cleansing of Poles from Ukraine and, through ‘Operation Vistula’, of Ukrainians from their homes in ‘People’s Poland’.
At Potsdam, Allied policyapproved the expulsion of all Germans f rom east of the Oder (see p. 1047).
The UPA came into being in October 1942 to initiate an exclusive, nationalist Ukraine and to oppose the growing bands of Soviet partisans infiltrated behind German lines. (Its commander, General Roman Shukevich, ‘Chuprynka’, fought on until captured in 1950.) However, when the rising communist tide had been stemmed neither by the Wehrmacht nor by the formation of the SS Galizien, the Ukrainian underground adopted desperate solutions. Western Ukraine was heading for the return either of Soviet or of Polish rule. The more radical elements then decided to wipe out their most vulnerable adversaries, namely Polish civilians.
3
They had no compunction in killing anyone who opposed them:
11 March 1943. In the Ukrainian village of Litogoszcz (Volhynia), Ukrainian nationalists murdered a Polish school teacher whom they had abducted. Together with this Pole they murdered several Ukrainian families who opposed the massacre.
4
In a conflict with strong religious undercurrents, the clergy were selected for bestial treatment:
Revd Ludwik Włodarczyk from Okopy was crucified; Revd Stanistaw Dobrzanski from Ostrówka was beheaded with an axe: Revd Karol Baran was sawn in half in Korytnica; Revd Zawadzki had his throat slit…
5
In post-war Eastern Europe, all war crimes were officially ascribed to the Nazis. Victims from areas like Buczacz were lumped together in the ‘Twenty Million Russian War Dead’, or otherwise hidden by silence.
6
The multinational dimensions of the tragedy were not appreciated. All nationalities have been guilty of publicizing their own losses, and of ignoring others, although one sometimes meets accounts of shared suffering:
Between May and December 1942, more than 140,000 Volhynian Jews were murdered. Some who had been given refuge in Polish homes were murdered together with their Polish protectors in the spring of 1943, when, of 300,000 Poles living in Volhynia, 40,000 were murdered by Ukrainian ‘bandits’. In many villages, Poles and Jews fought together against the common foe.
7
But no overall, even-handed survey of wartime genocide has been undertaken. Attempts to establish Polish or Catholic losses, for example, inevitably sideline Jewish and Ukrainian losses. They stress the role of Jewish and Ukrainian collaborators in the Soviet service, or of Ukrainian units under German command. They are not concerned with the activities of Silesian Poles in German
Schupo
units, nor with the Polish co-operation with the Soviet Army. It is not part of their brief to count the UPA’s Jewish and Ukrainian victims. Any exercise which looks at one side alone is bound to generate distortions.
Buczacz, incidentally, was the home town of Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi-hunter extraordinary.
8