How did hundreds of Ukrainians end up in France fighting with Americans and French against the Germans?
It’s a fascinating story that sheds light on Ukrainians, a people who throughout their history have been surrounded by bigger powers. In the 20th century, Ukraine’s neighbors warred with one another, subjugating and often dividing Ukrainians in the process. Yet the Ukrainian people, whether under the Russians, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poles, Germans or the Soviet Union, remained proud of their history, and many were intent on gaining independence.
The battalion in France was formed in Nazi-occupied Ukraine following Germany’s June 1941 surprise attack against the Soviet Union, even though the two countries had signed a joint security pact in 1939. Germans troops pushed deep into the Soviet Union, occupying land and drawing on Soviet citizens, including Ukrainian manpower, to strengthen their ranks.
Many “liberated” Ukrainians welcomed the German occupation as a chance to rebel against Soviet communism. Having been subjected to purges, forced famine, and military conscription as part of the Soviet Union, many Ukrainians saw allyship with Germany as a chance to break from Moscow and create an independent Ukraine.
The battalion, I believe, was no different from the society it came from. Organized in July 1942 in Kremenets in German-occupied Ukraine, its mission was to protect German military and transports sites from attacks by Soviet partisans. Though I have little information on the background of soldiers, I surmise that the battalion was composed of a mix of Ukrainians who joined the German military for different reasons. Some, as mentioned above, likely signed up with the German Army to seek revenge on the Soviets for their people’s suffering. This group included Ukrainians who were escaping forced labor by the Soviets and who remembered the famine caused by Soviet agricultural policies in the 1930s that killed roughly one in four Ukrainian citizens. Others may well have joined the Germans willingly because they harbored antisemitic views and wanted to defeat what they saw as a Soviet Union founded and led by Jewish leadership. And there were those who joined under duress, such as Ukrainians serving in the Soviet Army who were captured by the Germans and then released from prison on the condition that they join the Nazis.
Map of central Ukraine showing Kremenets under red arrow.
Among these groups were Ukrainian infiltrators who were seeded into the German Army with the dual purpose of strengthening resistance to the Soviets while opposing the Germans as best as they could. Their long-term goal was Ukrainian independence. Infiltrators may well have included men like the Ukrainian battalion’s first commander, a Major Rudnik. In 1943, while the battalion was protecting German trains and military installations in Belorussia (today’s Belarus), Rudnik connected with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known by its Ukrainian abbreviation UPA), which was liberating towns and small villages occupied by the Germans and sabotaging trains carrying workers to Germany. The plan was for Major Rudnik to bring the battalion to the UPA’s side, but it was scrapped when the commander was seriously wounded (or perhaps killed) in a fight with Soviet partisans. Rudnik’s successor, Major Lev Hloba, of whom we will hear about later, was infiltrated in 1942 into the German military by the UPA, according to one source.
The UPA, which numbered about 40,000 members in the summer of 1943, illustrated Ukraine’s difficult predicament at the time – forced to battle simultaneously enemies from the east (the Soviet Union) and west (Germany), who both wanted access to Ukraine’s fertile soil, long coastline and plentiful mines. The soldiers in the battalion likened their situation to being “caught between two machine guns.” *
The battalion’s dream to be free didn’t die when the initial plan in Byelorussia failed. With rumors circulating that the battalion would be moved farther west into Allied territory, leaders in the battalion decided to switch sides if the opportunity presented itself. That plan began to materialize as the Soviet Red Army pushed the Germans back and retook Ukrainian territory, forcing the Germans to move the Ukrainian battalion westward, first to present-day Poland and then through Germany to German-occupied France, where our story picks up.
By this time, the battalion had been incorporated as the 102nd battalion of the 30th Waffen-Grenadier-Division SS, an international Nazi army comprised of peoples from around Eastern Europe and the republics of the Soviet Union. The battalion was formed to protect German transportation and ammunition facilities in occupied countries. By the time it arrived in France, the 102nd battalion included Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussian, Poles and Hungarians, with the largest component comprised by Ukrainians and the officer corps predominantly Ukrainian.
But in France the 102nd’s mission became a more weaponized one – flushing out French partisans to help secure the German retreat across France after D-Day. The battalion arrived in Vesoul, France, on August 21, 1944, to destroy the maquis of Confracourt, a pesky French resistance movement that was ambushing German convoys and troop emplacements on major transport routes.
Under the watchful eyes of a 100-strong German officer corps, the battalion camped on a plateau near the Doillon Dairy, which was owned by a reputable French family whose son Simon, unbeknownst to the Germans, was a member of the Confracourt maquis. The German officers appeared clueless that their subordinates had little interest in fighting the French. They didn’t understand that most of the 102nd’s soldiers felt little animosity towards the French.
It’s not clear who — whether members of the 102nd or the French maquis — took the first step to communicate across enemy lines. But when Simon Doillon learned that the Ukrainian leadership of the battalion was open to discussions, he seized the opportunity. Operating under the noses of the Germans, Doillon met several times with the 102nd’s young Ukrainian commander Lev Hloba, who had replaced Rudnik. Hloba and his officers saw a chance to extract themselves from the crossfire of the “two machine guns.” They just didn’t know if the French would believe that they genuinely wanted to switch sides.
The Ukrainian officers proceeded cautiously, aware that the fate of 800 of their fellow soldiers depended on convincing the French to accept them without their German commanding officers finding out.
The French maquis, indeed, were suspicious: Who exactly were these soldiers in an SS battalion clothed in German uniforms? For sure, they were a confusing mix of nationalities, with different languages and maybe different motives. And what if some were actually German spies? Even if they were sincere, the maquis leadership reasoned, switching sides would provoke German retaliation and thus bring more suffering to French citizens.
Communicating during a series of secret meetings in a mix of German, French, Russian and Ukrainian, both sides listened and learned. The French began to understand the 102nd battalion’s plight — that they were anti-Hitler as much as they were anti-Stalin and had no desire to fight the French. Hloba and his officers began to see the French as similar to themselves – an occupied people seeking liberation, not terrorists intent on killing indiscriminately.
Photo of Simon Dillon from Mayor of Confracourt website.
Doillon’s reasoned demeanor eventually won the day. Speaking in the fluent German he learned as a schoolboy, he questioned the Ukrainians in measured tones. When they declared that they had orders to rid France “of the terrorists and communists who infest it,” Doillon responded: “What if these terrorists, these communists were only patriots who want, like you, to liberate their country from the foreign yoke? And if the Nazis, in France, as in Ukraine, as in Poland, killed and massacred with savagery?”
After a few days of back and forth, Doillon convinced the local maquis leadership of the Ukrainian officers’ sincerity and, backed with a promise from the maquis to provide the Ukrainians with food and safe refuge, took over control of the operation.
The battalion agreed to mutiny. After fighting for both the Soviets and Germans, they would now fight with the French.
* The UPA, comprised of Ukrainian nationalists fighting for an independent Ukraine, has a mixed historical record. It certainly helped rally Ukrainians in the dark days of 1943 when they were being attacked by both Germans and Soviets. But in the name of creating an independent Ukraine, it carried out massacres of ethnic Poles living in Ukraine in 1943 in collaboration with Nazi German helpers.
Jeffrey Lilley Writing 