User:Lvivske/Sandbox2

Polish-Ukrainian civil war
Part of World War II
Monument in memory of Polish citizens of Janowa Dolina, Volyn
Date 1943-45 Location Volhynia, Galicia, Lublin (Kholm region), all along the border
Belligerents
Pro Ukrainian forces UPA Local militias Armed peasants, SS Galizen in 1944	Pro Polish forces Armia Krajowa Polish self-defense groups; Polish soviet partisans, Polish Nazi collaborators/police
Commanders and leaders
Shukhevych
Strength
UPA = 20,000 est. in Volhynia ,	Polish Soviet partisans = 5-7,000, 1,200 Poles in german police (synder, restructuring, 172)
Casualties and losses
Military dead: X Civilian dead: 20,000 est.	Military dead: X Civilian dead: 35,000 est.

The Polish–Ukrainian Civil War of 1943-47 was a conflict between the forces of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Poles for the control over Eastern Galicia and Volhynia after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1941. Polish-Ukrainian conflict, endless cycle of mutual reprisals http://books.google.ca/books?id=Q2mq5C1CjgcC&pg=PR18&dq=shumuk+ukrainian+polish+volhynia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CddbT4-ZEILh0QHH-9ngDw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=shumuk%20ukrainian%20polish%20volhynia&f=false xvii

motyka calls it polish-ukrainian conflict

" Though he was a Polish partisan, Lotnik made it clear that atrocities could be attributed equally to both sides, ethnic Ukrainian and ethnic Polish" http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment13.htm " We retaliated by attacking an even bigger Ukrainian village and . . . killed women and children. Some of [our men] were so filled with hatred after losing whole generations of their family in the Ukrainian attacks that they swore they would take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. . . . This was how the fighting escalated. Each time more people were killed, more houses burnt, more women raped."[4] "

Background

The first of these occupational waves took place in the aftermath of the First World War. The attempted creation of nation-states in Poland and Ukraine carried with them the same transitional issues similarly situated European states endured.[1] In this transition away from an agrarian to a modern polity, cross-border friction over land ownership was only made worse by the authoritative policies of the Polish state at the time.[2] With the newly reformed Polish state no longer imperial in design, ethnic cleavages were especially pronounced in the voivodships within Galicia and Volhynia where Polish elite continued to rule as a minority of the population.[3] On a local level, first hand reports cite the killing of Ukrainians along the San River.[4] On an official level, Poles ruled heavy handedly from 1920-39.[5] In defiance of the League of Nations and its attempt to demarcate a border between two ethnic groups (known as the Curzon Line) Poland occupied and proceeded to divide Ukrainian lands with the Soviet Union.[6] Ukrainians considered Polish occupation to be thrust upon them, whereas Poles considered western Ukrainian lands to be a necessary possession for state security.[7] British commentary on government policy exclaimed that persecution provided Ukrainians with an “added consciousness and solidarity” and that Polish severity “increased the insecurity of the south-eastern frontier of the republic.”[8] The Polish narrative tends to ignore the behavior and consequences of its interwar government.[9] It should have come as no surprise, though, that the repressive policies of Jozef Pilsudski and the Polish colonization of Ukrainian territory fostered the growth of later Ukrainian insurgency.[10]

[1] Chirs Hann, "Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe: Poles and Ukrainians beside the Curzon Line," Nations and Nationalis, 2, 3 (1996), p. 403.

[2] David R. Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine (Budapest, 2007), p. 211.

[3] Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine, p. 211.

[4] Ibid., p. 218.

[5] Jonathan Levy, The Intermarium: Wilson, Madison, & East Central European Federalism (Boca Raton, Fla., 2006), p. 237.

[6] Hann, "Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe: Poles and Ukrainians beside the Curzon Line," p. 394.

[7] Levy, The Intermarium: Wilson, Madison, & East Central European Federalism, p. 237.

[8] H.G. Wanklyn, The Eastern Marchlands of Europe (London, 1941), pp. 163-164.

[9] Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating national history in contemporary Ukraine, p. 224.

[10] Ibid., p. 209.

hash ntes

• " In all of these conflicts Poles took revenge on Ukrainian civilians. "