FIGHTING IN SLOVAKIA WINTER 1945-46
FIGHTING IN SLOVAKIA WINTER 1945-46
During one of my recent trips to beautiful Slovakia I was discussing with a friend there about the fighting in the country in 1945. I had heard that several units of the German Army had continued fighting well past the winter of 1945 and into 46-47, with the goal of reaching Western lines in order to surrender. My friend says that many of these soldiers were Soviet deserters, but not all. Apparently they would come down from the Carpathian mountains at night to pillage the locals for supplies. Does anyone else know about this? He even gave me two MP40 magazines he says belonged to the "bandits".I find it quite interesting, but cannot subsantiate this. Hope this is in the right forum. Thanks all!
Your friend probably refers to units of UPA - Ukrainian Insurgent Army. More commonly known as "Banderovtsy" because of the commander Stepan Bandera. These units fought well into as long as 1953. Their operations were mostly in Western Ukraine, parts of Poland and Slovakia. Karpathian mountains are ideal to hide supplies of ammunition and local villages are small and scattered in the mountains to provide good cover for the partisans to give them food and rest.
They were armed with german weapons however they were neither parts of the German army nor supported it throughout the war. There were numerous times when the units of UPA fought against the nazis so I would not call them german collaborators.
Banderovtsi and the "Forest brothers" from Baltic countries were the only freedom fighters to combat Stalin regime in the USSR after the war.
They were armed with german weapons however they were neither parts of the German army nor supported it throughout the war. There were numerous times when the units of UPA fought against the nazis so I would not call them german collaborators.
Banderovtsi and the "Forest brothers" from Baltic countries were the only freedom fighters to combat Stalin regime in the USSR after the war.
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The 'collaborators' reference is probably because the post-war UPA included numerous survivors of the Ukrainian 14th 'Galicia' division of the W-SS (who had fulfilled the objective of volunteering for the division from the Ukrainian point of view - get plenty of weapons and military training from the Germans with which to defend the Ukraine from Stalin after the Germans had gone). There were no doubt a fair few former Schuma and other assorted German-armed Ukrainians with them too.ISU-152 wrote:They were armed with german weapons however they were neither parts of the German army nor supported it throughout the war. There were numerous times when the units of UPA fought against the nazis so I would not call them german collaborators.
Banderovtsi and the "Forest brothers" from Baltic countries were the only freedom fighters to combat Stalin regime in the USSR after the war.
The UPA's interests were in national independence and in preventing the mass murder of Ukrainians - and Stalin's state, with its record of inflicting massive artificial famine, deportation and mass shootings on the Ukraine, posed a far greater long-term threat to those interests than the German occupation did, especially once it was obvious that the Germans were losing the war.