Inter-Ethnic Violence on the Eastern Front?

[HistPolity]

While I've read a lot about the Third Reich's campaign of extermination against the Jews and other groups along with their various collaborators on the Eastern Front How common was sectarian or inter-ethnic violence?

For instance, I've read that Ukrainian nationalists on both sides targeted Russian speakers while the vice versa was also true for Russian Pro-Soviet partisans. While in a class on the Balkans I took in college, I was told the statistic that half of Yugoslavians killed during the war died at the hands of another Yugoslavian in which it was mentioned that this period was a gruesome prequel to the violence that would sweep the region in the 1990s.

Therefore, how common was this killing during the war, and is there any good sources on it?

[Jeff Leach]

You want to read about the violence in Volhynia. The wiki article gives a reference Timothy Snyder. (2003). The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing might give some interesting information (haven't read it yet). Trying to get suggestions for books about the ethnic conflict in Eastern Europé at the time of World War II, can be difficult because it still is a sore Point with many inhabitant of Eastern Europé.

When it comes to the Volhynia region my understand is that there was Ethnic conflict in the area when in 1943 the Germans started to encourage it, instead of suppressing it (same in Yugoslavia). This quickly led to small-scale warfare that really wasn't suppressed until the mid-1950s.

I read a book a Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44, M. Dean , which I feel was fairly unbaised. It gave some insights into the mindset of people from this area. I don't Think there is a book that give an ubiased and detailed account what happened in Volhynia. Yugoslavia is bettered covered but some of the best volumes are difficult to get. There are several thread on the subject on these forums.

[wm]

Volhynia was a conscious decision of Ukrainian leaders to ethnically cleanse the region from non-Ukrainians in order to create their own state there, it wasn't really a conflict.
They killed lots of their own political and military adversaries in the process too (but mostly earlier.)

[David Thompson]

For those readers interested in some forum discussions of Volhynia during the war, see:

Poland and Ukraine resolve massacre row
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26483
Huta Peniatska
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=18182
Wolyn/Volhynia in World War II
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=17547
So how many Poles were killed during the war, and by whom?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=14831
Genocide in Volhynia
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=14761
Polish President condemns "Operation Vistula"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1838
Ukrainian and Polish massacres
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53749

Off-site, there is also:
Litopys UPA
http://www.infoukes.com/upa/
Litopys UPA Online
http://www.litopysupa.com/main.php?pg=1&series=1

[wm]

I don't think the Germans encouraged the conflict, a strategically important railway line crossed Volynia and war was the last thing they needed there especially they were spread quite thin.
The UPA decided at some point of time to cleanse the territory (from Poles, Russians, Czechs, Germans) and mercilessly carried out their plan. A massacre/genocide isn't any conflict it's just a massacre.

[Forum Fan]

The Chechen deportations could be seen as an inter ethnic conflict in some aspects.

A certain number of Chechens were not only anti Soviet, but were also opposed to what they considered increasing Russian cultural influences and Russian settlement on Chechen lands, particularly the lower lying areas.

Likewise, though the Soviet directed deportations politically motivated, the deportations were carried out by locally recruited militia units from various groups that had ethnic grudges with Chechens. As a result, a certain number of the men in these units viewed their zealous enforcement of Soviet deportation orders as a means to settle ethnic grudges with Chechens.