You ask me if I have read “Mein Kampf” and I ask you: “would a 17 year old Ukranian in 1943 have read ‘Mein Kampf’?”
I repeat, how much of what you said would a 17 year old Ukranian know in 1943?
You are using 2023 information to criticize a decision made by a 1943 teenage farmer.
Would I ever join the Nazis not matter who they were fighting against?
No way! I agree with you, but we are not talking about me.
That’s my only point, to look at them on a per-case-basis and judge their actions, because they truly were between a rock and a hard place (I am not talking about Spanish, French, Italian, German and any other that joined the Nazis, this is very specific to Ukranians and maybe some neighbouring countries).
At the end of the day, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought for the Red Army because it was known policy at the time that the Nazis sought to eradicate the Slavic Untermensch and that they wanted to seize Ukrainian farmland to starve the Ukrainians and feed the Germans. This only became more evident as the war went on. Ukrainians who joined the Nazis are complicit in the deaths of their countrymen.
You ask me if I have read “Mein Kampf” and I ask you: “would a 17 year old Ukranian in 1943 have read ‘Mein Kampf’?”
I repeat, how much of what you said would a 17 year old Ukranian know in 1943?
You are using 2023 information to criticize a decision made by a 1943 teenage farmer. Would I ever join the Nazis not matter who they were fighting against? No way! I agree with you, but we are not talking about me.
That’s my only point, to look at them on a per-case-basis and judge their actions, because they truly were between a rock and a hard place (I am not talking about Spanish, French, Italian, German and any other that joined the Nazis, this is very specific to Ukranians and maybe some neighbouring countries).
At the end of the day, the vast majority of Ukrainians fought for the Red Army because it was known policy at the time that the Nazis sought to eradicate the Slavic Untermensch and that they wanted to seize Ukrainian farmland to starve the Ukrainians and feed the Germans. This only became more evident as the war went on. Ukrainians who joined the Nazis are complicit in the deaths of their countrymen.