Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists

The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was a Ukrainian nationalist organisation formed in 1929.

1930s

In the 1930s, the OUN was led by Eugene Konovalets who was in contact with the German Abwehr military intelligence service.

Following the murder of the Polish interior Minister, General Pieracki, in 1934, the Polish government arrested a number of OUN leaders including Stepan Bandera.

From the mid-1930s, the OUN received the patronage of MI6, whose Helskinki station chief, Harry Carr sent OUN agents into the Soviet Union from Finland.

In May 1938, Konovalets was assassinated by Soviet agent Pavel Sudoplatov. He was replaced as OUN leader by Andrei Melnyk, although a younger and more radical faction formed under Bandera.

In late 1938, the Abwehr, which had developed links with Melnyk, used OUN activists to destabilise Ruthenia, where they were ousted by Hungary the following year.

World War Two

During the Russo-Finnish War in 1939, Harry Carr again attempted to infiltrate OUN agents into the Soviet Union, though the operation was a failure.

At the OUN Congress in 1941, the movement split into the OUN-M under Melnyk and the OUN-B under Bandera.

The Germans developed close links with the OUN-B, training its security service and two military units, codenamed 'Nachtigall' and 'Roland'.

The OUN-B military units took part in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and were soon involved in massacres of Jews and Poles.

However, the OUN-B leadership overreached itself by declaring a Ukrainian state in Lvov, a move which led to its suppression on the personal orders of Hitler, despite the misgivings of more pragmatic Wehrmacht officers.

While Bandera was interned in the VIP camp at Sachsenhausen, his brothers died in Auschwitz.

By 1943, the OUN-B had formed its own partisan army, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, fighting the Soviets and Poles more often than the Germans. In Zhitomir in November 1943, the OUN-B formed an 'Anti-Bolshevik Front' of Soviet ethnic minorities, utilising prisoners, deserters and local SS recruits.

In 1944, as the Soviets re-occupied Ukraine, Heinrich Himmler authorised cooperation with the OUN as Operation Sunflower. Stepan Bandera was released from prison.

In early 1945, the leader of the OUN-B faction, Stepan Bandera gave his support to the Nazi-backed Ukrainian National Committee formed by Pavlo Shandruk.

In the same period, the OUN made contact with British intelligence in Berne, Switzerland.

Post War

After World War Two, MI6 used Karl Marcus to recruit SS and Sicherheitsdienst veterans with links to Stepan Bandera's OUN-B faction, veterans of which were in displaced persons camps in Germany.

Bandera reformed the OUN-B in Munich in 1946 under the patronage of British and American intelligence. The 1943 Anti-Bolshevist Front was reformed as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

In the summer of 1946, OUN-B members in the displaced persons camps in Germany were involved in Operation Ohio, denouncing alleged Communists to the US Counter-Intelligence Corps and subsequently in torturing those accused.

By mid-1946, the OUN-B leadership had lost contact with nationalist guerrillas still fighting in Ukraine.

Affiliations

• Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations