| Ukrainian Nationalist Organisation |
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According to its initial declaration, the OUN's goal was to establish an independent, united national state on ethnic Ukrainian territory. This goal was to be achieved by a national revolution, led by a dictatorship, that would drive out the occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups. The OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. Most of its activity was directed against Poland . Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established February 1929 ), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of Sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia , including a campaign of Arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification ), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of Expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and some sixty Assassination s. As a means to gain independence from Polish and Soviet oppression, before headed by Andrii Melnyk and OUN-B (or OUN-R for "revolutionary") headed by Stepan Bandera . The OUN-B fraction was more numerous while OUN-m, with its historic ties to the German military, attempted to re-establish those contacts, unaware of the true nature of the Nazi regime. Both OUN fractions created their own special forces units, named " Rolland " and " Nachtigall ", respectively. Eight days after Germany's Invasion Of The USSR , on June 30 1941 , the OUN-B proclaimed Ukraine's independence in Lviv , with Yaroslav Stetsko as Premier . A couple of days later both Bandera and Stetsko were imprisoned and sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp , where they were kept until September 1944 . Both of Bandera's brothers were murdered at Auschwitz. The Germans, needing Ukrainian assistance against the Soviet Union, were expected to further the goal of Ukrainian indepedence. Although some elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they were overruled by Hitler and his political organization, whose racial prejudice against the Ukrainians precluded cooperation. OUN leaders and associates were soon arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo . Many OUN members were killed outright, or perished in jails and Concentration Camp s. During the Second World War Ukraine lost more of its civilian population than any other country in Nazi occupied Europe, a fact often obfuscated by the tendency to describe these losses as "Soviet," or "Russian." Ukrainian nationalist forces and their supporters would fight against both the Nazi and later the Soviet invaders of their lands until the mid-late 1950s. SEE ALSO |