ABSTRACT
On June 22, 1941, the German army launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in which it was soon joined by Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Croatian, Italian, and Spanish regulars as well as by volunteers from nearly every European nation. Romanian colonizing and recolonizing policies spelled disaster for the local Jews and for many Ukrainians, all of whom were accused of having collaborated with the Soviet occupiers. At the news of the German invasion on June 22, 1941, the Soviet political police massacred thousands of prison inmates in western Ukraine, the former eastern Poland, and the Baltics. Divided before First World War between Austria-Hungary and czarist Russia, Ukraine was redivided in the interwar years, this time between Poland and Soviet Russia. While the internal Ukrainian conflicts were raging, the German army occupied Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and advanced rapidly to the gates of Leningrad and Moscow.
