Polish–Ukrainian conflict (1939–1947)
Series of armed clashes, 1942 to 1947 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Polish-Ukrainian conflict[2][lower-alpha 2] - a series of armed clashes between Ukrainian guerrillas and Polish underground armed units during and after the World War II, namely between 1942 and 1945, whose direct continuation was the struggle of the Polish People's Army against the Ukrainian underground until 1947, with periodic participation of Soviet guerrilla units and the regular Red Army, as well as Romanian, Hungarian and German armed formations. The fighting initially took place in the south-eastern areas of the Second Polish Republic occupied by the Third Reich, and later in the Rzeszów and south-eastern parts of the Lublin Voivodeship of the so-called "People's Poland" and in the western areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. There was also sporadic activity in the Romanian-occupied territories.[3]
Polish-Ukrainian ethnic conflict | |||||||||
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Part of World War II | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Home Army Peasant Battalions National Armed Forces People's Army People's Republic of Poland |
Ukrainian Insurgent Army Anti-communist allies: | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Stefan Rowecki Jan Kotowicz Kazimierz Bąbiński Antoni Rychel † Stanislaw Basaj † Zenon Jachymek Józef Biss Antoni Żubryd Stefan Mossor Franciszek Jóźwiak Karol Świerczewski † Michał Rola-Żymierski Marian Spychalski Timofei Strokach Pyotr Vershigora |
Stepan Bandera Mykola Lebed Roman Shukhevych Klyachkivsky † Hryhoriy Yankivskyi † Mykhailo Galyo † Dmytro Karvanskyi † Maryan Lukasevich † Volodymyr Shchygelskyi Myroslav Onishkevich Roman Hrobelski Ivan Mitringa † | ||||||||
Units involved | |||||||||
Peaseants Battalion |
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In the context of occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, that happened only 20 years after the defeat of West Ukrainian People's Republic in Polish-Ukrainian war, politically active Ukrainians wanted to create a new state to include Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, while politically active Poles wanted to restore Poland within its borders 1939.[4][5] The main clashes began after Nazi Germany had started to retreat on the Eastern front in 1943, as many already believed it was going to lose the war.