General Discussion

In the earl< phases of Operation Barbarossa, invading German armies were wlecomed by many Ukrainians as liberators. The 1930s had shown that the Kolkhozy, Stalin's "Collective Farms," and their disastrous system had caused the death by starvation of untold millions in western areas of the Soviet Union. The Germans' fanatical efforts to root out and kill Jews, along with their brainwashing that Ukrainians and Russians were "inferior" people, led to a quick turnaraound in the minds of the western Soviets, and the "partizany" were attacking the German invaders in very short order--the very people the Wehrmacht could have had as allies, hed their leadership not had such a blind racist bent to them.