1-276-512 - Art Media/Heritage Images

Ukrainian serving with the German army, Russian Front, 1941-1944. Detail from a German propaganda poster. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, many Ukrainians initially welcomed them as liberators from what they perceived as an occupying Russian tyranny. This was paricularly the case in the western Ukraine, which the Soviets occupied in 1939. Under German occupation, Ukrainian nationalist partisans fought on both sides.