“ The monuments make sense to me considering the Germans that invaded were supposed to be liberators from the Soviets who had decimated the population.”
Well that clears things up! The Nazis inn Poland and Ukraine were actually intent on liberation. What a bum rap the SS and German army is getting. Lol
Liberation was 0% of the Nazi mission in the east. Hitler himself said so in his book… it was living space for a German master race. It wasn’t to rescue Slavs.
But humorous Reich apologetics there.
Liberation was certainly not the German mission, but that didn’t preclude the Ukrainians from having that initial impression. They had suffered from Lenin and Stalin killing I think 20 million in the 20’s and 30’s. Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen killing soviet bureaucrats and Jews seemed OK, until they went after civilians in general and shipped harvests back to Germany. Even Goebbels objected to what the Nazi’s came up with for civil administration. Ukrainians were part of the intense guerrilla effort to fight the Germans.