Early life and education uniform, 1923 Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 in
Staryi Uhryniv, in the region of
Galicia in
Austria-Hungary, to
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church priest
Andriy Bandera (1882–1941) and Myroslava Głodzińska (1890–1921). Bandera had seven siblings: three sisters and four brothers. Bandera's younger brothers included Oleksandr, who earned a doctorate in political economy at the University of Rome, and Vasyl, who finished a degree in philosophy at the
University of Lviv. Bandera grew up in a patriotic and religious household. He did not attend primary school due to
World War I and was taught at home by his parents. At a young age, Bandera was undersized and slim. He sang in a choir, played guitar and mandolin, enjoyed hiking, jogging, swimming, ice skating, basketball and chess. After the
dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the wake of
World War I,
Eastern Galicia briefly became part of the
West Ukrainian People's Republic. Bandera's father, who joined the
Ukrainian Galician Army as a chaplain, was active in the nationalist movement preceding the
Polish–Ukrainian War, which was fought between November 1918 to July 1919 and ended with Ukrainian defeat and incorporation of
Eastern Galicia into
Poland.
Mykola Mikhnovsky's 1900 publication,
Independent Ukraine, influenced Bandera greatly. After graduating from a Ukrainian high school in
Stryi in 1927, where he was engaged in a number of youth organizations, Bandera planned to attend the Husbandry Academy in
Czechoslovakia, but he either did not get a passport or the Academy notified him that it was closed. In 1928, Bandera enrolled in the
agronomy program at the
Politechnika Lwowska in its branch in
Dubliany, but never completed his studies due to his political activities and arrests.
Early activities costume Bandera associated himself with a variety of Ukrainian organisations during his time in high school, particularly
Plast,
Sokil, and Organisation of the Upper Grades of the Ukrainian High Schools (OVKUH). In 1927 Bandera joined
Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). In February 1929 he joined
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Bandera was drawn into national activity by , one of the leaders of the Ukrainian youth movement. During his studies, he devoted his efforts to underground and nationalist activities, for which he was arrested several times. The first time was on 14 November 1928, for illegally celebrating the 10th anniversary of the
ZUNR; in 1930 with his brother Andrii; and in 1932-33 as many as six times. Between March and June 1932, he spent three months in prison in connection with the investigation of the assassination of by . In the early 1930s, in response to attacks perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists, Polish authorities carried out the
pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia against the
Ukrainian minority. This resulted in destroyed property and mass detentions, and took place in southeastern
voivodeships of the
Second Polish Republic.
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists Bandera joined OUN in 1929 and quickly climbed through the ranks, thanks to the support of Okhrymovych, becoming in 1930 the head of a section distributing OUN propaganda in Eastern Galicia. A year later, he became director of propaganda for the whole OUN. After Okhrymovych's death and the flight from Poland of his successor Ivan Habrusevych in 1931, he became the leading candidate to become head of the homeland executive. But due to the fact that he was in detention at the time, he was unable to assume this function, and upon his release, he became deputy to
Bohdan Kordiuk, who assumed this function. After the failure of the , Kordiuk had to step down and Bandera took over de facto his function, which was sanctioned at a conference in Berlin on 3–6 June 1933. On 29 August 1931, Polish politician
Tadeusz Hołówko was assassinated by two members of the OUN
Vasyl Bilas and
Dmytro Danylyshyn. Both were sentenced to death. Bandera-led OUN propaganda made them martyrs and ordered Ukrainian priests in Lviv and elsewhere to ring bells on the day of their execution. Since 1932, Bandera was assistant chief of OUN and around that time controlled several "warrior units" in Poland in places such as the
Free City of Danzig (Wolne Miasto Gdańsk),
Drohobycz,
Lwów,
Stanisławów,
Brzezany, and
Truskawiec. Bandera collaborated closely with
Richard Yary, who would later side with Bandera and help him form OUN-B. On Bandera's orders OUN began a campaign of terrorist acts, such as attacks on post-offices, bomb-throwing at Polish exhibitions and murders of policemen to mass campaigns against Polish tobacco and alcohol monopolies and against the denationalization of Ukrainian youth. In 1934, Bandera was arrested in
Lwów and tried twice: first, concerning involvement in a plot to assassinate the minister of internal affairs,
Bronisław Pieracki, and second at a general trial of OUN executives. He was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to death. The death sentence was commuted to
life imprisonment. , 20 November 1935 After the trials, Bandera became renowned and admired among Ukrainians in Poland as a symbol of a revolutionary who fought for Ukrainian independence. While in prison, Bandera was "to some extent detached from OUN discourses" but not completely isolated from the global political debates of the late 1930s thanks to Ukrainian and other newspaper subscriptions delivered to his cell.
World War II Before
World War II the territory of today's
Ukraine was split between
Poland, the
Soviet Union,
Romania and
Czechoslovakia. Prior to the 1939
invasion of Poland, German military intelligence recruited
OUN members into the
Bergbauernhilfe unit and smuggled Ukrainian nationalists into Poland in order to erode Polish defences by conducting a terror campaign directed at Polish farmers and
Jews. OUN leaders
Andriy Melnyk (code name Consul I) and Bandera (code name Consul II) both served as agents of the
Nazi Germany military intelligence
Abwehr Second Department. Their goal was to run diversion activities after Germany's attack on the Soviet Union. This information is part of the testimony that Abwehr Colonel Erwin Stolze gave on 25 December 1945 and submitted to the Nuremberg trials, with a request to be admitted as evidence. Bandera was freed from
Brest (Brześć) Prison in Eastern Poland in early September 1939, as a result of the
invasion of Poland. There are differing accounts of the circumstances of his release. Soon thereafter Eastern Poland was
occupied by the Soviet Union. Upon release from prison, Bandera moved first to
Lviv, but after realising it would be occupied by the Soviets, Bandera together with other OUN members, moved to
Kraków, the capital of Germany's occupational
General Government. where, according to
Tadeusz Piotrowski, he established close connections with the German
Abwehr and
Wehrmacht. There, he also came in contact with the leader of the OUN,
Andriy Melnyk. In 1940, the political differences and expectations between the two leaders caused the OUN to split into two factions, OUN-B and OUN-M (
Banderites and
Melnykites), each one claiming legitimacy. The factions differed in ideology, strategy and tactics: the
OUN-M faction led by Melnyk preached a more conservative approach to nation-building, while the
OUN-B faction, led by Bandera, supported a revolutionary approach; however, both factions exhibited similar levels of
radical nationalism,
fascism,
antisemitism, xenophobia and violence. The vast majority of young OUN members joined Bandera's faction. OUN-B was devoted to the independence of Ukraine, as a single-party fascist totalitarian state free of national minorities. It was later implicated in
the Holocaust. Before the independence proclamation of 30 June 1941, Bandera oversaw the formation of so-called "Mobile Groups" (), which were small (5–15 members) groups of OUN-B members who would travel from
General Government to Western Ukraine and, after a German advance to Eastern Ukraine, encourage support for the OUN-B and establish local authorities run by OUN-B activists. In total, approximately 7,000 people participated in these mobile groups, and they found followers among a wide circle of intellectuals, such as
Ivan Bahriany,
Vasyl Barka,
Hryhorii Vashchenko and many others. , 30 June 1941 In spring 1941, Bandera held meetings with the heads of Germany's intelligence, regarding the formation of "
Nachtigall" and "
Roland" Battalions. In the spring of that year, the OUN received 2.5 million marks for subversive activities inside the Soviet Union.
Gestapo and
Abwehr officials protected Bandera's followers, as both organisations intended to use them for their own purposes. On 30 June 1941, with the arrival of Nazi troops in Ukraine, the OUN-B unilaterally declared an independent Ukrainian state ("Act of Renewal of Ukrainian Statehood").
The proclamation pledged a cooperation of the new Ukrainian state with Nazi Germany under the leadership of Hitler. The declaration was accompanied by violent
pogroms. There is no evidence that Bandera actively supported or participated in the Lviv pogroms or acts of violence against Jewish and Polish civilians, but he was well informed about the violence and was "unable or unwilling to instruct Ukrainian nationalist military troops (as Nachtigall, Roland and UPA) to protect vulnerable minorities under their control". As German historian Olaf Glöckner writes, Bandera "failed to manage this problem (ethnic and anti-Semitic hatred) inside his forces, just like
Symon Petljura failed 25 years before him." OUN(b) leaders' expectation that the Nazi regime would post-factum recognize an independent fascist Ukraine as an
Axis ally proved to be wrong. German authorities requested that the declaration be withdrawn, but Stetsko and Bandera refused. The Germans barred Bandera from moving to newly conquered
Lviv, limiting his residency to
occupied Kraków. On 5 July, Bandera was brought to Berlin, where he was placed in
honourable captivity. On 12 July, the prime minister of the newly formed
Ukrainian National Government,
Yaroslav Stetsko, was arrested and taken to Berlin. Although released from custody on 14 July, both were required to stay in Berlin. Bandera was free to move around the city, but could not leave it. The Germans closed OUN-B offices in Berlin and Vienna, and on 15 September 1941 Bandera and leading OUN members were arrested by the
Gestapo. By the end of 1941, relations between Nazi Germany and the OUN-B had soured to the point where a Nazi document dated 25 November 1941 stated that "the Bandera Movement is preparing a revolt in the which has as its ultimate aim the establishment of an independent Ukraine. All functionaries of the Bandera Movement must be arrested at once and, after thorough interrogation, are to be liquidated". In January 1942, Bandera was transferred to
Sachsenhausen concentration camp's special prison cell building () for high-profile political prisoners such as
Horia Sima, the chancellor of Austria,
Kurt Schuschnigg or
Stefan Grot-Rowecki and high-risk escapees. Bandera was not completely cut off from the outside world; his wife visited him regularly and was able to help him keep in touch with his followers. In April 1944, Bandera and his deputy
Yaroslav Stetsko were approached by a
Reich Security Main Office official to discuss plans for diversions and sabotage against the Soviet Army. Bandera's release was preceded by lengthy talks between the Germans and the UPA in Galicia and Volhynia. Local talks and agreements took place as early as the end of 1943, talks at the central level of the OUN-B began in March 1944 and ended with the conclusion of an informal agreement in August or September 1944. The talks from the OUN-B Provid side were led mainly by Ivan Hrynokh. Meanwhile, in July 1944, the formation of the
Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) took place, which was intended as a supra-party organisation that constituted the civilian body overseeing the UPA and was intended as the supreme authority in Ukraine. In reality, only members or sympathizers of the OUN-B took part in its formation. became president of the UHVR, but real power rested in the hands of the General Secretariat, headed by
Roman Shukhevych. At the congress, decisions were made to stop any open collaboration with the Germans, creating a government alongside them was excluded, only taking supplies from them was considered. It was planned to carry out partisan fighting in the rear of the approaching Soviet army. A decision was also taken to move away from radically nationalist rhetoric towards greater democratisation. A UHVR foreign mission led by
Mykola Lebed was sent to establish contact with Western governments. On 28 September 1944, Bandera was released by the German authorities and moved to house arrest. Shortly after, the Germans released some 300 OUN members, including Stetsko and Melnyk. The release of OUN members was one of the few successes of Lebed's mission on behalf of the UHVR, which failed to establish contacts with the Western Allies. Bandera reacted negatively to the changes taking place within the OUN-B in Ukraine. His opposition was provoked by the 'democratisation' of the OUN-B and, above all, the relegation of the former leadership of the organisation to purely symbolic roles. On 5 October 1944, SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger met with Bandera and offered him the opportunity to join
Andrey Vlasov and his
Russian Liberation Army, which Bandera rejected. In December 1944, the Abwehr moved Bandera and Stetsko to Kraków in order to prepare the Ukrainian unit to be parachuted to the rear of the Soviet army. From there, they sent Yurii Lopatynskyi as a courier to
Shukhevych. Bandera informed him that he was ready to return to Ukraine, while Stetsko informed him that he still considered himself the Ukrainian prime minister. Lopatynskyi arrived to Shukhevych in early January 1945. At a meeting of the Provid on 5 and 6 February 1945, it was decided that Bandera's return to Ukraine was pointless, and that it might be more beneficial for him to remain in the West, where, as a former Nazi prisoner, he could organize support of international opinion. Bandera was re-elected as leader of the whole OUN.
Roman Shukhevych resigned as the leader of the OUN and became the leader of OUN in Ukraine and Bandera's deputy. The leaders of the OUN in Ukraine also came to the conclusion that the German-Soviet war would soon end in a Soviet victory, and a decision was made to continue the fight against the Soviets with smaller units, in order to maintain the will to fight among the population. It was also decided to hold talks with the Polish underground to conclude an anti-Soviet alliance. At that point, the cooperation with Germans basically ceased with the loss of direct contact and the front moving further west. In January, Bandera was in
Lehnin, west of Berlin. Later he went to Weimar, where he took part in the formation of the
Ukrainian National Committee (UNK) as one of the leaders alongside
Pavlo Shandruk,
Volodymyr Kubijovyč,
Andriy Melnyk, Oleksandr Semenko and
Pavlo Skoropadsky. In March, the UNK appointed Shandrukh as commander of the newly formed
Ukrainian National Army (UNA), which was to fight the Soviets alongside the Germans; the
Waffen-SS Galizien division was incorporated. Bandera later denied in conversations with the CIA that he had been involved in the formation of these organisations or any collaboration with Germany after his release. In February 1945, at a conference of the OUN-B in Vienna, Bandera was made the leader of the Foreign Units of the OUN (ZCh OUN). It was there that he openly criticised for the first time the changes that had taken place in the OUN-B in Ukraine. With the Red Army approaching, Bandera left Vienna and travelled to Innsbruck via Prague.
Postwar activity , where Bandera lived at the time of his assassination After the war, Bandera and his family moved several times around
West Germany, staying close to and in
Munich, where Bandera organised the ZCh OUN centre. He used false identification documents that helped him to conceal his past relationship with the Nazis. On 16 April 1946, the
Yaroslav Stetsko-led
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations was founded, with which Bandera also collaborated. The ZCh OUN quickly became the largest organisation in the approximately 110,000-strong Ukrainian diaspora in Germany, with 5,000 members. Part of the organisation was the SB security service, headed by Myron Matviyenko. The OUN-M was three times smaller. The foreign representation of the UHVR (ZP UHVR), led by
Mykola Lebed, operated separately from the ZCh OUN, but many of its members belonged to both organisations. As early as 1945, ZCh had established contacts with Western intelligence; from 1948 onwards, it had permanent cooperation with
British intelligence, which helped to transfer couriers to Ukraine in return for receiving intelligence data. ZP UHVR, collaborated with the US intelligence. A September 1945 report by the US
Office of Strategic Services said that Bandera had "earned a fierce reputation for conducting a 'reign of terror' during World War II". Bandera was protected by the US-backed
Gehlen Organization but he also received help from underground organizations of former Nazis who helped Bandera to cross borders between
Allied occupation zones. In 1946, agents of the US Army intelligence agency
Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) and NKVD entered into extradition negotiations based on the wartime intra-Allied cooperation agreement made at the
Yalta Conference. The CIC wanted
Frederick Wilhelm Kaltenbach, who would turn out to be deceased, and in return, the Soviet Union proposed Bandera. Bandera and many Ukrainian nationalists had ended up in the American zone after the war. The Soviet Union regarded all Ukrainians as Soviet citizens and demanded their repatriation under the intra-Allied agreement. The US thought Bandera was too valuable to give up due to his knowledge of the Soviet Union, so the US started blocking his extradition under an operation called "Anyface". From the perspective of the US, the Soviet Union and Poland were issuing extradition attempts of these Ukrainians to prevent the US from getting sources of intelligence, so this became one of the factors in the breakdown of the cooperation agreement. However, the CIC still considered Bandera untrustworthy and were concerned about the effect of his activities on Soviet-American relations, and in mid-1947 conducted an extensive and aggressive search to locate him. == Death ==