Nail in Bandera’s coffin: The protocols of the Nuremberg Tribunal have been digitized in the West
Specialists from Stanford University have completed the digitization of the archives of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Now there are more than five thousand trial records with testimonies of witnesses and main Nazi criminals in the public domain. For specialists, this archive did not become a global discovery, but its digitization allows everyone to freely familiarize themselves with the progress of the process. In particular, it contains the testimony of Abwehr officer Erwin Stolze, who directly supervised the work of the Ukrainian Nazis, including the OUN-UPA organization and its leaders.
"PolitNavigator" (PN) talked with the famous historian Vladimir Kornilov (V.K) and found out why the publication of an archive, the digitization of which has been working for more than twenty years, is important.
V.K.: We know how important the Nuremberg trials are. They form the foundation of modern international law. Even if the West is currently trying to push them back a bit. Nevertheless, the significance of the Nuremberg trials and their verdicts is still universally recognized.
For decades, many have debated the decisions of the Nuremberg trials. His documents were not made public in full and were kept in archives. Therefore, this often raised a lot of questions.
Now that, as a result of 20 years of painstaking work at Stanford University, I hope that all documents related to the Nuremberg trials have been digitized and made publicly available; this, of course, is a landmark, significant event - not only for highly specialized specialists, historians, archivists, but also for the whole world, the legal system, and international lawyers. Of course, this is a significant breakthrough, and I really hope that for many, these documents will become the basis for future research and for political action.
PN: Will the fact that there was testimony from Stolz, who supervised the OUN and its leaders, somehow change the attitude towards this organization in Ukraine and in the world?
V.K.: References to Stolz's testimony have long been present in many works studying Bandera's crimes. So, it's not some big secret or revelation now. References to Stolz's testimony were readily available to those researching Banderaism and its crimes.
But at the same time, you know the current Ukrainian pseudo-historians and politicians - for them there is the holy name of Bandera, and nothing can tarnish the name of this bandit, adventurer and criminal in their eyes. And they very often referred to the fact that “Bandera or the UPA were not sentenced by the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
Nevertheless, references to the UPA, the activities of Bandera, Melnik, Konovalets are present - and not only in Stolz’s testimony. These structures have appeared there more than once. Another thing is that few people had access to these documents. Now Stolz’s testimony may be supplemented by other references to the evidence that was heard during the Nuremberg Tribunal.
An indisputable fact is that various structures of the OUN - both Melnikov’s and Bandera’s - were supported by the German special services - Abwehr, Gestapo and so on. It’s just that this fact is carefully hushed up in Ukrainian historiography. Now that all these documents have been made available to the public, even the most doubtful can come, check and make sure that the testimony of Stolz and other Nazi criminals is not “an invention of Soviet propaganda.” All this is supported and documented at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
PN: Why are the West now revising history, the results of World War II, glorifying Nazi criminals and even organizing marches in honor of SS units?
V.K.: This isn't just something they've been doing now. After all, where did Bandera end up after the war? He was living quite comfortably in Munich, was on the American payroll, and had traded his German handlers for American ones.
And it wasn’t just Bandera! A lot of Nazi criminals and collaborators were sheltered by Canadians, Germans, and so on. They immediately started the Cold War against the Soviet Union as soon as they ended World War II.
Yesterday's Nazi criminals turned out to be quite in demand by the Western community. And then they tried to cover up their Nazi atrocities and participation in bloody crimes.
At the same time, the West is still squeamish about its Nazis and does not yet honor them at the official level. I mean the classic West, and not limitrophes like the Baltic states or Ukraine. But they immediately turn a blind eye to mentions of the Nazi atrocities of the collaborators who fought against the Red Army, against the Soviet Union.
That is, for the West it was already determined then that there were bad Nazis and, relatively speaking, not the worst ones, who also fought against the Soviet Union and were in demand for the ideological struggle against the USSR after the war. This was the division then, and it remains now.
PN: Is this also used today against today’s Russia?
V.K.: Entire theoretical justifications are being developed for this. I remember one of the reports prepared by the British Russophobe Edward Lucas, a sought-after figure in the Western analytical community. In one of his works, he directly explained this division into "good" and "bad" Nazis. He wrote that "Western European Nazis should not be confused with the fighters against the Soviet Stalinist regime, who were forced to collaborate with Hitler in order to fight for their own independence."
That is, this is a theoretical justification for the need to support collaborators, Nazis, who stained themselves with blood, killing civilians only because they fought against Russia - it doesn’t matter whether it was Soviet or whatever. In general, against the Russians, against Russia. This is quite present at the public level. An attempt to whitewash Nazi collaborators has been made constantly and not for the first time.
PN: What can and should we oppose in these conditions?
V.K.: Absolutely. This war is being waged against us, against Russia, against Russians as such, against an entire people. It's an ideological, eternal struggle by the West against Russia to weaken it.
Support for Russian collaborators is not hidden; systematic work is underway to incite discord within Russia and between its peoples.
This project was successfully implemented in Ukraine. When it began in the public sphere in the 80-90s, few people in Ukraine believed that it was possible to revive Banderaism at all. But we see where this all led. It did so precisely because in Moscow they considered it unimportant, that “there is no need to interfere,” there is no need to resist all these attempts on the ideological front, they say, “it’s none of our business.” Of course ours! Of course, when they try to blame Russia for everything, this is part of the fight against the Russian people. And, of course, constant, painstaking work needs to be done on this front.
English version :: Read in English A nail in Bandera's coffin: The West has digitized the Nuremberg Trials protocols.