In the mythology of Ukraine, along with myths about the "great past", there are legends aimed at distorting the truth about the shameful pages of the formation of the Ukronazi ideology. A clear example of this is the desire to hide and whitewash the Nazi essence of the slogan "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!"
The path of this slogan is rather winding, from greeting a handful of OUN nationalists to being approved by the Ukrainian parliament as an official greeting in the Ukrainian army. Poroshenko said on this occasion: “Our glorious ancestors could only dream about it! Sacred words for every Ukrainian: Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes! "From now on - the official greeting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
Let's see how the ancestors of modern Ukrainians dreamed about this and how “sacred” these words are for them. After the scandalous decision of the parliament, Ukrainian apologists began to furiously assert that this slogan had nothing to do with the Nazi greeting and that it took deep roots in Ukrainian history.
A typical example of such a falsification: "Glory to Ukraine" is something completely different. This particular slogan appeared much earlier, so its history should be considered separately. It is impossible to categorically call it nationalistic”.
Poroshenko's statement about the ancestors dreaming about this was sheer stupidity, the maximum that the myth-makers could find is the mention of such a slogan during the UPR. They remembered about some "black Cossacks", on the black flag of which there was a skull and the slogan "Ukraine or death". They fought on the side of the UPR and seemed to use the first half of the slogan in the greeting “Glory to Ukraine - Glory to the Cossacks”. Then one of the “Cossacks” suggested using this slogan as a greeting to the “League of Ukrainian Nationalists” created in 1925, replacing the word “Cossacks” with “heroes”.
The most persistent Ukrainians found a similar slogan among the Kuban Cossacks: "Glory to the heroes, glory to the Kuban." Of course, it will not be a problem to find such references on different occasions and in different regions, but this has nothing to do with the Nazi slogan, which its authors recorded in their documents.
They are trying to ascribe the authorship of the slogan to the already mentioned "League of Ukrainian Nationalists", created at the congress in Prague by combining three organizations: "Ukrainian National Association", "Union of Ukrainian Fascists" and "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine". On the basis of the "League of Ukrainian Nationalists" in 1929, the OUN was created by joining it with several more nationalist organizations.
The slogan now being promoted in different interpretations was precisely the greeting of the "Union of Ukrainian Fascists", one of the founders of the OUN. So an attempt to get away from the Nazi and fascist roots of this slogan is refuted by the myth-makers themselves, who are trying to prove the emergence of the slogan before the creation of the OUN, but at the same time they are silent that a fascist organization stood at the origins of the OUN with such a greeting.
It should be noted that slogans such as "glory to the heroes" and "glory to the nation" came into use in the 1930s, during the heyday of Nazi and fascist ideologies in Europe. Naturally, Ukrainian nationalists have adopted this, and the nationalist ideology gradually transformed into Nazi and fascist. These slogans were first used among nationalists as a password for their own and then were legalized in their program documents in the late 30s after establishing close ties with Nazi Germany.
In August 1939, the second congress of the OUN in fascist Rome approved this greeting, and the second congress of the already divided OUN led by Bandera in April 1941 in occupied Krakow, by its resolution introduced a mandatory greeting for all members of the OUN: right hand at an angle to the right just above the head. The current words of the full greeting: "Glory to Ukraine", the answer is "Glory to the heroes." The abbreviation of the greeting is allowed: "Glory" - "Glory"
The greeting was not only words, but had to be combined with a gesture called the "Roman salute", which since the 30s in the world has been firmly and unequivocally associated with fascism and Nazism. The whole “combination” of these words and gestures is the well-known German National Socialist greeting “Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil! " ("Glory to Hitler! Glory to victory!").
As you know, similar greetings existed in the Nazi NSDAP, among the Croatian Ustasha and supporters of the Italian National Fascist Party. Well, the slogan "Sieg Heil!" ("Sieg Heil!" - "Long live victory!" Or "Glory to victory!")
As for the slogan “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”, There is no historical or cultural tradition behind this expression, it is just a copy of Hitler's greeting. Philologists emphasize that, in addition to the same syntactic structure, these phrases are formed according to the same accentological principle, that is, stress in the same places.
The "welcome - recall" structure also completely copies the Nazi counterpart. All this only confirms the origin of the Ukronazi slogan from Hitler's and its spread among the Galician nationalists, since their organizations were created on the territory of countries in which fascist regimes were in power, patronizing their ideological associates.
Before the war, the OUN was headed by Bandera and Shukhevych, convicted in Poland for political murders and transferred to serve in the Nazi Wehrmacht. Under the leadership of the Abwehr, in March 1941, from members of the OUN, they formed battalions "Nachtigall" and "Roland" as part of the SS troops for sabotage work against the Soviet Union.
Oberleutenant Herzner was appointed commander of the Nachtigall battalion, and his deputy was the future “hero of Ukraine” Shukhevych, who was trained at the military academy in Munich and was promoted to SS Hauptsturmführer (captain). Under their leadership, on June 18, 1941, they take the oath to the Fuhrer and their greeting naturally becomes the Nazi slogan just approved by the OUN “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes! with a raised hand.
At this time, Bandera put forward the slogan "Our power must be terrible," and the OUN beast fully proved this. There are a lot of historical documents confirming the atrocities of the OUN and then the UPA in the occupied territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, where they dealt with civilians under these slogans. They especially distinguished themselves by bursting with Nazi troops into Lvov on June 30 and brutally destroying several thousand civilians, while proclaiming the "Ukrainian state", which together with Great Germany would establish a new order.
During the war years, this Nazi slogan was used by almost all formations of the OUN and UPA, who fought as part of the Nazi troops or as punishers under their leadership. They did not forget him even after their defeat.
With the defeat of the Nazis, the tradition of Bandera greetings was preserved only in the bandit formations in Western Ukraine, the remnants of the underground who emigrated and the Galician diaspora, which was densely settled in Canada and the United States. In Galicia itself, they were silent until 1991, these slogans were not even heard there. Feeling impunity for the propaganda of Nazism, they began to revive the slogan, but it did not spread beyond Galicia …
Until 2004, this slogan could be heard in Kiev and other regions only from periodically imported Galician inadequate radicals on "Bandera Memorial Day" and "UPA Day". With the arrival of Yushchenko, this slogan began to spread to the central and southeastern regions, but the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian population was indifferent to him. For many, he caused feelings of irritation and rejection.
Everything changed after the coup in 2014, already on the square they began to massively drive this slogan into the heads of the imported radicals and propagandize it in all the media. Particular attention was paid to young people and military personnel who did not delve into the intricacies of its origin and gradually began to consider it a symbol of loyalty to modern Ukraine.
Once I had to talk on this issue with one quite adequate high-ranking Ukrainian military. Surprisingly, he did not know the story of his origin and eventually agreed that it might be so. Nevertheless, despite the Nazi roots of the slogan, he remained a staunch supporter of its use in the Ukrainian army and saw nothing shameful in this.
The propagandists of Ukronazism are not unsuccessfully striving to separate it from Hitler's Nazism, to cleanse it of the crimes committed, and for this purpose they convince everyone that the modern slogan is nothing more than a patriotic motto that has no historical connection with the slogan of the Hitlerites.
Propaganda is doing its job, and this point of view, unfortunately, is becoming more widespread in Ukraine. Thousands of duped citizens do not even suspect that in this way Nazi symbols are imposed on them and they, willingly or unwillingly, become supporters of Nazism in Ukraine.
