Ukrainische Hilfspolizei

The Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (English: Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, Ukrainian: Українська поліція допоміжна, Ukrains’ka dopomizhna politsiia) was an official designation of the Ukrainian police in the Nazi occupied Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during World War II. It operated from the mid-August of 1941 under the control of German Ordnungspolizei. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police consisted to two distinct categories of German-controlled armed policing forces in the occupied East. The first comprised mobile police units most often called Schutzmannschaften, or Schuma, organized into battalion-formations and deployed to anti-Jewish and anti-partisan operations in most areas of the East. – These units were subordinated directly to the German Commander of Order Police for an area. The second category was the local police force (approximately, a constabulary), called simply the Ukrainian Police (or UP) but also stationary Schutzmannschaften by the German administration, which the SS raised most successfully in the District of Galicia (formed August 1, 1941) extending south-east from the General Government. The UP formations appeared as well in significant towns and cities such as Kyiv further east in German occupied Ukraine. The urban based forces were subordinated to the city's German Commander of Municipal Police (Schutzpolizei or Schupo); the rural police posts were subordinated to the area German Commander of Gendarmerie. The Schupo and Gendarmerie structures were themselves subordinated to the area Commander of Order Police.

The UP in the occupied Ukrainian SSR came into existence as the result of an order issued by the German commander in chief of Order Police (Kraków) on July 27, 1941 after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa. The total number enlisted numbered slightly more than 35,000. Some 6,000 of them - including 120 low-level officers - served in the politically separate District of Galicia. In Reichskommissariat Ukraine auxiliary police were named Schutzmannschaft.

The name of the unit reflected its geographic jurisdiction rather than the ethnic makeup of recruits. The makeup of the officer corps were often representative of various nationalities. Professor Wendy Lower from Towson University writes that as the largest population under German occupation rule, Ukrainians outnumbered other non-Germans in the auxiliary police forces; the Volksdeutsche Germans from Ukraine meanwhile were given leadership roles.

Many of those who joined the ranks of the police had served as militiamen under Soviet rule since 1939. Tadeusz Piotrowski claims the majority of the police was made from members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, while Ivan Patryljak claims that the German authorities expressly forbade drafting known nationalists. Nonetheless, the ethnic composition of Auxiliary Police reflected the demographics of the land and included Russians, Poles, and German Volksdeutsche drafted from the local population and from Soviet POWs wrote Gregorovich (Ukrainian Review). Most however were ethnic Ukrainians, hence the name according to Prusin.

The auxiliary police were directly under the command of the Germanic-SS, Einsatzgruppen, and military administration. The units were used primarily to keep order among the civilian population and carry out normal constabulary duties. Their actions were restricted by other police groups such as the Sonderdienst, made up of Volksdeutsche; the Kripo (Criminal police); Bahnschutz (railroad and transport police); and the Werkschutz, who kept order and guarded industrial plants. They were supported by the Ukrainian Protection Police and the Ukrainian Order Police.

In Distrikt Galizien, the Ukrainian auxiliary police forces were under the command of the German office in Kraków. A Ukrainian command centre for the auxiliary police did not exist. The highest ranked Ukrainian auxiliary police officer only rose to the rank of major - V. Pituley, who became a district commandant (Major der Ukrainische Polizei und Kommandeur) in Lemberg (now Lviv). A police school was established in Lviv by the district SS-and-Police leader in order to meet plans for growth. The school director was Ivan Kozak.