Polish–Ukrainian conflict (1939–1947)
Series of armed clashes, 1942 to 1947 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Polish–Ukrainian conflict[1][lower-alpha 1] was a series of an armed clashes between the Ukrainian guerrillas and Polish underground armed units during and after the World War II, namely between 1939 and 1945, whose direct continuation was the struggle of the Ukrainian underground against the Polish People’s Army until 1947, with periodic participation of the Soviet partisan units and even the regular Red Army, as well as the Romanian, Hungarian, German and Czechoslovak armed formations. The fighting initially took place in the south-east areas of the Second Polish Republic occupied by the Third Reich and later in the Rzeszów, south-east parts of the Lublin Voivodeship of the Polish People’s Republic and in the west areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. There was also sporadic activity in the Romanian-occupied territories.[2]
In the context of the occupation of the Second Polish Republic by the Third Reich, Slovak Republic and Soviet Union in September 1939, that happened only 20 years after the defeat of the West Ukrainian People's Republic in the Polish–Ukrainian War, politically active Ukrainians wanted to create a new state to include East Galicia and Volhynia, while politically active Poles wanted to restore Poland within its borders 1939.[3][4] The main clashes began after the Third Reich had started to retreat on the Eastern Front in the begging of 1943, as many already believed it was going to lose the war.