Making Bombs for Hitler

German policemen at the work camp, the cook, and even Juli tell Lida that there is “no such place” as Ukraine, which confuses Lida because Ukraine is her home. She knows that Ukraine and Russia are different and have unique cultures and languages—but people of other nationalities do not share her opinion. Lida and Natalia note that life in Ukraine under the Russian leader, Joseph Stalin, was terrible even before the Nazis invaded. A little background on the history of Ukraine prior to and during World War II will clarify Lida’s past and some of the choices that she and other characters make.

Ukraine’s history is complex and fraught with tragedy. Following World War I and during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922), Ukraine enjoyed a brief period of partial independence. In 1922, Ukraine became a republic in the Soviet Union, and from 1925-1928, developed its own language and expanded culturally. In 1928, however, a few years after Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin assumed total control of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party.

Stalin, wanting to create a communist economy, imposed “collectivism” on Ukraine, taking away individuals’ farms and making them part of a state-run collective. Stalin imposed harsh penalties on Ukrainian farmers who resisted. Stalin purposefully caused a famine known as the Holodomor or “death by hunger” in 1932-1933 that killed an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians— “about 13 percent of the population” (Kiger, Patrick J. “How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine.” History.com, 16 April 2019).

Today, the Holodomor is recognized as a crime of genocide. Stalin then sent Russian settlers to recolonize empty Ukrainian villages. Lida notes that there was not much food available even before the start of World War II. Stalin crushed Ukraine’s efforts to be independent and to create a separate culture, implementing “a campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders and political cadres,” imprisoning and executing thousands (“Holodomor Basic Facts.” Holodomor Research and Education Consortium).

From 1936-1938, Stalin launched The Great Purge, executing over 750,000 people he considered dissidents or enemies to the Communist Party and sending 1 million more to gulags, or forced labor camps. The Purge caused “rampant terror throughout the U.S.S.R” (History.com Editors. “Great Purge.” History.com, 7 July 2020). Skrypuch suggests that this is what happened to both Luka and Lida’s fathers. Luka’s father was “paraded through the streets as an ‘enemy of the people’” and “sentenced to ten years in Siberia” (85), and Lida laments, “Life was certainly not good under Stalin. It had been bearable until my father was taken” (213).

When the Nazis invaded Soviet Russia in 1941, they wanted to possess the agriculturally rich Ukraine, considered the “breadbasket” of Europe (Snyder, Timothy. “The Deliberate Starvation of Millions in Ukraine.” The Washington Post, 3 November 2017). Many Ukrainians viewed the Nazis as liberators from the oppressive Russian rule, but the Nazis turned out to be just as tyrannical. They killed and deported millions of Ukrainians to work as enslaved laborers for their war effort and executed an estimated “one and a half million Jews” in Ukraine (“The Holocaust in Ukraine.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Skrypuch references the Ukrainian Holocaust in the novel: Lida’s mother tried to hide Lida’s Jewish friend Sarah and her parents from the Nazis, and all were shot.

In 1943, when Making Bombs for Hitler begins, the Russians defeated the Nazis in the Battle of Stalingrad, forcing them to retreat. As Lida exclaims, “The Eastern Front was Ukraine!” (84). Luka describes being trapped in the middle of a battle between Nazi and Russian tanks. His experience epitomizes the position of Ukraine: caught between two powerful, aggressive nations. Ukraine is the prize, and Ukraine’s people are the pawns in a massive conflict.

Ukraine at last became an independent country in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. Current events, however, show that the struggle for Ukraine’s independence continues: Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.