Canada’s Hunka scandal is a demonstration of how when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity.
Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.
And the ongoing turmoil over Canada’s parliament recognizing former SS trooper Yaroslav Hunka highlights one of the most important reasons why.
Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth — a major problem for Western democracies trying to fight disinformation and propaganda by countering it with the truth, and one reason why fact-checking and debunking are only of limited use for doing so.
In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front. And it’s a demonstration of how when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity.
This history is complicated because fighting against the USSR at the time didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi, just someone who had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist. However, the idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide. And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.
Canada’s enemies have thus latched on to these simple narratives, alongside concerned citizens in Canada itself, with the misstep over Hunka being used by Russia and its backers to attack Ukraine, Canada and each country’s association with the other.
According to Russia’s ambassador in Canada, Hunka’s unit “committed multiple war crimes, including mass murder, against the Russian people, ethnic Russians. This is a proven fact.” But whenever a Russian official calls something a “proven fact,” it should set off alarms. And sure enough, here too the facts were invented out of thin air. Repeated exhaustive investigations — including by not only the Nuremberg trials but also the British, Canadian and even Soviet authorities — led to the conclusion that no war crimes or atrocities had been committed by this particular unit.
But this is just the latest twist in a long-running campaign by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, dating back even to Soviet times, when the USSR would leverage accusations of Nazi collaboration for political purposes as part of its “active measures” operations.
And given Moscow’s own history of aggression and atrocities during World War II and its aftermath, there’s a special cynicism underlying the Russian accusations. Russia feels comfortable shouting about “Nazis,” real or imaginary, in Ukraine or elsewhere, because unlike Nazi Germany, leaders and soldiers of the Soviet Union were never put on trial for their war crimes. Russia clings to the Nuremberg trials as a benchmark of legitimacy because as a victorious power, it was never subjected to the same reckoning. And yet, both before and after their collaborative effort to carve up eastern Europe between them, the Soviets and the Nazis had so much in common that it’s now illegal to point these similarities out in Russia.
Yet, it’s not just enemies of democracy that are subscribing to the seductively simple. Jewish advocacy groups in Canada have been understandably loud in their condemnation of Hunka’s recognition. But here, too, accusations risk being influenced more by misconception and supposition than history and evidence.
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center registered its outrage, noting that Hunka’s unit’s “crimes against humanity during the Holocaust are well-documented” — a statement that doesn’t seem to have any more substance than the accusation by Russia.
In fact, during previous investigations of the same group carried out by a Canadian Commission of Inquiry, Simon Wiesenthal himself was found to have made broad accusations that were found to be “nearly totally useless” and “put the Canadian government to a considerable amount of purposeless work.”
The result of all this is that otherwise intelligent people are now trying to outdo each other in a chorus of evidence-free condemnation.
In Parliament itself, Canadian Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman called Hunka “a monster.” Meanwhile, Poland’s education minister appears to have decided to first seek Hunka’s extradition to Poland, then try to determine whether he has actually committed any crime afterward. And the ostracism is now extending to members of Hunka’s family, born long after any possible crime could have been committed during World War II.
The episode shows that dealing with complex truths is hard but essential. Unfortunately, though, a debunking or fact-checking approach to countering disinformation relies on an audience willing to put in the time and effort to read the accurate version of events, and be interested in discovering it in the first place. This means debunking mainly works for very specific audiences, like government officials, analysts, academics and (some) journalists.
But most of the rest of us, especially when just scrolling through social media, are instead likely to have a superficial and fleeting interest, which means a lengthy exposition of why a given piece of information is wrong will be far less likely to reach us and have an impact.
In the Hunka case, commentary taking a more balanced view of the complex history does exist, but it’s rare, and when it does occur, it is by unfortunate necessity very long — a direct contrast to most propaganda narratives that are successfully spread by Russia and its agents. Sadly, an idea simple enough to fit on a T-shirt is vastly more powerful than a rebuttal that has to start with “well, actually . . .”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now issued an apology in his own name over Hunka’s ovation too. However, any further discussion of the error has to be carefully phrased, as any suggestion that Canada is showing contrition for “honoring a Nazi” would acquiesce to the rewriting of history by Russia and its backers, and concede to allegations of Hunka’s guilt that have no basis in evidence.
It’s true that Hunka should never have been invited into Canada’s House of Commons. But that’s not because he himself might be guilty of any crime. Rightly or wrongly, on an issue so toxic, it was inevitable the invitation would provide a golden opportunity for Russian propaganda.
No, fighting Soviets does not make you a Nazi, joining the Nazis makes you a Nazi.
We can discuss the nuances of "voluntarily" joining a unit of an occupying army, but the fact is he joined, and I've seen about as much evidence of his regret towards that as I have of specific atrocities that he or his unit committed. So, he most definitely is a Nazi, but we don't know whether or not he's done anything particularly evil.
we don’t know whether or not he’s done anything particularly evil.
True but the British, Canadian and Soviet Union's Governments (including the Nuremberg Trials) at the time said he and his group didn't do anything particularly evil which is why he was allowed to live in Canada.
I can't imagine why the USSR didn't come out and say they have proof of his evil acts which is in complete contrast to the Russian Government who says his war crimes are well documented. Which one is it? Do I believe USSR or Russia?
There's also this: If he's 96 in 2023, he was 18 in 1945. In other words, he was a stupid teenaged kid trying to figure out whether Hitler or Stalin was worse, in an environment where his access to reliable information about what was going on may have been limited.
Was he a Nazi? Yes, he was a Nazi. Was he in any position of authority among the Nazis? Unlikely, at that age. Is he culpable of war crimes? If he directly participated in them, yes. Would justice be served by hauling him into court at this late date? Depends on what, exactly, he did.
We're not talking about prosecution though, but the fact he shouldn't be lauded.
Yeah teenagers do stupid shit and some things should not be beaten over your head from the stupidity of youth, but a war record of this magnitude is definitely one of those things that should stick with you.
Exactly. Furthermore, the man has lived in Canada for many decades now. I think the overriding question should be simple: has he promoted Nazi ideology in that time since?
I honestly don't know, I'm not hugely invested in this story. But the impression I have is that the answer is no.
Ridiculous how some are trying to obfuscate the man's involvement with Nazism. He joined a Nazi organisation, he's a Nazi. Nazis are bad and should not be allowed to escape justice. Call a pig a pig.
That is not only very much an elective organization, you have to really want it.
In the early days, but as the war dragged on that started to change. Approximately 1/3 of Waffen-SS members were conscripts by 1942. Hunka joined in 1943. As a volunteer, though, so...
Fighting the Soviets doesn't make you a Nazi, being in the Waffen-SS does. The fact is that Nazi Germany launched a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and millions of Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht soldiers were involved in war crimes.
Tbh, the whole SS thing isn't that significant. Pretty much all Nazi on the eastern front were just as likely to be doing war crimes as the SS.
There was no real attempt in compartmentalizing out atrocities to the SS, aspects of the Wehrmacht took part in almost all crimes against of humanity on the eastern front that were later completely attributed to the SS.
The "Clean Wehrmacht" myth began its propagation before the war was even over, with Wehrmacht command all too happy to proclaim they were just too Prussian not to follow orders, and it was really all the crazy SS officers in charge of the war crimes the whole time.
It's true that "Nazism" has spread and warped throughout eastern Europe(including Russia) in a response to the fall of the Soviet Union. Yes, the complexity of this problem is nuanced in a way western media doesn't seem to want to understand......
But what the hell does the modern interpretation of reactionary fascism have to do with a guy who allied with actual Nazi?
In my view, a German soldier fighting for Nazi Germany is pretty bad, putting on the title of SS while swearing an oath to Hitler and willing to die for him and the Nazi ideals is VERY fucking bad.
There is in no way an equivalence between the USSR and the Nazis. Hunka fought because he thought his ethnicity might come out on top, just like the German SS members. The Soviets fought to stop the Nazis from killing and enslaving them all.
If he personally committed atrocities is important, but even if he somehow avoided it he was working with and for people who openly thought atrocities were cool.
Well for you, me, and most people in the western world: Yes. It's made complicated by the Russian propaganda however, since their very definition is that nazism is simply anti-russia. By their definition everybody against the Russian ideals are nazis, which is also why their propaganda about Ukraine is so effective on home soil. It's mostly grounded in how the 2nd World War was perceived on soviet side by the population in comparison to the west.
Simply put: What we call nazis isn't the the same as what the Russians would call nazis.
I'm not sure how relevant this is, but yeah "we defeated the Nazis" is the new Russian "national myth", and they're pretty comfortable stripping out any nuance to the Nazis beside the fact they attacked the USSR.
And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.
Your whole wall of text seems to be a strawman based on this projection. Canadians obviously don't believe this, or these former SS members would have been strung up by their necks decades ago. However, they should never be honoured, regardless of whether they directly participated in crimes. That membership implies being complicit in those crimes, as they would have sworn allegiance to Hitler, and would have known and understood the Nazi ideology and supported it through their military action.
If a SS fighter doesn't have enough evidence for a conviction, they should simply live out their lives quietly and in shame for being part of something truly evil. If they were fooled in youth, and understood as they grew older, they would abhor any sort of valour or recognition. I'm not going to engage in whataboutism. There are plenty of other examples of people who should do the same thing.
And every single person involved was fully aware of every single detail, supported all of it, and had no reservations or other reasons for playing one side against the other?
"They" are millions of diverse individual people. Not some sort of uniform Borg-like monolith. Some of them were evil racist scum, some of them were just trying to desperately figure out which option available to them was least likely to get them and everyone they loved killed. Given what the Soviet side got up to this was not a straightforward choice.
And don‘t forget Politico is owned by Springer Presse. A German extreme-right publisher. While they‘d call themselves conservative, they are the most vile, fascist baiting, libertarian outfit you can imagine. While they‘ve always been a threat to German democracy with the Bild newspaper, they seem to have become a global threat now.
No, the USSR never joined the Axis. When Hitler had raised the issue, Stalin gave him a list of demands he couldn't possibly meet (basically mocking him)... And a month later Operation Barbarossa started.
But some guy here was upvoted for saying 'if you fought Russians during WWII, you were a Nazi'.
Great article but as it states, people willing to read this are already the kind of people who are open to change their minds with new information with the desire to take the time to read this new information.
At a bare minimum, these Slavic nazis were collaborators in the murder of 11 million Slavs, 4 million of those being Ukrainians. This article is, frankly, Holocaust revisionism.
And the Holodomor killed 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians.
Holocaust bad, obviously. Holodomor also bad, obviously. Which side to join in an effort to fight off the other side? Far from obvious. This is not a simplistic a moral question as you make it out to be.
Not sure if you're a historian or an expert on the matter but I'll believe the author way easier than I would believe someone on the internet.
I can only imagine what it was like for a Ukrainian hated by both Germany and Russia and having to choose one to fight the other, or do nothing while your country and people are killed.