MI6’s post-war relationship with Bandera began while he was exiled in post-war Munich, West Germany in 1948, via Gerhard von Mende. An ethnic German hailing from Riga, Latvia, von Mende has been described as an “enthusiastic Nazi” who headed Berlin’s Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territory, or Ostministerium. Among other connivances, von Mende was charged with recruiting fifth columnists from the USSR’s Central Asian republics, to undermine and attack Communist authorities. He has been credited with influencing subsequent British and American support for Islamic extremism.

Per a declassified CIA biography, after Nazi Germany’s defeat, von Mende was “interned as a ‘guest’” at the Agency’s Camp King, where [Axis] officials and soldiers were interrogated and tortured. In some cases, inmates were unwittingly dosed with LSD under PROJECT BLUEBIRD, a forerunner of the CIA’s notorious MKULTRA mind control program. Subsequently, von Mende became an asset for West Germany’s Nazi-riddled BND, the CIA, and MI6, continuing to recruit anti-Communist assets in the USSR via a front company.

A modern celebration of Stepan Bandera, Ukraine

Through this position, von Mende was kept abreast of UPA activities and capabilities, and maintained an intimate personal relationship with Bandera. The Ukrainian fascist ideologue’s thuggish West German network was by then hard at work killing hundreds of local citizens suspected by the CIA and MI6 of harboring Communist sympathies. While the OUN-B chief’s “ask” of British intelligence was initially judged too high, that perspective rapidly changed. By 1949, MI6 was helping Bandera airdrop his chaos agents into Ukraine.