Lecture 41: The coming of World War II, 1938–1941

Professor Paul Robert Magocsi — Ukraine: A History Course.

The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter is pleased to present a lecture series by Paul Robert Magocsi titled Ukraine: A History Course. Magocsi recorded 45 lectures in 2023 at the University of Toronto, where he holds the professorial Chair of Ukrainian Studies and is a history and political science professor. He is also a Board Member of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.

Magocsi, one of the world’s leading experts on Ukraine, explores this fascinating country in all its complexity, from its history, culture, geography, politics, and multi-ethnic composition. The lectures are an important counterweight to Russian propaganda and explain Ukraine’s importance to global security today.

Time stamps are available for each lecture. Auto-translate is available in Ukrainian, major European, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish.

Recordings of the lecture series were made possible with the support of the Temerty Foundation.

All the lectures are available on YouTube here.

2:41 Central Europe, 1930 map
7:01 Adolf Hitler stands next to President Hindenburg shortly after becoming chancellor on 30 January 1933
12:19 Germans in Central Europe, Eastern Europe1900
15:56 From left to right: Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Galeazzo Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement (1938)
21:18 Carpatho-Ukraine 1938–1939
21:58 Andryi Bródyi
22:32 Avgustyn Voloshyn, Iuliian Revai
23:10 Seat of Carpatho-Ukraine's government in Khust, 1939
24:11 Carpathian Sich
24:36 Ukrainian nationalists from Galicia in Khust, early 1939
28:33 Declaration of independent Carpatho-Ukraine and election of Avgustyn Voloshyn (bottom right) as president, Khust, 15 March 1939; Hungarian soldiers treat a wounded soldier after facing armed resistance from the Carpathian Sich, March 1939
34:00 Iosif Stalin and Naxi Germany's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop look on as Soviet foreign minister Viacheslav Molotov signs a pact between the two countries, 23 August 1939
35:24 Western Ukraine 1939–1941 map
37:31 Germany invades Poland map
39:19 Western Ukraine, map 1939–1941; Hans Frank, governor-general of Nazi Germany's Generalgouvernment, reviewing Ukrainian volunteers for the Galicia Division, L'viv, June 1943
40:33 Delegates of Western Ukraine's people's assembly received by Stalin in Moscow, 4 November 1939
41:38 Soviet troops on the streets of Chernivtsi distributing newspapers confirming the Soviet annexation of norther Bukovina, June 1940
44:58 Prisoners of Polish ethnicity from western Ukraine deported to Soviet slave labor camps
38:35 Andriy Melnyk, Stepan Bandera, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
47:21 The presidium of the Ukrainian Central Committee in 1943. Sitting (right–left), K. Pankivskyi, V. Kubijovyc, V. Hlibovytskyi; Standing: Z. Zelenyi, Rev. M. Sopuliak, P. Isaiv, A. Figol, O. Tarnavskyi, Ya. Mazurak, M. Kushnir

For further information, you may wish to consult: A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (University of Toronto Press, 2010)

Robert Paul Magocsi
Chair of Ukrainian Studies University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada, September 2023.