On 30 June 1941 OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv, which had just come under Nazi Germany's control in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.

After preliminary meetings in Berlin in 1927 and Prague in 1928, at the founding congress in Vienna in 1929 the veterans of the UVO and the student militants met and united to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

[50] Before the war, the OUN regarded the Second Polish Republic as an immediate target, but viewed the Soviet Union, although not operating on its territory, as the main enemy and greatest oppressor of the Ukrainian people.

Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established in February 1929), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and assassinations.

[58] The leader of the "old" group Andriy Melnyk claimed in a letter sent to the German minister of foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop on 2 May 1938 that the OUN was "ideologically akin to similar movements in Europe, especially to National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy".

Many bright students, such as the talented young poets Bohdan Kravtsiv [uk] and Olena Teliha (executed by the Nazis at Babi Yar) were attracted to the OUN's revolutionary message.

[44] As a means to gain independence from Polish and Soviet oppression, before World War II the OUN accepted material and moral support from Nazi Germany.

Although some elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they were ultimately overruled by Adolf Hitler and his political organization, whose racial prejudice against the Ukrainians and desires for economic exploitation of Ukraine precluded cooperation.

[68] Political leader Transcarpathian Ukrainians Avgustyn Voloshyn praised Melnyk as a Christian of European culture, in contrast to many nationalists who placed the nation above God.

It had a strong network of devoted followers and was powerfully aided by Mykola Lebed, who began to organize the feared Sluzhba Bezpeky or SB,[citation needed] a secret police force modelled on the Cheka with a reputation for ruthlessness.

At the end of August 1941, however, they were both gunned down, allegedly by the OUN-B which had justified the assassination in their literature and had issued a secret directive (referred to by Andriy Melnyk as a "death sentence") not to allow OUN-M leaders to reach Ukrainian SSR's capital Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine).

[89] According to the Nuremberg Trials documents, on 25 November 1941, Einsatzkommando 5 received an order to "quietly liquidate" members of "Bandera-Movement" as it was confirmed that they were preparing a rebellion in the Reichskomissariat with the goal of establishing independent Ukraine.

[93]As the OUN-M was being wiped out in the regions of central and western Ukraine that had been east of the old Polish-Soviet border, in Volhynia the OUN-B, with easy access from its base in Galicia, began to establish and consolidate its control over the nationalist movement and much of the countryside.

Unwilling and unable to openly resist the Germans in early 1942, it methodically set about creating a clandestine organization, engaging in propaganda work, and building weapons stockpiles.

[98] 26 high-ranking members of the OUN-B (alongside Greek Catholic priest Ivan Hrynokh) gathered in the village of Zolota Sloboda between 21 and 25 August, holding a Third Supreme Assembly.

Termed "extraordinary" (Ukrainian: надзвичайний, romanized: nadzvychainyi; also read as "emergency") by the organisers, the meeting rejected the policies of integral nationalism in Bandera's absence in favour of pro-democratic and pro-peasantry positions.

[117] According to Per Anders Rudling, the ideology of the organization was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, German Nazism, and Italian fascism, combining extreme nationalism with terrorism, corporatism, and antisemitism.

The OUN's leadership felt that past attempts at securing independence failed due to democratic values in society, poor party discipline and a conciliatory attitude towards Ukraine's traditional enemies.

[126] Gomza wrote that OUN writers rejected both Soviet communism and liberal democracy and wished to instill a single-party state, living in the unrealized glory of battles past and an economic system that aimed to avoid class conflict.

[127] Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that the OUN had "created its own form of fascism" and that it "attempted to become a mass movement and to establish an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state.

The group also accepted the following: "(1) the OUN renounced the principles of economic centralism and adopted the idea of a market economy (Zakordonni chastyny Orhanizatsiyi Ukrayinskykh Natsionalistiv, 1955, 261; Iarlan, 1986, 159) (2) it rejected the aggressive rhetoric concerning national minorities and claimed "we must abandon the chauvinism and assimilation politics towards the minorities and create optimum conditions for national and cultural tolerance" (Stepanov 1946, 113e114) (3) the idea of a unique labor union was rejected (Resolutions of the 3rd Extraordinary Great Council of the OUN, 1943, 231)

[126] notably, the liberal faction became more powerful due to support from the United States Government which funded multiple thinktanks including the Prolog Research and Publishing Company.

[137] The faction-based abroad supported rapprochement with the Ukrainian Catholic Church while the younger radicals were anti-clerical and felt that not considering the Nation to be the Absolute was a sign of weakness.

[142] Antisemitism was a common attribute of agrarian radical right-wing Eastern European organizations, such as the Croatian Ustashe, the Yugoslav Zbor and the Romanian Iron Guard.

[147] German documents from the early 1940s give the impression that extreme Ukrainian nationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews; they were willing to either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate, for their political goals.

The Muscovite-Bolshevik government exploits the anti-Jewish sentiments of the Ukrainian masses to divert their attention from the true cause of their misfortune and to channel them in a time of frustration into pogroms on Jews.

According to a report to the Chief of the Security Police in Berlin, dated 30 March 1942, "...it has been clearly established that the Bandera movement provided forged passports not only for its own members, but also for Jews.

Eg the so-called to assimilate Polish peasants, realizing to them that they are Ukrainians, only of the Latin rite ... To destroy leaders, to isolate Jews, to move from governments to avoid sabotage, especially Muscovites and Poles.

According to Bohdan Hoshovsky, the color combination of red and black was based on a concept of the OUN ideologue and veteran of the Ukrainian Galician Army Yulian Varanasi.

"[176] Jars Balan, head of the Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at the University of Alberta, says "The red is for love and the black is for sorrow and how they are intertwined", with references to those colours occurring in Slavic songs and poetry since the 12th century.