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178-697: The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) ( German : 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (galizische Nr. 1) ; Ukrainian : 14-та гренадерська дивізія СС «Галичина» , romanized :  14-ta hrenaderska dyviziya SS "Halychyna" ), commonly referred to as the Galicia Division , was a World War II infantry division of the Waffen-SS , the military wing of the German Nazi Party , made up predominantly of volunteers with

356-538: A Ukrainian ethnic background from the area of Galicia , later also with some Slovaks . Formed in 1943, it was mainly deployed in the Eastern Front of World War II in combat against the Red Army and in the repression of Soviet , Polish , and Yugoslav guerrilla partisans . Parts of the division were said to have taken part in several massacres, such as at Huta Pieniacka , Pidkamin , and Palikrowy . It

534-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it

712-402: A second language , and 75–100   million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220   million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90   million people, or 16% of

890-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become

1068-729: A Soviet attack on Gleichenberg, which had placed the village's castle, held by Ukrainians, under siege. A relief force from the rest of the division reached the troops in the castle and pushed back the Soviets. On 12 March 1945, Alfred Rosenberg issued a decree stating that the German government recognized the Ukrainian National Committee as the sole representative of the Ukrainians in Germany. Formed in late 1944,

1246-516: A Ukrainian army." The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was also in favor. At the same time, it was met with a mixed reaction from the underground Ukrainian nationalist movement. The Galicia Division was supported by Andriy Melnyk's moderate faction of the OUN, who saw it as a counterweight to the extremist Banderite-dominated UPA, and by some officers of the former Ukrainian People's Republic, such as General Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko . The unit

1424-615: A Ukrainian national army established for the purpose of achieving Ukraine's independence. During the Interwar period much of the population of Galicia and its political class wanted to have their own army, ever since the existence of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen in World War I and the later Ukrainian People's Republic. Four police regiments were also formed from some of those who volunteered for the Galicia Division but did not meet

1602-698: A citizen or member of society in good standing". A key legal victory for this view came in 1952 when group libel law was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Beauharnais v. Illinois . However, the group libel approach lost ground due to a rise in support for individual rights within civil rights movements during the 60s. Critiques of group defamation laws are not limited to defenders of individual rights. Some legal theorists, such as critical race theorist Richard Delgado, support legal limits on hate speech, but claim that defamation

1780-469: A critic of hate speech theory, has argued that it "assumes bad faith on the part of people regardless of their stated intentions" and that it "obliterates the ethical responsibility of the individual". Rebecca Ruth Gould , a professor of Islamic and Comparative Literature at the University of Birmingham , argues that laws against hate speech constitute viewpoint discrimination (which is prohibited by

1958-648: A government in Kiev . Both Melnyk and Bandera were kept under arrest by the Germans until 1944, and the Germans spent the summer and fall of 1941 detaining OUN leaders and members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The OUN units with the Wehrmacht became fully integrated as Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 and were sent to occupied Belarus for anti-partisan operations until late 1942, before disagreements between them and

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2136-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from

2314-448: A high degree of psychopathy is "a significant predictor" for involvement in online hate activity, while none of the other 7 potential factors examined were found to have a statistically significant predictive power. Political philosopher Jeffrey W. Howard considers the popular framing of hate speech as "free speech vs. other political values" as a mischaracterization. He refers to this as the "balancing model", and says it seeks to weigh

2492-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained

2670-453: A partisan group, inflicting casualties, and discovered hidden weapons caches. About 20 to 25 Galicia Division soldiers were killed. The Kampfgruppe Beyersdorff performed its duty well enough that it earned the rare praise of German Field Marshal Walter Model . By the summer of 1944 the Soviets were on the offensive across the Eastern Front while Germany attempted to hold on to the territory it still had. Most of Ukraine had been retaken by

2848-511: A persistent problem online. According to a 2021 study by the Anti Defamation League 33% of Americans were the target of identity based harassment in the preceding year, a statistic which has not noticeably shifted downwards despite increasing self regulation by companies. Several activists and scholars have criticized the practice of limiting hate speech. Kim Holmes , Vice President of the conservative Heritage Foundation and

3026-472: A person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution states that hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation". There

3204-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In

3382-887: A rally of over 50,000 people in Lviv. Around this time the division received its first commanding officer, SS-Brigadeführer and Major General of Waffen-SS Walter Schimana , who was more of an administrator than a military commander. The training was initially done at the Heidelager camp in the General Government. They were given instruction in combat tactics, rifle, and heavy weapons training. Personnel who required specialized training in different fields (such as anti-tank warfare, communications, animal equipment maintenance, or combat engineering), and those who were selected to become officers, NCOs, or chaplains, were sent to various other locations throughout Europe before returning to

3560-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it

3738-430: A shortage of resources that prevent it from becoming a significant force. Therefore, Shukhevych secretly met with a Ukrainian member of Wächter's military board in early October 1943. In the meeting they arranged to send UPA volunteers into the division to receive training, weapons, and intelligence, taking advantage of the Galicia Division as much as they could for the movement's benefit, before having them desert and rejoin

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3916-408: A significant way. Wächter wanted to make the region an example for changing German policy toward Ukraine. In early 1943 Wächter discussed the matter of a Ukrainian SS division with Himmler, and received Himmler's approval for the basic idea on 28 March 1943. At a conference of SS officials held by Wächter on 12 April 1943, they came to an agreement regarding the details of the new division. He proposed

4094-609: A strong national consciousness while the region was an Austrian province , more so than people in the rest of Ukraine, which during that same time period was part of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union . The eastern half of Galicia in particular had a majority Ukrainian population along with Polish and Jewish minorities. Regardless, in early 1920 the leaders of the Ukrainian People's Republic , which

4272-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and

4450-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as

4628-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German

4806-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic

4984-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German

5162-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25   million speak it as

5340-534: Is generally accepted to be one of the prerequisites for mass atrocities such as genocide . Incitement to genocide is an extreme form of hate speech, and has been prosecuted in international courts such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda . Starting in the 1940s and 50s, various American civil rights groups responded to the atrocities of World War II by advocating for restrictions on hateful speech targeting groups on

5518-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in

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5696-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as

5874-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are

6052-413: Is no single definition of what constitutes "hate" or "disparagement". Legal definitions of hate speech vary from country to country. There has been much debate over freedom of speech , hate speech, and hate speech legislation. The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on

6230-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and

6408-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as

6586-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German

6764-440: Is reminiscent of efforts by totalitarian regimes to control the thoughts of their citizens. Civil libertarians say that hate speech laws have been used, in both developing and developed nations, to persecute minority viewpoints and critics of the government. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen says that, while efforts to censor hate speech have the goal of protecting the most vulnerable, they are ineffective and may have

6942-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c.  1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period

7120-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish

7298-414: Is too narrow a category to fully counter hate speech. Ultimately, Delgado advocates a legal strategy that would establish a specific section of tort law for responding to racist insults, citing the difficulty of receiving redress under the existing legal system. After World War II, Germany criminalized Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") to prevent resurgence of Nazism . Hate speech on

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7476-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers

7654-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to

7832-461: The 13th Division . In July 1943, Wächter argued with Himmler about his order forbidding the use of "Ukrainian" in the name to discourage Ukrainian statehood, but Himmler stood firm and insisted on calling the division members "Galicians" instead of Ukrainians. The regional symbol of Galicia was used as the division insignia because it was not seen as associated with Ukrainian nationalism. The SS sig runes were not worn, because non-Germanic members of

8010-535: The 1st and 8th Panzer Divisions along with a single regiment from the Galicia Division (the 30th) were deployed in a counterattack against the Soviet penetration in the Koltiv area, while the Soviet 2nd Air Army flew aircraft sorties and bombed them as they attempted their counterattack. On 18 July, the division's Field Replacement Battalion largely escaped the encirclement and were reported as having fled west, whilst

8188-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as

8366-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share

8544-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language

8722-611: The First Amendment in the United States) as the legal system punishes some viewpoints but not others. Other scholars, such as Gideon Elford, argue instead that "insofar as hate speech regulation targets the consequences of speech that are contingently connected with the substance of what is expressed then it is viewpoint discriminatory in only an indirect sense." John Bennett argues that restricting hate speech relies on questionable conceptual and empirical foundations and

8900-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout

9078-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in

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9256-675: The League of Nations to recognize Poland's control over the region in 1923. The whole area remained part of Poland until the Soviet Union annexed Eastern Galicia in September 1939 under the conditions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed with Nazi Germany . The majority of the western Ukrainian intelligentsia and clergy supported the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance while the region

9434-601: The Legionowo and Warsaw area, where it was used to reinforce the under-strength 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking , a mixed German-Scandinavian-Dutch-Flemish unit in the IV SS Panzer Corps . They fought against the troops of the 1st and 2nd Belarusian Fronts . In early November the 700 of them who were still alive rejoined the rest of the Galicia Division in Slovakia. They were commended for their performance by

9612-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c.  765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in

9790-478: The Slovak Uprising , before 28 September, when the entire division was ordered to go. The battlegroup, led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Wildner, consisted of one battalion from the 29th Regiment and several companies of support troops. From 28 July to 3 November 1944, a detachment of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers from the Galicia Division's Training and Reserve Regiment was dispatched to central Poland, in

9968-676: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

10146-550: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit.   ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this

10324-444: The Ukrainian National Committee . Lieutenant General Pavlo Shandruk of the National Army arrived at the division headquarters to take command on 19 April. The current commander, Freitag, had received notice ahead of time from Fritz Arlt of the SS Eastern Volunteers Office informing him of the agreement with the Ukrainian National Committee. Together with Shandruk, Freitag presided over the change in name and emblems, and administered to

10502-641: The United Nations Human Rights Committee have been protecting freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." While there are fundamental laws in place designed to protect freedom of expression, there are also multiple international laws that expand on

10680-400: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and   Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German

10858-438: The chaos that followed World War I , between 1918 and 1920, before being made part of Poland . During World War I many volunteers from Galicia joined the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen units of the Austro-Hungarian Army , and they formed a part of the Ukrainian Galician Army from 1918 to 1919. The Sich Riflemen were later seen as an inspiration by members of the SS Division Galicia. The Ukrainian population of Galicia developed

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11036-440: The internet and social media has presented a new medium through which hate speech can spread. Hate speech on the internet can be traced all the way back to its initial years, with a 1983 bulletin board system created by neo-Nazi George Dietz considered the first instance of hate speech online. As the internet evolved over time hate speech continued to spread and create its footprint; the first hate speech website Stormfront

11214-408: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from

11392-442: The 4th battalion of the 14th division. The division is honored by the far-right in Ukraine and by some organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. In 2020, the Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled that symbols of SS Division Galicia do not belong to the Nazis and were not banned in the country. In 2021, after a public march that prominently displayed the symbols of the division, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned

11570-446: The Division's 30th and 31st regiments had been destroyed. A second German breakout attempt that began on 21 July ended in failure, but ten miles (16 kilometres) to the west of the pocket, the 8th Panzer Division broke through Soviet lines and briefly established contact with the Brody pocket. They sent a message on 21 July to the 1st Panzer Army headquarters that thousands of men from the pocket were rescued before they were repulsed. By

11748-411: The Eastern Front (and not for Germany's internal security), have Ukrainian officers, and its soldiers would be given the same benefits as other Wehrmacht and SS personnel. Kubiyovych said after the war that the Germans largely met his demands. The Germans also made another concession, by adding the phrase to the division's oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler that it was in his role as "the Commander-in-Chief of

11926-403: The Eastern Front , claimed that Galicia Division members were in contact with the UPA and were giving their equipment to the Ukrainian nationalist underground. In December 1944 and January 1945, Galicia Division troops, especially the 29th Regiment, fought against the Soviet 40th Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front that launched an offensive into Slovakia from Hungary. In mid-January the frontline

12104-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In

12282-414: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of

12460-421: The Galicia Division but the 349th Infantry Division , which suffered heavy losses in the initial Soviet offensive, causing the Galicia Division to be sent to reinforce its sector of the front. The 29th and 30th regiments of the Galicia Division, supported by the division's artillery regiment, put up unexpectedly fierce resistance. Pidhirtsy changed hands several times before the Galicians were finally overwhelmed by

12638-449: The Galicia Division commander at the Battle of Brody. In late August 1944, a rebellion broke out in Slovakia against the pro-German government of President Josef Tiso . It involved 20,000 Slovak Army troops and local guerilla fighters, along with Soviet partisans and paratroopers who were airlifted into Slovakia. On 22 September 1944, the Galicia Division was ordered to send a battlegroup to Slovakia to assist German forces in putting down

12816-567: The Galicia Division faced the Yugoslav Partisans , who were much better organized and more capable than the partisans in Slovakia. The SS leader in Ljubljana was satisfied with the division's early successful operations against the local Yugoslav Partisan units, and decided to expand their role, sending some Ukrainian units to assist the Wehrmacht in the mountains south of Ljubljana. They carried out two large-scale operations against

12994-572: The Galicia Division on 8 August 1944. The survivors entered the Hungarian Carpathian Mountains , along with remnants of the 8th Panzer Division and the 18th SS Division Horst Wessel , where they rested for a short time before going to the Neuhammer training camp for the rebuilding of the Galicia Division. The surviving veterans were combined with 8,000 men who had come from the division's Training and Reserve Regiment, and

13172-407: The Galicia Division remnants to the south. Some Ukrainian assault groups remained intact, others joined German units, and others fled or melted away. The Ukrainian 14th SS Fusilier battalion, which at this point had also largely disintegrated, came to form the rearguard of what was left of the entire XIII Corps. Holding the town of Bilyi Kamin , it enabled units or stragglers to escape to the south and

13350-846: The Galicia division should not be indicted as a group. Polish and German commissions in the 2000s found it guilty of war crimes . In 2003, the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation found that the 4th battalion of the 14th division was guilty of war crimes. In 2005, the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences confirmed the Polish findings of war crimes committed by

13528-493: The German invasion of Poland . The willingness of the German military to work with Ukrainian nationalists led them to believe that Germany would recognize Ukrainian independence in the future in exchange for their assistance. An OUN battalion accompanied German forces into Poland in September 1939, but when Germany allowed the Soviet Union to occupy Eastern Galicia, the battalion was withdrawn by its leadership. The OUN itself

13706-582: The German Armed Forces in the struggle against Bolshevism." Kubiyovych made a proclamation calling on Ukrainians to join the Galicia Division in order to "destroy the Red monster." The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church supported its creation. The head of the Church, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky , reportedly told Kubiyovych that "there is virtually no price which should not be paid for the creation of

13884-483: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of

14062-642: The German military commander in Bratislava . Several other Axis units were also operating in northwest Slovakia, near the Galicia Division, including various SS units and the Hlinka Guard . On 27 October, the division's Kampfgruppe Wildner were the first Axis units to enter Banská Bystrica , the center of the insurgency, where they recaptured it from the rebels. Some of its members were personally decorated by Slovak President Josef Tiso. German commanders and members of Tiso's Slovak government acknowledged that

14240-621: The German military right up to the end of the war. On 6 May 1945 the German commanders in southeast Austria made the decision for all units to withdraw from the front line to surrender to the Americans or the British in the west instead of the Red Army. The Ukrainians surrendered to British troops at Tamsweg , central Austria, by 10 May 1945. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )

14418-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c.  1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of

14596-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by

14774-678: The Germans led the battalion to be dissolved. Its leader, Roman Shukhevych , and several other members founded the underground Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in January 1943 after returning to Ukraine. The OUN and the UPA declared their opposition to both Germany and the Soviet Union. The idea of recruiting Ukrainians into the Waffen-SS was first proposed by Gottlob Berger , the head of the SS Main Office , as early as April 1941. His request

14952-655: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are

15130-865: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German

15308-518: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c.  thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c.  1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy

15486-560: The OUN was responsible for their training and political leadership. Melnyk's faction, the OUN-M, also formed its own unit with the Germans. Both had the intent to eventually participate in a German invasion of Soviet Ukraine and seize power. Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa , on 22 June 1941. Adolf Hitler decided to invade to destroy Communism and to obtain Lebensraum , living space, for Germany in

15664-506: The Red Army, but the majority of Belarus and the Baltic states remained under German control. In the spring the Soviets began pushing into the regions of western Ukraine that had been part of Poland before the war. On 15 May 1944, the 1st Ukrainian Front was established under Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev for the purpose of breaking through German lines in Galicia and western Ukraine. It was opposed by Germany's Army Group North Ukraine, which

15842-556: The Soviet annexation the NKVD secret police began mass arrests, murders, and deportations to other parts of the Soviet Union of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in Galicia and other members of the population. These measures lasted for the entire period of Soviet control over the region between 1939 and 1941. The leaders of the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance were among those arrested and deported, and

16020-498: The Soviets, and some of the survivors decided to escape and join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Another source estimated that an additional 2,000 survived, but in the retreat either joined the UPA or were combined into other German units, before returning to the Galicia Division weeks later. Freitag resumed his role as the commander of the Ukrainian survivors who made it out of the pocket and retreated west with

16198-552: The Soviets. Wächter's governance of Galicia, which was part of the General Government ( occupied Poland ), was more lenient than Erich Koch , who led the rest of Ukrainian territory as the head of Reichskommissariat Ukraine . As a former part of the Austrian empire, Galicia was governed separately from the rest of Ukraine, and was also the only region where Ukrainians were allowed to participate in its administration in

16376-505: The Tiso government, and some members of the division thought they might find their relatives in the country. It was also reported that about 200 Ukrainian soldiers defected from the Galicia Division to the Slovak partisans while they were stationed in Slovakia. Additionally, a November 1944 report on the UPA and the OUN by the German general Reinhard Gehlen , the head of military intelligence on

16554-550: The UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically concerning the safety and protection of individuals. Most developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The United States does not have hate speech laws, because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that they violate

16732-420: The UPA. Shukhevych also said he respected the decision of anyone who joined the Galicia Division and considered them to be Ukrainian patriots. In early May 1943 the recruitment process slowly began. Rallies were held across cities and towns in Galicia for two months, and by mid-1943, as the division received support from retired Ukrainian officers and the UPA, recruitment picked up. After the first three months of

16910-493: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church because Galicia's population was very religious. Various logistical matters related to the unit were discussed, as well as methods of recruitment and propaganda. A recruitment committee was established along with a military board consisting of Ukrainian military veterans and other Ukrainian advisors. A ceremony was held in Lviv on 28 April 1943 where Wächter announced

17088-630: The Ukrainian officers remained at the company level or below. Dmytro Paliiv, who was a veteran of the Sich Riflemen, was appointed the Ukrainian political advisor to the Galicia Division's German commander. The division was led by a German commander and a staff of German officers at the senior levels. All of them except the chief of staff were brought over from the SS police division of the Waffen-SS. The longest serving division commander, SS-Brigadeführer and Major General of Waffen-SS Fritz Freitag ,

17266-586: The Ukrainian troops were involved in looting supplies from the civilian population as they evacuated. Around that time the unit was renamed as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian), being called the Ukrainian Division for the first time by the German military command. Many of the division's members remained unaware of this change and continued using the name Galicia. The division departed Slovakia for Maribor , Slovenia, in two separate groups on 31 January 1945, marching there because

17444-583: The Ukrainians from the Galicia Division had a significant role in fighting the uprising in northwest Slovakia. Ukrainian and German sources claim that the troops of the Galicia Division generally had good relations with the Slovak civilian population, and that Slovak guides worked with the division, though there are accusations from Slovak sources that some of them carried out repraisals against civilians and destroyed entire villages during anti-partisan operations. Ukrainian civilian refugees also left Galicia for Slovakia around that time, where they were given refuge by

17622-653: The Waffen-SS wore their division insignia instead. Besides obtaining the approval of Himmler and the SS hierarchy, Wächter also worked with Ukrainian community leaders in Galicia, finding widespread support for the division among them. One of these figures was Volodymyr Kubiyovych , the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee . The Ukrainian Central Committee was established in June 1940 in German-occupied Western Galicia with

17800-478: The Wiking Division commander, SS-Oberführer Karl Ullrich . The forces of Kampfgruppe Wildner were the first Galician units to arrive in Slovakia, on 29 September 1944, at Zemianske Kostoľany . It operated in the area around Zvolen and Žarnovica , in western Slovakia, together with other SS units. They recaptured several towns and villages from Slovak partisans during October. Kampfgruppe Wildner

17978-490: The approval of the German authorities. It had no political status and was meant to organize social and welfare services for the western Ukrainian population, including by cooperating with the International Red Cross , and throughout the occupation it appealed to German officials to minimize or prevent brutal policies from being imposed. The organization's motivation for supporting the Galicia Division included

18156-646: The area of western Ukraine being held by the 4th Panzer Army . On 27 June 1944, it was renamed the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician). They departed from Neuhammer towards western Ukraine on the following day, 28 June 1944. About 2,000 Galicia Division soldiers were deployed as Kampfgruppe Beyersdorff to the Biłgoraj – Zamość area in southeast Poland. The formation was divided into two smaller groups, with one of them being sent to Lviv, and commenced anti- partisan operations against Soviet guerilla fighters from 28 February until 27 March 1944. They attacked

18334-531: The basic military requirements; they were given the name Galician SS Volunteer Regiments 4 through 7 (German: Galizische SS-Freiwilligen Regiment ). These were completely separate from the division and were under the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) of the SS. In the spring of 1944 the police regiments were dissolved and their personnel were combined into the Galicia Division. The recruits began leaving for training on 18 July 1943, and they were seen off by

18512-444: The basis of race and religion. These organizations used group libel as a legal framework for describing the violence of hate speech and addressing its harm. In his discussion of the history of criminal libel, scholar Jeremy Waldron states that these laws helped "vindicate public order, not just by preempting violence, but by upholding against attack a shared sense of the basic elements of each person's status, dignity, and reputation as

18690-492: The basis of sexual orientation and gender identity also is banned in Germany. Most European countries have likewise implemented various laws and regulations regarding hate speech, and the European Union's Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA requires member states to criminalize hate crimes and speech (though individual implementation and interpretation of this framework varies by state). International human rights laws from

18868-468: The basis of their membership in the group, or that disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify protected groups based on certain characteristics. In some countries, including the United States , what is usually labelled "hate speech" is constitutionally protected. In some other countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law , criminal law , or both. Hate speech

19046-483: The command of Walter Schimana, before Fritz Freitag succeeded Schimana as the division commander two months later. Also in October the division was renamed and its units were renumbered in accordance with a reorganization of Waffen-SS units. Now the 14th Galician SS-Volunteer Division, it consisted of three 'grenadier' (infantry) regiments and an assortment of specialized units, though they were not yet at full strength. In

19224-474: The creation of the Galicia Division. He received Himmler's final approval shortly after that, despite the opposition of Erich Koch to any Ukrainian military units being formed. Himmler also believed that Galician Ukrainians were more Germanized because they had been part of the Austrian empire, and that the Galicians were more "Aryan-like." Thus it became the second non- Germanic division in the Waffen-SS, after

19402-404: The desire to create a Ukrainian military force, and given that Ukrainians were already being used by Germany, it would be better if they were concentrated in a single Ukrainian unit. In return for his support, Kubiyovych obtained assurances from Wächter that the division would be allowed to have chaplains of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, that it would only be used against communist forces on

19580-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with

19758-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in

19936-511: The difficult conditions in Galicia, and had very little interest in the Ukrainian national cause. The training of the new recruits was also of lower quality, due to the lack of time, equipment, and ammunition. After the division was rebuilt, it reportedly had 286 officers and 13,999 NCOs and soldiers. On 30 September 1944, Freitag was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his role as

20114-505: The division Ukrainian from the beginning, and that the German and Ukrainian members must be treated as equals. After his inspection, Himmler informed the commander of Army Group North Ukraine that the Galicia Division was ready to be sent into battle. In mid-June they were also visited by the leaders of the Ukrainian Central Committee. Towards the end of the month, it was decided that the division would be deployed to

20292-462: The division as the Third Reich faced collapse. In April 1945 they also absorbed about 2,500 Luftwaffe ground personnel and pilots from the 10th Parachute Division . In late March 1945, the Ukrainian Division was assigned to the I Cavalry Corps by Army Group South headquarters. As Hungarian resistance collapsed and the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front succeeded in breaking through to Austria ,

20470-480: The division existed or had forgotten about it, and when he found out during a meeting of generals in mid-March 1945, he gave an order, which was never implemented, for the Ukrainians to be disarmed and their weapons to be given to a German division. But because of the situation at the front line and the rapid advance of the Western Allies and the Soviets , the 1st Ukrainian Division remained in effect part of

20648-483: The division reportedly had 12,901 members. At the new location the division was joined by Ukrainian officers and NCOs who had completed their training elsewhere, along with new recruits from Galicia, and completed its assembling. In mid-May 1944, Heinrich Himmler visited Neuhammer to inspect the division. During that time he gave a speech to the Galicia Division's officers in which he acknowledged them as Ukrainian (as opposed to Galician), saying that he should have designated

20826-501: The division sent a company to Lviv to serve as an honor guard at the funeral of two of the Galicia governor's senior staff members who had been assassinated. Shortly after Freitag departed, in mid-February 1944 the division received an order to form a Kampfgruppe (battlegroup) of one infantry regiment and one detachment each of artillery, sappers, anti-tank grenadiers to go into combat against Sydir Kovpak 's Soviet partisan group, which entered Poland from Belarus. Beyersdorff believed

21004-608: The division was ordered to relocate to the Bad Gleichenberg – Feldbach area, south of Vienna . The evacuation from the Yugoslav side of the border into Austria was completed on 1 April 1945. The division fought against Soviet troops, including the 3rd Guards Airborne Division , in southeast Austria alongside other German units, such as the IV SS Panzer Corps. From 15 to 17 April, the Galicia Division defeated

21182-678: The division was unprepared, but complied with the order, because it came from the Higher SS and Police Leader in Kraków , Wilhelm Koppe . In the final phase of its training and assembling the division was sent to the Neuhammer training camp in Lower Silesia , in April 1944. The Kampfgruppe Beyersdorff detachment rejoined the rest of the division in Neuhammer shortly after. At this time

21360-506: The division's 29th, 30th, 31st Waffen-Grenadier regiments, a fusilier and an engineering battalion, along with its artillery regiment. The Field Replacement Battalion was deployed fifteen miles (24 kilometres) behind the other units. On 13 July, the Soviet forces launched their attack. By the next day, they had routed a German division (the 291st ) to the north of the XIII Corps and swept back an attempted German counterattack. On 15 July,

21538-509: The east, as well as to gain access to more natural resources. The Nazi Party regarded Ukrainians and other Slavs as subhumans, and therefore when the OUN-B leaders reached the Galician capital Lviv on 30 June 1941 and declared an independent government of Ukraine , they were arrested by the security service of the SS . The same happened to Melnyk and his faction before they could declare

21716-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of

21894-454: The end of that day, in the face of overwhelming Soviet attacks, the 14th Galician Division as a whole disintegrated. Late on 19 July its German commander, Fritz Freitag, resigned his command and was called in for service with XIII Corps staff. Command of all remaining units was then given to General Georg Lindemann . Freitag remained with the Corps staff while Lindemann organized the withdrawal of

22072-407: The end of the war, Wehrmacht Major Wolf-Dietrich Heike, noted that there was a shortage of German officers and NCOs, and that many of them were unsuited for working with the Ukrainians because of cultural differences. Based on postwar studies and veteran accounts after the war, the most common motivation for Ukrainian volunteers in the division was the idea that at some point it would become part of

22250-413: The guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . Laws against hate speech can be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The laws designed to protect public order require that a higher threshold be violated, so they are not often enforced. For example, a 1992 study found that only one person

22428-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,

22606-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of

22784-485: The internet crosses national borders, comprehensive government regulations on online hate speech can be difficult to implement and enforce. Governments who want to regulate hate speech contend with issues around lack of jurisdiction and conflicting viewpoints from other countries. In an early example of this, the case of Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme had a French court hold Yahoo! liable for allowing Nazi memorabilia auctions to be visible to

22962-469: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Hate speech Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards

23140-437: The last months of 1943 and early 1944 the division received additional troops from disbanded police regiments and from new volunteers. In January 1944, Freitag left for several weeks to attend a training course for division commanders, and in his absence the commanding officer was SS-Standartenführer and Colonel of Waffen-SS Friedrich Beyersdorff , who was normally the commander of the divisional artillery. In early February,

23318-430: The late afternoon, and at Olesko a major Soviet attack using T-34 tanks was repulsed by the division's Fusilier and Engineer battalions. On 20 July, the German divisions within the pocket attempted a breakout which failed partly because rain on the previous day had made the roads impassable for the armour of III Panzer Corps which was striking north to relieve the entrapped forces, despite early successes. By this point

23496-703: The march. The division's insignia is classified as a Nazi and hate symbol by Freedom House and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union . The region of Galicia , in modern-day southern Poland and western Ukraine , was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1772 and then the Austrian Empire until 1918. It was briefly involved in Ukrainian efforts for national independence in

23674-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted

23852-417: The name of the unit to be SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" (Himmler insisted against using "Ukrainian" in the name), and that it be given standard Waffen-SS field-grey uniforms with the addition of a patch on the right arm sleeve bearing the Galician regional symbol. The Galician lion was used as the division insignia instead of the Ukrainian trident . He added that the division would also have chaplains from

24030-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from

24208-476: The officer and NCO candidates who had completed their training courses around that time. More German officers and NCOs were also added to the Galicia Division. Many of the reassigned Germans were Volksdeutsche from Hungary and Slovakia . More volunteers from Galicia were accepted into the division as well, though they were different from those who had joined in 1943. Many of them joined for reasons other than Ukrainian nationalist sentiment, such as to escape from

24386-570: The only way to resolve this problem without abolishing hate speech laws would be to extend them to all possible conceivable categories, which Henze argues would amount to totalitarian control over speech. Michael Conklin argues that there are benefits to hate speech that are often overlooked. He contends that allowing hate speech provides a more accurate view of the human condition, provides opportunities to change people's minds, and identifies certain people that may need to be avoided in certain circumstances. According to one psychological research study,

24564-430: The opposite effect: disadvantaged and ethnic minorities being charged with violating laws against hate speech. Journalist Glenn Greenwald says that hate speech laws in Europe have been used to censor left-wing views as much as they have been used to combat hate speech. Miisa Kreandner and Eriz Henze argue that hate speech laws are arbitrary, as they only protect some categories of people but not others. Henze argues

24742-406: The organizers of the committee included Andriy Melnyk, Stepan Bandera, and Volodymyr Kubiyovych, the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee, which had been evacuated to Germany as the Red Army advanced. The National Committee appointed Pavlo Shandruk as the commander of its Ukrainian National Army . On 14 April 1945, the German government agreed to transfer control of the 14th Waffen-SS Division to

24920-572: The partisans, neither of which were successful, as the partisans were able to evade and escape from the Galicia Division due to the mountainous terrain slowing down the division's movements and giving the partisans time to detect their approach. During its stay in this area the Galicia Division was reinforced with another Ukrainian battalion under German leadership, known as the Ukrainian Self-Defence Legion, along with Ukrainians from various other German units that sought to join

25098-568: The party's dissolution by the Soviets left the OUN as the only functional Ukrainian political organization remaining in Galicia, since it was already an underground movement because of its conflict with the Polish government in the 1920s and 1930s. There was cooperation between members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists living in Germany and the Abwehr , the German military intelligence service led by Wilhelm Canaris , starting before

25276-401: The prestige of the idea of a Ukrainian state. The OUN-B was not in contact with the Ukrainian Central Committee and had no involvement in the division's creation. Roman Shukhevych's UPA discouraged young men in Galicia from joining it and instead tried to recruit them for their guerilla army. But the UPA later changed its position out of pragmatism. The organization lacked trained recruits and had

25454-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation

25632-465: The public. Yahoo! refused to comply with the ruling and ultimately won relief in a U.S. court which found that the ruling was unenforceable in the U.S. Disagreements like these make national level regulations difficult, and while there are some international efforts and laws that attempt to regulate hate speech and its online presence, as with most international agreements the implementation and interpretation of these treaties varies by country. Much of

25810-458: The railway lines were unavailable. The division had the opportunity to continue rebuilding and rearming itself while in Slovakia, as well as gaining experience in security operations, and the march to its new posting was successful. Divisional units were spread out in the Slovenian region of Styria and its adjacent Austrian region, Steiermark . They completed their arrival by 28 February. There

25988-528: The recruitment drive, there were 80,000 volunteers for the SS Division Galicia, of whom 53,000 were admitted. About 25,000 were deemed fit for service and 13,245 passed the medical examination. They were sent to training; 1,487 were dropped during the training period, leaving the division with 11,758 personnel. Those volunteers were mostly between the ages of 18 and 30, many from a middle class professional background or from farming families. Most of

26166-876: The regulation regarding online hate speech is performed voluntarily by individual companies. Many major tech companies have adopted terms of service which outline allowed content on their platform, often banning hate speech. In a notable step for this, on 31 May 2016, Facebook , Google , Microsoft , and Twitter , jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours. Techniques employed by these companies to regulate hate speech include user reporting, Artificial Intelligence flagging, and manual review of content by employees. Major search engines like Google Search also tweak their algorithms to try and suppress hateful content from appearing in their results. However, despite these efforts hate speech remains

26344-524: The remainder of XIII Corps, consisting of over 30,000 German and Ukrainian soldiers, was surrounded by the Soviets within the Brody pocket. Within the pocket, the Galician troops were tasked with defending the eastern perimeter near the Pidhirtsi Castle and Olesko . The Soviets wanted to collapse the Brody pocket by focusing their attack at what they perceived to be its weakest point; this was not

26522-462: The remnants of XIII Corps. The German high command believed that the Ukrainians had performed well given the conditions at Brody. Freitag and his chief of staff met with Himmler, who had taken a personal interest in the Galicia Division, in Berlin after the battle. Himmler defended the Ukrainians' performance in the battle when Freitag proposed that the division be disbanded, and gave the order to rebuild

26700-473: The rest of the division. The German instructors noted that the Ukrainian recruits were enthusiastic and dedicated. During their training the recruits also received two hours per week of political education by company commanders in National Socialism, which aimed to instill in them the belief in the victory of the Third Reich. In September 1943 the division's headquarters staff was established under

26878-418: The soldiers in the division were Ukrainian Greek Catholics, with the exception of a small number of Ukrainian Orthodox. The archpriest Vasyl Laba, a close associate of Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, became the head chaplain of the division, and it initially had a total of twelve chaplains. Ukrainians with previous experience as officers or NCOs were conscripted into the Galicia Division when it

27056-546: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,

27234-449: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in

27412-417: The troops an oath of loyalty to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. These events took place just weeks before the German surrender. Shandruk continued to work with Freitag and the German officers as the division commander. There is a dispute over whether the change in its status as a Ukrainian National Army unit was formally acknowledged amidst the deteriorating war situation in Germany. Hitler was either unaware

27590-438: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during

27768-541: The world population has access to the internet. Additionally, the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet imboldens many to make statements constituting hate speech that they otherwise wouldn't for fear of social or real life repercussions. While some governments and companies attempt to combat this type of behavior by leveraging real name systems , difficulties in verifying identities online, public opposition to such policies, and sites that don't enforce these policies leave large spaces for this behavior to persist. Because

27946-415: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching

28124-442: Was being overrun by the Red Army , signed a treaty that gave Poland the entirety of Galicia in exchange for military support against the Soviets. After Polish military victories during the ensuing Polish–Soviet War , another treaty that Poland concluded with the Soviets in 1921 recognized Polish sovereignty in western Ukraine, including all of Galicia. In 1922 the Polish parliament granted autonomy to Eastern Galicia, which led

28302-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of

28480-621: Was able to withstand several Soviet attempts to overwhelm it. By the evening of 21 July, it remained the only intact unit north of the Bug River even though several of its former members recorded that by 19 July there was chaos in the fusilier battalion, and it was running out of ammunition. In the early morning of 22 July, the 14th Fusilier battalion abandoned Bilyi Kamin. The Brody pocket was now only 4 to 5 miles (6.4–8.0 kilometres) long and wide. The German and Ukrainian soldiers were instructed to attack with everything they had by moving forward until they broke through or were destroyed. Fighting

28658-407: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially

28836-439: Was approaching close to the division's headquarters in Žilina. On 25 January 1945 the division received an order to move from Slovakia to the Austria–Slovenia border region, in occupied Yugoslavia , to be subordinated to the Higher SS and Police Leader in Ljubljana . The Ukrainians had about 22,000 troops at the end of 1944 and the start of 1945, including the Training and Reserve Regiment. There were claims in Slovak sources that

29014-441: Was changed to 1st Ukrainian ( German : 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (ukrainische Nr. 1) ). In late April 1945 its name was changed to the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army for the rest of the war. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared all members of all SS divisions "to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter ." In 1985, the Canadian Deschênes Commission concluded that

29192-427: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which

29370-430: Was established. These Ukrainian officers had previously served in the Russian Imperial Army , the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Polish Army, the Red Army, the Wehrmacht (including the former Nachtigall and Roland battalions), or the Austro-Hungarian Army. In addition to these, 1,000 of the Ukrainian recruits who enlisted in 1943 who had had higher education were sent to officer or NCO training schools. Most of

29548-412: Was fierce and desperate. The German and Ukrainian soldiers surging south were able to overwhelm the Soviet 91st Separate Tank Brigade and its infantry support, and to escape by the thousands. The remaining pocket collapsed by the evening of 22 July. Out of the around 11,000 soldiers in the Galicia Division who fought at Brody, only 3,000 escaped the encirclement. The others were killed or taken prisoner by

29726-426: Was initially opposed by the OUN-B and the UPA. A bulletin published by them in May 1943 criticized the creation of a German-led Ukrainian division, as it would deprive their nationalist movement of potential recruits by using them as cannon fodder, and went on to say that it represented colonialism, comparing the idea to the British Indian Army . The bulletin also said the creation of the Galicia Division would undermine

29904-413: Was largely destroyed in the Lvov–Sandomierz offensive , reformed, and saw action in Slovakia , Yugoslavia , and Austria before being transferred to the command of the Ukrainian National Committee on 14 April 1945, a change that was only partially implemented amidst the collapse of Germany, and surrendering to the Western Allies by 10 May 1945. The unit went by several names during its existence. It

30082-411: Was led by Andriy Melnyk from August 1939, though part of its local branch in Galicia had disagreements with him, and in February 1940 that faction broke away under the leadership of Stepan Bandera . Bandera's faction, the OUN-B, started working with the Germans in the spring of 1941 and established two battalions, known as " Nachtigall " and " Roland Battalion ." They were used by the Wehrmacht , though

30260-446: Was ordered to reinforce them, joining the XIII Army Corps , which was transferred from the 4th Panzer Army to the 1st Panzer Army around that time. In July 1944, together with six German infantry divisions, the Galicia Division was responsible for holding a front of approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) near the town of Brody . When the Soviets launched their offensive , the division was initially in reserve. Deployed at Brody were

30438-453: Was originally known as the SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" ( German : SS-Freiwilligen-Division "Galizien" , Ukrainian : Добровільна Дивізія СС "Галичина" , romanized :  Dobrovilna Dyviziia SS "Halychyna" ) from its creation until October 1943. It then became the 14th Galician SS-Volunteer Division, before being renamed again in June 1944 as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division (1st Galician) until November 1944, when its designation

30616-446: Was part of Poland, a party that stood for democracy and the development of the Ukrainian nation through increasing self-reliance and building up Ukrainian institutions. The other purpose of the party was to represent Ukrainian ethnic interests, and it became the largest Ukrainian party in the Polish parliament. It was opposed to the radical Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), seeing its violent actions as counterproductive. After

30794-521: Was prosecuted in Northern Ireland in the preceding 21 years for violating a law against incitement to religious violence. The laws meant to protect human dignity have a much lower threshold for violation, so those in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands tend to be more frequently enforced. A few states , including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Rwanda Hutu factions, actors in the Yugoslav Wars and Ethiopia have been described as spreading official hate speech or incitement to genocide . The rise of

30972-449: Was published in 1996, and hate speech has become one of the central challenges for social media platforms. The structure and nature of the internet contribute to both the creation and persistence of hate speech online. The widespread use and access to the internet gives hate mongers an easy way to spread their message to wide audiences with little cost and effort. According to the International Telecommunication Union , approximately 66% of

31150-429: Was rejected by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler because of racial reasons. It was not brought up again until 1942 by Otto Wächter , who had been appointed as the second German governor of Galicia in August 1941. Wächter sympathized with the Ukrainian population, many of whom initially saw the Germans as liberators after the previous years of Soviet oppression, and believed that Germany could work with them against

31328-402: Was reluctant to give more authority to Ukrainian officers since they did not have recent combat experience, which caused tensions between the Germans and the Ukrainians. Freitag was a committed National Socialist and was focused on instilling the Ukrainians with "the Prussian spirit" to turn the Galicia Division into an effective fighting force. The division's chief of staff from January 1944 until

31506-437: Was tasked with holding the area between the Pripyat Marshes and the Carpathian Mountains . Although the German army group consisted of over 40 divisions, they were under-strength, and its best armored units had been redeployed in June 1944 to France , where the Western Allies had landed that same month. The 1st Ukrainian Front vastly outnumbered Army Group North Ukraine in infantry, tanks, and artillery. The Galicia Division

31684-447: Was then used to provide security in that area. As this was happening, the rest of the division arrived at Žilina , in northwest Slovakia. Taking over from Panzer Division Tatra , the Galician regiments and battalions were spread out in an area that was 47 miles from north to south and 65 miles from east to west. The Galicia Division maintained order in the towns there and carried out successful actions against Slovak partisans, according to

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