Belarus during the occupation. Occupation of Belarus by German troops at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

After the Revolution of 1917, Ukraine, which declared independence, tried to seize part of Belarus with German help, but was faced with guerrilla warfare

In 1917-1918, immediately after the formation of national states from parts of the former Russian Empire, territorial conflicts with mutual claims began between them. But if in Transcaucasia the enmity between Armenian and Azerbaijani nationalists was fueled by centuries-old contradictions, then the borders between the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, although they were never clearly established, were not previously the subject of dispute. The Central Rada in Kyiv decided to quickly take advantage of this situation.

Contact zone

Historically, the Ukrainian-Belarusian state border, with a greater degree of convention, can be identified with the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the Union of Lublin in 1569, when Poland cut off the Kyiv, Volyn and Podolsk lands from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, the Brest region, Pinsk region, Mozyr region and Gomel region, which in the past were administratively associated with these lands, remained part of Belarus.

After the annexation of part of the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century to the Russian Empire, the Belarusian-Ukrainian demarcation began to take place along the borders of the Grodno, Minsk and Mogilev provinces with the territories of the Volyn, Kyiv and Chernigov provinces, respectively. At the same time, according to the ethnographic research of Academician Karsky, at the beginning of the 20th century, the settlement area of ​​ethnic Belarusians was much wider than the state borders of present-day Belarus. Belarusians lived on the territory of Chernigov and other neighboring provinces. Although in some southern regions of Belarus he still speaks dialects of a mixed, contact Belarusian-Ukrainian group. The influence of the Ukrainian language is also visible in eastern Polesie: in Braginsky, Khoiniki and some other southern regions of the modern Gomel region.

But this is a theory, and in 1917, the argument for establishing the boundaries of new national states was the rule of the strong, and not the research of ethnographers, linguists or historians, and not even referendums.

The Belarusian People's Republic (BPR), declared in March 1918 in Minsk, did not have such power. But the Central Rada of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) was able to receive German support.

German fist under Ukrainian embroidered shirt

On February 18, 1918, German troops, interrupting peace negotiations with the Soviet delegation in Brest, began their offensive on the territory of Belarus. The operation was called “Faustlag” - “fist strike”. The German troops of General Gronau easily scattered the Red Guard detachments and individual units of the old army that they encountered along the way. On March 1, 1918, units of the second German reserve corps, advancing along the line of the Polesie railway, occupied Gomel and began to advance further, in the direction of Novozybkov-Bryansk. The German offensive was supported by the actions of Ukrainian units. The entire territory of Southern Belarus, including Brest-Litovsk, Pinsk, Mozyr, Rechitsa and Gomel, was transferred by the Germans to Ukraine. The legal basis for this was the Brest Peace Treaty, signed by the UPR delegation with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey on February 27, 1918, and subsequent agreements. The delegation of the unrecognized BPR was not allowed to the negotiations and attended them only as advisers to the Ukrainian delegation, whose opinion they did not want to listen to.

The first government of the Belarusian People's Republic. Source: Wikipedia

Initially, according to the articles of the Brest Treaty, only the southern part of the Grodno province was transferred to the UPR: Brest-Litovsk and the area above the Western Bug. But soon the Ukrainian administration was established in the Pinsk and Mozyr districts of the Minsk province and in the Gomel and Rechitsa districts of the Mogilev province. In fact, over the entire Belarusian Polesie. For the Germans, in determining the northern border of the “new Ukraine”, not only the claims of their next allies played a role, but also the importance of complete control over the Brest-Gomel railway.

What about Belarusian nationalists? Representatives of the BPR and UPR continued negotiations: in April 1918, a delegation led by Brest resident Alexander Tsvikevich went to Kyiv to settle territorial disputes. The negotiations ended in vain; the Central Rada did not want to cede the newly acquired territories to the Belarusian delegation, which had only one argument in its hands - the map of the ethnographer Karsky.

However, the Belarusian parties did not have any serious positions in Gomel and throughout the southeast of Belarus. There were almost no organizations of the Belarusian Socialist Community, the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Belarusian Social Democratic Party.

A different picture emerged in Western Belarus. Most of the modern Brest region was captured by the German army during the 1915 offensive. In the occupied territory, along with Polish and Jewish ones, Belarusian national organizations were recreated, which began to adhere to a pro-German orientation. At the same time, left-wing all-Russian parties were forced to remain in an illegal and semi-legal position.

In 1918, after the further occupation of southeastern Belarus by German and UPR troops, the activities of political parties, including moderate socialist ones, were not prohibited here either. But the Bolsheviks, left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists were forced to go underground. The councils were liquidated, but city councils and other local government bodies were restored.

At the same time, forced Ukrainization begins in these territories. The paperwork is being translated into Ukrainian, which has created difficulties for the population. One of the main demands of the Gomel railway workers who went on strike in July 1918 was the abolition of Ukrainization. Which is logical - a misunderstanding of one or another technical term in this type of transport could lead to serious trouble.

In addition, the working day was increased to nine to ten hours, while wages were reduced by 50 rubles, and delays lasted for months.

At the same time, the Germans and their Ukrainian allies are constantly redrawing the map of Belarus. Thus, Gomel with its “povit” (district) was included in the Chernigov province. The Pinsk district is included first in the Volyn province, Rechitsa and Mozyr - in the Kyiv province. Subsequently, in August 1918, these counties were consolidated into the Polesie okrug (starostvo). The southern parts of Slutsk and Bobruisk districts were also included here. Mozyr was appointed the official capital of the Polesie district, but until October 1918 the district administrative center was located in Rechitsa.

Faustlag-2

In the spring of 1918, the Germans strike a second blow with their armed “fist”. But this time - not according to the Bolshevik Soviets, but already according to the Ukrainian Rada. On April 29, a military coup takes place in Kyiv, as a result of which German troops disperse the Central Rada and bring Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky to power. He liquidates the republican system in Ukraine and establishes a semi-monarchical regime, which, in addition to German bayonets, relies on landowners, former officers, the old bureaucracy, and so on. But if in Kyiv republican Ukrainian leaders are persecuted, up to and including arrests and executions, then in the occupied Belarusian territories forced Ukrainization continues.

Under Hetman Skoropadsky, democratic city dumas and zemstvos were dissolved, and the so-called “qualified” elements of large landowners and property owners returned to power. In Gomel, attempts are being made to restore the 160th Abkhazian infantry regiment stationed here before the World War, and volunteer officer squads are being formed.

However, the public administration from the very beginning was infected with severe corruption. Even the revolutionary underground managed to buy out their arrested comrades for banal bribes, which was very rare in tsarist times.

In addition to forced Ukrainization and the restoration of the class power of large landowners, the economic policy of the Ukrainian state caused particular discontent among the population. The land was again returned to the landowners, and heavy food and fodder taxes were imposed on the peasantry in favor of the German army. This eventually caused the rise of the guerrilla movement in the region.

Left Social Revolutionaries, anarcho-communists and the GRU

In the summer of 1918, the Chernigov province, which then included the annexed Belarusian “midwives,” was the most active partisan region. At the same time, most spontaneous rebel groups were wary of the Bolsheviks. The idols of the peasants were the Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists.

Destruction in Brest-Litovsk, 1918. Photo: Press Illustrating Service / FPG / Archive Photos / Getty Images / Fotobank

With the Social Revolutionaries everything was “clear” - these traditional defenders of the peasantry were the first to proclaim the socialization of the entire land. But the sympathy of Belarusian villagers for anarchist communists, who previously operated mainly among urban proletarians and lumpen proletarians, intensified during the war and the campaign of “various” government authorities in the villages. According to contemporaries, many partisan detachments agreed to deal with the Gomel underground revolutionary committee only after they learned that it included not only Bolsheviks, but also left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists.

It should be noted that almost the entire Bolshevik activists in Gomel were evacuated before the Germans arrived in the east, in Moscow and the Volga region. Therefore, the basis of the Gomel underground was originally anarchists and left Socialist Revolutionaries. Former expropriator, militant and political prisoner Efim Maizlin (“Tarantul”) was elected chairman of the Gomel underground revolutionary committee, which also included the anarcho-communist Dragunsky (a relative of the future author of stories about Denis Korablev), the anarcho-syndicalist Dneprov (Sheindlin), Bolsheviks, several left Socialist Revolutionaries and labor leaders. In the summer of 1918, Vasily Selivanov, who had arrived from Ukraine, joined the Gomel Revolutionary Committee, who by that time had been in the Cheka for participating in the “uprising” of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in Orsha. Subsequently, the leadership of the underground revolutionary committee passed to the Bolsheviks.

The anarcho-Left Socialist Revolutionary underground worked in close connection with the leadership of the military intelligence of the Red Army, in fact, the future GRU. The rebel work in the occupied territories was supervised by Belarusian Pavel Shishko, a member of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and at the same time the commissioner of the Special Intelligence Department under the Operations Department of the People's Commissariat of Military Affairs. From behind the cordon, the underground fighters received help, money and literature. Ukrainian and Belarusian partisans in 1918 underwent special training at military courses in Moscow. “You can’t teach to be a partisan; you have to be born a partisan. One thing only needs to be remembered: since the Germans, for every attack on them, brutally deal not only with the partisans, but also with the civilian population of those villages in the area in which the attack took place, it is necessary, if possible, to choose places for the attack away from populated areas,” - historian Yaroslav Leontiev quotes instructions for militias from the Central Insurgent Committee.

The organization of the anti-German and anti-hetman underground in Ukraine and Belarus was perhaps the first major operation of Soviet military intelligence in the field of sabotage work. The armed struggle against the occupiers in 1918 began with explosions and arson of German warehouses, military and railway facilities, and assassination attempts on officials of the occupation administration. Thus, militants of the revolutionary underground in Gomel threw bombs at a restaurant where German officers had gathered, and at the detective department, they blew up railway tracks, disabled steam locomotives, attempted to set fire to the barracks on Artilleriyskaya Street, and other acts of sabotage and sabotage. Weapons for the underground were supplied by local smugglers.

But the occupation authorities also used increasingly brutal and massive repressions to combat the movement, which was becoming wider. Thus, in July 1918, Gomel workshops actively participated in the general strike of the Ukrainian railways. A reward of 40 thousand rubles was placed on the heads of strike committee members. The Germans and Haidamaks conducted a raid in the Zalineiny region, where workers and employees of the workshops of the Libavo-Romensk and Polesie railways lived. Workers in “Zaliniya” were arrested straight from their homes, after which they were herded into the courtyard of the fire station. More than four thousand people were detained. In Brest-Litovsk, on the territory of the fortress, the Germans set up a concentration camp. 72 active participants in the railway strike were sent to it.

“Whose boys will you be?”

From July 5 to July 12, the first congress of the Ukrainian Communist Party was held in Moscow, at which a discussion about an armed uprising flared up. A group of supporters of active action, Georgy Pyatakov, Andrei Bubnov, Stanislav Kosior, advocated an uprising in Ukraine, Emmanuel Quiring was against it. The opinion of the Belarusian delegates of the Ukrainian congress (local Bolshevik organizations were then included in the Communist Party of Ukraine) was also divided between supporters and opponents of immediate action. The uprising was still raised. In the Gomel region, Colonel Krapivyansky declared himself the military leader of the uprising, which caused certain friction with the local underground revolutionary committee. The poorly prepared and coordinated armed attack ended in failure. Despite this, the Gomel, Rechitsa and Chernigov partisan detachments proved to be among the most militant. Thus, the Rechitsa rebel detachment under the command of the left Socialist Revolutionary Smotrenko captured the town of Gorval. The Germans and Haidamaks responded to this with public executions in Rechitsa and Gorval. After the defeat of the uprising, many partisans of the Gomel region joined the ranks of the first Ukrainian Soviet insurgent division of the left Socialist Revolutionary Nikolai Shchors.

International Regiment during the Civil War, Gomel, 1918. Photo: Archive / ITAR-TASS

The partisan war in Ukraine did not subside: historians estimate the number of those killed among the occupiers to be up to 20 thousand, among the rebels - 50 thousand. After German troops began to leave Ukraine, the days of the Hetman regime were numbered. Skoropadsky was replaced in Kyiv by the Petliura Directory, which tried to consolidate its power in the occupied Belarusian lands. However, in December 1918, about 60 militants of the Gomel United Revolutionary Committee, armed with only four rifles, ten revolvers and outdated revolvers, disarmed the police and captured the city. The officer squads do not offer resistance to them: recently the volunteers have been more busy trying to get the salary stolen by the recruiters - on this occasion they even almost destroyed the Collection Point on Volotovskaya Street.

In Gomel, the Germans, who had already created their own soldiers' councils, at first looked at what was happening with indifference. But the command of the 41st Reserve Corps from Mozyr still forces the “rebels” to be arrested. Christian Rakovsky and Dmitry Manuilsky arrive in Gomel for negotiations, and units of the regular Red Army from Russia are transferred to the city. Control over such a large railway junction as Gomel becomes strategically important. The railway workers go on strike again. The Germans cannot stand it and “give the go-ahead” to the Bolsheviks to evacuate. In Gomel there is even a joint banquet in honor of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, after which the Germans are loaded into trains. But the occupiers, already from the departing train, for fun, mortally wound a railway lineman with a rifle shot. The worker will die in the hospital of the Libavo-Romensky railway. Already in our time, his grandson from Moscow, having collected all the documents, will sue the German government for premeditated murder and win the case.

Left Socialist Revolutionary conspiracy in Polesie against Petliura and the Council of People's Commissars

Ukrainization was even more active in the Brest region. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia edited by Otto Schmidt noted back in 1935 that Northern Ukrainian dialects predominate in this region. Apparently, the mixed nature of dialects facilitated the propaganda of the UPR and the Hetmanites. In particular, the Prosvita society named after Taras Shevchenko has widely expanded its activities in Pinsk and other cities. Hundreds of graduates of special courses are sent to the Brest region to Ukrainize local schools and colleges. The Ukrainian newspapers and publishing houses opened here serve the same task, and Ukrainian cooperatives serve the same purpose of economic integration.

But economic devastation and extortions from the new authorities were more powerful arguments. The problem of refugees was also serious, some of whom were in eastern Belarus and then began to return home. Soon the partisan movement swept through Polesie. And here its military leaders were primarily a group of former officers - Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Gradually, the insurgent movement gained so much strength that entire regiments were formed on the basis of its units. The Polesie Revolutionary Committee was also created, in which the left Socialist Revolutionary G.M. played a prominent role. Ostrovsky, who in 1910-1912 studied in St. Petersburg at Chernyaev’s courses together with Yanka Kupala. In 1919, Ostrovsky will meet with Kupala again, and the story told by the rebel commander of the civil war in Polesie will be useful to the classics of Belarusian literature more than once. In February 1919, power in Pinsk passed into the hands of the Polesie insurgent revolutionary committee. True, the local Cheka would later accuse the leaders of the Polesie Revolutionary Committee of a “Left Social Revolutionary conspiracy.”

However, soon the German occupiers here will be replaced by Pilsudski’s legions, and instead of Ukrainization, even more brutal Polonization will be deployed in the Brest and Pinsk regions. Only the Mozyr district, which in 1919 became part of the BSSR, will become Belarusian. The Gomel province with Rechitsa will become part of Soviet Russia.

The annexation of Belarusian Polesie in 1918-1919 failed; All attempts to artificially Ukrainize it, both by the Hetman monarchists and the Petliura Republicans, also failed. Not the least important role was played by the fact that the population of Belarus did not accept not only the occupation power, but also the old social order restored by it. In 1941, Ukrainian nationalists will attempt revenge - the territory of southern Belarus will again be transferred to the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”.

At the end of the 90s, UNA-UNSO will begin to publish maps of “Great Ukraine”, send emissaries and try to expand their cells in Belarus. But here the repetition of history looked not even like a farce, but like some kind of aesthetic happening. If it were not for one “but”: the dynamics of geopolitical changes in the post-Soviet world are so great that if certain vectors coincide, chimeras of territorial disputes and redistributions can suddenly become a new reality.

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Original taken from oliver_queen92 in The truth about war. "Independent Belarus" in 1944.

In December 1943, the German occupation authorities allowed Belarusian collaborators to choose a Rada and de jure create their own state. The Belarusian parliament managed to sit for six months and even mobilize the population against the Bolsheviks. Today Belarus remains the last country in Eastern Europe to have a government in exile.

Almost 70 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Russian state propaganda continues to assert that Nazi Germany’s plans included an almost complete extermination of the Slavs. In particular, the political instructors refer to the notorious “Ost Plan,” which was never found in official form (and not in the notes of minor officials).

Hitler the Liberator

The Interpreter's blog has already written that the Germans, at a semi-official level, had several plans for the post-war reconstruction of the expanses of the former USSR. For example, one of these options looked like this:

« Another plan for the colonization of the East was drawn up in May 1942 by the Institute of Agriculture at the University of Berlin and sent to Himmler. Colonization of the vast expanses of the USSR was supposed to take about 25 years. Germanization quotas were introduced for different nationalities. The overwhelming majority of the local population was proposed to be evicted from cities to the countryside and used in large-scale agricultural activities.

To control areas where the German population was not initially predominant, it was proposed to introduce a system of “margraviates”. The first 3 such “margraviates” are Ingria (Leningrad region), Gotengau (Crimea and Kherson) and Memel-Narev (Lithuania-Bialystok). In Ingermanland, the population of cities should be reduced to 200 thousand people. In Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states and Ukraine, it was planned to create 36 strongholds, ensuring effective communication of the “margraviates” with each other and the metropolis. After 25 years, the “margraviates” were to be Germanized by 50%, and strongholds by 25-30%».

The map of these margraviates looked like this:

In the situation with the post-Soviet reorganization of Belarus, everything is much simpler. The Germans not only had an official plan, at the end of the occupation they generally granted de facto independence to Belarus, even to the point of allowing it to have its own army.

What the formation of this independence looked like is described in the book “Under the Germans” (compiled by the Encyclopedic Department of the IFI, Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University, 2011, circulation 1000 copies), in the chapter “Occupation of Belarus by the German army and collaboration of the local population.”

From the moment of the occupation of Belarus, the Germans divided the entire territory into “gebites”, districts (there were 9 of them in total). The Gebits were headed by German Gebit Commissioners with their own administrative apparatus. But at a lower level - the “Kreislandwirts” - local residents already ruled. As a rule, the Kreislandvirts were headed by Belarusian nationalists, and their closest servants were from the “former” - white officers, priests, kulaks, Socialist Revolutionaries, disenfranchised.

In December 1943, the Germans - largely under the influence of the Belarusian Nazis, as well as after failures on the eastern front - agreed to the creation of the Belarusian Central Rada (BCR). The Rada arose from two organizations. The first is the Belarusian Red Cross, organized by Dr. Antonovich (at the end of 1942 it was renamed “Belarusian Self-Help”). The second is the semi-underground “Belarusian Independence Party”, led by Major Rodzko.

(Belarusian self-defense units)

"Belarusian Self-Help" as a charitable organization managed to create its own organs in every volost of Belarus. On its basis, in July 1943, the “Union of Men of Trust” was organized in Minsk, the chairman of which was appointed Belarusian former deputy of the Polish Sejm Yuri Sobolevsky. This Union officially advised the apparatus of the General Commissariat "Belarus". Sobolevsky spent a long time persuading the Commissioner of Cuba to give political and economic power to the independent Belarusian parliament (leaving military and “foreign” policy to the Germans). He persuaded him, but Kube did not have time to bring these ideas to life, as he was killed by NKVD saboteurs.

The idea of ​​Kube and Sobolevsky was embodied by the new commissar, SS Lieutenant General von Gottberg. On December 21, 1943, at a solemn meeting of the Belarusian activists, he announced the Statute of the Belarusian Central Rada approved by him, which, in particular, contained the following points:

(Commissioner of Belarus von Gottberg with Belarusian officials)

— The Belarusian Central Rada is a representative of the Belarusian people convened within the framework of self-government. It has its location in Minsk.

— The Rada has the main task of mobilizing all the forces of the Belarusian people to destroy Bolshevism.

— I will be glad to host and implement all necessary events in the field of social, cultural and school life.

Radoslav Ostrovsky became the President of the Rada. He sets his conditions for the German administration:

— Convening no later than within 6 months of the Second All-Belarusian Congress to resolve the issue of Belarusian people's representation.

— Creation of the Belarusian armed force.

— The use of armed force against Bolshevism is only on the territory of Belarus.

(von Gottberg congratulates Professor Ostrovsky on his election to the post of President of Belarus)

The Germans accepted these conditions. And Ostrovsky gives the order to mobilize the population into the Belarusian Regional Defense. Within a week, 60 battalions of up to 600 people each were formed (about 35 thousand people in total). All of them were armed with German weapons. The Germans did not give weapons to the rest of the mobilized - and this was about 40 thousand people, citing the fact that “the supplies had run out.” These people were sent home by order of the Rada.

It is worth noting that before the creation of the Regional Defense, 200 so-called military units operated on the territory of Belarus. OD battalions (total number up to 100 thousand people).

At the same time, the “first free elections” to the Rada were held in Belarus. Everyone elected 1200 delegates, 5-7 people per district. At its first meeting, the Rada adopted the following resolutions:

(President of Belarus Ostrovsky inspects the local army)

— We confirm the need to implement the idea of ​​state independence of the Belarusian Republic;

— We confirm the resolutions of the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic of 1918;

— We declare invalid all the conditions accepted by the Bolsheviks and Poles on the issue of dismemberment of the territory of Belarus;

— We unanimously elect Professor Ostrovsky as President of the Rada. The Rada is declared the single legal representation of the Belarusian people.

The legal independence of Belarus was declared on June 27, 1944. But the republic did not survive for long.

After July 2, 1944, due to the offensive of the Red Army in Belarus, its combat forces were transferred to Germany. The following were formed from Belarusians: the 1st Belarusian Division, numbering 22 thousand people; 2nd assault brigade of General Ezovitov, numbering 12 thousand; SS-Brigade "Siegling" numbering about 10 thousand people. Both brigades fought on the Eastern Front against the Red Army. And the 1st Division was transferred to Italy, where it had to fight the Polish army of Anders at Monte Cassino. This was a mistake by the Germans: the Belarusians refused to fight against the Poles, and the division had to be transferred to the Rhine, where it fought against the Americans.

(The Belarusian army leaves Minsk for combat positions)

There, Belarusians from the 1st division surrendered to the Americans in 1945. Approximately half of the collaborators were extradited by the Americans to the USSR (the remaining half managed to emigrate to Latin America and Canada), almost all of them received from 10 to 25 years in the Gulag.

In July 1944, the Belarusian Rada was evacuated to the West - both the majority of its deputies and the executive authorities (a total of about 2 thousand people). About 30% of this composition moved to Canada (where a large Belarusian community already existed), another third approximately settled in Germany, the rest died or were extradited to the USSR.

It is interesting to trace the fate of the core of the Belarusian Rada, which moved to the West and on the basis of which the “Belarusian Government in Exile” was formed, which still considers itself the only legitimate representative of the authorities not on the territory of the republic.

— President of the Rada, Professor Radoslav Ostrovsky(1887-1976). In his political views he was a Socialist Revolutionary. In 1917, he was appointed commissioner in the Slutsk district by the Provisional Government. In the 1920s, a member of the Belarusian Workers' and Peasants' Community (standing in the positions of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries), a deputy of the Polish Sejm.

(President Ostrovsky speaks at a rally in Minsk)

Ostrovsky's candidacy was planned by the Germans for the post of burgomaster of Moscow. The Germans assumed that the professor remained leftist in his views and was well versed in Marxism. From April 1942 to June 1943, he formed and personally commanded anti-partisan self-defense units in Smolensk.

Since August 1944 in Germany, at the same time he received citizenship of this country. In the British occupation zone in Hanover they lived under the name “Andrey Korbut”. In 1947 he left for Argentina. In the second half of the 1950s he moved to the USA. Due to his advanced age, he left the post of President of Belarus in 1964. Died 1976 in Cleveland, Ohio.

(Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Belarus Sobolevsky. Head of the occupation police, since January 1944 - deputy chairman of the BCR Ostrovsky. After the war, he fled to Germany, died in 1957 in Munich.)

— Boris Ragulya, founder of the Belarusian Regional Defense. Polish army officer. He ended up in prison in the USSR, and was released by the Germans in July 1941. He led the self-government in Novogrudkov. In 1942, he formed the 68th punitive Belarusian battalion. The battalion “distinguished itself” by burning about 20 villages suspected of having connections with the partisans.

In the parliamentary elections he received about 90% of the votes in his district.

In the summer of 1944 in Germany, he received citizenship of this country. He supervised the training of agents at the Dalvitsa intelligence school. After the surrender of Germany, he ended up in Belgium and graduated from the medical faculty of the university there. Since the early 1950s in exile in Canada. He headed the “Ministry of Defense” in the “government in exile.” Died in 1983.

(Belarusian Army)

— Konstantin Ezovitov (1893-1946?). Participant of the First World War, second lieutenant in the 151st Pyatigorsk Regiment. Member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party since March 1917. Member of the regimental committee for elections to the Constituent Assembly.

From November 1917, he was involved in the formation of the 1st Belarusian Regiment. Since January 1918 - military commandant of Minsk. Secretary of the First Belarusian Rada. Member of the anti-Bolshevik underground. In exile in Lithuania, then in Latvia. In the early 1920s, he participated in the transportation of members of the Savinkovo ​​terrorist group to the USSR. In the 1930s, Russian emigrants suspected him of collaborating with the NKVD (allegedly he appeared under the nickname “Ozol”), but no evidence of this was ever found.

During the occupation, chairman of the Belarusian Committee in Latvia (until the end of 1943). Founder and commander of the Belarusian assault brigade, member of the honorary presidium of the Rada. Since August 1944 in Germany, he was engaged in training agents for insurgent activities in the rear of the Red Army. In April 1945, SMERSH was captured. He was kept in the Minsk city prison and wrote memoirs. According to the official version, he died of pneumonia on February 12, 1946 in a prison hospital. Unofficially, under the surname “Seleznev” he was kept under house arrest in Tashkent until his death in 1965.

(Residents of a Belarusian village see off a recruit to the army)

The Belarusian Government in Exile is based in New York. The President of the Belarusian Rada since 1997 is Ivonka Survilla (nee Ivona Vladimirovna Shimonets). Her father Vladimir Shimonets was the Minister of Finance of the BPR. Ivonka was 8 years old when her family fled from Belarus to Denmark in 1944, and in the late 1960s moved to Canada.

Unlike the emigrant governments of Ukraine, the Baltic countries, and Poland, which recognized the new governments in post-Soviet and post-socialist countries and transferred their powers to them, Belarus remains the last country in Eastern Europe to have its own “government in exile.”

(Current President of Belarus Ivonka Survilla with Lithuanian politician Vytutas Landsbergis)

Since the 1950s, this government has regularly filed lawsuits with the UN demanding “to investigate the colonial activities of Russia and the USSR on the territory of Belarus.” It does not recognize the current borders of Belarus, believing that the ancestral lands of the Belarusian people are the Smolensk and Bryansk regions, now part of the Russian Federation.

(Map of the Belarusian People's Republic. It clearly shows that Smolensk and Bryansk are part of the BPR

The Interpreter's blog collected photographs of everyday life in the territory of occupied Belarus. They clearly show how Belarusians quickly moved from worshiping one leader to another - from Stalin to Hitler. In principle, the way of life of ordinary Belarusians remained the same as under the Soviets.

Meetings of the Belarusian Rada, reports and debates:

Commissioner of Belarus von Gottberg presents medals to ordinary Belarusians for hard work, good sheds and milk yield:

Honorary funeral of the burgomaster of Minsk Ivanovsky, December 1943:

(The leadership of the Belarusian Rada raises their hand in mourning greeting: Nikolai Shkelenok (first vice-president of the BCR), Radoslav Ostrovsky (president of the BCR), Evgeniy Kolubovich (head of the culture department of the BCR), Yuri Sobolevsky (chief of the occupation police, deputy chairman of the BCR).

Celebration of May 1, workers of Minsk and other cities of independent Belarus at solemn rallies:

Belarusians for United Europe:

The flourishing of spiritual, Orthodox life in Belarus:

(Hierarchs of the Belarusian Autonomous Orthodox Church: Archbishop Filofey (Narko), Bishop Grigory Borishkevich, Bishop Stepan (Sevba) in the first row; Joseph Balai and Bishop Athanasius (Martas)

(Belarusian hierarchs at a picnic with Commissioner von Gottberg)

Festive evenings:

It is not difficult to predict that today Belarusians, as a young and just emerging nation, with the withering away of Lukashenko’s power, will again fall under the influence of Germany, the Fourth Reich, and at all times will rush towards their dream - a United Europe and “national identity”.

The Nazis created more than 260 death camps on the territory of Belarus. The largest of them were located in Minsk and its environs: on Shirokaya Street (20 thousand people were killed), in the Nemiga area (about 80 thousand), the Maly Trostenets death camp (more than 200 thousand), near the village of Masyukovshchina (80 thousand). ). More than 33 thousand people were killed in the Borisov death camps, in Koldychevo, Baranovichi district - 22 thousand people, near the Lesnaya station, Baranovichi district - more than 88 thousand, in the Polotsk region - about 150 thousand, in Vitebsk - also about 150 thousand people , in Gomel - about 100 thousand, in Pinsk - about 60 thousand, in Mogilev - more than 70 thousand people. Large camps were located in Molodechno, Brest, Volkovysk, near the Bronnaya Gora railway station in the Berezovsky district, in Bobruisk, etc.

During the war years, more than 2 million 200 thousand civilians and prisoners of war were killed on the territory of Belarus, and about 380 thousand people were taken to forced labor in Germany.

On the territory of Belarus, the invaders burned and destroyed 209 cities and regional centers, more than 8 million square meters of housing, 9,200 villages, leaving about 3 million people without housing.

Under the guise of fighting partisans during the years of occupation of Belarus, the Nazi invaders carried out more than 140 punitive operations, as a result of which more than 5,295 settlements were destroyed, of which 628 in 1941-1944 were destroyed along with the population (186 of them were not revived), 4,667 partially with population (325 of them have not been revived).

The Nazis destroyed more than 10 thousand industrial enterprises, almost all power plants, plundered 10 thousand collective farms, 92 state farms, 316 MTS, took 90% of machine tools and technological equipment, 18.4 thousand cars, more than 9 thousand tractors to Germany, 1, 1 thousand combines, 2.8 million heads of cattle, cut down 104 thousand hectares of forest, 33 thousand hectares of gardens.

During 1941-1944, the occupiers destroyed over 500 large cultural and scientific monuments in Belarus. They destroyed 5,300 clubs and red corners, more than 200 libraries, 26 museums. The damage caused by the invaders to art institutions was estimated at 163.4 million rubles in prices of that time. The occupiers completely destroyed 6,177 schools in Belarus, damaged 2,648, destroyed the 20 million book fund in the republic’s schools, and destroyed over 2,600 children’s institutions.

To organize resistance in Belarus, about 8 thousand communists were left behind German lines in 1941. At the same time, the Komsomol underground was created. Already in 1941, in the occupied territory of the BSSR, 3 regional, 2 city and 20 district committees of the CP(b)B operated underground; 2 underground regional committees, 2 city committees and 15 district committees of the LKSMB.

The Minsk party underground was among the first to launch the fight against the occupiers. During the war years, more than 9 thousand people fought in its ranks - representatives of all social strata of the population, 25 nationalities of the USSR, anti-fascists from foreign countries. Many of them were awarded orders and medals; Ivan Konstantinovich Kabushkin, Isai Pavlovich Kozinets, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kedyshko, Evgeny Vladimirovich Klumov, Elena Grigorievna Mazanik, Vladimir Stepanovich Omelyanuk, Maria Borisovna Osipova, Nadezhda Viktorovna Troyan were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

One of the most numerous and effective was the underground in the Vitebsk region. There were over 200 organizations and groups here. Among the region's underground fighters are Heroes of the Soviet Union Konstantin Sergeevich Zaslonov, one of the leaders of the Orsha underground; Vera Zakharovna Khoruzhaya, leader of the Vitebsk city underground group; members of the underground Komsomol group at the Obol station in the Sirotinsky district - Leningrad schoolgirl Zina Portnova and Fruza Zenkova; participant of the Polotsk underground Tatyana Savelyevna Marinenko; the head of the Rossony underground organization, Pyotr Mironovich Masherov, and a member of the same organization, Vladimir Antonovich Khomchenovsky.

Guerrilla formations began combat activities literally from the first days of their creation. Already on July 25, 1941, a detachment under the command of Minai Filippovich Shmyrev, “Father Minai,” carried out its first combat operation.

In total, during the years of occupation in Belarus, 374 thousand partisans fought with the enemy; 1 thousand 255 partisan detachments were created and operated, of which 258 were independent, the rest were united into 213 brigades. During the war years, there were almost 400 thousand reserve personnel in the partisan detachments and brigades. In 1943, according to the Belarusian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement (BSHPD), 12.8% of the partisans were under 20 years of age, 80% were between 20 and 40 years old, and the rest were over 40 years old. More than 5 thousand children under 14 years of age fought the enemy in the ranks of the Belarusian partisans.

The partisan movement in Belarus was international. Along with Belarusians (65.2%), Russians (25%), Ukrainians (3.8%), and representatives of other peoples of the Soviet Union took an active part in it. About 4 thousand foreign anti-fascists fought in the ranks of the people's avengers, including 3 thousand Poles, 400 Slovaks and Czechs, 235 Yugoslavs, 70 Hungarians, 60 French, 31 Belgians, 24 Austrians, 16 Dutch, about 100 Germans, representatives of many others European peoples.

In order to centralize the leadership of the partisan forces, in May 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, headed by the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) Panteleimon Kondratievich Ponomarenko. Under his leadership, the republican and regional headquarters of the partisan movement operated, including, since the fall of 1942, the Belarusian headquarters of the partisan movement, headed by the 2nd Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)B Pyotr Zakharovich Kalinin.

In 1943, combat cargo from the Soviet rear began to systematically arrive at the partisan formations. During the occupation of Belarus, Soviet aviators carried out 5,945 sorties to the partisans, delivered 2,403 tons of various cargo behind enemy lines, transported 2,626 people from the mainland and took about 9 thousand people out of the partisan zone.

One of the most important types of combat activities of the partisans was sabotage of enemy communications. The main flow of enemy military cargo went to the front via railways, the total operational length of which in Belarus on the eve of the war was 5,743 km. In January-February 1942, the occupation authorities registered 11 partisan attacks on railways, in March - 27, in April - 65, in May - 145, in June - 262, from July 1 to July 25 - 304. According to the BSPD, in May In 1943, the partisans of Belarus derailed 447 enemy trains, in June - 598, in July - 761 trains. Particularly effective were the actions of partisans on railway communications during the “rail war”. On the night of August 3, 1943, about 74 thousand Belarusian partisans took to the railways and struck the first blow. The operation lasted until mid-September 1943, and on September 19, its second stage began, codenamed “Concert,” which lasted until November. In the summer of 1944, on the eve of the Belarusian offensive Operation Bagration, the third stage of the rail war was successfully carried out.

The first partisan zones emerged in the fall of 1941. According to the BSPD, by the end of 1943, the people's avengers controlled 108 thousand square kilometers, or 58.4% of the occupied territory of the republic, including 37.8 thousand square kilometers that were completely cleared of the enemy. In total, more than 20 partisan zones were created in the liberated and partisan-controlled territories of the republic.

During the years of struggle behind enemy lines from June 1941 to July 1944, the patriots of Belarus destroyed and wounded more than 500 thousand Nazis, blew up and derailed 11 thousand 128 military trains and 34 armored trains, destroyed 29 railway stations, 948 headquarters and garrisons, blew up and destroyed more than 19 thousand 700 cars, blew up and burned 819 railway and 4 thousand 710 other bridges, damaged more than 300 thousand railway rails, more than 7 thousand 300 km of telephone and telegraph lines, shot down in the air and burned 305 aircraft at airfields , disabled 1 thousand 355 tanks and armored vehicles, destroyed 438 guns of various calibers, 939 enemy warehouses. The partisans of Belarus captured 363 cannons and mortars, 1,874 machine guns, and about 21,000 rifles and machine guns as trophies.

For the courage and heroism shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, more than 140 thousand Belarusian partisans and underground fighters were awarded orders and medals, 88 of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The liberation of Belarus began in the fall of 1943. As a result of the autumn-winter offensive of 1943-44, 36 districts of Belarus, 36 district and 2 regional centers - Gomel and Mozyr - were completely or partially liberated. From November 1943 to April 1944, 35 partisan brigades and 15 separate detachments (more than 50 thousand people) from the Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel and Polesie regions joined the Red Army. More than 45 thousand partisans joined the ranks of the Red Army.

The first regional center of the republic to be liberated from the Nazi invaders was Komarin. This happened on September 23, 1943 during the Chernigov-Pripyat operation, which was carried out by troops of the Central Front from August 26 to September 30, 1943.

From November 10 to November 30, 1943, troops of the Belarusian Front carried out the Gomel-Rechitsa operation, as a result of which Soviet troops advanced 130 km westward and on November 26 liberated the first regional center of Belarus, the city of Gomel.

The territory of Belarus was finally liberated during one of the largest strategic offensive operations of the Red Army, which took place from June 23 to August 29, 1944, codenamed “Bagration”. During the operation, troops of the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian fronts destroyed a large enemy group in the Vitebsk area and liberated Vitebsk on June 26, and Orsha on June 27. The troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front carried out the Mogilev operation and captured Mogilev on June 28. The troops of the right wing of the 1st Belorussian Front surrounded and defeated the enemy’s Bobruisk group and liberated Bobruisk on June 29. The troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts carried out the Minsk operation from June 29 to July 4 and liberated the capital of Belarus, the city of Minsk, on July 3, and liquidated the Wehrmacht units that fell into the Minsk cauldron from July 4 to 11. The troops of the 1st Belorussian Front captured Baranovichi on July 8, Slonim on July 10, defeated the Lublin and Brest enemy groups, stormed the city of Brest on July 28 and completed the liberation of Belarus.

During the Belarusian operation, Soviet troops defeated the German Army Group Center: 17 divisions and 3 brigades were completely destroyed, 50 divisions lost more than half of their strength.

More than 1.3 million Belarusians and natives of Belarus fought in the Red Army on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. During the war, military formations were commanded by 217 Belarusian generals and admirals.

For the courage and heroism shown during the Great Patriotic War, 300 thousand Belarusian soldiers and natives of the republic were awarded orders and medals, 441 people were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, 65 people were full holders of the Order of Glory. Pilot Pavel Yakovlevich Golovachev, commanders of tank formations Iosif Iraklievich Gusakovsky, Stepan Fedorovich Shutov, Ivan Ignatievich Yakubovsky were twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

15) Battle of Kursk (July 5, 1943 - August 23, 1943, also known as the Battle of Kursk)

in terms of its scale, the forces and means involved, tension, results and military-political consequences, it is one of the key battles of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War. The largest tank battle in history (approximately 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 people, 4,000 aircraft).

In Soviet and Russian historiography, it is customary to divide the battle into 3 parts: Kursk defensive operation (July 5-12); Oryol (July 12 - August 18) and Belgorod-Kharkov (August 3-23) offensive. The battle lasted 49 days - from July 5 to August 23, 1943. The German side called the offensive part of the battle Operation Citadel.

After the end of the battle, the strategic initiative in the war finally passed to the side of the Red Army, which until the end of the war carried out mainly offensive operations, while the Wehrmacht defended itself.

The German command decided to conduct a major strategic operation on the Kursk salient in the summer of 1943. It was planned to deliver converging attacks from the areas of the cities of Orel (from the north) and Belgorod (from the south). The strike groups were supposed to unite in the Kursk area, encircling the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts of the Red Army. The operation received the code name “Citadel”. According to German General Friedrich Fangohr, at a meeting with Manstein on May 10-11, the plan was adjusted at the suggestion of General Hoth: the 2nd SS Panzer Corps turns from the Oboyansk direction towards Prokhorovka, where terrain conditions allow for a global battle with the armored reserves of the Soviet troops.

To carry out the operation, the Germans concentrated a group of up to 50 divisions (of which 18 tank and motorized), 2 tank brigades, 3 separate tank battalions and 8 assault gun divisions, with a total number, according to Soviet sources, of about 900 thousand people. The leadership of the troops was carried out by Field Marshal Günther Hans von Kluge (Army Group Center) and Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (Army Group South). Organizationally, the strike forces were part of the 2nd Tank, 2nd and 9th Armies (commander - Field Marshal Walter Model, Army Group Center, Orel region) and the 4th Tank Army, 24th Tank Corps and operational group "Kempf" (commander - General Hermann Goth, Army Group "South", Belgorod region). Air support for the German troops was provided by the forces of the 4th and 6th Air Fleets.

At the same time, however, a significant number of frankly outdated tanks and self-propelled guns remained in the German units: 384 units (Pz.III, Pz.II, even Pz.I). Also during the Battle of Kursk, German Sd.Kfz.302 teletankettes were used for the first time.

The Soviet command decided to conduct a defensive battle, exhaust the enemy troops and defeat them, launching counterattacks on the attackers at a critical moment. For this purpose, a deeply layered defense was created on both sides of the Kursk salient. A total of 8 defensive lines were created. The average mining density in the direction of expected enemy attacks was 1,500 anti-tank and 1,700 anti-personnel mines for every kilometer of the front.

The troops of the Central Front (commander - General of the Army Konstantin Rokossovsky) defended the northern front of the Kursk ledge, and the troops of the Voronezh Front (commander - General of the Army Nikolai Vatutin) - the southern front. The troops occupying the ledge relied on the Steppe Front (commanded by Colonel General Ivan Konev). The coordination of the actions of the fronts was carried out by representatives of the Headquarters Marshals of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky.

16) In 1944, the Red Army inflicted a series of crushing blows on the German troops, which led to the complete liberation of Soviet land from fascist invaders. Among the largest operations are the following:

January-February - near Leningrad and Novgorod. The 900-day blockade of Leningrad, which had lasted since September 8, 1941, was lifted (during the blockade, more than 640 thousand residents died of hunger in the city; the food standard in 1941 was 250 g of bread per day for workers and 125 g for the rest);

February March - liberation of Right Bank Ukraine;

April May - liberation of Crimea;

June August - Belarusian operation;

July-August - liberation of Western Ukraine;

Beginning of August - Iasso-Kishinev operation;

October - liberation of the Arctic.

By December 1944, all Soviet territory was liberated. On November 7, 1944, the Pravda newspaper published Order No. 220 of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief: “The Soviet state border,” it said, “has been restored all the way from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea” (for the first time during the war, Soviet troops reached the state border USSR March 26, 1944 on the border with Romania). All of Germany's allies withdrew from the war - Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary. Hitler's coalition completely collapsed. And the number of countries that were at war with Germany was constantly increasing. On June 22, 1941 there were 14 of them, and in May 1945 there were 53.

The successes of the Red Army did not mean that the enemy ceased to pose a serious military threat. An army of almost five million confronted the USSR in early 1944. But the Red Army was superior to the Wehrmacht both in numbers and in firepower. By the beginning of 1944, it numbered more than 6 million soldiers and officers, had 90 thousand guns and mortars (the Germans had about 55 thousand), an approximately equal number of tanks and self-propelled guns, and an advantage of 5 thousand aircraft.

The successful course of military operations was also facilitated by the opening of a second front. On June 6, 1944, Anglo-American troops landed in France. However, the Soviet-German front remained the main one. In June 1944, Germany had 259 divisions on its Eastern Front, and 81 on the Western Front. Paying tribute to all the peoples of the planet who fought against fascism, it should be noted that it was the Soviet Union that was the main force that blocked A. Hitler’s path to world domination . The Soviet-German front was the main front where the fate of humanity was decided. Its length ranged from 3000 to 6000 km, it existed for 1418 days. Until the summer of 1944 -

Liberation of the territory of the USSR and the Mupei states by the Red Army 267

the time of the opening of the second front in Europe - 9295% of the ground forces of Germany and its allies operated here, and then from 74 to 65%.

Having liberated the USSR, the Red Army, pursuing the retreating enemy, entered the territory of foreign countries in 1944. She fought in 13 European and Asian countries. More than a million Soviet soldiers gave their lives for their liberation from fascism.

In 1945, the offensive operations of the Red Army assumed an even larger scale. The troops launched a final offensive along the entire front from the Baltic to the Carpathians, which was planned for the end of January. But due to the fact that the Anglo-American army in the Ardennes (Belgium) was on the brink of disaster, the Soviet leadership decided to begin hostilities ahead of schedule.

The main attacks were carried out in the Warsaw-Berlin direction. Overcoming desperate resistance, Soviet troops completely liberated Poland and defeated the main Nazi forces in East Prussia and Pomerania. At the same time, strikes were carried out on the territory of Slovakia, Hungary and Austria.

17) Preparation of an offensive operation in Belarus began in the winter of 1944, but the enemy failed to reveal this preparation - the Germans were convinced that a new Soviet offensive would begin in Northern Ukraine. To imagine the scale of the measures to disinformation the enemy, it is enough to say that the command of the Red Army concentrated 2.4 million people on four fronts for the offensive. The troops included 36 thousand guns and mortars, over five thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, and 5.3 thousand combat aircraft.

The command of Army Group Center had 1.2 million people, 9.5 thousand guns and mortars, 900 tanks and self-propelled guns and approximately 1.3 thousand aircraft (and most of the aircraft appeared in the combat zone after the start of the Soviet offensive).

The operation, called Operation Bagration in honor of the famous Russian commander, was one of the first Soviet strategic operations, the start dates of which were agreed upon with the Western allies. Having recently landed in Normandy, the Allies needed a strike from the other side of the front, which would facilitate the breakthrough from the bridgehead to the operational space.

The fronts participating in the operation were commanded: the 1st Baltic Front was commanded by Army General Bagramyan, the 3rd Belorussian Front was commanded by Colonel General (from June 28, 1944 - Army General) Chernyakhovsky, the 2nd Belorussian Front was commanded by Army General Zakharov, the 1st Belorussian Front was commanded by Army General Zakharov. General of the Army (from June 29 - Marshal of the Soviet Union) Rokossovsky, future commander of the Victory Parade. Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov was appointed coordinator of the actions of four fronts from Headquarters. Army Group Center opposing the Soviet troops was commanded by Field Marshal Bush.

The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Konstantin Rokossovsky, eventually proposed a solution that became key to the success of the operation on the southern face of the salient. He planned the offensive of the 28th and 65th combined arms armies through the Pripyat swamps, from a direction where the Germans had practically not prepared for defense, not expecting an attack of such power and scale. This made it possible to turn a frontal “cutting” attack into a classic “double envelopment”, which made it possible to encircle large German forces, first in the Bobruisk area, and then near Minsk.

In other areas of the breakthrough, success was determined by the superiority of the Soviet troops in firepower - to crush the German defense, a huge amount of heavy artillery was used, including super-heavy howitzers of 305 mm caliber, and detailed reconnaissance of positions prepared by the enemy, which made it possible to fire precisely at the location of German troops, making it difficult for them to maneuver . The combination of numbers and firepower determined the success of the offensive - on the very first day, 25 enemy divisions suffered heavy losses.

With such overwhelming superiority, the tenacity that individual enemy units showed in defense no longer solved anything - those divisions that were not defeated in the first hours of the offensive were surrounded.

During the first 24 hours, German troops were surrounded in the Vitebsk area; on June 27, the 1st Belorussian Front closed the encirclement ring around Bobruisk; by June 29, German troops were surrounded in the Mogilev area.

The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Konstantin Rokossovsky, whose troops achieved the greatest successes, received a diamond star and shoulder straps of the Marshal of the Soviet Union on June 29, and on July 30, 1944, he was awarded the highest award of the USSR - the Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Operation Bagration lasted 68 days, ending in Poland. The width of the combat front was 1,100 kilometers, the depth of advance was 550-600 kilometers. The enemy's irretrievable losses exceeded 539 thousand people - 381 thousand killed and 158 captured. The irretrievable losses of Soviet troops were significantly lower - 178 thousand people. 17 enemy divisions and three brigades were completely destroyed, and another 50 divisions lost more than half of their personnel.

As a result of the offensive, a 900-kilometer gap was formed between Army Groups “South” and “North”, to close which the Wehrmacht command transferred 46 divisions and 4 brigades from other sectors of the front, which facilitated the offensive both for the allies in the West and for Soviet troops in Ukraine and in the Baltic states.

Operation Bagration is also famous for one more episode. On July 17, 1944, 50 thousand German prisoners of war captured in Belarus, led by officers and generals, were paraded through Moscow. This procession, reminiscent of ancient triumphs with prisoners being driven through the streets of Rome, became the best demonstration of the successes of the Red Army, forever captured in photographs and newsreels.

Landing in Normandy

The Normandy Operation, or Operation Overlord, was an Allied strategic landing of troops in Normandy (France), which began in the early morning of June 6, 1944 and ended on August 31, 1944, after which the Allies crossed the Seine River, liberated Paris and continued their advance towards the French German border.

The operation opened the Western (or so-called “second”) front in Europe in World War II. Still the largest amphibious operation in history, it involved more than 3 million people who crossed the English Channel from England to Normandy.

The Normandy operation was carried out in two stages:

Operation Neptune, the code name for the initial phase of Operation Overlord, began on June 6, 1944 (also known as D-Day) and ended on July 1, 1944. Its goal was to gain a bridgehead on the continent, which lasted until July 25;

Operation Cobra, a breakthrough and offensive across French territory, was carried out by the Allies immediately after the completion of the first phase.

Together with this, from August 15 to the beginning of autumn, American and French troops successfully carried out the Southern French Operation, as a complement to the Normandy Operation. Further, having carried out these operations, the Allied troops advancing from the north and south of France united and continued their offensive towards the German border, liberating almost the entire territory of France.

When planning the landing operation, the Allied command used the experience gained in the Mediterranean theater of operations during the landings in North Africa in November 1942, the landings in Sicily in July 1943, the landings in Italy - which were the largest amphibious operations before the landings in Normandy, as well as the Allies took into account the experience of some operations conducted by the US Navy in the Pacific theater of operations.

The operation was extremely secret. In the spring of 1944, for security reasons, transport links with Ireland were even temporarily suspended. All military personnel who received orders regarding a future operation were transferred to camps at the embarkation bases, where they were isolated and prohibited from leaving the base. The operation was preceded by a major operation to disinformation the enemy (Operation Fortitude).

The main Allied forces that took part in the operation were the armies of the United States, Great Britain, Canada and the French Resistance movement. In May and early June 1944, Allied troops were concentrated mainly in the southern regions of England near port cities. Just before the landing, the Allies transferred their troops to military bases located on the south coast of England, the most important of which was Portsmouth. From June 3 to June 5, troops of the first echelon of the invasion took place on transport ships. On the night of June 5–6, landing ships were concentrated in the English Channel before the amphibious landing. The landing points were mainly the beaches of Normandy: Omaha, Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah.

The invasion of Normandy began with massive night parachute and glider landings, air attacks and naval bombardment of German coastal positions, and early on the morning of June 6, naval landings began. The landing took place for several days, both during the day and at night.

The Battle of Normandy lasted over two months and involved the establishment, retention and expansion of coastal beachheads by Allied forces. It ended with the liberation of Paris and the fall of the Falaise Pocket at the end of August 1944.

Occupation "new order". On the occupied territory of Belarus, the Nazi invaders introduced a “new order” aimed at eliminating the Soviet system, exploiting the national wealth and resources of Belarus, oppressing and exterminating people. The ideological basis of this order was the misanthropic “racial theory” of the Nazis. According to this theory, the superiority of the Aryan race over all other peoples, the need to expand the “living space” for the Germans and their “right” to world domination were asserted. The attitude of the occupiers towards the Belarusians was determined in the Ost plan, according to which it was envisaged to physically destroy or evict 75% of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians, and the remaining 25% to be Germanized and turned into slaves.

During the occupation, under the guise of fighting against partisans, the invaders carried out more than 140 punitive operations in Belarus. After them, entire areas turned into “desert zones.” On March 22, 1943, by order of the Nazis, all residents of the village of Khatyn, near Logoisk, were burned alive. The fire killed 149 people, including 76 children, the youngest of whom was seven weeks old. The name “Khatyn” became a symbol of the tragedy of the Belarusian people during the war. The tragic fate of Khatyn, which was burned along with its inhabitants, was shared by 627 villages, of which 186 were never restored after the war.

Politics of genocide. The main means of achieving their goals for the occupiers was the policy of genocide. It was aimed at the complete or partial destruction of population groups based on racial, national, ethnic, political or religious grounds. One could become a victim of genocide for various reasons: for belonging to communists or Jews, for any disobedience to the occupation authorities, or on racial grounds.

The Jewish population of Belarus was herded into special places of residence - ghettos; over 110 of them were created in Belarus. About 100 thousand Jews died in the Minsk ghetto. To designate genocide against the Jewish population of Europe, the concept of Holocaust is used (from Greek - burning, destruction by fire). In total, over 600 thousand Jews became victims of the Holocaust in Belarus during the years of the Great Patriotic War. Righteous Among the Nations are those persons of non-Jewish origin who saved persons of Jewish nationality during the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War. There are more than 700 Righteous Among the Nations in the Republic of Belarus (as of January 1, 2013).

More than 260 death camps were created in Belarus. There were five such camps in Minsk and its environs. One of them - Trostenets - in the system of camps of Nazi Germany stood in sad fourth place after Auschwitz (Auschwitz), Majdanek and Treblinka in terms of the number of people killed - 206,500 people.

Belarusian ostarbeiters. Soviet people, especially young people, were forcibly taken to hard labor in Germany. Those who avoided being sent to Germany were shot. During the occupation, almost 385 thousand people, mostly young people and the most capable population, including more than 24 thousand children, were taken from Belarus for forced labor in Germany and the countries it captured. In Germany, such people were called “ostarbeiters” - eastern workers, depriving them not only of their name, but also of their nationality. Once in hard labor, people died from hunger, various diseases, bullying, hard work, and were physically exterminated. According to incomplete data, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, only 120 thousand people returned to Belarus.

Activities of Belarusian collaborators. To establish the “new order,” the occupiers formed an occupation administration and police units. A small part of the residents of Belarus, who found themselves under conditions of a harsh occupation regime, began to work in the bodies of the German administration. To carry out their occupation policy, the Nazis attracted and used in various ways those who were against Soviet power. Those who have taken the path of cooperation with the occupation authorities are called collaborators.

In order to create a support for themselves among the population, the occupation authorities allowed those who began to cooperate with them to organize Belarusian schools, open theater and scientific institutions, and publish Belarusian newspapers. The occupiers even went to the creation of such pro-fascist organizations as the Belarusian Central Rada, the Belarusian People's Self-Help, the Belarusian Regional Defense, and the Union of Belarusian Youth (UBM). It was possible to join the SBM at the age of 10 to 20 with written proof of Aryan origin and a desire to serve with the invaders. The leadership of the SBM subjected the youth to ideological indoctrination. So, for example, A. Hitler was presented as a liberator and friend of the Belarusian people, and the Bolshevik communists - as his mortal enemies.

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Occupation regime- this is a strict order in which all bodies of Soviet power were liquidated. Workers worked 12-14 hours a day, people were thrown into concentration camps.

More than 260 death camps were created in Belarus. There were concentration camps, prisons, and ghettos in every region. 10 km. the territory of death “Trostenets” was created east of Minsk. Here the Nazis killed 206,500 people - this is the third highest number of deaths after Auschwitz and Majdanek.

genocide. The policy of genocide towards the Belarusian people was obvious. 209 cities were destroyed and burned, including Minsk, 200 settlements, 10,338 industrial enterprises, and all power plants were destroyed. In Belarus, 2,200,000 people died, 628 villages were burned along with their residents, of which 186 were not restored.

The German occupation regime on the territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War

The liquidation of Jews in the USSR was carried out mainly by special units, the composition of which was limited and therefore they could not independently and quickly destroy the several million Jews remaining in the occupied territory. To help them, the German gendarmerie on the ground, with the support of local police officers, had to concentrate Jews in temporary detention centers. Although the forced detention of Jews was ideologically explained by the danger of their influence on the surrounding population, in reality the Nazis pursued several goals:

3) Obtaining free labor.

4) Gaining sympathy from the rest of the population, to whom the Nazis, for propaganda purposes, presented the persecution of Jews as a fight against the Judeo-Bolsheviks, who were responsible for all the hardships in the interwar years.

All Jews and Jewish women who were in the occupied territory and who had reached the age of 10 were required to wear on the right sleeve of their outerwear and dresses a white stripe up to 10 cm wide with a Sianist star painted on it or a yellow bandage up to 10 cm wide.

Jews and Jewish women provide themselves with such bandages.

On the territory of Belarus, the Nazis used five main types of places of detention for Jews:

Ghettos are city neighborhoods surrounded by barbed wire.. On the territory of Eastern Belarus, ghettos began to be created at the end of June 1941. and almost all were liquidated between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942.

On the territory of Belarus, like the USSR in general, there were closed and open ghettos.

Open ghettos arose in places with a significant Jewish population, where it was impractical to evict them and then protect them. In addition, they also arose in small settlements where the German authorities could not organize security for the closed ghetto. In open ghettos, Jews were ordered not to leave their locality and not to visit public places. In these ghettos, Jews, as well as in closed ghettos, performed forced labor, were required to wear Jewish identification marks, and pay indemnities.

In all ghettos there were formed Judenrat (“Jewish Council” in German)-bodies introduced by the Nazi occupation authorities to manage the Jewish population of some cities and regions, which were made up of Jews designated by the authorities and were responsible for carrying out Nazi orders that concerned Jews. ;or elders were appointed, who often distributed and organized work, which naturally gave rise to dissatisfaction among a certain part of the prisoners, especially the disabled - the first candidates for liquidation.

As for the partisans, they did not willingly accept Jews into their units, even if they brought weapons with them. At the beginning of Nov. 1942, the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement, P. Ponomarenko, ordered the brigade commanders not to accept individuals or small groups of people who miraculously escaped from the ghetto, that is, Jews.

The pretext was more than absurd: they could supposedly be “agents sent by the Germans.”

2.Prisons. Prisons were especially often used in small settlements as temporary places of detention (for example, in Oshmyany, Cherikov and Vileika).

3. Labor camps .

Basically, especially at the beginning, they housed Jews of working age, both men and women. However, in 1942-1943. skilled Jewish artisans and family members were also transported here from liquidated ghettos. Some of these camps existed until liberation in 1944. On the territory of Belarus, as well as in Ukraine, there were both special labor camps for Jews (for example, in Bereza, in Bortniki in the Beshenkovichi district, in Drozdy in Minsk), and general camps for civilians persons in which Jews were part, often a significant part, of all prisoners (for example, in Baranavichy).

Prisoner of war camps. Some of the Jewish prisoners of war managed to hide their nationality. Attempts to hide nationality were made frequently, but success often depended, on the one hand, on the attitude of other prisoners towards them, and on the other, on the ability of German officers and local policemen to recognize nationality. In 1941-1942 On the territory of prisoner of war camps, the Nazis also placed Jews from nearby settlements in order to save effort in guarding places of detention.

Concentration camps. They were distinguished by more stringent conditions of detention (for example, in Minsk on Shirokaya Street, in Bronnaya Gora, Berezovsky district). Jews were placed here - civilians, prisoners of war, both Jews and non-Jews, as well as non-Jews punished by the Nazi authorities for their activities.

Basically, the places of forced confinement fulfilled the tasks assigned to them by the Nazis. At the same time, there was inconsistency in the actions of the German command regarding the liquidation of places of forced confinement, which was determined by the difference in the vision of goals and the tasks assigned to such places. As a rule, in the clash of ideological and practical approaches to the Jewish problem, supporters of the rapid liquidation of the Jewish population prevailed.

Supporters of the ideological approach to the problem misled themselves, exaggerating, on the one hand, the role of Jews in Soviet governance, and on the other, the hatred of the rest of the population towards them.

Factories of death

They were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps - just long enough for the executioner teams to kill them and “dispose of” the corpses. A well-functioning conveyor belt was built here, turning several thousand people into ducks into ashes.

The task of the Einsatzkommandos was to catch Jews and Gypsies, transport them to camps and liquidate them there. The most famous and largest sites of mass murder were Babi Yar near Kiev, where 30 thousand Jews were killed in two days on September 28-29, 1941, and the Maly Trostinets camp in Belarus, where 200 thousand people were shot in 1942-1943.

German occupation in Belarus

With the onset of the Great Patriotic War, until the end of August 1941, Belarus was completely occupied by the Nazi invaders. The establishment of a strict occupation regime began on the territory of the republic. It was established as the territory was captured.

The occupation regime is a strict order in which all bodies of Soviet power were liquidated.

Workers worked 12-14 hours a day, people were thrown into concentration camps. More than 260 death camps were created in Belarus. There were concentration camps, prisons, and ghettos in every region. 10 km. the territory of death “Trostenets” was created east of Minsk. Here the Nazis killed 206,500 people - this is the third highest number of deaths after Auschwitz and Majdanek.

Having established the occupation regime, Germany planned to implement the Ost plan, which was an integral part of the “blitzkrieg” plan.

According to this plan, it was envisaged to destroy 80% of the Slavs, turn 20% into slaves, and destroy all Jews and Gypsies. The actions of fascists with the goal of complete or partial destruction of the people (nation) are called genocide. The policy of genocide towards the Belarusian people was obvious. 209 cities were destroyed and burned, including Minsk, 200 settlements, 10,338 industrial enterprises, and all power plants were destroyed.

In Belarus, 2,200,000 people died, 628 villages were burned along with their residents, of which 186 were not restored.

Policies of genocide towards the Jewish population

The imprisonment of Jews in places of forced detention on the territory of Belarus during the Soviet-German war, as in Eastern Europe in general, was a stage in the general policy of their total extermination.

Unlike the rest of the population, Jews and Gypsies were exterminated on the territory of the USSR not for their actions or political beliefs, but on the basis of their nationality. While the German authorities, probably until 1942, did not have a clear program regarding the fate of the Gypsies in this territory, with regard to the Jews there was a program for their widespread liquidation.

Often the Nazis did not have sufficient forces for the immediate and complete liquidation of the Jews.

The liquidation of Jews in the USSR was carried out mainly by special units, the composition of which was limited and therefore they could not independently and quickly destroy the several million Jews remaining in the occupied territory.

To help them, the German gendarmerie on the ground, with the support of local police officers, had to concentrate Jews in temporary detention centers. Although the forced detention of Jews was ideologically explained by the danger of their influence on the surrounding population, in reality the Nazis pursued several goals:

1) Facilitation of the subsequent liquidation of Jews.

2) Preventing the resistance of the Jews, who, according to the well-founded fears of the Nazis, knowing about the fate prepared for them, could participate more actively in the resistance than the rest of the population.

3) Obtaining free labor.

4) Gaining the sympathy of the rest of the population, to whom the Nazis, for propaganda purposes, presented the persecution of Jews as a fight against the Judeo-Bolsheviks, who were responsible for all the hardships in the interwar years.

By administrative order of the rear commander of Army Group Center, Infantry General von Schenkendorff, on July 7, 1941, distinctive signs were introduced for the Jewish population:

1. All Jews and Jewish women who were in the occupied territory and who had reached the age of 10 were required to wear on the right sleeve of their outerwear and dresses a white stripe up to 10 cm wide with a Sianist star painted on it or a yellow bandage up to 10 cm wide.

2. Jews and Jewish women provide themselves with such bandages.

On the territory of Belarus, the Nazis used five main types of places of detention for Jews:

1. Ghettos are city blocks surrounded by barbed wire.

Belarus during the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War (1939-1945)

On the territory of Eastern Belarus, ghettos began to be created at the end of June 1941. and almost all were liquidated between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1942.

On the territory of Belarus, like the USSR in general, there were closed and open ghettos. Open ghettos arose in places with a significant Jewish population, where it was impractical to evict them and then protect them. In addition, they also arose in small settlements where the German authorities could not organize security for the closed ghetto.

In open ghettos, Jews were ordered not to leave their locality and not to visit public places. In these ghettos, Jews, as well as in closed ghettos, performed forced labor, were required to wear Jewish identification marks, and pay indemnities. In all ghettos, Judenrats (“Jewish Council” - German) were formed - bodies introduced by the Nazi occupation authorities to manage the Jewish population of some cities and regions, which were made up of Jews designated by the authorities and were responsible for carrying out Nazi orders that concerned Jews .; or wardens were appointed, who often distributed and organized work, which naturally gave rise to dissatisfaction among a certain part of the prisoners, especially the disabled - the first candidates for liquidation.

Sometimes for members of the Judenrat or the elder, compiling lists for destruction was a heavy moral burden, which some of them could not cope with, committing suicide.

Despite the security of these places of detention and harsh punishments for harboring Jews, some of them managed to escape and hide in the forests.

As for the partisans, they did not willingly accept Jews into their units, even if they brought weapons with them. At the beginning of Nov. 1942, the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement, P. Ponomarenko, ordered the brigade commanders not to accept individuals or small groups of people who miraculously escaped from the ghetto, that is, Jews. The pretext was more than absurd: they could supposedly be “agents sent by the Germans.”

2. Prisons. Prisons were especially often used in small settlements as temporary places of detention (for example, in Oshmyany, Cherikov and Vileika).

After the liquidation of the ghetto, prisons were especially often used for the temporary detention of Jews. After this, the Jews were either shot or placed in labor camps.

3. Labor camps. Basically, especially at the beginning, they housed Jews of working age, both men and women. However, in 1942-1943. skilled Jewish artisans and family members were also transported here from liquidated ghettos.

Some of these camps existed until liberation in 1944. On the territory of Belarus, as well as in Ukraine, there were both special labor camps for Jews (for example, in Bereza, in Bortniki in the Beshenkovichi district, in Drozdy in Minsk), and general camps for civilians persons in which Jews were part, often a significant part, of all prisoners (for example, in Baranavichy).

Prisoner of war camps. Some of the Jewish prisoners of war managed to hide their nationality. Attempts to hide nationality were made frequently, but success often depended, on the one hand, on the attitude of other prisoners towards them, and on the other, on the ability of German officers and local policemen to recognize nationality.

In 1941-1942 On the territory of prisoner of war camps, the Nazis also placed Jews from nearby settlements in order to save effort in guarding places of detention.

5. Concentration camps. They were distinguished by more stringent conditions of detention (for example, in Minsk on Shirokaya Street, in Bronnaya Gora, Berezovsky district). Jews were placed here - civilians, prisoners of war, both Jews and non-Jews, as well as non-Jews punished by the Nazi authorities for their activities.

Thus, the forced imprisonment of the Jews was a stage in the overall plan to exterminate them.

Basically, the places of forced confinement fulfilled the tasks assigned to them by the Nazis. At the same time, there was inconsistency in the actions of the German command regarding the liquidation of places of forced confinement, which was determined by the difference in the vision of goals and the tasks assigned to such places.

As a rule, in the clash of ideological and practical approaches to the Jewish problem, supporters of the rapid liquidation of the Jewish population prevailed. Supporters of the ideological approach to the problem misled themselves, exaggerating, on the one hand, the role of Jews in Soviet governance, and on the other, the hatred of the rest of the population towards them.

Factories of death

In the 30-40s, in the territory of Europe controlled by the Third Reich, there were several dozen concentration camps created for various purposes.

Some of these zones were created to hold prisoners of war, in others political opponents of the Nazis and unreliable elements were held and destroyed, others were simply “transfers”, from where prisoners were transported to larger concentration camps. Death camps stood apart in this system.

If the system of Nazi concentration camps - at least formally - was created to isolate criminals, anti-fascists, prisoners of war and other political prisoners, then Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and other death camps were originally intended specifically for the extermination of Jews.

They were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps - just long enough for the executioner teams to kill them and “dispose of” the corpses.

A well-functioning conveyor belt was built here, turning several thousand people into ducks into ashes.

In addition, the Einsatzkommando began work - special detachments moving behind the regular Wehrmacht units.

The task of the Einsatzkommandos was to catch Jews and Gypsies, transport them to camps and liquidate them there. The most famous and largest sites of mass murder were Babi Yar near Kiev, where 30 thousand Jews were killed in two days on September 28-29, 1941, and the Maly Trostinets camp in Belarus, where 200 thousand were shot in 1942-1943.

But the Nazi leadership nevertheless believed that the extermination of Jews and Gypsies was proceeding too slowly.

Firing squads and gas vans (“gas vans”), in Hitler’s opinion, were not up to the task. In 1941, a fundamental decision was made to develop the terrible technology that formed the basis of the death camps. The first such camp, intended for the mass liquidation of Jews, began to do its dirty work in Chelmno, Poland. More than 300 thousand people were killed and gassed here, mainly taken from the Lodz ghetto. In addition to Jews, gypsies, as well as the mentally ill and other categories of people doomed by the Nazis to total liquidation, were sent to death camps.

The technology developed by the Nazis meant that when a trainload of prisoners arrived at the camp, most of them would immediately go to the gas chambers.

So, in Auschwitz - the largest death camp - those doomed to death were undressed and driven into large sealed rooms, where poisonous gas was supplied from above, which quickly killed all living things.

After some time, the corpses were pulled out of the gas chambers and transported to crematoriums that worked around the clock. Particularly cynicism was that the service personnel who worked with the dead, and also collected the victims’ clothes and valuables, were recruited, as a rule, from the same Jews who knew that in a few weeks or months they too would be sent to the gas chambers.

Hunger reigned in all camps.

A portion of food was usually given once a day and consisted of soup with a piece of bread. Various punishments were introduced in concentration and extermination camps throughout Europe.

They were generated not only by the desire to keep prisoners from breaking the established rules, but also by the sadistic inclinations of the SS soldiers and their assistants. In each extermination camp, the Nazis created an orchestra from the Jewish prisoners.

The orchestra was supposed to please the ears of the SS men in their free time and play in front of those going to the gas chambers.

Extermination camps

In accordance with the decision of the meeting in Wannsee, the extermination camps began working in full force. Concentration camps were converted for the mass extermination of Jews. Some of them were turned into camps that worked only for extermination - the so-called “death camps”, some performed a double function: forced labor and murder.

Thousands of Jews were brought to extermination camps in crowded freight cars.

SS teams removed people from trains and, as a rule, separated men from women. Then a “selection” was carried out, i.e. they determined who would be sent directly to the gas chambers and who would be used to work in the camp. The operation of exterminating the Jews was carried out in secret. The killers took all measures to conceal the purpose of the camp and the method of killing in it.

About 4 million Jews were killed in six large extermination camps located in Poland. The most terrible of all was the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz) camp. It held a huge number of prisoners of war of different nationalities and Jewish prisoners - about 250,000 - at a time. Auschwitz (Auschwitz) was used not only as a death camp, but also as a grandiose work camp, where thousands of prisoners worked for the benefit of the Reich.

Of all the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau was an example of the effective extermination of many people. It operated longer than all other death camps, from 1942 until the beginning of 1945, that is, until the very end of the war, when it was liberated by the Soviet Army.

It used cyclone gas, which was more efficient than the gases used at Sobibor or Treblinka. Giant gas chambers could accommodate up to 800 people at a time.

In Auschwitz there were also 5 huge furnaces, in which 50 furnaces could burn 10,000 bodies per day. At Auschwitz, doctors under the guidance of the notorious Dr. Mengele conducted terrible medical experiments.

In the spring of 1945, the horrors of war that lasted six years ended.

But one people did not take part in the general rejoicing: for the Jews, the victory came too late. Six million Jews - a third of world Jewry - were wiped off the face of the earth.

“Father’s Nazis”: Russian media started talking about “Nazism” in Belarus (photo)

One of the most popular Russian resources, Lenta.ru, published an article about Belarus entitled “Father’s Nazis.”

Russians were outraged that on March 25, the centenary of the formation of the BPR was celebrated in Minsk on a grand scale, but Lukashenko did not ban this event, journalist Denis Kazansky writes on his Facebook page.

He noted that the article refers to “father’s Nazis” as people who came out to celebrate the events that took place in 1918.

Kazansky also cited his favorite fragment - it lists the signs of “Nazism” into which Belarus is “immersed by Lukashenko”: “The positions of nationalists in the sphere of culture and education have constantly strengthened.

A campaign began to expand the scope of use of the Belarusian language, which ended with the complete destruction of Russian-language toponymy: now all signs on Belarusian streets and highways contain inscriptions in the “language”, duplicated in the Latin alphabet (and in some places also in Chinese). The authorities began to pay more and more attention to the development of national culture, which was suspiciously reminiscent of what was happening in Ukraine with its “Vyshyvanka Days.” More and more goods with national symbols appeared on the shelves of Belarusian stores - mainly Lithuanian and collaborationist ones.”

“In general, wildness.

While they were strangling the Bandera reptile, a new one formed nearby. Just think - signs on "language"!

Days of embroidery, like in Ukraine! And products with national symbols on the shelves in stores - it’s completely unbelievable. What other evidence is needed that Lukashenko is a Nazi and a Russophobe?” the journalist emphasized. It seemed, Kazansky continues, that a more pro-Russian state than Belarus does not exist today. But the Kremlin mouthpieces are already labeling Belarusians, led by the “father,” as Nazis.

“And this despite the fact that in the country Russian has long been the state language and totally dominates in all spheres of communication, and Belarus itself is not only in the Customs Union, but also in a union state with the Russian Federation.

There is virtually no border between the countries,” he added.

“And this is a very significant moment, which proves that Russia will never be enough. No matter how much countries and rulers humiliate themselves before the Kremlin, it will demand ever greater loyalty. Up to complete dissolution and submission. Any manifestation of national selfhood, any, even the most harmless forms of reverence for national culture, will always be interpreted in the Russian Federation as “Nazism”... Only by completely abandoning their own national identity can a Ukrainian or Belarusian become “good” for Russians,” the journalist concluded.

To attack the USSR, three powerful groups were created: “North”, “Center”, “South”.

The German army group “Center” was focused on the defeat of Soviet troops in Belarus with a subsequent attack on Smolensk and Moscow. It consisted of two armies (4th and 9th), two tank groups (2nd and 3rd) a total of 50 divisions (including 9 tank, 6 motorized and 1 cavalry) and 2 brigades . The offensive of Army Group Center was supported by the 2nd Air Fleet, the strongest in the Nazi army.

The General Plan "Ost" was developed - a plan related to one of the main goals of the German leadership to capture the "living space" necessary for the prosperity of the Third Reich, its colonization, and the liberation of the "living space" from the "excess" indigenous population. This is where the strategic concept of waging war in the East—a war of annihilation—followed. Winning the East was not enough.

It was necessary to destroy the army, the country, the people.

Hitler stated: “We are obliged to exterminate the population; this is part of our mission to protect the German population. I have the right to destroy millions of people of the inferior race who multiply like worms.”

On March 30, 1941, at a meeting of the Wehrmacht’s senior command staff, Hitler emphasized that in the war against the Soviet Union the fight would be “for destruction,” that “the fight will be very different from the fight in the West.

In the East, cruelty is soft for the future.” In accordance with the Ost master plan, the extermination of 120-140 million people on the territory of the USSR and Poland was envisaged.

A terrible fate was in store for the Belarusian people.

The number of local population that could be left in these cities was determined by an exact calculation: for every master of the “superior” race, two slaves of the “lower” race. So in Minsk and the region it was planned to settle 50 thousand German colonists and leave 100 thousand local residents, in Molodechno and its environs 7 thousand Germans and 15 thousand Belarusians, respectively, in Baranovichi 10 thousand Germans and 20 thousand local residents, in Gomel 30 thousand Germans and 50 thousand local residents, in Mogilev and Bobruisk 20 thousand Germans and 50 thousand residents each.

Documents such as the Ost general plan, “Instructions on special areas to Directive No. 21 (Barbarossa plan)”, dated March 13, 1941, “On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa area and on special powers of troops” dated May 13 1941, “Twelve commandments for the behavior of Germans in the east and their treatment of Russians” dated June 1, 1941.

Great Patriotic War in Belarus

exempted fascist soldiers from responsibility for crimes and elevated atrocities against civilians to the level of state policy.

By the end of August 1941. The entire territory of Belarus was occupied.

The “German Soldier’s Memo”, published for Wehrmacht personnel, said: “You have no heart, no nerves, they are not needed in war. Destroy pity and sympathy in yourself kill every Russian, Soviet, do not stop if in front of you is an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy, kill, by this you will save yourself from death, ensure the future of your family and become famous forever.”

Politics of genocide

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Over its centuries-old history, Belarus has repeatedly become the scene of bloody wars. Each of them left behind death and destruction. The Belarusian people suffered the greatest losses during the Great Patriotic War.

The general plan of the war against the USSR and instructions for its preparation and conduct were set out in Directive No. 21 of December 18, 1940, which received the code name “Barbarossa”.

The fascist command intended, through a “lightning war”, to capture the European territory of the Soviet Union within 8-16 weeks and reach the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line.

In accordance with this directive, it was planned to use almost all German ground forces, as well as Finnish, Romanian and Hungarian troops totaling 190 divisions.

To attack the USSR, three powerful groups were created - “North”, “Center”, “South”.

Army Group North was ordered to destroy Soviet troops in the Baltic states and capture ports on the Baltic Sea, including Kronstadt and Leningrad, to deprive the Soviet fleet of support bases.

Army Group South was aimed at conquering the wealth of the northern Caucasus, capturing bread and oil.

The German army group “Center” was focused on the defeat of Soviet troops in Belarus with a subsequent attack on Smolensk and Moscow.

It consisted of two armies (4th and 9th), two tank groups (2nd and 3rd) - a total of 50 divisions (including 9 tank, 6 motorized and 1 cavalry) and 2 brigades . The offensive of Army Group Center was supported by the 2nd Air Fleet - the strongest in the Nazi army.

Along with the preparation of military plans, a program of monstrous atrocities was being prepared in the territory to be occupied.

The General Plan "Ost" was developed - a plan related to one of the main goals of the German leadership to capture the "living space" necessary for the prosperity of the Third Reich, its colonization, and the liberation of the "living space" from the "excess" indigenous population. Hence the strategic concept of waging war in the East - a war of destruction.

Hitler's occupation regime on the territory of Belarus during the Second World War

Winning the East was not enough. It was necessary to destroy the army, the country, the people.

Hitler stated: “We are obliged to exterminate the population - this is part of our mission to protect the German population. I have the right to destroy millions of people of the inferior race who multiply like worms.”

At a meeting of the Wehrmacht's senior command staff, Hitler emphasized that in the war against the Soviet Union the fight would be “for destruction,” that “the fight will be very different from the fight in the West. In the East, cruelty is soft for the future.” In accordance with the Ost master plan, the extermination of 120-140 million people on the territory of the USSR and Poland was envisaged.

The main directions of this policy were outlined by Himmler in the secret memorandum “Some considerations of SS Reichsführer Himmler on the treatment of the local population of the eastern regions.”

Among the prepared documents of the Ost plan, the most outspoken are the comments and proposals of the head of the colonization department of the 1st main political directorate of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Regions, Wetzel, according to which 25% of the Belarusian population was supposed to be Germanized, 75% were to be destroyed.

During the war, based on the Ost plan, the Nazis developed short-term specific tasks to exterminate the population.

Materials of such developments were found in the documents of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. According to the map - diagram dated November 17, 1942. Belarus from its western border to the Grodno-Slonim line, the southern part of the Brest region, the areas of Pinsk, Mozyr and the rest of Polesie along the line of Pruzhany, Gantsevichi, Parichi, Rechitsa was supposed to be completely cleared of the local population and only German colonists settled there.

In all major cities of Belarus, the Nazis intended to create settlements for the privileged strata of German society.

The number of local population that could be left in these cities was determined by an exact calculation: for every master of the “superior” race, two slaves of the “lower” race.

So in Minsk and the region it was planned to settle 50 thousand German colonists and leave 100 thousand local residents, in Molodechno and its environs - 7 thousand Germans and 15 thousand Belarusians, respectively, in Baranovichi 10 thousand Germans and 20 thousand local residents, in Gomel - 30 thousand Germans and 50 thousand local residents, in Mogilev and Bobruisk - 20 thousand Germans and 50 thousand residents each.

Documents such as the Ost general plan, “Instructions on special areas to Directive No. 21 (Barbarossa plan)”, dated March 13, 1941, “On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa area and on special powers of troops” dated May 13 1941, “Twelve commandments for the conduct of Germans in the east and their treatment of Russians” dated June 1, 1941.

and others exempted fascist soldiers from responsibility for crimes and elevated atrocities against civilians to the level of state policy.

Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. By the end of August 1941. The entire territory of Belarus was occupied.

The Nazis' implementation of the policy of genocide of the Belarusian people began from the first days of the war. Executions and mass executions acquired enormous proportions.

Wehrmacht soldiers and officers carried out massacres of civilians everywhere. The practical implementation of crimes was facilitated by the ideological indoctrination of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers carried out in preparation for aggression against the USSR.

The “Memo of a German Soldier” published for Wehrmacht personnel said: “You have no heart, no nerves, they are not needed in war. Destroy pity and sympathy in yourself - kill every Russian, Soviet, don’t stop if there’s an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy in front of you - kill, by doing this you will save yourself from death, ensure the future of your family and become famous forever.”

4Belarusian collaborationism- a designation adopted in Soviet and Russian historiography for political, economic and military cooperation with the occupying German authorities during the Second World War on the territory of Belarus.

The main reasons for Belarusian collaborationism were the dissatisfaction of part of the population with the Soviet regime (including mass repressions [source not specified 244 days] and forced Sovietization in Western Belarus, annexed to the USSR in 1939), as well as the activities of representatives of the Belarusian People's Republic, a group of priest supporters IN.

Godlevsky (he himself and some of his followers later became disillusioned with the Germans and switched to an underground struggle against them), etc.

Preparation of the Belarusian collaboration before the start of the war

The training of Belarusian collaborators by the Third Reich began in the mid-to-late 1930s, when a Belarusian representative office was created under the German Ministry of Internal Affairs - first in Berlin and then in other German cities.

It was engaged in identifying and recruiting persons willing to assist Germany in Belarusian issues. Thus, the third president of the BPR, Vasily Zakharka, wrote a detailed report on the political, economic and cultural situation of Belarus, and also addressed a memorandum to Hitler with assurances of support.

In addition, the Belarusian Self-Help Committee was created, an organization that actively recruited members among Belarusians living in Germany. With the outbreak of World War II, the German command created bases in Warsaw and Biala Podlaska for the transfer of Belarusian nationalist agents to the territory of the USSR. In Berlin, in the Vustavu camp, courses for propagandists and translators were organized from among the Belarusian nationalists to work in Belarus after the change of power.

[edit]Before the attack on the USSR

The leadership of the “right-wing Belarusian emigration” asked the German leadership to organize the activities of the Belarusian National Socialists, including training sabotage personnel from among captured military personnel of the Polish Army in order to transport them to the territory of the USSR.

Spring 1941

The formation of the first Belarusian unit began. As part of the Brandenburg 800 regiment, the 1st assault platoon of 50 people was trained. Similarly, the Germans trained paratroopers of the Warsaw-Belarusian Committee, which included captured Belarusian volunteers of the former Polish army. After their formation, these two units were placed under the operational subordination of the Valley headquarters.

The tasks of the saboteurs were to carry out sabotage in the near Soviet rear, physically destroy the command and control personnel of the Red Army, and transmit intelligence information by radio.

[edit]During the German occupation of Belarus

Together with the advancing units of the German army, the main figures of the Belarusian nationalist movement from emigration arrived in Belarus: Fabian Akinchits, Vladislav Kozlovsky, activists of the Belarusian National Socialist Party, Ivan Ermachenko, Radoslav Ostrovsky and others.

In the initial period of the war, the development of political and military collaboration occurred at a slow pace, which is explained by the successes of the Germans at the front and the lack of need for them to develop collaborationist structures.

The German leadership hoped for a quick victory in the war and was skeptical about the abilities of the Belarusian population for nation-state building due to the weakness of ethnic self-awareness.

The activities of collaborators during this period were reduced mainly to the work of non-political structures, the largest of which was the Belarusian People's Self-Help, created on October 22, 1941, the purpose of which was declared to be concern for health care, issues of education and culture.

With the help of Belarusian collaborators, the German authorities tried to use the scientific personnel who ended up in the occupied territory for their own purposes.

In June 1942, they created the “Belarusian Scientific Partnership”. Gauleiter of Belarus V. Kube became its honorary president. However, Belarusian scientists boycotted the work of the partnership, and it existed only on paper.

Other non-political collaborationist structures were also created (Women's League, trade unions, etc.). At the same time, attempts to create a Belarusian Free Self-Defense Corps were unsuccessful due to opposition from the military authorities and the SS. Its creation was proclaimed in June 1942 in the amount of 3 divisions.

However, about 20 battalions were created, which they never decided to arm, and were disbanded in the spring of 1943. The attempt to create Belarusian autocephaly with the aim of separating Belarusian believers from the Moscow Patriarchate was also unsuccessful.

The situation that had developed by 1943 forced the German command to reconsider its attitude towards the collaborationist movement.

To a large extent, this happened thanks to the efforts of the Minister of Eastern Occupied Territories A. Rosenberg, who was a supporter of the creation of collaborationist administrations. On June 22, 1943, the Union of Belarusian Youth (UBM) was formally created, which became an analogue of the Hitler Youth in Belarus (in fact, it existed since 1942) .

On the initiative of Cuba, on June 27, 1943, the creation of the Council of Confidence under the General Commissariat of Belarus was proclaimed.

This body was an administrative commission, whose sole task was to process and present wishes and proposals from the population to the occupation authorities. On December 21, 1943, instead of the Rada of Trust, on the initiative of K. Gotberg (who became the General Commissioner after the murder of Cuba by partisans), the Belarusian Central Rada (BCR) was created, the head of the administration of the Minsk district, R., was appointed its president.

Ostrovsky (1887-1976). The activities of the Rada were not effective, since the Rada did not have real political power (only in matters of social care, culture and education it had the right to relatively independent decisions), and its members held different views on the future of Belarus and often did not know local conditions. Therefore, she could not have authority in the eyes of the population. The Rada was indirectly connected with war crimes - in particular, with carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Polish population.

In occupied Belarus, many collaborationist newspapers and magazines were published: “Belaruskaya Gazeta”, “Pagonya” ( Chase), "Biełaruski hołas" ( Belarusian voice), "Novy Shliakh" ( New way), etc.

d. These publications carried out anti-Semitic, anti-Soviet and pro-fascist propaganda. In a special article published on September 25, 1943 after the destruction of Kube in the Belorusskaya Gazeta, the editor of this newspaper, Vladislav Kozlovsky, wrote: “The heart is compressed by grief... He (that is, Kube - author) is no longer among us.

General Commissioner Wilhelm Kube was one of the best, most heartfelt friends... who thought and spoke like every Belarusian nationalist...".

Parade of the Belarusian Regional Defense near the current government house, Minsk, June 1944
German State Archives (Bundesarchiv), photo 183-1991-0206-506

On February 23, 1944, K. Gottberg issued an order to create the Belarusian Regional Defense (BKO), a military collaborationist formation, whose leader was Franz Kuschel, and instructed the BCR to carry out mobilization.

The 45 BKO battalions formed by the end of March were poorly armed. Their discipline gradually decreased and there were not enough officers. By the end of the occupation, the BKO was used to fight partisans, guard various objects and carry out economic work.

The most important areas of activity of the BCR at the final stage of the war were the reorganization of units of the BKO and the replenishment of Belarusian military formations by recruiting new soldiers, the creation of auxiliary contingents for use in the German defense system, and the organization of the anti-Soviet partisan movement on the territory of Belarus.

Initially, it was planned to reorganize the BKO into the Belarusian Legion. In preparation for this reorganization, in September 1944, the first personnel BKO battalion (422 people) was created in Berlin under the command of Captain Pyotr Kasatsky, which became a reserve and officer school for future units. At the same time, from among those recruited by the “Union of Belarusian Youth” as “air defense assistants” (from 2.5 to 5 thousand)

people) groups were selected for training at the anti-aircraft artillery school. After completing their studies, they were included in the air defense units of Berlin.

On June 27, 1944, the Second All-Belarusian Congress was held in Minsk, in which most of the active leaders of the collaborationists took part. The Congress took place as the Red Army approached Minsk and was conducting a major offensive operation in Belarus.

At the congress, it was decided that the BCR is the only legitimate government of Belarus, and Germany’s full support was also expressed.

Plans were also developed for anti-Soviet sabotage and partisan operations in Belarus, in the event of a complete retreat of German troops from its territory.

Z. Poznyak gave the following assessment of those events:

Meanwhile, the indestructibility of Belarus and the Belarusian national idea was witnessed by the Second World War.

From 1941 to 1944, central Belarus (where the German civil administration headed by V. Kube operated) experienced a powerful national upsurge. This completely baffled the Bolsheviks and infuriated Moscow. With the return of the Soviets to Belarus, hundreds of thousands of conscientious Belarusians emigrated to the West.

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Or where did the March of Traitors in Minsk have white-red-white flags and the chant “Live Belarus”!

Belarusian Nazi collaborators (like their Ukrainian brothers-in-arms, Bandera) played an important role in maintaining the occupation-terrorist regime during the German occupation of 1941-1944. It should be noted that the proportion of collaborators among Belarusians was the lowest among the peoples and nationalities living on the territory of the USSR. These, according to the German archives themselves, were no more than 70 thousand people. This is largely due to the great influence of religious affiliation on the disposition to cooperate with the Nazi regime. In particular, the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian Nazi-Banderists belonged to the Uniate church, moreover, the Uniate parishes and even the Uniate metropolitans themselves - the spiritual leaders of the SS "Galicia" division Andrey (Sheptytsky) and Joseph (Slipy) - were the main inspirers not only of the cooperation of their flock with German Nazis, but directly carrying out punitive actions and policies of genocide of Russians (including Belarusians), Poles, and Jews. The Ukrainian 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion, subordinate to the SS Sonder Battalion, burned, along with many others, the famous Belarusian village of Khatyn with all its inhabitants. In general, the largest number of collaborators was among the Crimean Tatars, Latvians and Estonians: for 3 Belarusian punitive battalions (with a much larger number of Belarusians themselves), there were 9 Crimean Tatars, 22 Estonians, 37 Lithuanians, 49 Latvians and 58 Ukrainians (the majority were from Western Ukraine ). It is easy to see that among these ethnic groups even today there is a rapid revival of neo-Nazism (with special emphasis on Russophobia), supported at the level of political leaders. And the “Belarusian” collaborators themselves, as we will see below, can be called Belarusian very conditionally.

The core of Nazi collaboration in Belarus also came from the Polish-Catholic or Polish population of White Rus'. This is not surprising, because even in the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the interwar period, the Polish nationalist regime of J. Pilsudski (the hero of modern Poland) actively used the methods of the Hitler regime, including the genocide of Belarusians and Russians (a tragic example is one of the first and largest European concentration camps in Bereza-Kartuzska, the policy of mass eviction of Belarusians from Western Belarus to western Poland and Latin America with the simultaneous settlement of Belarus by Polish siege officers with their families). Having taken part together with Hitler in the division of Czechoslovakia, Poland intended, together with the Third Reich, to seize and divide the USSR itself. To plan the invasion back in 1938, Hitler’s deputy, Reichsmarshal and Gestapo leader Hermann Goering, personally came to Warsaw and then to Belovezhskaya Pushcha, meeting with his bosom friend, President of Poland I. Mosticki and the top leadership of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, in previous attacks of the collective West on Rus' - in particular, in the Patriotic Wars of 1812 and 1914-1918. - their ancestors actively supported the invaders from Romano-Germanic Europe.

It is not surprising that the core of the Belarusian collaborators were the founders of the BPR, who were close to Poland during the German occupation in the First World War, and their successors - members of the BPR in exile. The third president of the Belarusian People's Republic, V. Zakharka, voiced a memorandum in support of Hitler, and under the Nazi government, the “Belarusian Kamitset Samapomachi” was created in Berlin. The first “Belarusian” collaborators sent to the territory of the BSSR before the start of the war were former employees of the Polish Army, from which the “Brandenburg 800” regiment was formed. The collaborationist structures of the General District of Weiβruthenien were headed by emigrants Radoslav Kazimirovich Ostrovsky, who arrived with the Nazi troops, who became the head of the Minsk government, and Ivan Abramovich Ermachenko, who headed the “Belarusian People's Samapomach” (occupation police), created by the Germans from former officers of the Polish Army. After the war, both managed to escape and move to the USA, where these Nazi servants were warmed up by the American authorities and for many years carried out subversive activities against our Motherland. The main collaborationist propagandists were the founders of the “Belarusian National Socialist Party” Vaclav Kozlowski and Fabian Akincic, who published the mouthpiece of pseudo-Belarusian Nazi propaganda “Belaruska Gazeta”, as well as the editor-in-chief of the publication “Belarusski Golas” František Tumas. A key role in the collaborationist movement belonged to the group of priest Vincent Godlewski, who headed the “Belarusian Independent Party” and held a high official position in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Among the members of this group, it is especially worth highlighting the “right hand” of V. Godlewski, the editor-in-chief of the collaborationist publication “Belarusian Golas” Franciszek Oleshkevich, the first burgomaster of Minsk Vitovt Tumash and the vice-president of the “Belarusian Central Rada” Mikalay Shkelenok.

In 1943, along with the defeats inflicted by the Red Army on the German occupiers at the fronts, the Nazis sharply intensified their support and organization of the collaborationist movement on the territory of Belarus. On June 22, the Union of Belarusian Young People (an analogue of the Hitler Youth) was created in Minsk under the leadership of Uniate woman N. Abramova (Teodorovich) and Mikhas Ganko, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Long Live Belarus!” On June 27, on the initiative of Gauleiter V. Kube, the “Belarusian Daver Rada” was created under the General District of Weiβruthenien - an advisory body that was designed to gather around the German administration under the Gauleiter an asset of local traitors and convinced “Belarusian” nationalists and rally them to serve the Nazi-fascist occupation authorities. The main order of the "Rada Daver" from the Reichskommissariat Ostland was to fight the partisans mainly using provocative methods. The Rada was headed by the Pole Vaclav Ivanovsky, a former member of the BPR government in 1918. On December 21, the “Belarusian Rada of Daver” was transformed into the “Belarusian Central Rada”, which was entrusted with police and propaganda functions. The department of propaganda, press and culture of the BCR was headed by Yevgeny Todorovich Kalubovich (the local analogue of Goebbels), who later also found refuge in the USA, became the prime minister of the BPR government “in exile” there and carried out active Russophobic and anti-Soviet activities.

A new milestone in the history of criminals and Nazi collaborators speaking on behalf of the Belarusian people was the creation in Minsk on February 23, 1944, at the Belarusian Central Radze, of the military punitive collaborationist formation "Belarusian Regional Abaron" under the leadership of SS Standartenführer Frantiszak Kushel, a former officer of all that the same Polish Army, who had previously been the chief commissioner for Belarusian police forces (the main police officer on the territory of Belarus) since August 1943. F. Kushel’s wife was the nationalist poetess N. Arsenyeva, who collaborated with the editors of Vaclav Kozlovsky’s “Belaruska Gazeta” and became the author of the poem “Malitva for Belarus”, according to which the anthem “Magutny God” was written - the blasphemous political banner of the current pro-Western nationalist opposition. Before A. Lukashenko came to power, this godlessness was going to be made the national anthem of the Republic of Belarus. After the war, SS Standartenführer Frantiszak Kushel ensured the transition of the “Belarusian” Nazi units to the side of the US Army at the end of April 1945 and, together with his wife, moved to the “State of Freedom” itself, in which all the offspring of humanity often found a “free” refuge. There they predictably became involved in active Russophobic and anti-Soviet activities within the framework of the Belarusian Central Rada in exile and on Radio Liberty.

Forced conscription was carried out into the “Belarusian Regional Abarona”, including prisoners of war, under the threat of the death penalty. At the same time, it was possible to initially gather about 40,000 people from all over Belarus, of which only 21,700 people were able to serve, who took the oath in Minsk on March 25, 1944. But the occupation authorities did not have much confidence in these BKA battalions either and provided them with weak weapons. Their discipline was steadily declining, and the main problem was the shortage of officers, which indicated the level of real desire even of these people to fight for the “independence of national Belarus” as part of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, the BKA took an active part in operations against partisans until July 1944. The BKA commanders were directly subordinate to the command of the SS troops and coordinated their actions directly with the German authorities. Among the operations in which units of the “Belarusian Regional Abarona” took part together with the SS and police, the operation “Frühlingsfest” (“Spring Festival”), carried out in the region of Polotsk and Lepel, stood out, as a result of which local units of Soviet partisans lost more than 80% of its personnel. By the end of the occupation, the BKA was used to fight partisans, protect various objects and economic works, as well as replenish the “Belarusian” military Nazi formations by recruiting new soldiers, creating auxiliary contingents for use in the defense system of Nazi Germany from the liberation offensive of the Red Army, organizing anti-Soviet partisan movement on the territory of Belarus - including under the control of American intelligence and security services.

The “Belarusian Regional Abarona” was defeated on June 23, 1944 by Soviet troops during the large-scale offensive liberation operation “Bagration”. In the chaos of the retreat, many units of the BKA were completely deprived of leadership, and communication between the main command and many battalions was broken. Some of the battalions took part in battles with the advanced units of the Soviet troops and were destroyed, others were disbanded by their commanders, some managed to evacuate to Poland along with the retreating Wehrmacht units, where they subsequently joined the 30th Grenadier Division of the SS troops or the “Belarusian” landing force battalion "Dalwitz", in the creation of which the future long-term head of the BPR Rada in the USA, Yazep Sazhich, took an active part. Finally, the remaining collaborators became part of the so-called “Belarusian Liberation Army” (or “Belaruska Krayovaga Troops”, an underground network organization “Black Cat”), which was created by the intelligence services of the Third Reich for subversive activities in the rear of the Soviet army and state, and subsequently transferred under the control of the US intelligence command. The “Belarusian Free Army”, numbering more than 3,000 people, was headed by a former policeman and punisher of the unarmed population, Mikhas Vitushka, who these days is one of the main heroes of the pro-Western nationalist opposition of Belarus (like S. Bandera for Ukrainian neo-Nazis) and whose portraits have often been depicted in recent years rise to the standards at opposition rallies with impunity.

The last major action of Nazi collaborators in Minsk was the holding on June 27, 1944 in Minsk of the “Drugoga Usebelarusskaga kangres”, in which most of the active leaders of Nazi collaborators took part. The Congress took place as the Red Army approached Minsk and was conducting a major offensive operation in Belarus. At the congress, it was decided that the “Belarusian Central Rada” is the only legitimate Belarusian government, and Germany’s full support was also expressed. Plans were also developed for anti-Soviet sabotage and partisan operations in Belarus during the retreat of German troops from its territory.

It should be noted that, despite the defeat of most of the collaborationist formations with the liberation of Belarus, Belarusian collaborationism did not disappear from the face of the earth. At first, he took root in Russophobic-pro-Western nationalist circles outside the Belarusian soil. Many of these and other Nazi collaborators, including punishers and SS officers, emigrated to Western countries - primarily to the USA and Canada - where they received powerful support and organizational assistance from the American and other governments, joining the emigrant political formations led by the Belarusian Rada people's republic". If in Soviet times they operated from outside Belarus, then after the collapse of the USSR they received complete freedom of action (and even a significant part of state power). Moreover, former Nazi collaborators (or, in any case, their ideological supporters) gradually began to raise their heads in the USSR itself, along with the death of I. Stalin: by the time of perestroika, they already felt very confident, actively infiltrated into the sphere of science, culture, The media (not without the help of the confused and decayed KGB of the USSR) were ready at any moment to launch a decisive offensive on the ideological and information fronts. This is what happened with the collapse of the USSR, when they - with the help of their brothers from among the descendants of fugitives to the West during the retreating Hitlerite Wehrmacht - received broad rights and unanimously set about rewriting history textbooks, developing state laws, publishing literature and periodicals, preparing television programs, recruiting like-minded people among young people and the population in general. Their main symbols were, as in 1918 and 1941, the white-red-white banner and coat of arms “Pahonia”, which had never before been used as Belarusian historical symbols and go back to the national symbols of Poland and Lithuania. In particular, the white-red-white flag was first designed by the Polish "Belarusian" Claudius Duzh-Duszewski in 1917 during the February Revolution at the request of the revolutionary authorities of Petrograd with the aim of symbolically and politically dismembering White Rus' from the rest of Russia and tying it to Poland. This anti-Belarusian symbol was used exclusively during the period of occupation of Belarusian lands by Germany, Poland and after the collapse of the USSR (in conditions, in fact, also of the hidden Western occupation of Belarus).

The unfolding catastrophe was largely stopped only with the coming to power of Alexander Lukashenko, but its ideological basis was actively supported by the United States and its satellites in the European Union (especially Poland and the Baltic countries) for 25 years. However, even now they have the opportunity - including with the help of the media and especially the Internet - to conduct a variety of propaganda among white people (especially young people), who at first softly, and then more and more openly praise anti-people traitors, Western collaborators and criminals of the past of different centuries, choosing to the collaborators of the 1940s, propagates false nationalist myths, recruits and trains militants in a number of neighboring states - including the “heroic” example of their historical predecessors, punitive forces and saboteurs.

Ukrainian collaborators of the Third Reich and neo-Nazi Banderaites received similar support from the West, most of whom fled from the advancing Soviet troops and found refuge mainly in Canada and the USA. Having received complete freedom of action with the collapse of the USSR, they, together with their few (initially) minions from among the former citizens of the USSR (especially many of them were found among the former leaders and activists of the Ukrainian Communist Party and Komsomol) carried out their systematic propaganda, ideological and military-preparatory activities and eventually achieved their goals. In modern Ukraine, the founding day of the Nazi Ukrainian Insurgent Army has been declared a public holiday and a day of military glory, processions of veterans of the SS Galicia division and neo-Nazi torchlight processions are held in cities, and the first meeting of the new Verkhovna Rada was opened by its deputy Yuriy Shukhevych, the son of Roman Shukhevych - the Hauptmann of the troops -SS, commander of the Nazi Nachtigal battalion, deputy commander of the 201st Schutzmannschaft battalion, which carried out punitive operations against Belarusian partisans. Until recently, the incredible, the stuff of nightmares, has become the reality of our days.

And, despite the fact that since the mid-1990s, the direct and ideological descendants of the members of the “Belarusian Central Rada” and “Belarusian Regional Abarons” were deprived of the opportunity to freely spread their ideology and movement in Belarus (and even the share of the supporters of Russophobic and anti-Belarusian pro-Western nationalism was still orders of magnitude smaller in comparison with neighboring countries during the War itself), the people of White Rus' should be especially vigilant in this matter: suffice it to say that the ideology and glorification of Ukrainian neo-Nazism and collaboration, under the influence of skillful and technological indoctrination, captured many residents (especially young) in central and eastern Ukraine, where during the Great Patriotic War the level of collaboration was even lower than in Belarus (since it had almost no ethno-religious basis).

Distortion of history, an attempt to contrast Belarusians with their Russian brothers from Russia, inculcation and propaganda of neo-paganism and Uniatism, inciting pride and aggressiveness among young people (especially at rock concerts and mass sports shows) with the addition of neo-Nazi symbols, slogans and portraits of collaborators from different times - these and many other ways of spreading lies and malice with the active financial and technological assistance of Western states and elites, as well as the presence of sympathizers among the bureaucrats and creative intelligentsia - especially in conditions of an extremely open media and Internet space, almost unlimited pluralism (chaos) in culture - are quite capable of leading to the most tragic