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Belarus World War II
Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. Two and
onehalf weeks later, Soviet troops moved into the western
portions
of Belorussia and Ukraine. Ignorant of, or disbelieving
the
existence of, mass persecutions under Stalin, most
Belorussians
welcomed the Red Army, only to learn quickly of the harsh
reality
of communism. Arrests and deportations were common, and
the socalled flourishing of national culture was strictly
circumscribed
by the ideological and political goals of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU--see Glossary). About 300,000
persons were
deported from western Belorussia to Soviet labor camps
between
September 1939 and June 1941, when Germany attacked the
Soviet
Union.
In June 1941, when German tanks swept through
Belorussia
toward Moscow, many Belorussians actually welcomed the
Nazis,
thinking that they would free the Belorussian people from
their
communist oppression. However, the Nazis' designs for the
occupied territories became known soon enough: Germanizing
and
assimilating 25 percent of the Belorussians and either
ousting or
destroying the remaining 75 percent; parceling out
Belorussian
territory to the Lithuanian and Ukrainian administrative
divisions and to East Prussia, while making the central
part of
Belorussia the Weissruthenische Generalbezirk (Belorussian
Military District); and placing the eastern portion of
Belorussia
under the German military regime.
Although the front was far to the east, military
operations
continued within Belorussia. During the three years of
Nazi
occupation, enormous devastation was caused by guerrilla
warfare,
retaliatory burnings of entire villages by the occupiers,
mass
executions of the Jewish population, and two movements of
the
front through the area. More than 2 million lives were
lost and
more than 1 million buildings destroyed. An American
observer,
after six months of travel across Belorussia, called it
"the most
devastated territory in the world." Major cities, such as
Minsk
and Vitsyebsk (Vitebsk, in Russian), were in ruins.
One of the political consequences of the German
occupation
was an upsurge of Belorussian nationalism, which the
German
authorities used for their own ends. Once the Red Army and
Soviet
administrators fled Belorussia ahead of the Nazis,
Belorussians
began to organize their own police forces and
administration,
which the Nazis encouraged. Belorussians living in
Belorussia
were assisted by Belorussian anticommunist political
refugees who
were permitted to return from Germany. The Nazis permitted
the
Union of Belorussian Youth to organize in mid-1943; the
Belorussian Central Council (BCC) was formed as a
self-governing
auxiliary body in December 1943; the BCC mobilized a
Belorussian
Land Defense force in March 1944; and the All-Belorussian
Congress was permitted to meet in Minsk to rally
resistance to
the Russian communists in 1944. However, none of those
measures
changed the negative attitude of the Belorussians toward
the
brutal occupation regime.
To counterbalance the Belorussians, the Nazis allowed a
number of Russians back from political exile in
German-occupied
countries in Europe. In addition, they encouraged Poles
who had
settled in Belorussia during the time of Polish control
(and who
were frequently at odds with the Belorussians) to become
involved
in the government.
When the eastern front began moving westward, many
Belorussians had to choose between two evils: life with
the
Soviets or departure into exile with the Nazis. Many
Belorussians
decided to flee, and tens of thousands of them found
themselves
in Germany and Austria toward the end of World War II.
Some of
those who had been deported as forced laborers to Germany
agreed
to go back to Belorussia, only to be redeported by the
communists
to Siberia or other remote places in the Soviet Union. All
those
who fled voluntarily to the West eventually settled in
Germany,
other West European countries, or overseas.
Data as of June 1995
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