Byelorussian collaboration with the Axis powers

Headquarters of Belarusian Central Rada, a pro-Nazi semi-government of Belarus operating from Minsk, June 1943.

During World War II, some Belarusians collaborated with the invading Axis powers. Until the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the territory of East Belarus was under control of the Soviet Union, as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, memories of the Russian Civil War were still fresh, and many people in Belarus wanted an independent Belarus. Many Belarusians chose to cooperate with the invaders in order to achieve that goal, assuming that Nazi Germany would allow them to have their own independent state after the war ended. The collaborationist regime Belarusian Central Rada was formed in Minsk.

"Before the war – wrote Leonid Rein – many of the Byelorussian nationalists had belonged to Akinčyc's[1] Party of Byelorussian National Socialists and were now [at the onset of Operation Barbarossa] prepared to identify completely with the Nazis' goals and slogans, with their aspirations ranging from the creation of a "New Europe" to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question."[2]

Administration

Belarusian volunteers in the German army

Minsk training base in 1942, leaders of the Schutzmannschaft Battalions 102 and 115, as well as the Ukrainian Battalion 118 ready for service in Reichskommissariat Ostland

German Commanders and officers associated with Belarus

Belarusian political leaders

The unofficial White-red-white flag of Belarus which became associated with collaboration during World War II

Belarusian anti-communist commanders

German-collaborationist Biełaruskaja Krajovaja Abarona, Minsk, June 1944.

Belarusian political movements

Belarusian political news

See also

Notes

  1. Politician Fabian Akinčyc, educated in Petersburg (1913), was a leader of the Belarusian national–socialists in Vilnia long before the German invasion of Poland. Already in the spring of 1939 he went to Germany aiming to establish political and military collaboration of Belarusian Nazis with the German authorities notably, in the hope of becoming the leader of Free Belarus after the German conquest of Europe. – Jury Turonak.
  2. Rein 2013, The Kings and the Pawns, page 135.

References

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