German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II

The occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany started with the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) and ended in August 1944 with the Soviet Operation Bagration. The western parts of the Belorussian SSR (as of 1940) became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, but in 1943 the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a client state, the Belarusian Central Rada, that would last until the Soviets liberated the region.

The Soviet and Belarusian historiographies study the subject of German occupation in the context of contemporary Belarus, regarded as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR), a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in the 1941 borders as a whole. Polish historiography insists on special, even separate treatment for the East Lands of the Poland in the 1921 borders (alias "Kresy Wschodnie" alias West Belarus), which were incorporated into the BSSR after the Soviet invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. More than 100,000 people in West Belarus were imprisoned, executed or transported to the eastern USSR by Soviet authorities before the German invasion. The NKVD (Soviet secret police) killed more than 1,000 prisoners in June/July 1941, for example, in Chervyen, Hlybokaye and Vileyka. These crimes stoked anti-Communist feelings in the Belarusian population and were used by Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda.

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