Military history of Belarus during World War II

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Military history of Belarus during World War II.

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[edit] September 1939 - June 1941

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 had established a non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and a secret protocol described how Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (Second Polish Republic) and Romania would be divided between them.

In the Invasion of Poland of 1939 the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland, and to return the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Moldavian territories in the North and North-Eastern regions of Romania (Northern Bucovina and Bessarabia).

The Polish defense was already broken, with their only hope being retreat and reorganisation in the south-eastern region (the Romanian Bridgehead), when on September 17, 1939, it was rendered obsolete overnight. The 800,000 strong Soviet Union Red Army, divided into the Belarusian and Ukrainian fronts, invaded the eastern regions of Poland that had not yet been involved in military operations, in violation of the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Soviet diplomacy claimed that they were "protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities inhabiting Poland in view of Polish imminent collapse" while in reality the Soviets were acting in co-operation with Nazi Germany [1] [2], carrying out their part of a secret deal (the division of Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence, as specified in the secret appendix of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).


Polish border defence forces (Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza) in the east (about 25 battalions) were unable to defend the border, and Edward Rydz-Śmigły further ordered them to fall back and not engage the Soviets. This, however, did not prevent some clashes and small battles, like the defence of Grodno was defended by soldiers and local population. The Soviets murdered a number of Poles, including prisoners-of-war like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński. Ukrainians rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, e.g. in Skidel, robbing and murdering Poles. Those movements were quickly disciplined by the NKVD.

The Soviet invasion was one of the decisive factors that convinced the Polish government that the war in Poland was lost. Prior to the Soviet attack from the East, the Polish military's fall-back plan had called for long-term defence against Germany in the southern-eastern part of Poland (near the Romanian border), while awaiting relief from a Western Allies attack on Germany's western border. Facing two powerful enemies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the Polish government decided that it was impossible to carry out the defence on Polish territories. However, it refused to surrender or negotiate for peace with Germany and ordered all units to evacuate Poland and reorganize in France.

Near the end: TIME magazine, September 25, 1939.
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Near the end: TIME magazine, September 25, 1939.

Meanwhile, Polish forces tried to move towards the Romanian bridgehead area, still actively resisting the German invasion.

The Red Army take over in Brześć Litewski. The Wehrmacht general at the center is Heinz Guderian.
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The Red Army take over in Brześć Litewski. The Wehrmacht general at the center is Heinz Guderian.

From 17 September to 20 September, the Polish Armies Kraków and Lublin were crippled at the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, the second largest battle of the campaign. Oksywie garrison held until 19 September. Despite a Polish victory at the battle of Szack, after which the Soviets executed all the NCOs and officers they had managed to capture, the Red Army reached the line of rivers Narew, Western Bug, Vistula and San by September 28, in many cases meeting German units advancing from the other side. The last operational unit of the Polish Army, General Franciszek Kleeberg's Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie", capitulated after the 4-day Battle of Kock near Lublin on 6 October, marking the end of the September Campaign.

Adolf Hitler had always intended to renege on the pact with the Soviet Union and invade (Operation Barbarossa). He had argued in Mein Kampf of the necessity of acquiring new territory for German settlement (Lebensraum) in Eastern Europe.

[edit] June 1941 - September 1941

At 04:45 on 22 June 1941, four million German soldiers, to be joined by Italian, Romanian and other Axis troops over the following weeks, burst over the borders and stormed into the Soviet Union, including the Byelorussian SSR. For a month the offensive was completely unstoppable north of the Pribjet marshes, as the Panzer forces encircled hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in huge pockets that were then reduced by slower-moving infantry divisions while the panzers charged on, following the Blitzkrieg doctrine.

Army Group Centre comprised two Panzer groups (2nd and 3rd), which rolled east from either side of Brześć Litewski and affected a double encirclement at Białystok and west of Minsk. They were followed by 2nd, 4th and 9th Armies. The combined Panzer force reached the Beresina River in just six days, 650 km (400 miles) from their start lines. The next objective was to cross the Dnieper river, which was accomplished by 11 July. Following that, their next target was Smolensk, which fell on 16 July, but the engagement in the Smolensk area blocked the German advance until mid-September, effectively disrupting the blitzkrieg.

Operation Barbarossa: the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 21 June 1941 to 5 December 1941 ██ to 9 July 1941 ██ to 1 September 1941 ██ to 9 September 1941 ██ to 5 December 1941
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Operation Barbarossa: the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 21 June 1941 to 5 December 1941 ██ to 9 July 1941 ██ to 1 September 1941 ██ to 9 September 1941 ██ to 5 December 1941

With the capture of Smolensk and the advance to the Luga river, Army Groups Centre and North had completed their first major objective: to get across and hold the "land bridge" between the Dvina and Dnieper.

The German generals argued for an immediate drive towards Moscow, but Hitler overruled them, citing the importance of Ukrainian grain and heavy industry if under German possession, not to mention the massing of Soviet reserves in the Gomel area between Army Group Centre's southern flanks and the bogged-down Army Group South to the south.

After a meeting held in Orsza between the head of the Army General Staff, General Halder, and the heads of three Army Groups and armies, it was decided to push forward to Moscow since it was better, as argued by head of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, for them to try their luck on the battlefield rather than just sit and wait while their opponent gathered more strength.

[edit] Occupation and Collaboration 1941 - June 1944

Main article: Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany

Atrocities against the Jewish population in the conquered areas began almost immediately, with the dispatch of Einsatzgruppen (task groups) to round up Jews and shoot them. Local anti-semites were encouraged to carry out their own pogroms. By the end of 1941 there were more than 50,000 troops devoted to rounding up and killing Jews. The gradual industrialization of killing led to adoption of the Final Solution and the establishment of the Operation Reinhard extermination camps: the machinery of the Holocaust. In three years of occupation, between one and two million Soviet Jews were killed. Other ethnic groups were targeted for extermination, including the Roma and Sinti; see Porajmos.

The massacres of Jews and other ethnic minorities were only a part of the deaths from the Nazi occupation. Many thousands of Soviet civilians were executed, but millions died from starvation as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses. As they retreated from Ukraine and Belarus in 1943–1944, the German occupiers systematically applied a scorched earth policy, burning towns and cities, destroying infrastructure, and leaving civilians to starve or die of exposure.

The Nazi ideology and the maltreatment of the local population and Soviet POWs encouraged partisans fighting behind the front, motivated even anti-communists or non-Russian nationalists to ally with the Soviets, and greatly delayed the formation of German allied divisions consisting of Soviet POWs (see Vlasov army). These results and missed opportunities contributed to the defeat of the Wehrmacht.

[edit] June 1944 - May 1945

Soviet advances from 1 August 1943 to 31 December 1944 ██ to 1 December 1943 ██ to 30 April 1944 ██ to 19 August 1944 ██ to 31 December 1944
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Soviet advances from 1 August 1943 to 31 December 1944 ██ to 1 December 1943 ██ to 30 April 1944 ██ to 19 August 1944 ██ to 31 December 1944

In the summer of 1944 a balcony-shaped frontline had shaped following advances by the Red Army during late 1943. This invited an encirclement attack to cut off and destroy Army Group Centre. For Operation Bagration, as it was to be called, the Red Army achieved a ratio of ten to one in tanks and seven to one in aircraft over the enemy. At the points of attack, the numerical and quality advantages of the Soviets were overwhelming. More than 2.5 million Soviet troops went into action against the German Army Group Centre, which could boast a strength of less than 800,000 men. The Germans crumbled, with the loss of almost 400,000 men who were either overrun or encircled. The capital of Belarus, Minsk, was taken on July 3, 1944, trapping 50,000 Germans. Ten days later the Red Army reached the prewar Polish border. In West Belarus, as the Red Army approached the Polish Home Army launched the Operation Tempest. Despite the war now passing out of Belarus, the Soviet Fronts name "Byelorussian" kept their name until the end of the war, and were to distinguish themselves in the battles in Poland and Germany in 1944 and 1945.

In the Soviet Union the end of World War II in Europe is considered to be 9 May, when the surrender took effect Moscow time. This date is celebrated as a national holiday, Victory Day, or День Победы in Belarus, Russia and some other post-Soviet countries.

[edit] Belarusian volunteers in German forces

[edit] German commanders and officers linked with Belarus

[edit] Belarusian Anti-Soviet commanders

[edit] Timeline

[edit] 1939

[edit] 1940

[edit] 1941

[edit] 1942

[edit] 1943

[edit] 1944

[edit] 1945

[edit] See also

[edit] People

[edit] External links

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