"Total ruthlessness to civilian population" - how some of the bloodiest Nazi operations were carried out in Belarus

"There can be only one way to solve the German question - the way of violence. The aim of Germany is the seizure of living space in the East and its ruthless Germanization." These words from Hitler's speech at a meeting in the Imperial Chancellery on November 5, 1937, were intended only for the command under the seal of top secret. New facts of genocide of the Belarusian people are revealed in a new special project "Genocide. Without the Right to Life".

On August 9, 1940 Hitler issued an order on the preparation for the Blitzkrieg. It had to be implemented before the winter of 1941. It went down in history as the plan "Aufbau Ost" - "The buildup of forces in the East". Among the priorities of the plan were to "purge" Poland and the western Soviet Union of 31 million people, evict up to 46-51 million people beyond the Urals, and to Germanize, 14 million people, remaining there, to defeat the Russians as a nation.

The Belarusians were meant by the Russians. 75% of them were to be destroyed, the remaining 25% were to be turned into slaves.

Long before the attack on the USSR a large number of documents - orders, decrees, instructions, inhuman and brutal in their essence - were adopted.

But a particularly cynical one was adopted on May 13: It prescribed "total ruthlessness to the civilian population." "We are obliged to exterminate the population-it is part of our mission to protect the German population. We will have to develop the technique of exterminating the population...." And such techniques were developed.

The organization of gas chambers, "sterile cleansing" surgical, chemical, radioactive castration, contamination with dangerous diseases. The main question was to be solved - how to get rid of large quantities of useless population, we were talking about millions.

Punitive operations were recognized as an effective method of killing people. They were actively used in the Belarusian territories occupied by the fascists from the first days of the invasion.

"Total cruelty to the civilian population" - how some of the bloodiest Nazi operations were carried out in Belarus

On 14 August 1941, a meeting with the participation of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler was held in the Belarusian town of Baranovichi. The Chief of Staff Karl Wolff and the Supreme Fuhrer in Central Russia and Belarus Erich von dem Bach reported on the results of the operations to resettle the population from Belovezhskaya Pushcha. A separate report on the territories of the Brest, Baranovichi, Polesie and Pinsk regions. They had to be cleared of enemy elements for the Germans - partisans, Red Army units who had fallen into encirclement, and also of the inhabitants of these areas. The operation was called "Pripyat march" or "Pripyat bogs".