When, in December 1918, the Red Army captured Minsk and the short-lived (established on March 25, 1918) Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) ceased to exist, multiple nationalist activists fled Belarus and found refuge in several European countries, including Germany. After Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party came to power in inter-war Germany, some of these Belarusian expatriates sought out potential help from war-minded Berlin to liberate Belarus from the Bolsheviks. For example, in April 1939, the second “president” of the BPR, Vasil Zakharka, sent a memorandum to Hitler expressing his enthusiastic support for the Nazi cause. Then in June of that …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation