Nazi Occupation of Belarus
The film may seem over-the-top, but the Nazis were that brutal to the Slavic communities in Eastern Europe. While the mass murder of Jews in the "Holocaust of Bullets" is the most well-known Nazi atrocity in the region, gentiles in the Western Soviet Union were not treated any better, falling victim to massacres, forced labor, rape, and the decimation of whole villages. Some observers considered Belarus the most devastated place of the entire war, and that probably was no exaggeration: it is estimated that 2 million Belarusians perished during the war, or roughly a quarter of the region's populationnote .
Drang nach Osten
Why was Nazi Germany so brutal to Belarus and other parts of the Soviet Union?
Since the late 19th century, "Drang nach Osten" (Drive to the East) became prominent among German nationalists. The idea was that for Germany to become a significant power, it was "destined" to conquer and subjugate the Slavs. And yes, German nationalists of this period also believed Slavic peoples were inferior.
The Treaty of Brest Litovsk, in which the Germans gained massive territory from the Soviets, seemed to fulfill the idea of Eastern Expansion, albeit in a more watered-down way, since the Imperials Germans didn't pursue a campaign of wholesale colonization. Instead, they were interested in building puppet states loyal to Germany from the former Soviet holdings. Belarus briefly formed a sovereign nation with German backing, but in November 1918, the Germans surrendered and were forced to withdraw from their Eastern European holdings. The brief Belarusian state quickly collapsed, and its territory was partitioned between Poland and the Soviet Union after Polish-Soviet War.
Lebensraum
Adolf Hitler was also enamored with the idea of moving the German border further East, albeit in a much more extreme and violent manner. As early as his 1925 "magnum opus" Mein Kampf and in the unpublished 1928 sequel
, Hitler called for Germany to move its borders further east to create Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people. Once he gained power in 1933, Hitler expanded Germany's war machine with the eventual goal of an Eastern European conquest.
Hitler's expansion doctrine was an unholy mixture of anti-semitism, racism, social Darwinism, national security, and anti-communism: in his mind, the Soviet Union was created by Jewish Bolsheviks that ruled over a subhuman Slavic people; The German people were a superior race that deserved and needed a lot of lands to compete with powers such as America; logically, the superior German would destroy the "Jewish-controlled" Soviet Union, and slaughter the majority of Slavs, and the lands were given over to German colonization.
Nazism is in many ways a reaction to Marxism. Where Marx saw human history and human society as built around "class struggle" note , fascism sees it as built around "national struggle" note and Nazism takes it further by being built on "racial struggle" note . To the Nazis, the biological race (i.e Aryan) is effectively inseparable from nation (i.e German), hence the annexation of "German lands" like Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. These views extended to other nations, for instance Hitler considered France an "hereditary enemy" that needed to be crippled so that it would never be a rival to Germany again like they were in 1806,1870-1871 and 1914-1918, while the USA were seen as a decadent "mutt" nation corrupted by Black people and other immigrants. The Nazis did not perpetrate the Holocaust simply because of hatred, but also because these "inferior" elements were seen as an existential threat in a struggle to exist. The Nazis simultaneously thought of Aryans as the Master Race, but also a weak race that could be subjugated by "Asiatic hordes" and their Jewish overlords, simply by virtue of being overwhelmed.
The goal of the Lebensraum was to replicate what the Nazis considered the source of the power of the USA - Manifest Destiny. In their eyes the USA had conquered parts of Mexico and wiped out Native Americans and taken their land and derived wealth, food and resources from it. The Nazis wanted to do the same to the nations to the east, killing two birds with one stone. They would take out the immediate threat to the Aryan race in the form of the "Asiatic hordes" and take their lands, where they could grow food, extract resources and sustain a larger population and economy that could eventually take on the USA 1-to-1 in a generation or two. In the event that the Nazis won their worldview would have likely reached its logical conclusion - endless war until literally everyone but those judged Aryan were dead, and then they'd likely degenerate into civil war without end due to the need to prove their strength.
War of Extermination
When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, what followed was a horrific attack on the Polish people, with tens of thousands of Polish elites executed and many Polish civilians driven off their lands and imprisoned in forced labor camps. But this was just the opening act to a bloody campaign of terror.As the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union gathered steam, the Nazi eastern expansion plan was solidified under Generalplan Ost, a deliberate act of mass genocide against the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe. According to some estimates, 75% of the Belarusian population was to be exterminated. Every bit of land up to the Urals was to be settled by Germans, with the Slavic communities killed, enslaved, or expelled into Siberia. Both the SS and the Wehrmacht were on board with the plan and German forces of all kinds perpetrated unspeakable atrocities against the Slavic populations in Eastern Europe. Many Belarusian nationalists who were angered by Stalinist atrocities initially welcomed the German invasion, only to learn the Nazis were even less kind than Stalin, with German forces heavily persecuting Belarusian nationalist groups.
Dirlewanger Brigade
While the SS were brutal to the people of Eastern Europe, the Direlwanger brigade surpassed them in cruelty. Oskar Direlwanger was a career criminal and sexual predator who ran a unit of criminals like himself. When his forces debuted in Poland, they committed such vile crimes that the SS transferred Dirlewanger and his troops to Belarus, where they brought their nightmarish fantasies to life. Locking civilians in barns and then setting them on fire was his preferred method of execution.
