The Unknown War is an American 20-part series that documents the World War II conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Today, SouthFront shares the 14th part of the series titled “The Liberation of Belorussia”. In 1944, the Red Army was advancing faster than ever. Having liberated Smolensk and Novgorod, the Soviet troops were approaching the first villages of Belarus.
While occupying Belarus for three years, the Nazis destroyed 9200 villages and killed more than two million people.
For Hitlar’s forces in Belarus, there was no return home. The Soviet Air Forces first cut their back lines. Six German divisions were later surrounded in Bobruisk. On June 26 the Red Army took Vitebsk.
Soviet troops then marched towards Minsk. There, one hundred thousand Nazis were captured in a ring of fire. At dawn on July 3, Soviet tanks broke through the German defensive lines, and the infantry broke into Minsk. By the end of the day the capital of Belarus was liberated.
As in the Baltics, the Red Army was faced in Belarus with another horrifying sight, the concentration camps left behind by the Nazis.
MORE ON THE TOPIC:
