German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II

The German invasion of the Soviet Union started on 22 June 1941 and led to a German military occupation of Byelorussia until it was fully liberated in August 1944 as a result of Operation Bagration. The western parts of Byelorussia became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, and in 1943, the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a regional government, the Belarusian Central Rada, that lasted until the Soviets reestablished control over the region. Altogether, more than two million people were killed in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation, around a quarter of the region's population,^[1] or even as high as three million killed or thirty percent of the population,^[2] including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews as part of the Holocaust in Belarus.^[3] In total, on the territory of modern Belarus, more than 9,200 villages and settlements, and 682,000 buildings were destroyed and burned, with some settlements burned several times.^[4]