The political mood of the population and its reaction to German propaganda in the occupied Soviet territory (based on the materials of the General District of Belarus)
Authors:   Russian Customs Academy, Pushkarenko Elena A. , Tretyak Sergey A. ,   Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus
Published: December 2024

The article deals with the problem of the political mood of the population in the occupied Soviet territory and its reaction to German propaganda (on the example of the General District of Belarus). The purpose of the study: to identify specific features of the political mood of the population in the territory of the General District of Belarus in 1941-1944, to determine the factors that caused them, and the effectiveness of German propaganda. The sources for writing the work were the documents of the National Archive of the Republic of Belarus (NARB), the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). The methods of research used are analysis, synthesis, and comparison.
The problem of the political mood of the population and its reaction to German propaganda in the occupied Soviet territory remains a little studied problem until recently. At the same time, the general mood of the people, their expectations, and the reaction to the policy pursued by the occupation authorities had a significant impact on the outcome of the war. It should be noted that during the Great Patriotic War in the occupied territory of the BSSR there was the most massive partisan movement, the very presence of which was the clearest evidence of the attitude of Belarusians to the German authorities and their policies. At the same time, the political mood of the population of the General District of Belarus was not uniform. A small part, mainly the Belarusian intelligentsia, initially accepted the propaganda slogans about the «revival of Belarus» with confidence, cooperated with the civil German administration in the field of propaganda, culture, education, participated in the creation of various collaborationist organizations, naively expecting a «gift» from the Nazis in the form of sovereignty. The overwhelming part of the society was extremely skeptical of the agitation and propaganda of the German authorities, while at the beginning of the war its position can be described as expectant and indifferent.
The authors came to the conclusion that the political mood of the population of the General District of Belarus was determined by a number of objective factors: the lack of practice of independent state-building and long stay under the authority of other states, large-scale and destructive military actions between the Western countries and Russia that took place on the land of Belarus. In general, the reaction of the population of the district to the German propaganda was characterized by a high degree of distrust and skepticism, since the content of the propaganda materials was in sharp contrast to the harsh reality. The policy of «scorched earth», methods of fighting partisans, the genocide of Jews, the practice of forced recruitment of potential ostarbeiters – all this together leveled the slogans of German propaganda about the prospects of national and cultural construction of Belarus as part of the so-called «New Europe».