The Failed Alliance: The Baltic Germans and the Belorusian Nationalists, 1914-1941

Abstract

Since the beginning of the occupation of the Russian territory during the First World War, the “discovering” of the Belarusians became a current task of the German authorities. The Baltic Germans, who traditionally considered themselves as elite for the local non-Russian and non-Polish communities, offered their assistance to the occupation forces. As experts, they strove to provide some kind of mediation to ensure the positive encounter of German authorities in the interaction with local communities. Nonetheless, this activity initially sought to preserve the higher status of Baltic Germans rather than to raise a similar one among Belarusians. After the end of the First World War, some politicians and intellectuals of Baltic German origin joined the National Socialist movement and tried to apply the old models to revive the old style of life on the north-west borders of the former Russian Empire. These ideological concepts became known as a “moderate” line of the Eastern policy of the Reich, opposed by the “radical” one formed by the very nature of the Nazi state. Pretending to be the ideologues of the German policy towards Belarus and the Belarusians, the Russian Germans did not understand the fact that the Belarusian nationalists, on the contrary, develop their agenda within the “radical line”.