The official government of the occupation forces was established on August 23, 1941, under the direction of Wilhelm Kube, the German administrator of the Generalbezirk Weißruthenien.

[4] From that time until the end of the year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Byelorussia formed courses and offices helping those wishing to fight the Nazi Government.

Already in July 1941, an underground group in the Vesnitsky village council of the Ushachsky district was created by the head of the Lesinsky outpost of the 13th Berezinsky border detachment (Russian: 13-го Березинского погранотряда), Lieutenant Kudryavtsev.

Underground workers established relations with the population, conducted oral campaigns among them, calling for a struggle against the invaders, and helped unite the locals.

Throughout 1941, the core of the partisan movement consisted of the straggling remains of the Red Army units destroyed in Operation Barbarossa, personnel of the destruction battalions, and local Communist Komsomol and Soviet apparatchiks.

The "seed" partisan detachments, diversionist and organizational groups were actively formed and inserted into German-occupied territories beginning in the summer of 1941.

[11][13] In the period (1941-12-01), the German guard forces in the Army Group "Centre" rear comprised 4 security divisions, 2 SS brigades, 260 companies of different branches of service.

[8] In the period of December 1941, the German guard forces in the Army Group "Centre" rear comprised 4 security divisions, 2 SS brigades, 260 companies of different branches of service.

However, the real turning point in the development of the partisan movement in Belarus, and, in fact, on the German-occupied territories in general, came in the course of the Soviet Winter 1942 offensive.

The Germans treated the local population abysmally (with the notable exception of the fraction of the civil administration headed by Wilhelm Kube), maintained kolkhozes in East and restored land possessions in West, collecting heavy food taxes, rounded up and sent young people to work in Germany.

The direct boost to the partisan numbers were the Red Army POWs of the local origin, who were let out "to the homes" in Fall 1941, but ordered by Germans to return to the concentration camps in March 1942.

The partisan units were included in the overall Soviet strategical developments shortly after that, and the centralized organizational and logistical support had been organized, with Gate's existence being the very important facilitating factor.

[23] Certain level of military cooperation, imposed by the respective commands, was noted between Soviet partisans and the Home Army; the people of Polish nationality were, to a degree, exempted from the terror campaign in 1942.

On June 11, 1943, the UBK forces under Major Stanislaw Pieciul (Radecki) of the 4th Battalion engaged the Germans near the village of Pawly (Bielsk Podlaski County).

These heavy losses were criticized by the headquarters of the Home Army, who claimed that the UBK was profusely using lives of young Polish soldiers.

[27] The partisan movement was so strong that by 1943–44 there were entire regions in occupied Belarus, where Soviet authority was re-established deep inside the German held territories.

[citation needed] Apart from a foray infiltrating the Vilna Ghetto in April 1943 to meet with underground leader Abba Kovner, he stayed with the partisans until the end of the war, fighting the Germans and their collaborators near Lake Narach.

The Bielski partisans' activities were aimed at the Nazis and their collaborators, such as Belarusian volunteer policemen or local inhabitants who had betrayed or killed Jews.

The Nazi regime offered a reward of 100,000 Reichsmarks for assistance in the capture of Tuvia Bielski, and in 1943, led major clearing operations against all partisan groups in the area.

Some of these groups suffered major casualties, but the Bielski partisans fled safely to a more remote part of the forest, and continued to offer protection to the non-combatants among their band.

On June 12, 1944, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, issued an order to prepare a plan of liberating Vilnius from German hands.

The Commander of the Home Army district in Vilnius, General Aleksander Krzyżanowski "Wilk", decided to regroup all the partisan units in the north-eastern part of Poland for the assault, both from inside the city and from the outside.

As part of the Nazis' effort to combat the enormous Belarusian resistance during World War II, special units of local collaborationists were trained by the SS's Otto Skorzeny to infiltrate the Soviet rear.

In 1944 thirty Belarusians, known as "Čorny Kot" ("Black Cat") and led by Michał Vituška, were airdropped by the Luftwaffe behind the lines of the Red Army, which had already liberated Belarus during Operation Bagration.

They experienced some initial success due to disorganization in the rear of the Red Army, and some other German-trained Belarusian nationalist units also slipped through the Białowieża Forest in 1945.

The Catholic priest Vincent Hadleŭski, who was the leader of the Belarusian Independence Party, was arrested by the German police on December 24, 1942, and executed in the Maly Trostenets extermination camp.

[citation needed] June 22, 1943, Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party received orders in Moscow to destroy the Home Army in Belarus.

Many partisans, such as Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykaŭ, later went on to become prolific writers as well as active members of the pro-independence Belarusian Popular Front.

Pyotr Masherov, in his position as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia, also sought to increase public awareness of Belarusian partisan activities across the Soviet Union.

[35] The Belarusian partisan movement was depicted in the film Come and See, which was written by Adamovich alongside Elem Klimov, and got through Soviet censors with the assistance of Masherov.