A summarized history of Belarus under the Unity Pakt.
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Officer cadets of the Belarusian National Army holding a passing out march to mark their graduation from the Military Academy of Patriots in Minsk (building in the background), 1967. These young men had been largely trained by veteran Wehrmacht instructors from Germany and would be the very first of their academy (established shortly after the Bialystock Agreement in 1965) to serve as commissioned officers in service of the collaborationist Independent State of Belarus.
During the Hitlerite era, Belarus had not existed as it's own nation but rather had been part of Reichskommisariat Ostland as a German colony. Yet even back then, an authority of native collaborators called the Belarusian Central Council that was led by Michal Vituska held great sway over these lands in service of their Nazi German overlords. The turmoil that commenced within Ostland after Hitler's death would see Vituska coming to seize control of the colony after a violent struggle against rivaling factions, followed not long after by the Reformists triumphing in the German Burgerkrieg later on.
Negotiations between Speer and the Belarusians were swift to commence. Vituska had a balancing act to play. Much as he talked himself up as a loyal patriot of the Belarusian nation, he knew all too well that his own power had always been very much reliant on German backing for all the 20 years that he had collaborated. Yet it was obvious he needed to appease the nationalists that made up his power base, who were really not keen for Belarus to return to its previous status as a German colony and had long desired a return to sovereignty that had been stripped away since the Russian Civil War. On Germany's end, Vituska was seen a an untrustworthy, powerhungry upstart. Fuhrer Speer and the GO4 were particularly displeased that their ideological kindred Meyer-Landrut and his reformist faction had not won out in the struggle over Ostland, having been dealt a killing blow by Dreschler's Militarists. Yet they were far from inclined to disregard peaceful resolution in lieu of open conflict, considering how shattered Germany's empire had become after Hitler's death, and how much time and effort it would take to rejuvenate it. In Bialystok, both sides would hash out an arrangement. In which Vituska was granted a fiefdom for him to lord over; the so-called
Independent State of Belarus, while the Baltic territories would return to direct German control (acceptable enough in the eyes of many in Germany, considering that it was the Baltics where Germanization had really taken affect and was believed to hold actual value while Belarus attracted only miniscule German settlement and was seen as a backwater, therefore no loss in it being handed over). In exchange, Vituska and his newly formed puppet state would be nothing less than loyally subservient to the Third Reich in all forms. Indeed, not long after the Bialystock Agreement was put in effect, Belarusian forces would aid the Wehrmacht in pacifying the anarchic situation in the former RK Moskowien, for which the ISB was rewarded with some territorial border corrections in their favour (Like the Gomel area that had once been part of Moskowien). Moreover, the agreement stipulated that any of the estimated 470,000 slaves of Belarusian origin located throughout Germany and elsewhere in Europe were to be repatriated back to their homeland , seen to be the first steps of Speer's and Erhard's own wider plans for abolishment of slavery itself.
The Bialystock Agreement was perfect for Vituska. It furthered his power and greatly bolstered his standing in the eyes of Belarusian nationalists and those who doubted him, given his servility for Germany. The reality of course is that despite it's name, the Independent State of Belarus was some ways more welded to Germany than even Vichy France. Vituska's plan of "developing" Belarus entailed massive economic exploitation of resources and labour by German interests in collusion with collaborationist bigwigs. The state is dominated by an elite bolstered by German patronage and upholds itself by the operation of an expansive and highly oppressive apparatus that brutally represses any opposition to Vituska's rule that they can. For more than a few Belarusians, one of the main differences between RK Ostland and the ISB would simply be the more prominent presence of their collaborationist countrymen pressing the boot on their backs in place of the Germans before them. The repatriated former slaves in particular have largely found themselves marginalized into a new sort of impoverished underclass within ISB society and in any case have found their "liberation" to be very wanting, which made them a base that were especially prone to gravitating towards the anti-Vituska resistance where they would later be importantly involved in the insurrections during the events of the early 70s.
Vituska would play a prominent role in the Great Slave Revolt that erupted across German dominated Eastern Europe. While Poland, Ukraine and the Caucasus found themselves collapsing from the inside by intense, spontaneous rebellion, Vituska however had managed to endure. The ISB military had by and large maintained loyalty to the regime (though a number of small scale mutinies did break out) and were able to put down internal anti-regime revolts and repel incursions from the Reichsbanner to the south. Additionally, Vituska could count on a core of elite commando units called the Black Cats who were unwaveringly loyal and highly effective against the inferiorly trained and organised rebels. Numerous historians would judge that the crushing of the revolt in Belarus was crucial in preventing the Reichsbanner from expanding their reach northwards to the Baltics and linking up with rebels in that region, which allowed these to be crushed as well. Thus, with Belarus and the Baltics still secure at hand, Speer had used these as a launchpad to more effectively put down Schorner's mutiny in Moskowien as well as take advantage of the fact that the Reichsbanner mastermind Willy Brandt was not in as much intimidating of a position as he could've been, to negotiate with the revolt on favourable terms for the Reich. During the Second West Russian War too, the ISB would once again play a major role as an important supply and logistical hub for Unity-Pakt soldiers moving east to beat back against the Russian Empire's attempted reconquest.
Vituska's rulership over Belarus would last all the way to his death in 2006, though as he increasingly aged, authority was gradually left more to the Central Council itself which has become more compromised of younger Germanophile nationalists who grew up under Vituska's reign and are stalwartly dedicated to the rejuvenated National Socialist order that continues to prevail in Europe. At his lavish funeral, Fuhrer Gunter Deckert would heap praise on Vituska as being "one of the most exemplary warriors of National Socialism amongst all the eastern peoples". In the free world of course, Vituska's infamous name has superseded that of Quisling as being the byword of a craven, tyrannical traitor. His corpse would be interred at a mausoleum in Minsk.
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A design piece commemorating Vituska's memory. Found on the ISB government's official website in NetzRam.
