Belarusian Home Defence

(with walking stick) and collaborators from the Belarusian Home Defence (1944). After the Wehrmacht suffered two major strategic defeats at Stalingrad (in February 1943) and at Kursk (in August 1943) the Germans made some concessions to the Belarusian collaborators by proposing a Belarusian quasi-state. Assistance was offered by the local administrative governments from the Soviet era, and former members of public organizations including the Soviet Belarusian Youth. On March 6, 1944, the general mobilization of all healthy men born between 1908 and 1924 into the BKA started. Some 40,000 individuals reported to recruitment bureaus set up in seven cities; although 30% of them were sent back home on German orders for overcrowding. From each region (Uezd) about 500 to 600 men were recruited, not older than 57 years and Unteroffiziers not older than 55 years of age (except those protecting the collaborationist government), were brought into the fold of the BKA. Organization was controlled by the German Police and SD commandants. In mid-June 1944 an officer school for BKA volunteers was started by the German SS in Minsk, but the city was overrun by the Soviets only two weeks later. After evacuating the council to Königsberg and soon to Berlin in November 1944 along with its upper echelon, the 1st personnel battalion was formed. Meanwhile, BKA battalions on Belarusian territory were mainly used in anti-partisan operations and later at the front against the Red Army. ==Dissolution==

The BKA ceased to exist after the Red Army regained control in the Byelorussian SSR. Some BKA units retreated to the West and became the base for the creation of the Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling. Many conscripts quietly went back home to their Belarusian villages. The BCR existed until the late 1980s in the United States and president Radasłaŭ Astroŭski worked with it till 1960. Most of its members, as members of other organizations, received political asylum as immigrants. In April and May 1945, most of the BKA and SBM submitted to the Russian Liberation Army and surrendered to the western Allies. Later propagandists hold that the Belarusian Liberation Armies 1st personnel battalion in Berlin was in fact a reserve for the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Russian). Eleven its officers, including Barys Rahula and others entered the 1st Grenadier Sturm Brigade SS "Belarus", formed in Nazi Germany; it was sent to the Battle of Monte Cassino, and acted against the II Corps (Poland) of General Władysław Anders (Anders Army). BKA soldiers were not trusted by the Germans, which explains why Russian Liberation Army formations weren't sent to the Eastern Front, and combat at Western Front. ==Rank insignia==

Commissioned officer ranks The rank insignia of commissioned officers. Other ranks The rank insignia of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel. ==See also==