MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. German troops had no intention to restore Minsk under their occupation and kept destroying the city and turning it into a stronghold before the Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday.

The Defense Ministry of Russia has launched a new history section titled: "Bagration Victorious Strikes." The section is based on the historical documents from the ministry’s central archive and tells about the preparation for and the implementation of Operation Bagration, a major strategic battle of the Soviet Union’s 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.

"Having bombed Minsk in 1941, the German troops had no intention to restore it. Pursuant to the Nazis’ plans, some Soviet citizens were intended for extermination, others for servicing the Wehrmacht’s needs and still others for their resettlement to rural areas for use as agricultural slaves," the ministry revealed.

On March 8, 1944, Hitler assigned the status of a stronghold to Minsk and issued orders to create long-term fire emplacements in the city. For their construction, the Nazis decided to use building materials from nearby buildings and for this purpose began to blow them up, it said.

In addition, on July 1, 1944, the retreating German troops set Minsk on fire, destroying the water supply and sewage systems, telephone and telegraph communications and blowing up 23 operational enterprises, the archives show.

"The Germans disfigured Minsk with trenches, barbed wire barriers, pillboxes and bunkers. They punched slits in the walls of many stone buildings. Nothing helped them. By the evening of July 3, there were many German soldiers and officers in the city: these were prisoners-of-war who were afraid of looking into the eyes of city residents and our fighters," says the description of combat operations by the 31st Soviet army during the Minsk offensive.

Operation Bagration

Operation Bagration (June 23 - August 29, 1944), was the first large offensive operation by the Red Army conducted during the period when the US and British troops began military operations in Western Europe. The Soviet offensive resulted in the liberation of Byelorussia, the larger part of Lithuania and eastern Poland. The offensive also contributed to the advance by allied forces in France as it denied the German military command the possibility to redeploy reserves from the Soviet-German front to the west.

Following the results of Operation Bagration, 1,500 Soviet servicemen were awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union and hundreds of thousands of others were bestowed with Soviet orders and medals.