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The Belarusian Republic (Belarusian: Беларуская нацыянальная рэспубліка, БНР; BNR) was a puppet government established in 1941 by Nazi Germany in the former territory of the Byelorussian SSR; following the successful Operation Barbarossa. The BNR controlled much of modern Belarus, as well as parts of Russia. To not have to create too many governments, the Reichskommisar of the East, Alfred Rosenburg, initially wanted to give Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Belarus, but that never occurred because Hitler wanted the Baltic peoples to contribute more to his war efforts, and he thought of Baltic peoples to be "more Aryan" than Slavs and did not want Belarusians ruling over them.
It was one of the three East Slavic puppet regimes established by the Axis (the others being Ukrainian Republic and the Russian Republic). The government was led by the chairman of the Central Rada, Radasłaŭ Astroŭski, the former mayor of Minsk. The Central Rada was the parliament, and Radasłaŭ Astroŭski had tried to give it more power than the usual puppet government received. He was an anti-Nazi, but was willing to cooperate with them in order to save lives. Astroŭski tried to keep the genocides from happening in the country, and refused to allow the Belarusian police to aid the German Wehrmacht or SS in their executions.