Page "Land mine" Paragraph 66

The Nazi Germans used captured civilians who were chased across minefields to detonate the explosives.

According to Laurence Rees, " Curt von Gottberg, the SS-Obergruppenfuhrer who, during 1943, conducted another huge anti-partisan action called Operation Kottbus on the eastern border of Belorussia, reported that ' approximately two to three thousand local people were blown up in the clearing of the minefields '.