of biodiversity of Polesie, Belarus and Europe as a whole. History Historically, for most of the year, the marshes were virtually impassable to major military forces, which influenced strategic planning of all military operations in the region. Like most other wetlands in Europe, the Pinsk Marshes were once seen as an unhealthy area and a focus of sickness. Land reclamation projects of the eastern part of the wetlands were started in 1872 and by the late 19th century drainage of the marshes recovered 1.5 million hectares of wetlands for use as pasture and farmland. First World War At the start of World War I, the marshes separated the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army from the XII corps; the few roads that traversed the region were narrow and largely unimproved. That left a wide gap, and the Third Army Corps of the Imperial Russian Army poured in before the Austro-Hungarian Second Army's transfer from Serbia was complete. The Russians soon captured the valuable railhead at Lemberg (now Lviv), then in the far east of Austria-Hungary (now part of the western Ukraine), as a result. Throughout the rest of the war, the wetlands remained one of the principal geographic obstacles of the Eastern Front. Second World War The marshes divided the central and southern theatres of operation during World War II, and they served as a hideout for both Soviet and Polish partisans. At one stage during the war, the German administration planned to drain the marshes, 'cleanse' them of their 'degenerate' inhabitants and repopulate the area with German colonists. Konrad Meyer was the leader in command of the 'Pripet plan'. Hitler scuttled the project late in 1941, as he believed that it might entail Dust Bowl conditions. German racial anthropologist Theodor Poesche had proposed, in the late 19th century, that the Aryan race evolved in the marshes because of the prevalence of albinism. In 1942, after an uprising, approximately 1,000 Jews escaped from the Łachwa Ghetto, of whom about 600 were able to take refuge in the Pinsk Marshes. Known as Pripjet-Sümpfe by the Germans, the wetlands were dreaded by the Wehrmacht troops. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Third Reich armies skirted the wetlands, passing through the north or south of it. However, after the debacle of the Eastern Front in 1944, many retreating units such as the 7th, 35th, 134th and 292nd Infantry Divisions had to cut across