Brest-Litovsk Brazilian Air Force and Navy made more limited contributions Varga was ousted in 1945 BRAZZAVILLE DECLARATION (OCTOBER 27, 1940) Charles de Gaulle, supported by colonial governors and officials from French Equatorial Africa and the Congo, announced at this conference that the Vichy regime was illegitimate and did not represent France The conference then established a Council for Defense of the Empire, which became the kernel of the Free French political structure and movement BRENNER PASS A strategic Alpine pass between Austria and Italy Its access and control was a major objective of both countries during World War I, leading to repeated futile mountain battles at Isonzo which cost hundreds of thousands of lives Italian concern that Germany would control the pass led to initial opposition to the Anschluss of Austria with Germany Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in the Brenner Pass on June 2, 1941 U.S armies in Italy and Austria linked there on May 4, 1945 See also Switzerland BRERETON, LEWIS (1890–1967) U.S general Commander of USAAF forces destroyed in the Philippines in 1941–1942 He next commanded 9th Air Force in North Africa Promoted to lead Allied 1st Airborne Army in August 1944, he was in charge of drops at Arnhem and other sites during MARKET GARDEN that September He oversaw the marginally more successful Rhine drop in March 1945 BRESKENS POCKET See Scheldt Estuary campaign BRESLAU, SIEGE OF (1945) See Germany, conquest of BREST-LITOVSK This Polish city was annexed by the Soviet Union in September 1939, under terms of the Nazi–Soviet Pact (August 23, 1939) A ferocious fight broke out over control of the 18th-century citadel during the first hours of BARBAROSSA on June 22, 1941 Desperate Soviet defenders held out in the citadel for five days During the fight, NKVD troops slaughtered all their prisoners rather than see them freed by the Germans Such resistance was only a burr in the rear of the Wehrmacht juggernaut, but it was also a portent of bitter fighting to come The city was not retaken by the Red Army until July 1944 The NKVD returned to take control of its old jail cells and execution chambers—which the Germans had used extensively in the interim A handful of survivors from the fight at Brest-Litovsk were found in 1945, having survived four years of gross mistreatment in German POW camps They were immediately arrested by SMERSH Most were either 187