The Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and remained under its control until its dissolution in 1991. For a period of several years during World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
The initial Soviet invasion and occupation of the Baltic states began in June 1940 under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, made between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in August 1939, before the outbreak of World War II. The three independent Baltic countries were annexed as constituent Republics of the Soviet Union in August 1940. Most Western countries did not recognise this annexation, and considered it illegal. In July 1941, the occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany took place, just weeks after its invasion of the Soviet Union. The Third Reich incorporated them into its Reichskommissariat Ostland. In 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states as a result of the Red Army's Baltic Offensive, trapping the remaining German forces in the Courland Pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945.
During the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation, many people from Russia and other parts of the former USSR were settled in the three Baltic countries, while the local languages, religion, and customs were suppressed in an "extremely violent and traumatic" occupation. Colonization of the three Baltic countries included mass executions, deportations, and repression of the native population.
While there has been a broad international consensus that the Baltic states were illegally occupied and annexed, the Soviet Union never acknowledged that they were forcefully taken over. The post-Soviet government of Russia maintains the claim that the incorporations of Baltic states was in accordance with international law, and Russian school textbooks state that the Baltic states voluntarily joined the Soviet Union after grassroots popular socialist revolutions. As most Western governments maintained that Baltic sovereignty had not been legitimately overridden, they thus continued to recognise the Baltic states as sovereign political entities represented by the Baltic Legations, which functioned in Washington and elsewhere as governments in exile.
The Baltic states regained de facto independence in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia started to withdraw its troops from the Baltics starting with Lithuania in August 1993. However, it was a violent process and Soviet forces killed several Latvians and Lithuanians. The full withdrawal of troops deployed by Moscow ended in August 1994. Russia officially ended its military presence in the Baltics in August 1998 by decommissioning the Skrunda-1 radar station in Latvia. The dismantled installations were repatriated to Russia and the site returned to Latvian control, with the last Russian soldier leaving Baltic soil in October 1999.
History
Background
Early in the morning of 24 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, called the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. The pact contained a secret protocol by which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence". In the north, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement"—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula, and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, although a second secret protocol agreed in September 1939 assigned the majority of Lithuanian territory to the Soviet Union. Under the secret protocol, Lithuania would regain its historical capital Vilnius, previously subjugated during the inter-war period by Poland.
Following the end of the Soviet invasion of Poland on 6 October, the Soviets pressured Finland and the Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance treaties. The Soviets questioned the neutrality of Estonia after the escape of an interned Polish submarine on 18 September. On 24 September, the Estonian foreign minister was given an ultimatum: the Soviets demanded a treaty of mutual assistance to establish military bases in Estonia. The Estonians were coerced to accept naval, air, and army bases on two Estonian islands and at the port of Paldiski. The corresponding agreement was signed on 28 September 1939. Latvia followed on 5 October 1939 and Lithuania shortly thereafter, on 10 October 1939. The agreements permitted the Soviet Union to establish military bases on the Baltic states' territory for the duration of the European war and to station 25,000 Soviet soldiers in Estonia, 30,000 in Latvia, and 20,000 in Lithuania starting October 1939.
Soviet occupation and annexation (1940–1941)
In May 1940, the Soviets turned to the idea of direct military intervention, but still intended to rule through puppet regimes. Their model was the Finnish Democratic Republic, a puppet regime set up by the Soviets on the first day of the Winter War. The Soviets organised a press campaign against the allegedly pro-Allied sympathies of the Baltic governments. In May 1940, the Germans invaded France, which was overrun and occupied a month later. In late May and early June 1940, the Baltic states were accused of military collaboration against the Soviet Union by holding meetings the previous winter. On 15 June 1940, the Lithuanian government was coerced into agreeing to the Soviet ultimatum and permitting the entry of an unspecified number of Soviet troops. President Antanas Smetona proposed armed resistance to the Soviets but the government refused, proposing their own candidate to lead the regime. However, the Soviets refused this proposal and sent Vladimir Dekanozov to take charge while the Red Army occupied the state.
On 16 June 1940, Latvia and Estonia also received ultimata. The Red Army occupied the two remaining Baltic states shortly thereafter. The Soviets dispatched Andrey Vyshinsky to oversee the takeover of Latvia and Andrey Zhdanov to Estonia. On 18 and 21 June 1940, new "popular front" governments were formed in each Baltic country, made up of Communists and fellow travelers. Under Soviet surveillance, the new governments arranged rigged elections for new "people's assemblies." Voters were presented with a single list, and no opposition movements were allowed to file candidates. To get the required turnout to 99.6%, votes were forged. A month later, when the new assemblies met, the sole item of business for each of them was a resolution to join the Soviet Union. In each case, the resolution passed by acclamation. The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union duly accepted the requests in August, thus sanctioning them under Soviet law. Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union on 3 August, Latvia on 5 August, and Estonia on 6 August 1940. The deposed presidents of Estonia and Latvia, Konstantin Päts and Kārlis Ulmanis, were deported to the USSR and imprisoned. They died later in the Tver region and Central Asia respectively. In June 1941, the new Soviet governments carried out mass deportations of "enemies of the people". Estonia alone lost an estimated 60,000 citizens. Consequently, many Balts initially greeted the Germans as liberators when they invaded a week later.
The Soviet Union immediately started to erect border fortifications along its newly acquired western border—the so-called Molotov Line.
German occupation (1941–1945)
Ostland province and the Holocaust
On 22 June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The Baltic states, recently Sovietized by threats, force, and fraud, generally welcomed the German armed forces. In Lithuania, a revolt broke out and an independent provisional government was established. As the German armies approached Riga and Tallinn, attempts to reestablish national governments were made. Baltic citizens hoped that the Germans would reestablish Baltic independence. Such hopes soon evaporated and Baltic cooperation became less forthright or ceased altogether. The Germans aimed to annex the Baltic territories into the Third Reich, where "suitable elements" would be assimilated and "unsuitable elements" exterminated. In practice, the implementation of occupation policy was more complex; for administrative convenience, the Baltic states were included with Belorussia in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The area was governed by Hinrich Lohse, who was obsessed with bureaucratic regulations. The Baltic area was the only eastern region intended to become a full province of the Third Reich.
Nazi racial attitudes to the peoples of the three Baltic countries differed between Nazi authorities. In practice, racial policies were directed not against the majority of Balts but rather against the Jews. Large numbers of Jews were living in the major cities, notably in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Riga. The German mobile killing units slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews; Einsatzgruppe A, assigned to the Baltic area, was the most effective of four units. German policy forced the Jews into ghettos. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered his forces to liquidate the ghettos and to transfer the survivors to concentration camps. Some Latvians and Lithuanian conscripts collaborated actively in the killing of Jews, and the Nazis managed to provoke pogroms locally, especially in Lithuania. Only about 75 percent of Estonian and 10 percent of Latvian and Lithuanian Jews survived the war. However, for the majority of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, the German rule was less harsh than Soviet rule had been, and it was less brutal than German occupations elsewhere in eastern Europe. Local puppet regimes performed administrative tasks and schools were permitted to function. However, most people were denied the right to own land or businesses.
Baltic nationals within the Soviet forces
The Soviet administration had forcibly incorporated the Baltic national armies at the wake of the occupation in 1940. Most of the senior officers were arrested and many of them murdered. During the German invasion, the Soviets conducted a forced general mobilisation that took place in violation of the international law. Under the Geneva Conventions, this act of violence is seen as a grave breach and war crime, because the mobilised men were treated as arrestants from the very beginning. In comparison with the general mobilisation proclaimed in the Soviet Union, the age range was extended by 9 years in the Baltics; all reserve officers were also taken. The aim was to deport all men capable to fight to Russia, where they were sent to convict camps. Almost half of them perished because of the transportation conditions, slave labour, hunger, diseases, and the repressive measures of the NKVD. In addition, destruction battalions were formed under the command of the NKVD. Hence, Baltic nationals fought in both German and Soviet army ranks. There was the 201st Latvian Rifle Division. The 308th Latvian Rifle Division was awarded the Red Banner Order after the expulsion of the Germans from Riga in the autumn of 1944.
An estimated 60,000 Lithuanians were drafted into the Red Army. During 1940, on the basis of the disbanded Lithuanian Army, the Soviet authorities organized the 29th Territorial Rifle Corps. The decrease in quality of life and service conditions, and forceful indoctrination of Communist ideology, caused discontent amongst recently Sovietized military units. Soviet authorities responded with repressions against Lithuanian officers of the 29th Corps, arresting over 100 officers and soldiers and subsequently executing around 20 in Autumn 1940. By that time, allegedly nearly 3,200 officers and soldiers of the 29th Corps were considered "politically unreliable". Due to high tensions and soldiers' discontent, the 26th Cavalry Regiment was disbanded. During the 1941 June deportations, over 320 officers and soldiers of the 29th Corps were arrested and deported to concentration camps or executed. The 29th Corps collapsed with the German invasion into Soviet Union; on June 25–26, a rebellion broke in its 184th Rifle Division. The other division of the 29th Corps, the 179th Rifle Division, lost most of its soldiers during the retreat from Germans, mostly to deserting of its soldiers. A total of less than 1,500 soldiers from the initial strength of around 12,000 reached the area of Pskov by August 1941. By the second part of 1942, most of the Lithuanians remaining in the Soviet ranks, as well as male war refugees from Lithuania, were organized into the 16th Rifle Division during its second formation. 16th Rifle Division, despite officially called "Lithuanian" and mostly commanded by officers of Lithuanian origin, including Adolfas Urbšas, was ethnically very mixed, with up to 1/4 of its personnel made of Jews and thus being the largest Jewish formation of Soviet Army. A popular joke of those years said that the 16th Division was called Lithuanian, because there were 16 Lithuanians among its ranks.
The 7000-strong 22nd Estonian Territorial Rifle Corps got heavily beaten in the battles around Porkhov during the German invasion in summer 1941, as 2000 were killed or wounded in action, and 4500 surrendered. The 25,000–30,000 strong 8th Estonian Rifle Corps lost 3/4 of its troops in the Battle of Velikiye Luki in winter 1942/43. It participated in the capture of Tallinn in September 1944. About 20,000 Lithuanians, 25,000 Estonians, and 5000 Latvians died in the ranks of the Red Army and labor battalions.
Baltic nationals in the German forces
The Nazi administration also conscripted Baltic nationals into the German armies. The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, composed of volunteers, was formed in 1944. The LTDF reached a size of roughly 10,000 men. Its goal was to fight the approaching Red Army, provide security, and conduct anti-partisan operations within the territory claimed by Lithuanians. After brief engagements against Soviet and Polish partisans, the force self-disbanded. Its leaders were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps, and many of members were executed by the Nazis. The Latvian Legion, created in 1943, consisted of two conscripted divisions of the Waffen-SS. On 1 July 1944, the Latvian Legion had 87,550 men. Another 23,000 Latvians were serving as Wehrmacht "auxiliaries". Among other battles, they participated in the Siege of Leningrad, in the Courland Pocket fighting, the defence of the Pomeranian Wall, at the Velikaya River for Hill "93,4", and in the defence of Berlin. The 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) was formed in January 1944 through conscription. Consisting of 38,000 men, it took part in the Battle of Narva, the Battle of Tannenberg Line, the Battle of Tartu, and Operation Aster.