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Prisoner B-3087

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The Diary of Anne Frank

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The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow

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Annexation of the Baltic States
15 Jun 1940 - 9 Aug 1940
ww2dbasePer the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between the Soviet Union and Germany on 23 Aug 1939, Latvia and Estonia were in the Soviet sphere of influence while Lithuania was in the German sphere of influence. During the course of the joint Soviet-German invasion of Poland, territories were traded, resulting in all three Baltic States falling within the Soviet sphere of influence. As early as 24 Sep 1939, the Soviet Union began asserting pressure on Estonia, demanding territory for the Soviet military to establish bases. Similar pressures were placed on Latvia and Lithuania in early Oct. By creating political instability through these demands, the Soviet Union successfully toppled some governments, and slowly maneuvered to place Soviet-friendly politicians at the top of the three Baltic States.

ww2dbaseIn Jun 1940, the Soviet Union further increased the pressure. After mobilizing troops on the Baltic States' borders, on 14 Jun a demand for Lithuania to establish a Soviet government was issued, while Soviet forces blockaded Estonia. On 15 Jun, Soviet troops invade Lithuania, while Soviet and Latvian troops exchanged fire near Maslenki, Latvia. The main invasion of Estonia and Latvia began on the following day. Sporadic fighting would continue for days to come, but for the large part the Soviet forces occupied the three countries with relative ease by the end of the day on 17 Jun. In Jul, plebiscites were held in the three countries, and all three nations expressed their wish to join the Soviet Union; the elections were widely recognized as fixed. The annexation of the three countries was completed in early Aug, when Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, in that order, joined the Soviet Union.

ww2dbaseSuspicious of their German allies, Soviet forces would begin constructing defenses in the Baltic States against a potential German invasion before the end of 1940.

ww2dbase Sources:
William Shirer,The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Wikipedia

Annexation of the Baltic States Interactive Map Annexation of the Baltic States Timeline Visitor Submitted Comments
All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB.

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annexation of the baltic states | world war ii database

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Annexation of the Baltic States 15 Jun 1940 - 9 Aug 1940 ww2dbasePer the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between the Soviet Union and Germany on 23 Aug 1939, Latvia and Estonia were in the Soviet sphere of influence while Lithuania was in the German sphere of influence.

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The Hope and Spirit series is dedicated to the millions of victims of Soviet deportations--the men, women and children from all Soviet-occupied nations, and of all nationalities, religions, and races--who suffered two indignities: the brutality of forced exile, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and genocide, and the injustice of the subsequent denial, minimization and suppression of their suffering and victimization.

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Dedication The Hope and Spirit series is dedicated to the millions of victims of Soviet deportations--the men, women and children from all Soviet-occupied nations, and of all nationalities, religions, and races--who suffered two indignities: the brutality of forced exile, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and genocide, and the injustice of the subsequent denial, minimization and suppression of their suffering and victimization.

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The Hope and Spirit series is dedicated to the millions of victims of Soviet deportations--the men, women and children from all Soviet-occupied nations, and of all nationalities, religions, and races--who suffered two indignities: the brutality of forced exile, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and genocide, and the injustice of the subsequent denial, minimization and suppression of their suffering and victimization.

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Dedication The Hope and Spirit series is dedicated to the millions of victims of Soviet deportations--the men, women and children from all Soviet-occupied nations, and of all nationalities, religions, and races--who suffered two indignities: the brutality of forced exile, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and genocide, and the injustice of the subsequent denial, minimization and suppression of their suffering and victimization.

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"My Latvia" is a stirring documentary featurette of the illegal Soviet military occupation of the three then-autonomous Baltic states in 1940. This unusual film, made by filmmaker Albert Jekste who worked for the republic of Latvia prior to the Soviet occupation, illuminates communist methods of internal subversion and conquest. It includes rare scenes of Stalin and other Soviet leaders attending closed Kremlin meetings, and examines the criminal background of the Latvian nationals who invited the Soviets into that country and subsequently assumed high communist government posts. The film was funded by the United States Information Service as part of Cold War efforts to alert the American public to the Communist threat.

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" MY LATVIA " COLD WAR SOVIET OCCUPATION OF BALKAN STATES 74582

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"My Latvia" is a stirring documentary featurette of the illegal Soviet military occupation of the three then-autonomous Baltic states in 1940. This unusual film, made by filmmaker Albert Jekste who worked for the republic of Latvia prior to the Soviet occupation, illuminates communist methods of internal subversion and conquest.

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video

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Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism.

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Baltic Countries: Maps
Lithuania is the southernmost of the Baltic states.

The Jews of Lithuania had their own distinct and highly developed Jewish culture, including a special dialect of the Yiddish language. Lithuanian Jewry played a profound role in many Jewish ideologies, including the Jewish workers' movement, Zionism, and rational religious thought. Before World War II, the Lithuanian Jewish population was some 160,000, about 7 percent of the total population.

Lithuania was an independent country from the end of World War I until 1940. In March 1939, Nazi Germany delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania to cede the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), a region with an ethnic German majority, to the Reich. On March 21, the Lithuanian government agreed to the German terms. The following day the German and Lithuanian foreign ministers signed a treaty that returned the Memel territory back to Germany and included an non-aggression pact between the two parties. The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940 and annexed the country in August 1940. By 1941, the Jewish population of Lithuania swelled by an influx of refugees from German-occupied Poland to reach about 250,000, or 10 percent of the population.

In June and July 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied Lithuania. During the German occupation, Lithuania was incorporated into the Reich Commissariat Ostland (Reichskommissariat Ostland), a German civilian administration covering the Baltic states and western Belorussia.

The Lithuanians carried out violent riots against the Jews both shortly before and immediately after the arrival of German forces. In June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppen together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, began murdering the Jews of Lithuania. By the end of August 1941, most Jews in rural Lithuania had been shot. By November 1941, the Germans also massacred most of the Jews who had been concentrated in ghettos in the larger cities. The surviving 40,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilna, Kovno, Siauliai, and Svencionys ghettos, and in various labor camps in Lithuania. Living conditions were miserable, with severe food shortages, outbreaks of disease, and overcrowding

In 1943, the Germans destroyed the Vilna and Svencionys ghettos, and converted the Kovno and Siauliai ghettos into concentration camps. Some 15,000 Lithuanian Jews were deported to labor camps in Latvia and Estonia. About 5,000 Jews were deported to killing centers in German-occupied Poland, where they were murdered. Shortly before withdrawing from Lithuania in the fall of 1944, the Germans deported about 10,000 Jews from Kovno and Siauliai to concentration camps in Germany.

Soviet troops reoccupied Lithuania in the summer of 1944. In the previous three years, the Germans had murdered about 90 percent of Lithuanian Jews, one of the highest victim rates in Europe.

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Baltic Countries: Maps Lithuania is the southernmost of the Baltic states. The Jews of Lithuania had their own distinct and highly developed Jewish culture, including a special dialect of the Yiddish language. Lithuanian Jewry played a profound role in many Jewish ideologies, including the Jewish workers' movement, Zionism, and rational religious thought.