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Territorial changes of the Baltic states refers to the redrawing of borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after 1940. The three republics, formerly autonomous regions within the former Russian Empire and before that of former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and as provinces of the Swedish Empire, gained independence in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The occupation of the Baltic states was a period of annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania begun by the Soviet Union in 1940, continued for three years by Nazi Germany after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and finally resumed by the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
The Germans lacked concern for the fate of the Baltic states, and initiated the evacuation of the Baltic Germans. Between October and December 1939 the Germans evacuated 13,700 people from Estonia and 52,583 from Latvia, and resettled them in Polish territories incorporated into Nazi Germany. The following summer [1940], the Soviets occupied ...
The background of the occupation of the Baltic states covers the period before the first Soviet occupation on 14 June 1940, stretching from independence in 1918 to the Soviet ultimatums in 1939–1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia gained independence in the aftermath of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the German occupation which in the ...
The Soviet Union (USSR) occupied most of the territory of the Baltic states in its 1944 Baltic Offensive during World War II. [1] The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war.
The Baltic states regained independence in 1990–1991. In 1944–1945, World War II and the occupation by Nazi Germany ended. Then, re-occupation and annexation by the Soviet Union occurred, as the three countries became constituent "union republics" of the USSR: Estonian SSR , Latvian SSR and Lithuanian SSR .
The Baltic states[a] or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, Council of Europe, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less ...
11 July 1940, Baltic Military District is created by Soviet Union at Riga, on the territories of theoretically still independent states; 14–15 July 1940, Mock elections in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where non-communist candidates were disqualified, harassed and beaten. Results of Latvian "elections" published in advance in London by accident.