Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The occupation of the Baltic states was a period of annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union from 1940 until its dissolution in 1991. For a brief period, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
15 June 1941, The Governor of New York, Herbert Lehman, declares 15 June to be Baltic States Day. 22 June 1941 Germany enacts Operation Barbarossa, invades Soviet Union. In Soviet historiography, start of World War II as the Great Patriotic War. 24–25 June 1941 Soviet authorities massacre political prisoners in Rainiai, Lithuania.
In 1939, the British and French tried to arrange a "guarantee" of the Baltic states to the Soviet Union. The Baltic states would have preferred to remain neutral, but the only security systems on offer were German or Soviet. [27] In June 1939, Estonia and Latvia yielded to German pressure and signed non-aggression pacts. [28]
As a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War, many Baltic Germans fled to Germany. After 1919, many Baltic Germans felt obliged to depart the newly independent states for Germany, but many stayed as ordinary citizens. [17] In 1925, there were 70,964 Germans in Latvia (3.6%) and 62,144 in 1935 (3.2% of ...
The causes of heavy defeats and losses of personnel, weapons, and as a result - vast territories (the entire Kingdom of Poland, part of the Baltic states, Grodno, partly Volhynia and Podolia provinces - up to 300,000 square kilometers) were to a large extent systemic shortcomings in the management of the armed forces and the defense industry ...
By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans or so-called Schwaben as far southeast as the Bosphorus , Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever constituted sizable minorities in various countries.
The term Baltic countries (or lands, or states) was, until the early 20th century, used in the context of countries neighbouring the Baltic Sea: Sweden and Denmark, sometimes also the German Empire and the Russian Empire. With the advent of Foreningen Norden (the Nordic Associations), the term Baltic countries was no longer used for Sweden and ...
German troops landing at Ösel. Estonia was under military occupation by the German Empire during the later stages of the First World War.On 11–21 October 1917, the Imperial German Army occupied the West Estonian archipelago (Moonsund archipelago), including the larger islands of Saaremaa (Ösel), Hiiumaa (Dagö), and Muhu (Moon).