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 period of several years during World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
Soviet expansion in 1939–1940. After the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939, in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the Soviet forces were given freedom over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, an important aspect of the agreement to the Soviet government as they were afraid of Germany using the three states as a corridor to get close to Leningrad.
War crimes by Soviet armed forces against civilians and prisoners of war in the territories occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941 in regions including Western Ukraine, the Baltic states and Bessarabia in Romania, along with war crimes in 1944–1945, have been ongoing issues within these countries.
After World War II, on 29 June 1945, a treaty was signed between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, ceding Carpatho-Ukraine officially to the Soviet Union. Following the capture of Prague by the Red Army in May 1945 the Soviets withdrew in December 1945 as part of an agreement that all Soviet and US troops leave the country.
In 1944, Nazi Germany was losing the war and Soviet Russia was making steady advances. In July 1944, Red Army reached the Lithuanian borders as part of the Operation Bagration. Most of the Lithuanian territory was taken during the Baltic Offensive. The last battle in Klaipėda ended in January 1945.
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. 25 June 1941 Continuation War breaks out between Finland and Soviet Union. 2 July 1941, General mobilisation is announced in the Soviet Union.
The June Uprising (Lithuanian: Birželio sukilimas) was a brief period in late June 1941 between the first Soviet and the Nazi occupations.. A year prior, on June 15, 1940, the Red Army occupied Lithuania and established the unpopular [5] Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, which silenced its critics and suppressed resistance with political repression and state terrorism.
The first period deals with the occupation from June 1940 to July 1941, followed by the German occupation during World War II. The second period of occupation covers 1944 when the Soviet forces pushed the Germans out, until the end of the Soviet occupation in 1991 when the three countries restored full independence.