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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.
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).
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]
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 ...
The defeat of Germany in World War I in November 1918, followed by the defeat in 1919 of the Baltische Landeswehr and German Freikorps units of General Rüdiger von der Goltz in Latvia by the 3rd Estonian Division and the North Latvian Brigade, rendered any ideas for the creation of the United Baltic Duchy irrelevant.
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 Russian Bolsheviks ceded the Baltic areas to Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918. The Imperial German government established occupation governments in Estonia and Latvia [1] and formally recognised the independence of a puppet government in Lithuania on March 24, 1918. [2]