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The Nazis went so far as to suggest a German–Lithuanian military alliance against Poland and promised to return the Vilnius Region, but Lithuania held to its policy of strict neutrality. [22] After the invasion of Poland , the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty assigned Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence.
The territories that Lithuania received from the Soviet Union were former territories of the Second Polish Republic, disputed between Poland and Lithuania since the Polish-Lithuanian War of 1920 and occupied by the Soviet Union following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty was described by The New ...
Latvia followed on 5 October 1939 and Lithuania shortly thereafter, on 10 October 1939. The agreements permitted the Soviet Union to establish military bases on the Baltic states' territory for the duration of the European war [26] and to station 25,000 Soviet soldiers in Estonia, 30,000 in Latvia and 20,000 in Lithuania starting October 1939.
As a result of the German-Soviet Invasion of Poland part of Vilnius Region was under Lithuanian administration in the period lasting from the takeover of the city from the occupying Soviet administration on October 27, 1939, to the occupation of all of Lithuania including Vilnius on June 15, 1940. [1]
However, the Lithuanian government refused to hold a plebiscite. In December 1920, the Soviets protested against the deployment of foreign forces in the Vilnius region. [1] Poland and Lithuania entered negotiations in 1921 with the mediation of the League's representative, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gimans.
At the beginning of World War II, which began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Lithuania remained a neutral country. However, after Poland's defeat, pressure intensified on Lithuania, which was forced to sign he mutual assistance pact of October 10, 1939, with the Soviet Union, making it a de facto Soviet protectorate. [4]
22 September 1939, Soviet army captures the region of Vilnius, which Poland had annexed from Lithuania in 1922. 24 September 1939, Stalin demands establishment of Soviet military bases in neutral Estonia, using the OrzeĊ incident as the pretext and threatening with war in case of noncompliance.
It would persist abroad for many years as one of the groups representing Lithuania in exile. [10] [11] Lithuanian Liberty Army during Nazi Germany's occupation opposed German policies, but did not begin armed resistance. The armed struggle began in mid-1944 when Red Army reached the Lithuanian borders after the Minsk Offensive.