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Furthermore, Nazi Germany rejected the recreation of the Baltic states in any form in the future, as it unilaterally declared itself the legal successor to all three of the Baltic countries, as well as the Soviet Union, which it expected would collapse due to the German invasion. [3]
The initial Soviet invasion and occupation of the Baltic states began in June 1940 under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, made between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in August 1939 before the outbreak of World War II. [1] [2] The three independent Baltic countries were annexed as constituent Republics of the Soviet Union in August 1940.
Wartime collaboration occurred in every country occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, including the Baltic states.The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were occupied by the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, and were later occupied by Germany in the summer of 1941 and then incorporated, together with parts of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of ...
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.
Though initially having bases only in the eastern corner of the Gulf of Finland, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet was the largest naval power in the Baltic Sea. As World War II progressed, it was able to make use of naval bases in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, first under the terms of agreements forced by the Soviet Union in autumn 1939, then by ...
By the first half of the 20th century, the Baltic Germans were, until after World War II, along with the Transylvanian Saxons and the Zipser Germans (in Romania and Slovakia respectively), one of the three oldest continuously German-speaking and ethnic German groups of the German diaspora in Europe.
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] In late June, the German general Franz Halder visited Estonia and Finland, and later Admiral Wilhelm Canaris visited ...
[1]: 271 By mid October, the German Army, which partly included the "Latvian Legion", was besieged in Kurzeme, in the "Courland Pocket". Some 200,000 German troops held out in Courland, trapped between the Baltic Sea and the Soviet lines while the Soviet Army concentrated its attacks on East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and ultimately Berlin.