German occupation of Estonia during World War II

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Army Group North reached Estonia in July. Initially the Germans were perceived by most Estonians as liberators from the USSR and its repressions, having arrived only a week after the first mass deportations from the Baltics. Although hopes were raised for the restoration of the country's independence, it was soon realized that they were but another occupying power. The Germans pillaged the country for their war effort and unleashed The Holocaust in Estonia during which they and their collaborators murdered tens of thousands of people (including ethnic Estonians, Estonian Jews, Estonian Gypsies, Estonian Russians, Soviet prisoners, Jews from other countries and others). For the duration of the occupation, Estonia was incorporated into the German province of Ostland.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Three days later, on June 25, Finland declared herself to once again be in a state of war with the USSR, starting the Continuation War. On July 3, Joseph Stalin made his public statement over the radio calling for scorched-earth policy in the areas to be abandoned. Because the northernmost areas of the Baltic states were the last to be reached by the Germans, it was here that the Soviet destruction battalions had their most extreme effects. The Estonian forest brothers, numbering about 50,000, inflicted heavy casualties on the remaining Soviets; as many as 4,800 were killed and 14,000 captured.

Even though the Germans did not cross the Estonian southern border until July 7–9, Estonian soldiers who had deserted from Soviet units in large numbers, opened fire on the Red Army as early as June 22. On that day, a group of forest brothers attacked Soviet trucks on a road in the district of Harju. The Soviet 22nd Rifle Corps was the unit that lost most men, as a large group of Estonian soldiers and officers deserted from it. Furthermore, border guards of Soviet Estonia were mostly people who had previously worked for independent Estonia, and they also escaped to the forests, becoming one of the best groups of Estonian fighters. An Estonian writer Juhan Jaik wrote in 1941: "These days bogs and forests are more populated than farms and fields. The forests and bogs are our territory while the fields and farms are occupied by the enemy [e.g. the Soviets]".

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