Occupation of the Baltic republics by Nazi Germany

The occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany occurred during Operation Barbarossa from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans as liberators from the Soviet Union. The Balts hoped for the restoration of independence, but instead the Germans established a provisional government. During the occupation the Germans carried out discrimination, mass deportations and mass killings generating Baltic resistance movements.

The Germans had given the Baltic states under the Soviet sphere of influence in the 1939 German–Soviet Pact. The Germans lacked concern for the fate of the Baltic states and they initiated the evacuation of the Baltic Germans. Between October and December 1939 the Germans evacuated 13,700 people from Estonia and 52,583 from Latvia, who were resettled in Polish territories incorporated into the Nazi Germany. The following summer, the Soviets occupied and illegally annexed all three states. On 22 June 1941 the Germans carried out Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets had executed sovietization earlier, including the first mass deportation of 14 June, 8 days prior, with the result that the majority of Balts welcomed the German armed forces when they crossed the frontiers of Lithuania.

In Lithuania, a revolt broke out on the first day of the war, and a provisional government was established. As the German armies approached Riga and Tallinn, attempts to reestablish national governments were made. It was hoped that the Germans would reestablish Baltic independence. Such political hopes soon evaporated and Baltic cooperation became less forthright or ceased altogether. A growing proportion of the local populations turned against the Nazi regime as Germany turned the Baltic states—except for the Memel (Klaipėda) region annexed into Greater Germany in 1939—and most of Belarus into the Reichskommissariat Ostland, a colony in all but name in which the four predominant nationalities had little role in governance. Hinrich Lohse, a German Nazi politician, was Reichskommissar until fleeing in the face of the Red Army's advance in 1944. 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.

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