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The Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the western part of Byelorussian SSR. German planning documents initially referred to an equivalent Reichskommissariat Baltenland. The political organization for this territory – after an initial period of military administration before its establishment – involved a German civilian administration, nominally under the authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories led by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but actually controlled by the Nazi official Hinrich Lohse, its appointed Reichskommissar.
Alfons Vilhelm Robert Rebane, known simply as Alfons Rebane was an Estonian military commander. He was the most highly decorated Estonian military officer during World War II, serving in various Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units of Nazi Germany.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were invaded and occupied in June 1940 by the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin and auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that had been signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The three countries were then annexed into the Soviet Union as constituent republics in August 1940, though the United States and most other Western countries never recognised this incorporation, considering it illegal. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Third Reich incorporated the Baltic territory into its Reichskommissariat Ostland. As a result of the Red Army's Baltic Offensive of 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states and trapped the remaining German forces in the Courland pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945.
The Nazi–Soviet population transfers were population transfers of ethnic Germans, ethnic Poles, and some ethnic East Slavs that took place from 1939 to 1941. These transfers were part of the German Heim ins Reich policy in accordance with the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Klooga concentration camp was a Nazi forced labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex established in September 1943 in Harju County, during World War II, in German-occupied Estonia near the village of Klooga. The Vaivara camp complex was commanded by German officers Hans Aumeier, Otto Brennais and Franz von Bodmann and consisted of 20 field camps, some of which existed only for short periods.
During World War II, Reichskommissariat Ukraine was the civilian occupation regime of much of Nazi German-occupied Ukraine. It was governed by the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories headed by Alfred Rosenberg. Between September 1941 and August 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Erich Koch as the Reichskommissar. The administration's tasks included the pacification of the region and the exploitation, for German benefit, of its resources and people. Adolf Hitler issued a Führer Decree defining the administration of the newly occupied Eastern territories on 17 July 1941.
The Estonian resistance movement was an underground movement to resist the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, 1941–1944 during World War II. Due to the unusually benign measures implemented in Estonia by the German occupation authorities, especially in contrast to the preceding harsh Soviet occupation of Estonia (1940–1941), the movement was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale than in other occupied countries.
Estonia gained independence in 1918 from the then warring German and Russian Empires. However, in June 1940, in the wake of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia. The country was annexed into the Soviet Union in August 1940.
The Nemmersdorf massacre was a civilian massacre perpetrated by Red Army soldiers in the late stages of World War II. Nemmersdorf was one of the first prewar ethnic German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army during the war. On 21 October 1944, Soviet soldiers killed many German civilians as well as French and Belgian POWs.
During World War II, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union (1940–1941), Nazi Germany (1941–1944), and the Soviet Union again in 1944. Resistance during this period took many forms. Significant parts of the resistance were formed by Polish and Soviet forces, some of which fought with Lithuanian collaborators. This article presents a summary of the organizations, persons and actions involved. Lithuania was defacto independent from June 24, 1941 until June 30, 1941 when Nazi Germany took full control of the area.
During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland and eastern Romania. Apart from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and post-war division of Germany, the USSR also occupied and annexed Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia in 1945.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, concerning the partition and disposition of sovereign states, including Estonia, and in particular its Secret Additional Protocol of August 1939.
Alfred Käärmann was an Estonian resistance fighter, also known as Forest brother, as the Estonians call their guerrillas, and author. In 2007 he was decorated with a military honour in recognition of his service. According to The New York Times, Alfred Käärmann's life is "a monument to man's astounding ability to endure the unbearable".
Latvian national partisans were Latvian pro-independence partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during and after the Second World War.
The Lithuanian partisans were partisans who waged a guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. It is estimated that a total of 30,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters were killed. The Lithuanian partisan war lasted almost for a decade, thus being one of the longest partisan wars in Europe.
Estonian Partisans or the Forest Brothers in Estonia were partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against the Soviet forces in Estonia from 1940 to 1941 and 1944–1978.
The Soviet Union occupied most of the territory of the Baltic states in its 1944 Baltic Offensive during World War II. The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war. The German forces were deported and the leaders of Latvian collaborating forces were executed as traitors. After the war, the Baltic territories were reorganized into constituent republics of the USSR until they declared independence in 1990 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers, against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar anti-Soviet Central and Eastern European resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and western Ukraine.
Artur Terras was an Estonian lawyer and politician who was the mayor of Tallinn from 24 August 1941 to September 1944. His older brother was former Estonian State Secretary Karl Terras.
Ants Kaljurand was an Estonian anti-Soviet and forest brother during and after World War II.
References
- ↑ We Lived for Estonia, Festival Cinéma Nordique
