Baltic States. The history of the three Baltic States (See
Estonia,
Latvia, and
Lithuania) followed a very similar pattern during the Second World War. They formed an important part of the broad swathe of eastern Europe where Soviet and German interests overlapped, and which suffered the double tyranny of both Soviet and Nazi invasions. There were three successive periods of occupation: the first Soviet occupation, 1940–1; the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944–5; and the second Soviet occupation starting in 1944.
In 1939 the independent sovereign status of the Baltic States had been established and confirmed by international recognition, by membership of the
League of Nations, and by treaties signed with the government of the USSR, including a series of bilateral pacts of non-aggression. There was little legal, moral, or political basis for the subsequent Soviet claims which sought to include the Baltic States within a Soviet ‘sphere of influence’ (as recognized by the
Nazi–Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939), and which, from June 1940, sought to justify their forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union. Although the western powers never formally acquiesced in the fruits of Stalin's aggression against the Baltic States, the politics of
the Grand Alliance barred any effective protest.
The inhabitants of the Baltic States played no part in the political decisions which determined their fate. The national governments which survived until June 1940 had no role in Nazi–Soviet negotiations, and were obliged to accept the resultant ultimatums that were put to them. They had no means to resist the ominous Treaties of Friendship and Co-operation with the USSR, nor the introduction of Soviet garrisons under the terms of those treaties, nor the subsequent political agitation conducted by Soviet agencies. The elections, which accompanied Soviet occupation in July 1940, were stage-managed operations imposed in conditions of nascent mass terror. The demands for annexation to the USSR, consummated in August 1940, were a total sham. The arrival of German forces in June– July 1941 was widely welcomed on the mistaken assumption that the Third Reich might practise policies similar to those of Imperial Germany during the
First World War. In reality, Soviet terror was replaced by a Nazi terror directed largely, though not exclusively, at the Jewish population. The Nazis took no steps to restore Baltic independence, leaving all three states under the military government of the Reich Commissariat
Ostland. The return of Soviet forces in 1944–5 produced a third wave of terror, with the Stalinist security organs conducting vast purges of collaborators, real or imagined.
The multinational population of the Baltic States—Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, German, Jewish, Polish, and Russian—was radically altered by the war. In 1939 it was still coloured by 19th-century experiences under tsarist rule, when the German minority had commanded considerable social and political power and an important Jewish community held a strong position in such cities as Riga and
Wilno. The Polish community was still very influential in large parts of Lithuania. Most pre-war social, ethnic, and cultural patterns were destroyed from 1939 onwards. The purges of the first Soviet occupation of 1940–1 were often directed at the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian intelligentsia, who had served or been educated by the national regimes, and who were decimated by methods bordering on genocide. The Baltic Germans were evacuated under the terms of a Nazi–Soviet agreement, and resettled either in Germany or in territory seized by Germany from Poland. The Nazi occupation resulted in the mass murder of virtually all Baltic Jews (see also
Final Solution), the formation of a number of Waffen-
SS divisions, and the persecution of Poles and Russians. The second Soviet occupation restarted the earlier purges, while supervising the evacuation of most of the remaining Poles. It also saw the beginning of a mass influx of Russians and of other Soviet immigrants, especially to Estonia and Latvia.
Baltic war losses are not easily calculated, since they have been officially subsumed and concealed within statistics pertaining to the Soviet Union as a whole. It is certain, however, that the victims of political terror and genocide far outnumbered military casualties, also that in percentage terms Baltic losses considerably exceeded the Soviet average.
In 1945, the re-incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR as the ‘Soviet Republics’ of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania clearly breached international law; but it passed without challenge.
Norman Davies
