Seven weeks later, the country was officially annexed by the USSR. On 15 June 1940, the Soviets assumed control of Lithuania, including the capital Vilna, which had been part of Poland until October 1939.

Examining each Baltic state in turn, Nazi ideology, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, resulted in wasted opportunities that ultimately contributed towards the German defeat in the East. In reality, they were just tools to further Nazi aims. The Germans were able to recruit sizeable numbers of volunteer units, though many of the recruits believed they were fighting to liberate their homelands from the Soviets and restore national sovereignty. The head of Hitler’s secretariat, Martin Bormann, put it succinctly: “There are no independent nations in the East, but only the Sovietized mass of Slavs, who must and will be mastered.” However, as with the other Eastern peoples, the Baltic states were subject to Nazi ideology, which meant “germanizing” the “racially suitable”, German colonization, and deportation or extermination of “undesirables” (usually the latter). Indeed, during the early stages of Barbarossa, the Germans were welcomed as liberators. The subsequent behaviour of the Soviets in the Baltic states – 34,250 Latvians, 60,000 Estonians and 75,000 Lithuanians either killed or deported – should have turned their populations into willing allies of the Germans. In fact, the move was part of Stalin’s aim to advance the Soviet frontier westwards to create a buffer zone to absorb any future German attack. In June 1940, following the collapse of France, Stalin ordered his army into the Baltic states under the pretence that they had, in official Soviet language, “grossly violated their mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union”. Unfortunately, the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 left them to the mercy of the USSR, as it designated them to be in the Soviet sphere of influence. These former provinces of Russia had been independent only since 1920.

The Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were independent nations on the eve of World War II. Lithuanian schuma, police and TLR members. Schuma graduates from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia attend a trip/conference in Germany.

Rome 2 auxiliary units