[9] Nazi Germany resettled almost all the Baltic Germans under the Heim ins Reich program into the newly formed Reichsgaue of Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia (on the territory of the occupied Second Polish Republic).

Resettlement was planned by the Allies for the territory remaining under Germany under terms of the border changes promulgated at the Potsdam Conference, i.e. west of the Oder–Neisse line.

The families of Barclay de Tolly and of George Armitstead (1847–1912), who had emigrated from the British Isles, married into and became part of the Baltic-German community.

During the next three centuries, German-speaking soldiers, clergymen, merchants and craftsmen constituted the majority of the quickly growing urban population, as the native inhabitants usually were prohibited from settling there.

[11] Membership in the Hanseatic League and active trade links with Russia and Europe increased the wealth of German traders.

In 1558, the Tsardom of Russia began the Livonian War against Terra Mariana which soon involved the Kingdoms of Poland, Sweden, and Denmark and lasted for 20 years.

Years of peace under Russian rule brought increasing prosperity and many new manor houses were built on country estates, but economic exploitation worsened the situation of the native population.

The native Latvian and Estonian population enjoyed fewer rights under the Baltic German nobility compared with farmers in Germany, Sweden, or Poland.

In response Cossack punitive expeditions aided by German nobles and officers burned down hundreds of farms, arrested and deported thousands and summarily executed at least 2,000 people.

Reaction to 1905 Revolution included a scheme by Karl Baron von Manteuffel-Szoege and Silvio Broedrich-Kurmahlen to pacify the countryside by settling up to 20,000 ethnic German farmers, mostly from Volhynia, in Courland.

[6] Livonian and Estonian nobles delivered a note of independence to Soviet representatives in Stockholm on January 28, 1918, announcing their intention to break away from Russia under the rights granted to them by the Treaty of Nystad of 1721.

In the spring of 1918, Baltic Germans announced the restoration of the independent Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and pursued plans for uniting it with the Kingdom of Prussia.

Subsequently, a plan for a United Baltic Duchy ruled by Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, instead of outright annexation, was developed.

The Baltic Germans' rule and class privileges came to the end with the demise of the Russian Empire (due to the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917) and the independence of Estonia and Latvia in 1918–1919.

On November 27, 1918 this was authorized by the Estonian government, and the Volunteer Baltic Battalion (Freiwilligen Baltenbataillon) was formed under the command of Colonel Constantin von Weiss (de).

Baltische Landeswehr units took Riga on May 22, 1919 which was followed by White Terror in which up to 2,000 people, mostly Latvians, were shot as suspected Bolshevik supporters.

Radical agrarian reforms were implemented in both countries to break German power and to distribute land to the veterans of independence wars and landless peasants.

The Deutsch-baltische Partei in Estland was established to defend the interests of German landowners, who wanted to receive compensation for their nationalized lands and properties.

Baron Wilhelm Wrangell, leader of the Baltic German cultural association between 1933 and 1938 was included in the Estonian Council of State after 1937 as a token representative of minorities.

[6] In Latvia, Baltic Germans remained a politically active and organized ethnic group, although they lost some influence after the 1934 Latvian coup d'état.

Treaties were signed with Estonia and Latvia in 1939 and 1940 concerning the emigration of Baltic Germans and the liquidation of their educational, cultural, and religious institutions.

Larger properties, real estate and businesses were sold over a longer period of time by a special German commission to local governments.

The "new" homes and farms they were given to live in had been owned and inhabited by Poles and Jews just a few months earlier who were executed or deported eastwards when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

This time around no compensation was offered for any property or belongings left behind and this group of resettlers were treated with intense suspicion or considered traitors because they had refused Hitler's first call to leave the Baltics in 1939.

Unknown to the general public, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was only two to four months away, and this was Hitler's last chance to transfer these people in peacetime conditions.

[citation needed] Many Baltic Germans were on board the KdF Ship Wilhelm Gustloff when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine on January 30, 1945.

[16] A small group of Latvians and Baltic Germans emigrated to Newfoundland as part of then Premier Joseph Smallwood's New Industries Program.

The Great Cemetery of Riga, the largest burial ground of Baltic Germans in Latvia, standing since 1773, also had the vast majority of its graves destroyed by the Soviets.

An occasional exception to this comes with some criticism in relation to the major landowners, who controlled most of the rural areas of the Baltics, and the ethnic Estonians and Latvians, until 1918.

Since 1989, many elderly Baltic Germans, or their descendants, have taken holidays to Estonia and Latvia to look for traces of their own past, their ancestral homes, and their family histories.