Estonia in World War II

[need quotation to verify] At the same time, in June–August 1941, Soviet paramilitary destruction battalions carried out punitive operations in Estonia, including looting and killing, based on the tactics of scorched earth ordered by Joseph Stalin.

After breaching the defence of II Army Corps across the Emajõgi river and clashing with the pro-independence Estonian troops, Soviet forces reoccupied mainland Estonia in September 1944.

Most notably, the pact contained a secret protocol, revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945, according to which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence".

[12] Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement"—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west.

[15] On 24 September 1939, with the fall of Poland to Nazi Germany and the USSR imminent and in light of the Orzeł incident, the Moscow press and radio started violently attacking Estonia as "hostile" to the Soviet Union.

[29] On 12 June 1940, the order for a total military blockade on Estonia was given to the Soviet Baltic Fleet, according to the director of the Russian State Archive of the Naval Department Pavel Petrov (C.Phil.)

[32] On 14 June while the world's attention was focused on the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany a day earlier, the Soviet military blockade on Estonia went into effect.

[46][page needed] The 1940 occupation and annexation of Estonia into the Soviet Union was considered illegal and never officially recognized by Great Britain, the United States and other Western democracies.

The low toll of human deaths in comparison with the number of burned farms is due to the Erna long-range reconnaissance group breaking the Red Army blockade on the area, allowing many civilians to escape.

The next day, a larger offensive happened in Vastseliina where the Forest Brothers prevented Soviet destruction of the town and trapped the extermination battalion chiefs and local communist administrators.

Võru was subsequently liberated and by the time the 18th army arrived, the blue-black-white flags were already at full mast and the Forest Brothers had organised into the Omakaitse militia.

[57] Under the leadership of Friedrich Kurg, the Forest Brothers drove the Soviets out of Tartu, behind the Pärnu River – Emajõgi line and secured southern Estonia under Estonian control by 10 July.

[76] In June 1944, the elector's assembly of the Republic of Estonia gathered in secrecy from the occupying powers in Tallinn and appointed Jüri Uluots as the prime minister with responsibilities of the President.

[78] The permanent Jewish settlement in Estonia began in the nineteenth century, when in 1865 the Russian Tsar Alexander II granted Jews with university degrees and merchants of the third guild the right to enter the region.

[85] There have been 7 known ethnic Estonians—Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere, Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas, Aleksander Laak, and Ervin Viks—who have faced trials for crimes against humanity.

[88] In May 2005, Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip gave a speech while visiting Klooga: Estonia (together with Austria, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Syria and Ukraine) has been given the grade Category F: "Total Failure" ("countries, which refuse in principle to investigate, let alone prosecute, suspected Nazi war criminals") by the Simon Wiesenthal Center Status Report on Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals for 2006.

On 28 August 1942, the German powers announced the legal compilation of the Estonian Legion within the Combat Support Forces, the Waffen SS Verfügungstruppe units.

[nb 7] Having mobilized some 33,000 Estonians as the Soviets were evacuating in the summer of 1941, no more than half of those men were used for military service; the rest perished in Gulag concentration camps and labour battalions, mainly in the early months of the war.

The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps, as these units came to be called after September 1942, reached the front in Velikie Luki in December 1942 and suffered heavy losses in battle as well as the defection of about 1,000 men to the German side.

[96] Jüri Uluots, the last constitutional prime minister of the republic of Estonia,[97] the leader of the Estonian underground government delivered a radio address on 7 February[76] that implored the able-bodied men born in 1904–1923 to report for military service.

Since the beginning of January, the Leningrad Front had lost 227,440 men as wounded, killed or missing in action, which constituted more than half of the troops who participated in the Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive.

The Kampfgruppe Strachwitz inspired by their success tried to eliminate the bridgehead as a whole but was unable to proceed due to the spring thaw that had rendered the swamp impassable for its tank squadron.

The German units supported by the local Omakaitse civil defence battalions fortified their positions along the Väike Emajõgi and repelled the numerous Soviet attempts until 14 September.

The Soviet 282nd Rifle Division, the 16th Single Tank Brigade, and two self-propelled artillery regiments passed the defence and captured the strategically important Kärevere Bridge across the Emajõgi River to the west of Tartu.

On 25 August, three Soviet rifle divisions with the support of armoured and artillery units conquered the town and established a bridgehead on the north bank of the Emajõgi River.

[102][104] As Finland left the war on 4 September 1944, according to the peace agreement with the Soviets the defence of the mainland became impossible and the command of Army Group Narwa started preparing an evacuation from Estonia.

[118] The Russian Federation, the successor state to the Soviet Union, subsequently ended its military presence in the Republic of Estonia by withdrawing its last troops in August 1994,[119] and relinquishing its control of the nuclear reactor facilities in Paldiski in September 1995.

The totalitarian communist regime of the Soviet Union conducted large-scale and systematic actions against the Estonian population, including, for example, the deportation of about 10,000 persons on 14 June 1941 and of more than 20,000 on 25 March 1949.

[122] Following the events of the Bronze night in 2007, the national conservative UEN group of the European Parliament made a motion for a resolution acknowledging the 48 years of occupation as a fact.

Estonian national Arnold Meri who fought on the Soviet side and was later charged with genocide for his role in the deportations: "Estonia's participation in World War II was inevitable.