As Soviet political repression intensified over the following years, tens of thousands of partisans from the Baltics began to use the countryside as a base for an anti-Soviet insurgency.

Lithuanians re-established a sovereign state with a rich former history, the largest country in Europe during the 14th century,[10] occupied by the Russian Empire since 1795.

In 1944, the German authorities created an ill-equipped but 20,000-man strong Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force under General Povilas Plechavičius to combat Soviet partisans led by Antanas Sniečkus.

Approximately half the remaining forces formed guerrilla units and dissolved into the countryside to prepare for partisan operations against the Red Army as the Eastern Front approached.

Others such as Alfons Rebane and Alfrēds Riekstiņš escaped to the United Kingdom and Sweden and participated in Allied intelligence operations in aid of the Forest Brothers.

While the Waffen-SS was found guilty of war crimes and other atrocities and declared a criminal organization after the war, the Nuremberg trials explicitly excluded conscripts in the following terms: The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph, who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such crimes.

[12] With the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Joseph Stalin made a public statement on the radio calling for a scorched earth policy in the areas to be abandoned on 3 July.

[22] By the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the Forest Brothers were provided with supplies, liaison officers and logistical coordination by the British (MI6), American and Swedish secret intelligence services.

[23] That support played a key role in directing the Baltic resistance movement, but it diminished significantly after MI6's Operation Jungle was severely compromised by the activities of British spies (Kim Philby and others) who forwarded information to the Soviets and enabled the MGB to identify, infiltrate and eliminate many Baltic guerrilla units and cut others off from any further contact with Western intelligence operatives.

On the other hand, professor Heinrihs Strods, based on NKVD reports, claims that in 1945, 8,916 partisans were killed in Lithuania, 715 in Latvia and 270 in Estonia, which makes Lithuanian losses around 90%.

At its peak in 1947, the organization controlled dozens of villages and towns, creating considerable nuisance to Soviet supply transports that required an armed escort.

The KGB insisted that the 69-year-old Sabbe had drowned while trying to escape, a theory difficult to credit given the shallow water and lack of cover at the site.

For about a month they dragged me through woods and took me to farms owned by relatives of Forest Brothers, and they sent me in as an instigator to ask for food and shelter while the Chekists themselves waited outside.

"[30] In Latvia, preparations for partisan operations began during the German occupation, but the leaders of these nationalist units were arrested by Nazi authorities.

Some of the most prominent LCC accomplishments were related to its military branch – the General Jānis Kurelis Group [lv] (the so-called kurelieši) with the Lieutenant Roberts Rubenis Battalion, which carried out armed resistance against Waffen SS forces and was envisioned as a new pro-Latvian independence army, but was decimated the SS and SD in November 1944, with many servicemen executed or sent to the Stutthof concentration camp.

[31] In some 3,000 raids, the partisans inflicted damage on uniformed military personnel, party cadres (particularly in rural areas), buildings, and ammunition depots.

Escaping to the forest, the group, led by Krastiņš, avoided all contact with local residents and relatives, robbing trucks for money while simultaneously maintaining an apartment in the center of Riga for reconnaissance operations.

The group recruited a Russian woman working at the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR who told them Lācis' transportation schedule.

As in Estonia and Lithuania, assistance from Western intelligence was severely compromised by Soviet counter-intelligence and Latvian double agents such as Augusts Bergmanis and Vidvuds Šveics.

[14] When not in direct battles with the Red Army or special NKVD units, they significantly delayed the consolidation of Soviet rule through ambush, sabotage, assassination of local Communist activists and officials, freeing imprisoned guerrillas and printing underground newspapers.

[37] On 1 July 1944, Lithuanian Liberty Army (LLA) declared the state of war against the Soviet occupation and ordered all its able members to mobilize into platoons, station in forests and not to leave Lithuania.

In 1949 all members of presidium of Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters – captain Jonas Žemaitis-Tylius, Petras Bartkus-Žadgaila, Bronius Liesys-Naktis ir Juozas Šibaila-Merainis came from LLA.

The partisans replenished their arsenal by killing istrebiteli, members of Soviet secret-police forces or by purchasing ammunition from Red Army soldiers.

[40] Every partisan had binoculars and a few grenades, usually saving one to blow themselves up to avoid being taken as prisoner, since the physical tortures of Soviet MGB/NKVD were very brutal and cruel [specify], and to prevent their relatives from suffering.

stribai, from Russian: izstrebiteli – destroyers, i.e., the destruction battalions), used shock tactics such as displaying executed partisans' corpses in village courtyards to discourage further resistance.

[14][41] The report of a commission formed at a KGB prison a few days after the 15 October 1956, arrest of Adolfas Ramanauskas ("Vanagas"), chief commander of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, noted the following: The right eye is covered with haematoma, on the eyelid there are six stab wounds made, judging by their diameter, by a thin wire or nail going deep into the eyeball.

Many of the remaining Forest Brothers laid down their weapons when offered an amnesty by the Soviet authorities after Stalin's death in 1953, although isolated engagements continued into the 1960s.

The last individual guerrillas are known to have remained in hiding and evaded capture into the 1980s, by which time the Baltic states were pressing for independence through peaceful means.

This never materialized, and according to Mart Laar[12] many of the surviving former Forest Brothers remained bitter that the West did not take on the Soviet Union militarily.

When the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 did not bring about an intervention by, or a supportive response from, Western Powers, organized resistance in the Baltic States declined further.