German occupation of the Baltic states during World War II

The Germans agreed to leave the Baltic states, except for Lithuania (which was later ceded in exchange for oil-rich regions of Poland), under the Soviet sphere of influence in the 1939 German–Soviet Pact.

Between October and December 1939 the Germans evacuated 13,700 people from Estonia and 52,583 from Latvia, and resettled them in Polish territories incorporated into Nazi Germany.

Hinrich Lohse, a German Nazi politician, was Reichskommissar until he fled in the face of the Red Army's advance in 1944.

As Adolf Hitler explained in a conference on 16 July 1941, the Baltic states were to be annexed to Germany at the earliest possible moment,[5] and some Nazi ideologists suggested renaming Estonia as Peipusland and Latvia as Dünaland and integrating them as German provinces.

[4] During the course of the war, the main thrust of Nazi racial policies was directed against the Jews, not so much the majority Baltic peoples.

Although initially the Germans were perceived as liberators from the USSR and its repressions by most Estonians who hoped for the restoration of the country's independence, it was soon realized that they were merely another occupying power.

That made many Estonians unwilling to side with the Nazis to join the Finnish army to fight against the Soviet Union.

Most of them joined in 1944, when the threat of a new invasion of Estonia by the Red Army had become imminent and it was clear that Germany would not win the war.

Immediately after the installation of German authority (the beginning of July 1941) a process of eliminating the Jewish and Gypsy population began, with many killings taking place in Rumbula.

During the years of Nazi occupation special campaigns exterminated 18,000 Latvians, approximately 70,000 Jews and 2,000 Gypsies – in total about 90,000 people.

The occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany refers to the period from the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union to the end of the Battle of Memel (22 June 1941 – 28 January 1945).

[citation needed] In the hope of re-establishing independence or at least gaining autonomy, Lithuanians organized their Provisional Government.