Prior to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, the main part of the territory later known as Lithuania Minor was inhabited by the tribes of Skalvians and Nadruvians.

The war ended with the Treaty of Melno and the land was repopulated by Lithuanian newcomers, returning refugees, and the remaining indigenous Baltic peoples; the term Lithuania Minor appeared for the first time between 1517 and 1526.

With the exception of the Klaipėda Region, which became a mandated territory of the League of Nations in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles and was unified with Lithuania from 1923 to 1939, the area was part of Prussia until 1945, which at various times was under sovereignty of the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Germany.

The standard written form of Prussian-Lithuanian provided the basis for modern Lithuanian,[2] evolved from people close to Stanislovas Rapalionis and graduates from Lithuanian-language schools established in Vilnius, who were expelled from the Grand Duchy during Counter-Reformation years.

The broader understanding of Lithuania Minor includes the area west from the Łyna and south form the lower reaches of the Prieglius and the Sambian Peninsula, making up 17–18 thousand km2 in total.

Other towns include Ragainė (Ragnit), Šilokarčema (Heydekrug), renamed to Šilutė, Gumbinė (Gumbinnen), Įsrutis (Insterburg), Stalupėnai (Stallupönen).

Mindaugas, in critical political circumstances for his rule, undertook to grant Samogitia to the Order in exchange for baptism and the crown from the pope.

Lithuanian grand dukes probably considered the Order to be illegitimate state, propagandizing the mission of Christianization as the fundamental aim and factually seeking political authority at one time.

[9] In 1525, per the Treaty of Kraków, the state of the Teutonic Order was secularized and transformed into Ducal Prussia, a vassal duchy of Poland within the Polish–Lithuanian union[10] (soon elevated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), and the term of Lithuania Minor has appeared around that time (1517–26).

Polish secret resistance was active and smuggled weapons through the region to the Russian-controlled Augustów Governorate and Samogitia during the January Uprising of 1863–1864.

In 1938 a massive campaign of renaming of placenames was carried out in the German-held part of Lithuania Minor in attempt to erase traces of Lithuanian origin.

[15] Lithuania submitted to the ultimatum and, in exchange for the right to use the new harbour facilities as a Free Port, ceded the disputed region to Germany in the late evening of 22 March 1939.

[18] Groups of Poles expelled from German-occupied Poland were deported by the Germans to forced labour in the region (in the vicinity of Klaipėda and Tilsit).

[19] At the end of the war, the local German and Lithuanian population of the former East Prussia either fled or was expelled to the western parts of Germany.

Gołdap (Lithuanian: Geldapė, Galdapė, Geldupė), the seat of Gołdap County, a transitional county between Lithuania Minor and Masuria, is the largest municipality of the region within Poland, making it the de facto capital of Polish Lithuania Minor, however, it is also considered part of Masuria and is not inhabited by an autochthonous Lithuanian population.

She stated, that Scalovians, Nadruvians and Sudovians were Prussians before the German invasion and Lithuanians were colonists of the 15–16th centuries from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – Samogitia and Suvalkija.

He deduced that wildnis was that part of Lithuania which belonged to the Order juridically, by the grants of the popes and emperors of Holy Roman Empire, but was not subordinate to it due to the resistance of the residents.

H. Łowmiański thought that Nadruvian and Scalovian tribes had changed ethnically due to Lithuanian colonization as early as times of tribal social order.

Linguist Z. Zinkevičius has presumed that Nadruvians and Skalovians were transitive tribes between Lithuanians and Prussians since much earlier times than German invasion had occurred.

The inside Baltic migration, trading and ethnic consolidation presumably had happened since the earlier times than the German military invasion occurred.

Lithuanian farmers used to flee to the Sudovian forest, which lain in the Trakai Voivodeship, and live here without dues, what was possible until the agrarian reform of Lithuania, performed during the second half of the 16th century.

In 1724, King Frederick William I of Prussia prohibited Poles, Samogitians and Jews from settling in Lithuania Minor, and initiated German colonization to change the region's ethnic composition.

The southern limit of Lithuania Minor went by[dubious – discuss] Šventapilis (Mamonovo), Prūsų Ylava (Preußisch Eylau, Bagrationovsk), Bartenstein (Bartoszyce), Barčiai (Dubrovka), Lapgarbis (Cholmogorovka), Mėrūniškai (Meruniszki), Dubeninkai (Dubeninki).

The southern limit of the most compact Lithuanian area went by [dubious – discuss]Žuvininkai, Königsberg, Frydland, Engelschtein (Węgielsztyn), Nordenburg (Krylovo), Węgorzewo, Gołdap, Gurniai, Dubeninkai.

Thus, the situation of ethnic composition previous to the century is known from the various separate sources: various records and inventories, descriptions and memoirs of contemporaries, language of the sermons used in the churches, registers of births and deaths; various state published documents: statutes, acts, decrees, prescriptions, declarations etc.

At the end of the war, the German and Lithuanian population of the former East Prussia either fled or was expelled to the western parts of Germany.

By 1945, when World War II was drawing to a close, the Soviets, who had occupied almost all of Eastern Europe, had effectively committed genocide of the local population, whether they were Prussian, Lithuanian, or German.

[citation needed] The Darkehmen (Polish: Darkiejmy, now Ozyorsk) and Gołdap counties, as transitional counties between Lithuania Minor and the Masuria region to the south, were inhabited by notable numbers of both Poles and Lithuanians,[28] with Polish-founded villages including Kazachye (Piątki), Nekrasovo (Karpowo Wielkie) and Maltsevo (Karpówko).

Between the two world wars, in the regions lost by Russia following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russian and Jewish communists printed seditious literature in local languages until 1933.

Lithuania Minor was the home of Vydūnas, philosopher and writer, and Kristijonas Donelaitis, pastor and poet and author of The Seasons, which mark the beginning of Lithuanian literature.