Soviet re-occupation of the Baltic states (1944)
[1] The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war.
The day is not far off when we will completely liberate the Ukraine, and the White Russia, Leningrad and Kalinin regions from the enemy; when we will liberate … the people of the Crimea and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia and Karelo-Finnish Republic.—Joseph Stalin in a public speech broadcast in Moscow during the Second Battle of Kiev, November 1943[2]By 2 February 1944 the siege of Leningrad was over and the Soviet troops were on the border with Estonia.
The 1945 VE Day did not bring a restoration of independence to Estonia, and the Forest Brothers then renewed their campaign of killing Soviet senior armed forces and NKVD officers.
The memorandum was a call to resist the reoccupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union following the defeat of Germany, which by that time was widely expected.
On 8 September 1944 in Riga, the leadership of the Latvian Central Council adopted Declaration on the Restoration of the Republic of Latvia [lv].
The adoption of the Declaration was an attempt to restore de facto independence of the Republic of Latvia, in hopes of international support and by taking advantage of the interval between changes of occupying powers.
[9] Jüri Uluots, the last legitimate prime minister and the head of the National Committee of the Republic of Estonia delivered a radio address that implored all able-bodied men born from 1904 through 1923 to report for military service.
On 1 August 1944, the Estonian National Committee pronounced itself Estonia's highest authority, and on 18 September 1944, acting Head of State Jüri Uluots appointed a new government led by Otto Tief.
The Baltic states did not have governments in exile as effective as those of the French under Charles de Gaulle or the Polish under Władysław Sikorski, and their geographic location made communication to the West of circumstances there difficult.
The leaders of Great Britain and the United States had little interest in the Baltic cause, particularly while the war against Nazi Germany remained undecided and secretly regarded them as disposable in order to secure Stalin's cooperation.
However, despite territorial losses and a heavy reparations burden in the Continuation War, Finland survived as a neutral, western-oriented capitalist democracy and did not share the fate of the Baltic states.
Despite this apparent freedom, the Finns still had to take into consideration Soviet foreign policy interests including specific accommodations in their domestic affairs, with critics calling the process "Finlandisation".
After visiting Moscow in the winter of 1941–1942, British Foreign Minister Eden had already advocated sacrificing the Baltic states to secure Soviet cooperation in the war.
"[16] In March, 1942, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt urging the sacrifice of the Baltic states: "The increasing gravity of the war has led me to feel that the principles of the Atlantic Charter ought not to be construed so as to deny Russia the frontiers she occupied when Germany attacked here.
"[19] A month later, Roosevelt related to Otto von Habsburg that he had told the Russians they could take over and control Romania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland.
The attitude taken by the Western Allies with regard to the Baltic states following World War II was summarized by Hector McNeil, the Under-Secretary of the Foreign Affairs (1945–1946), before the House of Commons on 10 February 1947.
He also agreed that the annexation violated the self-determination principle of the Atlantic Charter, but that it should be kept in mind that the Baltic states had been part of the Russian Empire before 1918.
