Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force - Persecutions

Persecutions

On May 15, Plechavičius was arrested together with the his chief of staff, colonel Oskaras Urbonas. Jeckeln and Hintze delivered a speech before the remaining LTDF officers accusing them of banditry, sabotage, and political agenda and threatening them with executions and transfers to concentration camps. Jeckeln announced that LTDF was to be disbanded and disarmed. Soldiers of the LTDF would be transferred to German air defence forces. Anyone who would desert would be shot on sight, causing repressions against their families. Together with other members of the LTDF staff Plechavičius was deported to the Salaspils concentration camp in Latvia. Altogether, 52 LTDF officers ended up in Salaspils, 106 cadets in Stutthof, and 983 soldiers in Oldenburg concentration camps. To make an example, the Nazis shot about 100 former LTDF members, and publicly executed 12 randomly selected soldiers in a Vilnius line-up which consisted of some 800 men. 84 or 86 members of LTDF were shot in Paneriai. While transporting some of the arrested men to Kaunas, one of the prisoners escaped. In retaliation, the Germans then selected NCO Ruseckas for execution on the spot. Since the German regular army guards were stalling the execution, an SS officer did the actual shooting.

Most of the soldiers were to be disarmed and arrested by the Germans, but they succeeded disarming only 4 out of 14 battalions. On May 16 German units arrived to liquidate Marijampolė officers school, but found only a dozen soldiers; after an attempt to disarm them a firefight started and 4 or 5 soldiers were killed. About 3,500 members of the LTDF were by force drafted into other Nazi formations: several infantry battalions under Colonel Birontas were sent to the Eastern Front, some became guards at Luftwaffe installations outside Lithuania, others were sent to Germany as forced laborers. Many soldiers who managed to evade the Germans, disappeared with their weapons. They formed the core of the armed anti-Soviet resistance, which waged a guerrilla war for the next eight years. Covert Soviet plans for the destruction of the remnants of Plechavičius' army were already created in 1944 and the Soviets would execute or imprison LTDF soldiers they captured. LTDF was the last large mobilization attempt by the Nazis.