Occupation of The Baltic Republics By Nazi Germany - Under German Rule

Under German Rule

The Germans had given the Baltic states under the Soviet sphere of influence in the 1939 German–Soviet Pact. The Germans lacked concern for the fate of the Baltic states and they initiated the evacuation of the Baltic Germans. Between October and December 1939 the Germans evacuted 13,700 people from Estonia and 52,583 from Latvia, who were resettled in Polish territories incorporated into the Nazi Germany. The following summer, the Soviets occupied and illegally annexed all three states. On 22 June 1941 the Germans carried out Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets had executed sovietization earlier, including the first mass deportation of 14 June, 8 days prior, with the result that the majority of Balts welcomed the German armed forces when they crossed the frontiers of Lithuania.

In Lithuania, a revolt broke out on the first day of the war, and a provisional government was established. As the German armies approached Riga and Tallinn, attempts to reestablish national governments were made. It was hoped that the Germans would reestablish Baltic independence. Such political hopes soon evaporated and Baltic cooperation became less forthright or ceased altogether. A growing proportion of the local populations turned against the Nazi regime as Germany turned the Baltic states—except for the Memel (Klaipėda) region annexed into Greater Germany in 1939—and most of Belarus into the Reichskommissariat Ostland, a colony in all but name in which the four predominant nationalities had little role in governance. Hinrich Lohse, a German Nazi politician, was Reichskommissar until fleeing in the face of the Red Army's advance in 1944. Furthermore, Nazi Germany rejected the recreation of the Baltic states in any form in the future, as it unilaterally declared itself the legal successor to all three of the Baltic countries, as well as the Soviet Union, which it expected would collapse due to the German invasion.

German policy in the area was harsh, beginning with the pre-Holocaust mass executions carried out by advancing Einsatzgruppen against the Jewish population. The remainder of the Baltic peoples were deemed by the Nazis to be "a dying race" that needed to be "replaced by a more dynamic people", meaning Germans. The main Nazi plan for the colonization of conquered territories in the east, referred to as Generalplan Ost, called for the wholesale deportation of some two thirds of the native population from the territories of the Baltic states in the event of a German victory. The remaining third were either to be exterminated in situ, used as slave labour, or Germanized if deemed sufficiently "Aryan", while hundreds of thousands of German settlers were to be moved into the conquered territories. 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, and some Nazi ideologists suggested renaming the states of Estonia to Peipusland and Latvia to Dünaland when they would be integrated as German provinces. 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.

Towards the end of the war, once it became clear that Germany would be defeated, many Balts and Estonians joined the Germans once again. It was hoped that by engaging in such a war the Baltic countries would be able to attract Western support for the cause of independence from the USSR. In Latvia an underground nationalist Central Council of Latvia was formed on August 13, 1943. An analogous body, the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, emerged on November 25, 1943. On March 23, 1944, the underground National Committee of the Estonian Republic was founded.