Latvian National Partisans - Aftermath of World War II

Aftermath of World War II

Latvian national partisans waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 during World War II, and the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic after the war. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Romania and Galicia (Central Europe).

The Red Army occupied the formerly independent Latvia in 1940–1941 and, after the period of occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany, again in 1944–1945. As Stalinist repression intensified over the following years, thousands of residents of this country used the heavily-forested countryside as a natural refuge and basis for armed anti-Soviet resistance.

Resistance units varied in size and composition, ranging from individually operating guerrillas, armed primarily for self-defence, to large and well-organised groups able to engage significant Soviet forces in battle.

Read more about this topic:  Latvian National Partisans

Famous quotes containing the words aftermath of, aftermath, world and/or war:

    “The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
    —Rachel Carson (20th century)

    “War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
    —Milan Kundera (b. 1929)