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Forest Brothers

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File:Algis platoon.jpg
Young Lithuanian Forest Brothers.

The Forest Brothers (also: Brothers of the Forest, Forest Brethren; in Estonian: metsavennad, in Latvian meža brāļi, in Lithuanian miško broliai) were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian guerrillas who fought against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic nations during, and after, World War II. Similar partisan groups fought against Soviet rule in Poland and western Ukraine.

The Soviet Army occupied the formerly independent Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940-1941 and, after German occupation, again in 1944-1945. During the following years, as Stalinist repressions intensified, more than 100,000 residents of these countries hid from the authorities, often using the more wooded hinterlands as a natural refuge and basis for armed anti-Soviet resistance.

Background

The resistance units varied in size and composition, ranging from individually operating guerillas, armed primarily for their own protection, to large and well-organised groups able to engage significant Soviet forces in battle.

Some guerillas relied on German training and equipment in early resistance against the second Soviet occupation. In 1944 the Nazi authorities had created an ill-equipped but 20,000-strong "Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force" (unlike Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania never had its own Waffen-SS division) to combat Soviet partisans but quickly came to see this force as a nationalist threat. The senior staff were arrested on May 15, 1944 but approximately half of the standing forces formed guerilla units and dissolved into the countryside in preparation for partisan operations against the Soviet Army as the Eastern Front approached.

The guerilla operations in Estonia and Latvia had some basis in Hitler's authorisation of a full withdrawal from Estonia in mid-September 1944, as he allowed any soldiers of the 20th Waffen-SS Division (1st Estonian) who wished to stay and defend their homes to do so, and in the fate of Army Group Courland (formerly Army Group North), one of the last of Hitler's armies to surrender as it became enveloped in the Courland Pocket on the Latvian peninsula in 1945. Many Estonian and Latvian soldiers, and a few Germans, evaded capture and fought as Forest Brothers in the countryside for years after the war. Others, such as August Sabe and Alfrēds Riekstiņš escaped to the United Kingdom and Sweden and participated in Allied intelligence operations against the Soviet occupation.

While the Waffen-SS was found guilty of war crimes and other atrocities and declared a criminal organization after the War, in 1949-1950 the United States Displaced Persons Commission investigated the Estonian and Latvian divisions and found these military units to be neither criminal nor Nazi collaborators. On April 13 and September 12 1950, in letters from the United States High Commission in Germany and the Commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Relief Association to the Estonian Secretary of State, and Latvia's charge d'affaires in Washington respectively, it was said that "the Baltic Waffen SS Units are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States under Section 13 of the Displaced Persons Act." Nevertheless, for some, the links between some Forest Brothers and the Nazi regime remain controversial to this day.

Post-World War II

By the late 1940s and early 1950s the Forest Brothers were provided with supplies, liaison officers and logistical coordination by the British (MI6), American, and Swedish secret intelligence services. This support played a key role in directing the Baltic resistance movement, however it diminished significantly after MI6's Operation Jungle was severely compromised by the activities of British spies (Kim Philby and others) who forwarded information to the Soviets, enabling the KGB to identify, infiltrate and eliminate many Baltic guerilla units and cut others off from any further contact with Western intelligence operatives.

The conflict between the Soviet armed forces and the Forest Brothers lasted over a decade and cost at least 50,000 lives. Among the three countries, the resistance was best organised in Lithuania, where guerrilla units were able to effectively control whole regions of the countryside until 1949. When not in direct battles with the Soviet Army or special NKVD units, they significantly delayed the consolidation of Soviet rule through ambush, sabotage, assassination of local Communist activists and officials, freeing imprisoned guerillas, and printing underground newspapers. Captured Lithuanian Forest Brothers themselves often faced torture and summary execution if not deportation to Gulags, and reprisals against their collaborators' farms and villages were harsh.

File:Bunker of lith partisans.jpg
The Forest Brothers often used cellars, tunnels or more complex underground bunkers such as the one depicted here.

Some estimates put Lithuanian deaths as high as 40,000 and Soviet deaths as high as 70,000. Comparisons have been drawn between the Soviet-Lithuanian conflict and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. As the conflict was relatively undocumented by the Soviet Union (the fighters were never formally acknowledged as anything but "bandits"), some consider it to be a forgotten war. [1]

A major motivation for many Forest Brothers was the hope that Cold War hostilies between the West (who never formally recognized the Soviet occupation) and the Soviet Union might progress to an armed conflict in which the Baltic states would be liberated. This never materialised, and according to Mart Laar (Prime Minister of Estonia 1992-1994, 1999-2002 and author of a book on the post-war resistance) many of the surviving former Forest Brothers still feel bitter that the West chose not to take the Soviets on militarily. (See Stimson Doctrine, Atlantic Charter, Yalta Conference, Western betrayal)

Winding Down of Hostilities

By the early 1950s, the Soviet forces had gained the upper hand in the fight against the Forest Brothers. Intelligence gathered by the Soviet spies in the West and KGB infiltrators within the resistance movement, in combination with large scale Communist mop-up operations in 1952 cleared most of the last remaining guerilla fighters.

Many of the remaining Forest Brothers laid down their weapons when offered an amnesty by the Soviet authorities after Stalin's death in 1953, although isolated engagements continued into the 1960s. The last individual guerillas are known to have remained in hiding and evaded capture into the 1980s, by which time the Baltic states were pressing for independence through peaceful means. (See Sąjūdis, The Baltic Way, Singing Revolution) All three republics regained their independence in 1991.

In 1999, the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament) formally signed into law a declaration of independence that had been made on February 16, 1949 by elements of the resistance unified under the "Movement of the Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania" and recognized that it had been "the sole legal authority within the territory of occupied Lithuania." [2]

See also

  • Leśni
  • Narodowe Siły Zbrojne
  • Ukrainian Insurgent Army
  • Forest Guerrillas (Finland)
  • Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
  • Wilno Uprising
  • Battle of the Baltic (1944)
  • Benediktas Mikulis
  • Secret Army
  • Japanese holdouts
  • Lithuanian Riflemen's Union
  • Population transfer in the Soviet Union
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