9. Estonia in the Second World War

Question 1

• The beginning of World War II

Answer 1

23 Aug 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact (also called Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) → de facto alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union before war
The secret protocol of the pact divided Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Germany
As the Hitler-Stalin pact made Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union de facto political and military allies, they are both responsible for the beginning of World War II
1 Sept 1939 German aggression against Poland from the west
17 Sept 1939 Soviet aggression against Poland from the east

Question 2

• The German-Soviet victory parade in Brest-Litovsk

Answer 2

22 Sept 1939 German Wehrmacht Generals M. von Wiktorin and H. Guderian, Soviet Red Army General S. Krivošein
About 200,000 Polish civilians killed between 1939 and 1941, during the German-Soviet joint attack: about 50 % killed by the Germans, about 50 % killed by the Soviets
The Katyn massacre by the Soviets in April and May 1940, 22 000 victims
The Soviet Union supplied Nazi Germany with raw materials (most importantly oil and grain) until June 1941, thus supporting the German war machine

Question 3

• The end of Estonian independence

Answer 3

 Autumn 1939 Soviet military bases established in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
 The „Winter War“ in Finland, Nov 1939 – March 1940
The Soviet aggression against Finland
The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the organisation
Finland lost some eastern territories but maintained its independence
 Umsiedlung (resettlement) of the Baltic Germans, since October 1939, to Polish territories, occupied by Germany
June-August 1940 The Soviet occupation Introduction of terror „The Soviet Socialist Republic of Estonia“
 “ Large-scale lies and falsifications in the later Soviet historiography and in Soviet-time school textbooks: „The Socialist Revolution of the Estonian working class in June 1940, the Estonian workers wished to join the fraternal family of workers in the Soviet Union.“
The de facto alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union lasted until 22 June 1941

Question 4

• the German attack on the Soviet Union

Answer 4

The Summer War, :1941 The largely spontaneous fight of the Estonians against the Soviet occupants

Question 5

• German occupation in Estonia 1941–1944

Answer 5

 921 Jews in Estonia at the beginning of the German occupation, mass terror against the Jews
Estonian volunteers in the Finnish army
80 000 Estonians fled to the West in autumn 1944, to avoid Soviet terror
* The end of World War II
For the Baltic countries, ‘liberation’ from Nazi German occupation by the Soviets in autumn 1944 was only the continuation of totalitarian oppression