Forest Brothers

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This article is about the Baltic Forest Brothers. "Forest Brothers" is also the name of a Georgian partisan group involved in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

Young Lithuanian Forest Brothers in 1947

The Forest Brothers (also: Brothers of the Forest, Forest Brethren; Forest Brotherhood; in Estonian: metsavennad, in Latvian meža brāļi, in Lithuanian miško broliai) were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian guerillas (partisans) 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 170,000 residents of these countries hid from the authorities, often using the wooded countryside as a natural refuge and basis for armed anti-Soviet resistance.

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.

Contents

1 Background

1.1 Origins of the term
1.2 Caught between two powers

2 The partisan war

2.1 In Estonia
2.2 In Latvia
2.3 In Lithuania
2.4 Winding down of hostilities

3 Aftermath, memorials and remembrances

3.1 Dramatizations

4 See also
5 Notes and references
6 Further reading
7 External links

Background

Origins of the term

The term forest brothers first came into use in the Baltic region during the chaotic Russian Revolution of 1905. Varying sources refer to forest brothers of this era either as peasants revoltingWoods, Alan. [Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution], Wellred Publications, London, 1999. ISBN 1900007053 or as schoolteachers seeking refuge in the forest.Skultans, Vieda. The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia, pp. 83-84, Routledge, 1st edition, December 22, 1997. ISBN 0415162890

Caught between two powers

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had gained their independence in 1918 and a generation had come of age by the outset of World War II. The ideals of nationalism and self-determination had taken hold with many people as they had in other parts of the world. Allied declarations such as the Atlantic Charter had offered promise of a post-war world in which the three Baltic nations could re-establish themselves. Having already experienced occupation by the Soviet regime followed by the Nazi regime many people were unwilling to accept another occupation.

In 1944 the Nazi authorities had created an ill-equipped but 20,000-strong "Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force" under General Povilas Plechavičius (unlike Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania never had its own Waffen-SS division) to combat Soviet partisans led by Antanas Sniečkus but quickly came to see this force as a nationalist threat. The senior staff were arrested on May 15, 1944 (General Plechavičius was deported to the concentration camp in Salaspils, Latvia), but approximately half of the standing forces formed guerilla units and dissolved into the countryside in preparation for partisan operations against the Red Army as the Eastern Front approached.Kaszeta, Daniel J. [Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation 1940-1952], Lituanus, Volume 34, No. 3, Fall 1988. ISSN 0024-5089Mackevicičius, Mečislovas. [Lithuanian Resistance to German Mobilization Attempts 1941-1944], Lituanus Vol. 32, No. 4, Winter 1986. ISSN 0024-5089

The guerilla operations in Estonia and Latvia had some basis in Hitler's authorisation of a full withdrawal from Estonia in mid-September 1944 — he allowed any soldiers of his Estonian forces, primarily 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, among the last of Hitler's forces to surrender after it became trapped 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 Alfons Rebane and Alfrēds Riekstiņš escaped to the United Kingdom and Sweden and participated in Allied intelligence operations in aid of the Forest Brothers.

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 on September 1, 1950 adopted the following policy:

The Latvian government has documented that the Latvian Legion (primarily comprised of the 15th and 19th Latvian Waffen-SS divisions) was neither a criminal nor collaborationist organization.Feldmanis, Inesis and Kangeris, Kārlis. [The Volunteer SS Legion in Latvia], Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, n.d. Mart Laar (Prime Minister of Estonia, 1992-1994 and 1999-2002), in his 1992 book War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival, 1944-1956Laar, Mart. War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival, 1944-1956, translated by Tiina Ets, Compass Press, November 1992. ISBN 0929590082 rejected Soviet propaganda that had painted the Baltic resistance as having been orchestrated by wealthy landowners and Nazi officials and noted that the Forest Brothers counted among their ranks anti-Nazis and former Soviet partisans. Nevertheless, for some, the links between some Forest Brothers and the Nazi regime remain controversial.

The ranks of the resistance swelled with the Red Army's attempts at conscription in the Baltic states after the war, with fewer than half the registered conscripts reporting in some districts. The widespread harassment of disappeared conscripts' families pushed more people to evade authorities in the forests. Many enlisted men deserted, taking their weapons with them.

The partisan war

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 Cambridge Five|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 Forest Brothers often used cellars, tunnels or more complex underground bunkers such as the one depicted here.

The conflict between the Soviet armed forces and the Forest Brothers lasted over a decade and cost at least 50,000 lives. Estimates for the number of guerillas in each country vary. Misiunas and TaageperaMisiunas, Romuald and Taagepera, Rein. The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940-1990, University of California Press, expanded & updated edition, October 1, 1993. ISBN 0520082281 estimate between 10,000 and 15,000 in Latvia and 170,000 for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania combined.

In Estonia

August Sabe, the last surviving Forest Brother in Estonia, killed himself when discovered by KGB agents in 1978.

In Latvia

In Latvia, preparations for partisan operations were begun during the German occupation, but the leaders of these nationalist units were arrested by Nazi authorities.Laar, p. 24

In Latvia, the number of active combatants peaked at between 10,000 and 15,000, while the total number of resisters was as high as 40,000. Over time, the partisans replaced their German weapons with Russian ones. A Central Command of Latvian resistance organizations maintained an office on Matisa Street in Riga until 1947.Laar, p. 24

The Latvian Forest Brothers were most active in the border regions. Areas where they were most active included Dundaga, Taurakalne, Lubna, Aloja, and Libni. In the eastern regions, they had ties with the Estonian Forest Brothers, in the western regions, with the Lithuanians. As in Estonia and Lithuania, the partisans were killed off and infiltrated by the MVD and NKVD over time, and as in Estona and Lithunia, Western assistance and intelligence was severely compromised by Soviet counter-intelligence and Latvian double agents such as Augusts Bergmanis and Vidvuds Sveics. The last groups emerged from the forest in 1957.Laar, p. 27

In Lithuania

Among the three countries, the resistance was best organised in Lithuania, where guerrilla units were effectively able to control whole regions of the countryside until 1949. Their armaments included Czech Skoda guns, Russian Maxim heavy machine guns, assorted mortar (weapon)s and a wide variety of mainly German and Soviet light machine guns and submachine guns. 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.Dundovich, E., Gori, F. and Guercett, E. Reflections on the gulag. With a documentary appendix on the italian victims of repression in the USSR, Feltrinelli Editore IT, 2003. ISBN 880799058X Captured Lithuanian Forest Brothers themselves often faced torture and summary execution while their relatives faced deportation to Gulags. Reprisals against collaborators' farms and villages were harsh. The NKVD units, named People's Defense Platoons (known by the Lithuanians as Stribaï or destroyers) used shock tactics to discourage further resistance such as displaying executed partisans' corpses in village courtyards.Unknown author. [excerpt from Lithuania's Struggle For Freedom], unknown year.

The report of a commission formed at a KGB prison a few days after the October 15, 1956 arrest of Adolfas Ramanauskas ("Vanagas"), chief commander of the Lietuvos Laisvės Kovotojų Sąjūdis (LLKS) or "Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters", noted the following:

Pranas Končius (code name Adomas), was the last Lithuanian anti-soviet resistance fighter killed in action by Soviet forces on July 6, 1965 (some sources indicate he shot himself in order not to be captured on July 13). He was awarded the Cross of Vytis posthumously in 2000.

Benediktas Mikulis, one of the last known partisans to remain in the forest emerged in 1971. He was arrested in the 1980s and spent several years in jail.

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.

Aftermath, memorials and remembrances

A persisting motivation for many Forest Brothers was the hope that Cold War hostilities between the West (who never formally recognized the Soviet occupation) and the Soviet Union might escalate to an armed conflict in which the Baltic states would be liberated. This never materialised, and according to Laar many of the surviving former Forest Brothers remained bitter that the West did not take on the Soviets militarily. (See also Yalta Conference, Western betrayal)

As the conflict was relatively undocumented by the Soviet Union (the Baltic fighters were never formally acknowledged as anything but "bandits and illegals"), some consider it and the Soviet-Baltic conflict as a whole to be an unknown or forgotten war.Tarm, Michael. [The Forgotten War], City Paper's The Baltic States Worldwide, 1996. Discussion of resistance was suppressed under the Soviet regime. Writings on the subject by Baltic emigrants were often labelled as examples of "ethnic sympathy" and disregarded. Laar's research efforts, begun in Estonia in the late 1980s, are considered to have opened the door for further study.Huang, Mel. [Review of Mart Laar's War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival, 1944-1956]. Central Europe Review, Vol. 1, No. 12, September 13, 1999. ISSN 1212-8732

In 1999, the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament) formally signed into law a declaration of independence that had been made on February 16, 1949 (the 31st anniversary of the February 16, 1918 declaration of independence) by elements of the resistance unified under the "Movement of the Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania".

In Latvia and Lithuania, Forest Brothers veterans receive a small pension. In Lithuania, the third Sunday in May is commemorated as the Day of The Partisan. As of 2005, there are about 350 surviving Forest Brothers in Lithuania.

In a 2001 lecture in Talinn, U.S. Senator John McCain acknowledged the Estonian Forest Brothers and their efforts to liberate their country.McCain, John. ["From Tragedy to Destiny: Estonia's Place in the New Atlantic Order,"] The Robert C. Frasure Memorial Lecture, Tallinn, Estonia, August 24, 2001.

Ülo and Aivar Voitka ("The Voitka brothers"), two men who evaded authorities in the forests of Estonia from 1986 to 2000 and received a great deal of attention in the Estonian media were often referred to as modern-day Forest Brothers.Kalmre, Eda. [The Saga of the Voitka Brothers in the Estonian Press: The Rise and Fall of a Heroic Legend], Electronic Journal of Folklore, vol. 29, August 2005. ISSN 1406-0949

Dramatizations

The 2004 film Utterly Alone (Lithuanian: ) portrays the travails of Lithuanian partisan leader Juozas Lukša who travelled twice to Western Europe in attempts to gain support for the armed resistance.

The 2005 documentary film Stirna tells the story of Izabelė Vilimaitė (codenames Stirna, Sparnuota), an American-born Lithuanian who moved to Lithuania with her family in 1932. A medical student and pharmacist, she was an underground medic and source of medical supplies for the partisans, eventually becoming a district liaison. She infiltrated the local Komsomol (Communist Youth), was discovered, captured, and escaped twice. After going underground full time, she was suspected of having been turned by the KGB as an informant and was nearly executed by the partisans. Her bunker was eventually discovered by the KGB and she was captured a third time, interrogated and killed.Krokys, Bronius. "The Winged One". Bridges, April 2006.()

Notes and references

External links

[Museum of Occupations of Estonia]
[Occupation Museum of Latvia]
[Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania]
[Lithuanian Tauras District Partisans and Deportation Museum]
[War Chronicle of the Partisans] – Chronicle of Lithuanian partisans, June 1944–May 1949, prepared by Algis Rupainis
[What Happened in Lithuania in 1940?] – Article by Alfred Erich Senn
[Crimes of Soviet Communists] – Wide collection of sources and links
[Vienui Vieni ("Utterly Alone")] – 2004 film about the Lithuanian Forest Brothers, based on the real life events of Juozas Lukša aka Juozas L. Daumantas
[Could the Baltic States have resisted to the Soviet Union?] – Forum discussion, includes many links and pictures of Lithuanian partisans

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