For most Europeans, the end of the Second World War meant the fighting was done
and the process of rebuilding could begin. But for the resistance fighters of Lithuania,
the struggle was far from over. This motley band of partisans, Marxists,
Nazis, liberals, and renegades stayed in the fight until 1953. In this video, we shed light
on those disparate factions and pose the question "How on Earth did they manage to get along?"
Lithuania has a long and bloody history of resistance and guerilla warfare.
From its declaration of independence in February 1918 to the start of the Second World War in 1939,
Lithuania fought three separate wars: one against the Bolsheviks,
one against a force of Baltic Germans pretending to be White-Russians,
and another against Poland. While the conventional armies battled it out,
Lithuanian guerillas and urban resistance fighters conducted recon and raided enemy supply lines.
It was during these early struggles that Lithuanian soldiers and resistance members gained
the crucial skills and experience that they would desperately need of the Lithuanian Army, as well
as local militiamen, gained valuable experience fighting in these early nationalist struggles.
Lithuania would have liked to remain neutral during the Second World War, but its position
smack-bang inbetween the Soviet Union and Germany
made this impossible. When Soviet and German diplomats carved up Eastern Europe between them,
Lithuania was lumped in the Soviet pile. The Reds consolidated by annexing the country in June 1940.
At this point, the people of Lithuania had had a two-decade-long taste of independence,
and they weren’t about to let it slip away into the hands of the Soviets.
Their response was the Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF — an incredibly diverse resistance
movement that included nationalist party members, pro-Nazis, and trade-unionists.
The LAF built a secret communications network and spied on the Soviets,
but they also carried out scattered armed raids. Buying into the whole “enemy of my enemy” thing,
the LAF provided intel to the Germans, and in return, received warning of Operation Barbarossa.
Seizing the German invasion of the East on June 22nd 1941 as a perfect cover,
the LAF launched what became known as the “June Uprising” on the same day. Around
10,000 resistance fighters from around the country rose up and attacked the Soviets,
fighting side-by-side with the Wehrmacht. The LAF greeted the Germans as liberators, but instead of
freeing Lithuania, Hitler amalgamated it into German Ostland. The LAF had been betrayed.
Fearing an anti-German uprising, the German invaders clamped down hard on the LAF. The
Front’s leader, Leonas Prapuolenis, was arrested along with many others, and sent to Dachau to
rot. This betrayal was made all the worse by the fact that the LAF had issued a manifesto
aligning it politically to Nazi Germany. This manifesto was viciously anti-Semitic,
stating "The Lithuanian Activist Front, by restoring the new Lithuania, is determined
to carry out an immediate and fundamental purging of the Lithuanian nation and its land of Jews..."
The only advantage the LAF had in the face of the overwhelming German opposition was
its scattered units throughout the country. Knowing they couldn’t face the might of the
Wehrmacht head-on, the resistance members melted into the forests.
By late 1941, the LAF was no more, but its members were still resisting the occupation
out of the forests. Trade unionists, anti-Semites, nationalists, and liberals
were stockpiling weapons and preparing for a guerilla campaign against the Germans.
But wait, it’s about to get a lot more complicated.
Immediately after they retreated from Lithuania, the Red Army deployed several communist partisan
units to the forests. These pro-Soviet Lithuanians received supplies from partisan command in Moscow
in return for causing as much chaos as they could for the Germans.
Surprising no one, they set up their bases in the forest too.
While all this was going on, the Germans were putting their Jewish extermination
plan into action. The Lithuanian Jews weren’t happy about this and,
would you believe it, started another resistance movement
and called it the United Partisan Organization or FPO. Formed in January 1942 in the Vilna Ghetto,
FPO’s primary goal was to arm as many Jews as possible and sabotage the German war machine.
They brought together Jewish factions from right across the political compass, including
Marxists-Leninists, Socialists, Right-Wing Zionists, and Jewish ethno-nationalists.
It didn’t take long for the Nazis to notice the Jews were suddenly way better armed and organised,
and they did their best to crush the organisation. When they came to liquidate the ghetto in 1943,
some FPO members stayed to fight, while most fled to the forests.
In mid-1943, Lithuania’s forests were absolutely teeming with resistance groups. The country was
still under German occupation, but the Wehrmacht had been dealt a mortal blow at Stalingrad
and were in full retreat. Sensing an opportunity, the myriad resistance groups in the forest met
up and consolidated themselves into the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania or VLIK.
The Supreme Committee included nearly everyone: from hardcore Marxist-Leninists, who thought
the Soviet Union wasn’t communist *enough*; to liberals and nationalists who were veterans of
the LAF and the Lithuanian Army before the war; to far-right Zionists *and* ardent anti-Semites
snubbed by the Nazis. Reportedly, it was very difficult to make decisions. With
that many different ideologies in the mix, it’s amazing they got anything done at all!
One thing they did do was prepare. VLIK decided that the main enemy of Lithuania
wasn’t the occupying Germans, but the advancing Soviets. Choosing to play the long game,
the VLIK resistance fighters did their best to capture as much German equipment as they
could and stockpile it. They knew the Germans couldn’t hold back the oncoming Soviet tsunami,
and when they came, VLIK would be ready to defend Lithuania.
Between July and October 1944, the Soviets reasserted their control over Lithuania.
Ready for a fight, the Lithuanian Liberation Army (LLA) declared war against the Soviet Union on
July 1st and threw all their military might into harrying the Red advance.
The LLA was well-drilled, disciplined, and even wore standardised uniforms. According to
NKVD statistics, the LLA had 10,000 fighters, but the real number is probably much smaller.
They used both captured German and Soviet weapons along with smuggled
Czech guns. Command was centralized under Lithuanian Army officer Kazys Veverskis,
who ran the resistance campaign from his forest headquarters.
The LLA fought hard against the Soviets, killing around 4,000 NKVD and Red Army
soldiers in 1944 and 1945, but their centralised command was an Achille’s Heel.
In December 1945, the NKVD located Veverskis’ headquarters and killed off the commanders. The
head of the snake was gone, but the LLA simply dissolved into the other resistance groups.
The Reds would have to do much better than that to crush the Lithuanians.
These remnants became known as the Forest Brothers and kept fighting the Soviets even after the war
had ended. Political discussions between the Forest Brothers were probably pretty fierce,
seeing as the organisation included Nazi Party members and ex-Wehrmacht troops,
Jewish ethno-nationalists and Zionists, Marxist-Leninists and Socialists, and
liberals and conservatives from the old regime. Thought it couldn’t get any more complicated?
Well, the USSR’s anti-religion stance put them on the bad side of many Catholics, who joined up too.
It’s estimated that around 30,000 people fought with the Forest Brothers, and
amazingly, they managed to get along just fine. Such is the power of anti-Soviet hatred.
With a combination of fighting skill, organisation, preparation, and guerilla
experience, the Forest Brothers kept fighting a large-scale insurgent war until the 1950s.
Deep knowledge of the land let the Forest Brothers launch deadly strikes against Soviet bases and lay
expert ambushes for the NKVD and Red Army units sent to eradicate them. They were so effective
that by 1949, they controlled large sections of the countryside and nearly all the forests. The
Soviets knew that sending in troops was a suicide mission, so instead went after the men’s families.
Soviet officials used mass deportations, imprisonment, and covert surveillance to bring the
Forest Brothers down. The large-scale resistance ended in 1953, with many Forest Brothers giving up
the fight when Stalin died. Not all did, however. One of the last Forest Brothers, Benediktas
Mikulis, was caught in 1971, 32 years after the resistance to the Soviet occupation began.
That was the story of the Lithuanian resistance, the most diverse band of renegades to ever take
up the fight against the Soviet Union. But what do YOU think? Which factions do
YOU think would have had the toughest time getting along? Are YOU surprised that the
people thought the Soviets were worse than the Nazis? What do YOU hit would be like to
fight as a Forest Brother for decades after the war ended? Share your thoughts in the comments!