50 of 50 events · showing 21–40
Country in northeastern Europe
1920
The Polish–Lithuanian War was an undeclared war fought in the aftermath of World War I between newly independent Lithuania and Poland, with fighting mainly in the Vilnius and Suwałki regions, which was part of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence and lasted from May 1919 to 29 November 1920. From the spring of 1920 onward, the conflict happened alongside the wider Polish–Soviet War and was affected by its progress.
1923
The Klaipėda Revolt took place in January 1923 in the Klaipėda Region (also known as the Memel Territory or Memelland). The region, located north of the Neman River, was detached from East Prussia, German Empire by the Treaty of Versailles and became a mandate of the League of Nations.
12 September 1934
The Baltic Entente was based on Treaty of Good-Understanding and Co-operation signed between Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on 12 September 1934 in Geneva. The main objective of the agreement was joint action in foreign policy.
18 September 1939 – 19 September 1939
The Battle of Wilno (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) was fought by the Polish Army against the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, which accompanied the German Invasion of Poland in accordance with Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. On 18–19 September, Soviet forces took over the city of Wilno.
10 October 1939
The Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty (Lithuanian: Lietuvos-Sovietų Sąjungos savitarpio pagalbos sutartis, Russian: советско-литовский договор о взаимопомощи, romanized: sovetsko-litovskiy dogovor o vzaimopomoshchi) was a bilateral treaty signed between the Soviet Union and Lithuania on October 10, 1939. According to provisions outlined in the treaty, Lithuania would acquire about one fifth of the Vilnius Region, including Lithuania's historical capital, Vilnius, and in exchange would allow five Soviet military bases with 20,000 troops to be established across Lithuania.
1940–1991
The Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and remained under its control until its dissolution in 1991. For a period of several years during World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
1941
The June Uprising (Lithuanian: Birželio sukilimas) was a brief period in late June 1941 between the first Soviet and the Nazi occupations. A year earlier, on June 15, 1940, the Red Army occupied Lithuania and established the unpopular Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, which silenced its critics and suppressed resistance with political repression and state terrorism.
June 1941
The Rainiai massacre (Lithuanian: Rainių žudynės) was the mass murder of between 70 and 80 Lithuanian political prisoners by the NKVD, with help from the Red Army, in a forest near Telšiai, Lithuania, during the night of June 24–25, 1941. It was one of many similar massacres carried out by Soviet forces in Lithuania, and other areas under the control of the Soviet Union, during June 1941.
22 June 1941 – 28 January 1945
The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 to the end of the Battle of Memel on 28 January 1945. At first, the Germans were welcomed as liberators from the repressive Soviet regime which had occupied Lithuania.
23 June 1941 – 27 June 1941
The Battle of Raseiniai (23–27 June 1941) was a large tank battle that took place in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The battle was fought between the elements of the German 4th Panzer Group and the Soviet 3rd Mechanized Corps with the 12th Mechanised Corps, in Lithuania, 75 km (47 mi) north-west of Kaunas.
27 June 1941
The Kaunas pogrom was a massacre of Jews living in Kaunas, Lithuania, that took place on 25–29 June 1941; the first days of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. The most infamous incident occurred at the garage of NKVD Kaunas section, a nationalized garage of Lietūkis, an event known as the Lietūkis Garage Massacre.
July 1941 – 1944
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states were under military occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans liberators from the Soviet Union.
9 July 1941
The Baltic strategic defensive operation (Russian: Прибалтийская стратегическая оборонительная операция, romanized: Pribaltiyskaya strategicheskaya oboronitel'naya operatsiya) encompassed the operations of the Red Army from 22 June to 9 July 1941 conducted over the territories of Soviet-occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in response to the offensive launched by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa.
29 October 1941
The Kaunas massacre of October 29, 1941, also known as the Great Action, was the largest mass murder of Lithuanian Jews. 9,200 people among them 2,007 Jewish men, 2,920 women, and 4,273 children were murdered in a single day at the Ninth Fort.
23 June 1944
The Dubingiai massacre was a mass murder of Lithuanian civilians committed by the Polish Home Army (AK) in the town of Dubingiai and its surroundings on 23 June 1944. The Dubingiai massacre started a wider Polish Home Army (AK) operation in which units beyond the 5th Brigade were involved.
July 1944
The Vilnius offensive (Lithuanian: Vilniaus operacija; Russian: Вильнюсская наступательная операция, lit. 'Vilnius offensive operation') occurred as part of the third phase of Operation Bagration, the Soviet Red Army's strategic summer offensive against the German Wehrmacht in June and July 1944. It lasted from 5 July to 13 July 1944 and ended with a Soviet victory.
5 July 1944
The Šiauliai offensive (Russian: Шяуляйская операция) was an operation of the Soviet forces of the 1st Baltic Front, commanded by General Hovhannes Bagramyan, conducted from 5 July to 29 August 1944, during the Second World War. It was part of the third phase of the Belorussian strategic offensive operation (also known as Operation Bagration), and drove German troops from much of Lithuania, with the main tactical objective of the city of Šiauliai (Russian: Шяуля́й, German: Schaulen).
7 July 1944 – 15 July 1944
Operation Ostra Brama (Polish: Operacja „Ostra Brama”, lit. 'Operation Sharp Gate') was the Polish Home Army's attempted takeover of Vilnius (Polish: Wilno) in wake of the German Wehrmacht's evacuation, ahead of the approaching Soviet Red Army's Vilnius offensive. A part of a Polish national uprising, Operation Tempest, the action happened on 7–13 July 1944.
5 October 1944 – 28 January 1945
The Battle of Memel or the siege of Memel (German: Erste Kurlandschlacht) was a battle which took place on the Eastern Front during World War II. The battle began when the Red Army launched its Memel offensive operation (Russian: Мемельская наступательная операция) in late 1944. The offensive drove remaining German forces in the area that is now Lithuania and Latvia into a small bridgehead in Klaipėda (Memel) and its port, leading to a three-month siege of that position.
1987–1991
The Singing Revolution was a series of events from 1987 to 1991 that led to the restoration of independence of the three Soviet-occupied Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania at the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union annexed the Baltics around 1940, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (a non-aggression agreement with Nazi Germany), though this annexation was not widely recognized.