The Soviet re-occupation of Latvia in 1944 refers to the

military occupation Military occupation, also called belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is temporary hostile control exerted by a ruling power's military apparatus over a sovereign territory that is outside of the legal boundaries of that ruling pow ...

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in 1944. During World War II Latvia was first occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940, then was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944, and after which it was re-occupied by the Soviet Union.

Battle of the Baltic

Army Group Centre Army Group Centre () was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created during the planning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the So ...

was in tatters, and the northern edge of the Soviet assault threatened to trap

Army Group North Army Group North () was the name of three separate army groups of the Wehrmacht during World War II. Its rear area operations were organized by the Army Group North Rear Area. The first Army Group North was deployed during the invasion of Pol ...

in a pocket in the

Courland Courland is one of the Historical Latvian Lands in western Latvia. Courland's largest city is Liepāja, which is the third largest city in Latvia. The regions of Semigallia and Selonia are sometimes considered as part of Courland as they were ...

region.

Panzer {{CatAutoTOC, numerals=no Words and phrases Germanic words and phrases Words and phrases by language la:Categoria:Verba Theodisca ...

s of

Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Gross-Zauche und Camminetz Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz (also known as Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz; 30 July 1893 – 25 April 1968) was a German officer of aristocratic descent in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He was a recipient of the Knigh ...

had been sent back to the capital of Ostland,

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

and in ferocious defensive battles had halted the Soviet advance in late April 1944. Strachwitz had been needed elsewhere, and was soon back to acting as the Army Group's fire brigade. Strachwitz's Panzerverband was broken up in late July. By early August, the Soviets were again ready to attempt to cut off Army Group North from Army Group Centre. A massive Soviet assault sliced through the German lines and Army Group North was completely isolated from its neighbour. Strachwitz was trapped outside the pocket, and ''Panzerverband von Strachwitz'' was reformed, this time from elements of the 101st Panzer Brigade of panzer-ace Oberst

Meinrad von Lauchert __NOTOC__ Meinrad von Lauchert (29 August 1905 – 4 December 1987) was a German general in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. On the eve of the Battle ...

and the newly formed SS Panzer Brigade Gross under SS-Sturmbannführer Gross. Inside the trapped pocket, the remaining panzers and StuG IIIs of the ''Hermann von Salza'' and the last of Jähde's

Tigers The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is a large cat and a member of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Asia. It has a powerful, muscular body with a large head and paws, a long tail and orange fur with black, mostly vertical stripes. It is tradition ...

were formed into another Kampfgruppe to attack from the inside of the trap. On 19 August 1944, the assault, which had been dubbed ''Unternehmen Doppelkopf'' (

Operation Doppelkopf Operation Doppelkopf () and the following Operation Cäsar were German counter-offensives on the Eastern Front in the late summer of 1944 in the aftermath of the major Soviet advance in Operation Bagration with the aim of restoring a coherent ...

) got underway. It was preceded by a bombardment by the

cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several operational roles from search-and-destroy to ocean escort to sea ...

Prinz Eugen's 203mm guns, which destroyed forty-eight

T-34 The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank from World War II. When introduced, its 76.2 mm (3 in) tank gun was more powerful than many of its contemporaries, and its 60-degree sloped armour provided good protection against Anti-tank warfare, ...

s assembling in the square at

Tukums Tukums (; ; ) is a town in Latvia and serves as the administrative center of Tukums Municipality. It is located in the eastern part of the historical region of Courland, and with more than 16,000 inhabitants Tukums is the 13th largest settlem ...

. Strachwitz and the ''

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

'' remnants meet on the 21st, and contact was restored between the army groups. The 101.Panzerbrigade was now assigned to the army detachment "Narwa active at the Emajõgi River Front, bolstering the defenders' armour strength. Disaster had been averted, but the warning was clear. Army Group North was extremely vulnerable to being cut off. In 1944, the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

lifted the

siege of Leningrad The siege of Leningrad was a Siege, military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 t ...

and re-conquered the Baltic area along with much of

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

and

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

. However, some 200,000 German troops held out in

along with Latvian forces resisting Soviet reoccupation. They were besieged with their backs to the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

. The Red Army mounted numerous offensives at massive losses but failed to take the

Courland Pocket The Courland Pocket was a Pocket (military), pocket located on the Courland Peninsula in Latvia on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 9 October 1944 to 10 May 1945. Army Group North of the ''Wehrmacht'' were ...

Colonel-General Colonel general is a military rank used in some armies. It is particularly associated with Germany, where historically general officer ranks were one grade lower than in the Commonwealth and the United States, and was a rank above full , but be ...

Heinz Guderian Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German general during World War II who later became a successful memoirist. A pioneer and advocate of the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of ...

, the Chief of the

German General Staff The German General Staff, originally the Prussian General Staff and officially the Great General Staff (), was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army and later, the Imperial German Army, German Army, responsible for the continuous stu ...

insisted to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

that the troops in Courland should be evacuated by sea and used for the defence of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

; however, Hitler refused and ordered the German forces in Courland to hold out. He believed them necessary to protect German

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

bases along the Baltic coast. On January 15, 1945,

Army Group Courland Army Group Courland () was a Nazi Germany, German Army Group on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front. It was created from remnants of the Army Group North, blockade, isolated in the Courland Peninsula by the advancing Soviet Army for ...

(''Heeresgruppe Kurland'') was formed under

Lothar Rendulic Lothar Rendulic (; 23 October 1887 – 17 January 1971)Rudolf Neck, Adam Wandruszka, Isabella Ackerl (ed.) (1980): ''Protokolle des Ministerrates der Ersten Republik, 1918–1938, Abteilung VIII, 20. Mai 1932 bis 25. Juli 1934''. Vienna: Verlag ...

. Until the end of the war, Army Group Courland (including divisions such as the Latvian Freiwiliger SS Legion) successfully defended the Latvian peninsula. It held out until May 8, 1945, when it surrendered under

Carl Hilpert, the army group's last commander. He surrendered to Marshal

Leonid Govorov Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov (; – 19 March 1955) was a Soviet Union, Soviet military commander. Trained as an artillery officer, he joined the Red Army in 1920. He graduated from several Soviet military academies, including the Military Aca ...

, the commander of opposing Soviet forces on the Courland perimeter. At this time the group still consisted of some 31 divisions of varying strength. After May 9, 1945 approximately 203,000 troops of Army Group Courland began moving to Soviet prison camps in the East. The Soviet Union reoccupied Latvia as part of the Baltic Offensive in 1944, a twofold military-political operation to rout German forces and the "liberation of the Soviet Baltic peoples"Д. Муриев, ''Описание подготовки и проведения балтийской операции 1944 года'', Военно-исторический журнал, сентябрь 1984. Translation available, D. Muriyev, ''Preparations, Conduct of 1944 Baltic Operation Described'', ''Military History Journal'' (USSR Report, Military affairs), 1984–9, pp. 22–28 beginning in summer-autumn 1944, lasting until the capitulation of German and Latvian forces in

Courland pocket The Courland Pocket was a Pocket (military), pocket located on the Courland Peninsula in Latvia on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 9 October 1944 to 10 May 1945. Army Group North of the ''Wehrmacht'' were ...

in May 1945, and they were gradually absorbed into Soviet Union. After World War II, as part of the goal to more fully integrate Baltic countries into the Soviet Union, mass deportations were concluded in the Baltic countries and the policy of encouraging Soviet immigration to Latvia continued. Background Note: Latvia
at US Department of State On January 12, 1949 the Soviet Council of Ministers issued a decree "on the expulsion and deportation" from Latvia of "all kulaks and their families, the families of bandits and nationalists", and others. More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from the Baltic in 1940–1953. In addition, at least 75,000 were sent to

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

. 10 percent of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps. Many soldiers evaded capture and joined the Latvian national partisans' resistance that waged unsuccessful guerilla warfare for several years.

Wartime expediency

The precedent under

international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...

established by the earlier-adopted

Stimson Doctrine The Stimson Doctrine is the policy of nonrecognition of states created as a result of a war of aggression. The policy was implemented by the United States government, enunciated in a note of January 7, 1932, to the Empire of Japan and the Republ ...

, as applied to the Baltics in U.S. Under Secretary of State

Sumner Welles Benjamin Sumner Welles (October 14, 1892September 24, 1961) was an American government official and diplomat. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1936 to 1943, dur ...

's declaration of July 23, 1940, defined the basis for non-recognition of the Soviet Union's forcible incorporation of Latvia. Despite Welles's statement, the Baltics soon reprised their centuries-long role as pawns in the conflicts of larger powers. After visiting Moscow in the winter of 1941–1942, British Foreign Minister

Anthony Eden Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achi ...

already advocated sacrificing the Baltics to secure Soviet cooperation in the war. The British ambassador to the U.S.,

Lord Halifax Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as the Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and the Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a British Conservative politician of the 1930s. He h ...

, reported, "Mr. Eden cannot incur the danger of antagonizing Stalin, and the British War Cabinet have... agree to negotiate a treaty with Stalin, which will recognize the 1940 frontiers of the Soviet Union." By 1943 Roosevelt had also consigned the Baltics and Eastern Europe to Stalin. Meeting with Archbishop Spellman in New York on September 3, U.S. President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

stated, "The European people will simply have to endure Russian domination, in the hope that in ten or twenty years they will be able to live well with the Russians." Meeting with Stalin in Tehran on December 1, Roosevelt "said that he fully realized the three Baltic Republics had in history and again more recently been part of Russia and jokingly added, that when the Soviet armies re-occupied these areas, he did not intend to go to war with the Soviet Union on this point." A month later, Roosevelt related to

Otto von Habsburg Otto von Habsburg (, ; 20 November 1912 4 July 2011) was the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 until the dissolution of the empire in November 1918. In 1922, he became the pretender to the former thrones, head of the House of Habs ...

that he had told the Russians they could take over and control Romania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland. The future was sealed when on October 9, 1944 Churchill met with Stalin in Moscow and penciled out the post-war state of Europe. Churchill recounts: "At length I said, 'Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed that we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.' — 'No, you keep it,' said Stalin." The February 1945

Yalta Conference The Yalta Conference (), held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three sta ...

, widely ascribed as determining the future of Europe, essentially codified Churchill's and Roosevelt's prior private commitments to Stalin not to interfere in Soviet control of Eastern Europe.

Treaties the USSR signed between 1940 and 1945

The Soviet Union joined the

Atlantic Charter The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II, months before the US officially entered the war. The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic C ...

of August 14, 1941 by resolution, signed in London on September 24, 1941. Resolution affirmed: * "First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other; * "Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; * "Third, they respect the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them. ..." Most importantly, Stalin personally reaffirmed the principles of the Atlantic Charter on November 6, 1941: Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union signed the

Declaration by United Nations The Declaration by United Nations was the main treaty that formalized the Allies of World War II and was signed by 47 national governments between 1942 and 1945. On 1 January 1942, during the Arcadia Conference in Washington D.C., the Allied " B ...

of January 1, 1942, which again confirmed adherence to the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Union signed the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe of February 4–11, 1945, in which Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt jointly declare for the reestablishment of order in Europe according to the principle of the Atlantic Charter "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live, the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor nations." The Yalta declaration further states that "to foster the conditions in which the liberated peoples may exercise these rights, the three governments will join ... among others to facilitate where necessary the holding of free elections." Finally, the Soviet Union signed the

Charter of the United Nations The Charter of the United Nations is the foundational treaty of the United Nations (UN). It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the UN system, including its six principal organs: the Secretariat, the G ...

on October 24, 1945, which in Article I Part 2 states that one of the "purposes of the United Nations is to develop friendly relations among nations based on ''respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples''."

Latvian losses

Losses in Latvia during the World War II period were among the highest in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, in relative numbers: estimates of population loss stand at 30% for Latvia. War and occupation deaths have been estimated at 180,000 in Latvia. In addition to deaths attributed directly to military actions, these include the Soviet deportations in 1941, the German deportations and extermination of the Jews, and sizable flight abroad in view of Soviet advances in 1944–1945.Latvia, World War II losses
at

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

Notes

References

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