The longest and bloodiest
partisan war in modern Europe
LITHUANIA, LATVIA & ESTONIA 1944 – 1953

Lithuanian ‘forest brothers’ from the so-called “Vytis” military district.

Text: Aage Myhre, VilNews Editor-in-Chief

Tell a Lithuanian that his country was liberated and peace after WWII was restored on the 9th of May 1945, as the Russians claim. Tell him that this 2011 May it is 66 years since the Soviet Union and the Western world defeated Hitler’s Nazi regime, and that Lithuania since then has been a free, happy country in line with what other European countries experienced after they were occupied in 1939 – 1940 and liberated in 1945. Do not be surprised if you get an angry and annoyed look back. For while we in the Western world, in Russia and in other parts of the world joyfully could celebrate the liberation and the recovered freedom after the World War, Lithuania, the other two Baltic states, and Ukraine were forced to realize that one war had been replaced by a new, much bloodier and more protracted war, lasting from 1944 to at least 1953. What we in the west celebrated in May 1945 was by Lithuanians and the other occupied countries experienced only in 1990 –1991.