page_title: Estonia in World War II
section_title: Soviet return
hierarchical_section_title: Estonia in World War II / Soviet return
caption_attribution_description: English: Estonian Swedes fleeing Soviet occupation of Estonia for Sweden. Svenska: Estlandssvenskar flyr till Sverige undan den sovjetiska ockupationen av Estland.
context_page_description: Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, concerning the partition and disposition of sovereign states, including Estonia, and in particular its Secret Additional Protocol of August 1939.
  The Republic of Estonia declared neutrality in the war but fell under the Soviet sphere of influence due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. Mass political arrests, deportations, and executions followed. In the Summer War during the German Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the pro-independence Forest Brothers captured South Estonia from the NKVD and the 8th Army before the arrival of the German 18th Army. At the same time, Soviet paramilitary destruction battalions carried out punitive operations, including looting and killing, based on the tactics of scorched earth proclaimed by Joseph Stalin. Estonia was occupied by Germany and incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland.
  In 1941, Estonians were conscripted into the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps and in 1941–1944 to the Nazi German forces.
context_section_description: Soviet forces reconquered Estonia in the autumn of 1944 after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river (see Battle of Narva) and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimäed). In 1944, in the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, 80,000 people fled from Estonia by sea to Finland and Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates. 25,000 Estonians reached Sweden and a further 42,000 Germany. During the war about 8,000 Estonian Swedes and their family members had emigrated to Sweden. After the retreat of the Germans, about 30,000 Forest Brothers remained in hiding in the Estonian forests, to prepare for a massive guerrilla war. Commander of 46. SS Grenadier Regiment, Friedrich Kurg, stood with most of his men in the Estonian forests.
  In 1949 27,650 Soviet troops still fought a war against the Forest Brothers. Only the 1949 mass deportation (see Operation Priboi) when about 21,000 people were taken away broke the basis of the insurgent movement. 6,600 Forest Brothers gave themselves up in November 1949. Later on, the failure of the Hungarian uprising broke the resistance morale of the 700 men still remaining under cover. According to the Soviet data, up to 1953, 20,351 insurgents were disarmed. Of these, 1,510 perished in the battles. During that period, 1,728 members of the Red Army, NKVD and the militia were killed by the Forest Brothers. August Sabbe, one of the last surviving Forest Brothers in Estonia, was discovered by KGB agents and drowned himself in 1978. After him there were few insurgents alive in the Estonian forests. Many of them died because of their age in the next 15 years.
  During the first post-war decade of Soviet regime, Estonia was governed by Moscow via Russian-born Estonian governors. Born into the families of native Estonians in Russia, the latter had obtained their Red education in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist repressions at the end of the 1930s. Many of them had fought in the Red Army (in the Estonian Rifle Corps), and few of them had mastered the Estonian language.
  Although the United States and the United Kingdom, the allies of the USSR against Germany during World War II, recognized the occupation of the Republic of Estonia by the USSR at the Yalta Conference in 1945 de facto, the governments of the rest of the western democracies did not recognize the seizure of Estonia by the USSR in 1940 and in 1944 de jure according to the Sumner Welles' declaration of July 23, 1940. Such countries recognized Estonian diplomats and consuls who still functioned in many countries in the name of their former governments. These aging diplomats persisted in this anomalous situation until the ultimate restoration of Estonia's independence in 1991.
  The Russian Federation, the successor state to the Soviet Union, subsequently ended its military presence in the Republic of Estonia by withdrawing its last troops in August 1994, and relinquishing its control of the nuclear reactor facilities in Paldiski in September 1995.
caption: Estonian Swedes fleeing the Soviet occupation to Sweden in 1944.
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