Baltic States Before and During WW II

choi

Andrew Stuttaford, Wrong Place, , Wrong Time; The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 consigned the Baltic States to Moscow's sphere of influence. Arrests, deportations and executions followed. Wall Street Journal, Aug 16, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 37833611741790.html
(book review on Prit Buttar, Between Giants; The battle for the Baltics in World War II. Osprey, 1913)

Quote: "Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia carved up northeastern Europe between them before turning on each other. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 consigned the Baltic trio of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to Moscow's sphere of influence. * * * these three small countries were first forced to accept Soviet garrisons and then incorporated into the USSR in August 1940 * * * When the Germans invaded the U.S.S.R. in June 1941, they quickly rid the Baltic States of their Soviet occupiers and were initially welcomed as liberators.

Note:
(a) Baltic Sea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea

View the map for three Baltic states (with respective capitals).
(b) "Most of these people [Jews in Baltic states] were dead at the end of 1941, murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, German mobile killing squads."
(i) Einsatzgruppen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen
(singular Einsatzgruppe; under the administration of the Schutzstaffel (SS); operated in territories occupied by the German armed forces following the invasion of Poland in September 1939)
(ii) German English dictionary:
* einsatzgruppe (noun feminine): "task force, operational unit"
* einsatz (noun masculine): "action, operation"  (einsatz... (adj): "operational")
* gruppe (noun feminine): "group"
* waffen ("weaponry) is the plural form of waffe (noun feminine, singular form; "weapon")
* schutz (noun masculine): "protection"
* staffel (noun feminine): "(mil[itary]) squadron"

(c) "The danse macabre of ethnicity and ideology didn't stop there."
(i) The danse macabre is French. In English it is Dance of Death. "
(ii) Danse Macabre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre
(They [artistic genre such as painting and plays] were produced to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now lost mural in the Saints Innocents Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424–25)
(iii) Dance of Death. Catholic Encyclopaedia, undated
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04617a.htm
("In these plays Death appeared not as the destroyer, but as the messenger of God summoning men to the world beyond the grave, a conception familiar both to the Holy Bible and to the ancient poets. The dancing movement of the characters was a somewhat later development, as at first Death and his victims moved at a slow and dignified gait. But Death, acting the part of a messenger, naturally took the attitude and movement of the day, namely the fiddlers and other musicians, and the dance of death was the result")
(iv) etymology of the English word:

macabre (adj; French, from (danse) macabre dance of death, from Middle French (danse de) Macabré; First Known Use 1889)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/macabre

(d) "Latvian and Estonian formations were established within the Waffen-SS and fought in battles on the Eastern Front."

Waffen-SS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS
(armed wing of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel ("Protective Squadron"); 1933-1945)
(e) "The Red Army re-invaded the Baltic States in 1944 and in a sequence of brutal autumn battles evicted the Germans from Estonia and Lithuania. Several hundred thousand troops were cut off in Latvia's 'Courland Pocket' and continued fighting until war's end in May 1945."

Courland Pocket
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courland_Pocket
(Oct 9, 1944-May 10, 1945; on the Courland Peninsula, Latvia)