Estonia in World War II

Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II (1939–1945), but the country was repeatedly contested, invaded and occupied, first by the Stalinist Soviet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and ultimately reinvaded and reoccupied in 1944 by the Soviet Union. Immediately before the outbreak of World War II, in August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact (also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, or the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact), concerning the partition and disposition of Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, in its Secret Additional Protocol. The territory of until then independent Republic of Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Red Army on 16–17 June 1940. Mass political arrests, deportations, and executions by the Soviet regime followed. In the Summer War during the German Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the pro-independence Forest Brothers captured large parts of southern Estonia from the Soviet NKVD troops and the 8th Army before the arrival of the German 18th Army in the area. At the same time, in June–August 1941, Soviet paramilitary destruction battalions carried out punitive operations in Estonia, including looting and killing, based on the tactics of scorched earth ordered by Joseph Stalin. Estonia was occupied by Germany and incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941–1944. Upon the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, thousands of Estonians were conscripted into the Soviet army (including the Soviet 8th Estonian Rifle Corps and other units), and in 1941–1944 to the German armed forces. A number of Estonian men who had avoided these conscriptions were able to flee to Finland, and many of them then formed the Finnish Infantry Regiment 200. About 40% of the Estonian pre-war fleet was requisitioned by British authorities and used in Atlantic convoys. Approximately 1000 Estonian sailors served in the British Merchant Navy, 200 of them as officers. A small number of Estonians served in the Royal Air Force, in the British Army and in the U.