Lithuania

History

Legend of the Iron Wolf

According to Lithuanian legend, Grand Duke Gediminas dreamed of a giant Iron Wolf standing atop a hill beside the Vilnia River, howling with the strength of a hundred wolves. When the pagan priest Lizdeika interpreted the vision as a prophecy of a great capital whose renown would echo across the world, Gediminas built the fortress city of Vilnius. After preserving their ancient Baltic language during 19th-century Russian rule through underground book smugglers (knygnešiai), Lithuanians re-established an independent republic in February 1918.

Interwar Kaunas and Territorial Pressures

After Poland seized the historic capital Vilnius in 1920, Lithuania governed from its temporary capital of Kaunas, modernizing its agriculture and civic institutions. In March 1939, an ultimatum from Nazi Germany - The totalitarian German state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, which initiated World War II in Europe. forced Lithuania to surrender its main Baltic port of Klaipėda (Memel).

World War II and Occupation

Under the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the Soviet Union - The world's first socialist federal state (1922–1991), which bore the brunt of the land war against Nazi Germany and emerged as a Cold War superpower. occupied and annexed Lithuania in June 1940—a period during which diplomats Jan Zwartendijk and Chiune Sugihara issued thousands of life-saving transit visas in Kaunas. Invaded by Germany in June 1941, Lithuania suffered devastating losses during the Holocaust, and after the Red Army returned in 1944, Lithuanian partisans ('Forest Brothers') waged a prolonged insurgency for independence.