Lithuanian officer and envoy in Berlin who founded the Lithuanian Activist Front behind the June Uprising of 1941
Mobilised into the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, he was the first to enlist in the Lithuanian armed forces after independence in 1918, and on 1 January 1919 his men raised the Lithuanian flag over Gediminas’ Tower in Vilnius. He became Chief of the General Staff in 1925 but had to resign after opposing the 1926 coup. He was envoy to Germany in 1927–1930 and 1938–1941. After the Soviet occupation of 1940 he founded in Berlin the Lithuanian Activist Front, which sought to restore independence by working with the Nazis; named prime minister of the provisional government in 1941, he was held under house arrest by the Germans. In 1944 he was arrested for a memorandum demanding a Lithuanian government. After the war he settled in the United States, working at the Library of Congress. His antisemitic writings have made dedications in his honour controversial.
Career timeline
1919Raised the flag over Gediminas’ Tower
1925–1926Chief of the Lithuanian General Staff
1938–1941Envoy to Germany
1940–1941Founded the Activist Front; named provisional prime minister
A prodigy who commanded an army at twenty-three, architect of the Red Army's mechanization
Marshal Zhukov's verdict: "He was a genuine Soviet commander who had mastered operational art to perfection. He was a military man in the full sense of the word."
Born to a Lithuanian peasant family, he served as an artillery officer in the First World War. At twenty-three he commanded the 14th Army, defeating Denikin's forces in the Civil War and capturing Kharkov and Odessa; as C-in-C of the Far Eastern Republic he liberated Vladivostok. A German internship grounded him in mechanized warfare, and together with Tukhachevsky and Yakir he drove the Red Army's technical modernization, capping his career by directing the 1936 grand manoeuvres in Belorussia. Arrested in the "Tukhachevsky case" of 1937, he was shot the next day and rehabilitated in 1957.
Partisan commander “Vanagas” who led the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters from 1952, the last commander to be captured
Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family in New Britain, Connecticut, he came to Lithuania at the age of three. He graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1940 and worked as a teacher, and after the NKVD pressured him to spy on his students he joined the partisans in early 1945 under the nom de guerre Vanagas (“Hawk”). He commanded the Dainava military district and the Southern Lithuania Region, published underground newspapers, and in 1949 became first deputy chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. Succeeding Jonas Žemaitis as its leader in 1952, he ordered an end to armed struggle in favour of passive resistance. Betrayed by a former classmate, he was arrested in October 1956, tortured and executed in November 1957. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has alleged that a unit he commanded in the June 1941 uprising took part in killing Jews; the Lithuanian government denies this.
Career timeline
1940Graduated from the War School of Kaunas
1945Joined the partisans; brigade commander
1947Commander of the Dainava military district
1949First deputy chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters
