The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars" (Estonian: metsavennad, Latvian: mežabrāļi, Lithuanian: žaliukai), these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Soviet forces, consisting primarily of the Red Army, occupied the Baltic states in 1940, completing their occupation by 1941. After a period of German occupation during World War II, the Soviets reoccupied Lithuania from 1944 to 1945. As Soviet political repression intensified over the following years, tens of thousands of partisans from the Baltics began to use the countryside as a base for an anti-Soviet insurgency.
