(The untold story of the Stalin-Smetona secret 1938 pact, which offered Lithuania to the Russians for fear of a pending takeover of Lithuania by her archenemy Poland, with Hitler’s wink and nod.
Here is the history of Polish-Lithuanian “marriage,” and of their bitter historical enmity, culminating in the 1938 appeal of Antanas Smetona to Stalin, offering him a deal that Stalin could not pass on, boiling down to Lithuania’s annexation by the Soviet Union as the preferable alternative to being swallowed up by Hitler’s “greedy hyena” Poland (to use Churchill’s famous depiction of Poland after Munich). Smetona’s choice in this case may appear shocking at first, because of the sheer novelty of this revelation, but it must become clear to all (on second thought) who are aware of the fact that throughout her history of independence, between the two world wars, Lithuania was in a state of perpetual war with Poland, and to say that the visceral feeling of hatred for Poland in Lithuania was intense would be a gross understatement.
…Truly, history has a store of shocking secrets yet to come to light, and this entry is an attempt to throw yet another beam of light into one of her darkest corners…)
Very few people outside the secretive Polish and Lithuanian nationalities are familiar with the fact that an acrimonious historical enmity has existed between them since time immemorial, and that between the two world wars of the twentieth century there was an open state of war between the two nations, formerly, both provinces of the Russian Empire. Throughout their short history of independence, Poland was actually in possession of Lithuania’s cherished capital Vilnius, disgracefully renamed Vilna by the aggressor, whereas the embittered Lithuanians had to settle for the city of Kaunas as their temporary capital.
Previously, the pagan Lithuania had first become a united nation under King Mindaugas (1251), while the Catholic kingdom of Poland had already been in business for centuries, all the time eyeing the neighboring land of the Liths as its natural ground for expansion. Poland’s opportunity came in 1386, when both these countries were threatened by the powerful Teutonic knights. On Poland’s tempting suggestion, the ruler of Lithuania grand duke Jagailo ascended the throne of Poland as Wladyslaus II, bringing his country in tow. The two were thus united, and together successfully defended themselves against the aggressors, decisively defeating them in 1410, at Tannenberg/Grünwald. (Remarkably, with considerable Russian and Tatar help!)
In that 1386 deal, each side saw itself as the winner. Lithuania was actually led to believe that their Jagailo was thus winning Poland for his happening nation. The Poles, naturally, thought otherwise, and their share of the pie was indeed bigger and sweeter. Jagailo ended up accepting Poland’s Catholic faith, and another binding string attached: the Polish princess Jadwiga, as his wife and the Queen of their joint kingdom. A propitious event saved the Liths from a further aggravation of anti-Polish animosity, when in 1772, Poland was first partitioned between Russia and Prussia, eventually completing the disappearance of the kingdom by the end of the eighteenth century. In 1795, Lithuania, too, became a part of the Russian Empire (the bad news), but on the upside, it now received a welcome separation from the Polish nemesis and also its spirit of independence was given a giant boost.
Gaining, at last, its full independence from Russia in 1918, Lithuania sought, and received, some protection from Germany, which did not help her however to get her Vilnius back, after Poland had avidly grabbed the city, and an awful lot of Lithuanian land with it.
The first President of independent Lithuania was her longtime nationalist revolutionary Antanas Smetona, born in 1874. Elected to the post in early 1919, he was not reelected the next year, and resented the fact of such playing democracy in the face of a war with Poland. After an intense shuffling in the shadows, which included brief imprisonment, in 1926 he successfully conducted a coup d’état, declaring himself President, and in 1928 he went much farther, dissolving the parliament and adopting a new Constitution, which turned Lithuania into a full-blown dictatorship.
In the 1930’s, all three Baltic countries, formerly part of Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, developed into fascist regimes, and were courting Hitler, in the hope of becoming Germany’s privileged satellites. The case of Lithuania was, however, very different from the other two, as, at the same time, Poland, also a quasi-fascist dictatorship, was steadily courting Hitler to allow the Polish re-annexation of Lithuania as part of the deal to establish a vibrant German-Polish partnership (only the irrationally arrogant Poles could expect their almighty neighbor to agree to anything but complete submission). Surely, Hitler had not a partnership at all in mind, but he was temporarily obliging the pesky Poles, such as “graciously” allotting them portions of a dismembered Czechoslovakia, after Munich 1938, for which Poland received the name of “hyena” from an utterly disgusted Winston Churchill. (For the record, the British declaration of war on Germany, on account of the 1939 invasion of Poland, did not happen on Churchill’s watch, but, in any case, such a concern about the “Polish hyena” would make no sense for the British, except for the considerations which I presented in my earlier posting The Stalin Hitler Pact.)
Terrified at the prospect that the Führer was leaning toward Lithuania’s archenemy Poland, Smetona sent his secret emissaries to Stalin, resulting in the super-secret 1938 treaty, pledging Lithuania into Moscow’s court, and, in substantiation of that pledge, revealing to Stalin the private communications between the three Baltic dictators, concerning their anti-Soviet activities and joint advances to Nazi Germany.
This whole layout became part of Moscow’s position in the negotiation of the 1939 Stalin-Hitler Pact, as a result of which the three Baltic states were chalked into the Soviet corner, and in 1940, ended up occupied by the Soviet troops. Smetona was encouraged to publicly oppose Stalin’s pre-occupation ultimatum, but it was apparently a staged play, and of the three Baltic dictators only two suffered the consequences of their love for Hitler: Karl Ulmanis of Latvia and Konstantin Päts of Estonia ended their lives in Soviet prisons, whereas Smetona was “allowed” to flee to the West, eventually settling down in 1941 in the United States, where Stalin had some plans for him, considering how many goods he had on him, which could always be used as leverage, in case the man should balk.
Unfortunately, however, Smetona was not to enjoy a long life in America. In January 1944, he was burned to death, under suspicious circumstances, in a fire at his son’s house in Cleveland, Ohio. Whether his death was an assassination (by a party unknown), or just a tragic accident, or even, perhaps, a benign American “eraser” effort to hide him from others’ watchful eyes, by giving him a new post-mortem identity (in case he had suddenly decided to cooperate with the authorities) is now a matter of personal detail, which has no relevance to the preceding story. Besides, I honestly have no idea what really happened to him in America, to be sure. This is certainly a matter, that merits further investigation by some interested enthusiast, perhaps, of Lithuanian descent…
Here is the history of Polish-Lithuanian “marriage,” and of their bitter historical enmity, culminating in the 1938 appeal of Antanas Smetona to Stalin, offering him a deal that Stalin could not pass on, boiling down to Lithuania’s annexation by the Soviet Union as the preferable alternative to being swallowed up by Hitler’s “greedy hyena” Poland (to use Churchill’s famous depiction of Poland after Munich). Smetona’s choice in this case may appear shocking at first, because of the sheer novelty of this revelation, but it must become clear to all (on second thought) who are aware of the fact that throughout her history of independence, between the two world wars, Lithuania was in a state of perpetual war with Poland, and to say that the visceral feeling of hatred for Poland in Lithuania was intense would be a gross understatement.
…Truly, history has a store of shocking secrets yet to come to light, and this entry is an attempt to throw yet another beam of light into one of her darkest corners…)
Very few people outside the secretive Polish and Lithuanian nationalities are familiar with the fact that an acrimonious historical enmity has existed between them since time immemorial, and that between the two world wars of the twentieth century there was an open state of war between the two nations, formerly, both provinces of the Russian Empire. Throughout their short history of independence, Poland was actually in possession of Lithuania’s cherished capital Vilnius, disgracefully renamed Vilna by the aggressor, whereas the embittered Lithuanians had to settle for the city of Kaunas as their temporary capital.
Previously, the pagan Lithuania had first become a united nation under King Mindaugas (1251), while the Catholic kingdom of Poland had already been in business for centuries, all the time eyeing the neighboring land of the Liths as its natural ground for expansion. Poland’s opportunity came in 1386, when both these countries were threatened by the powerful Teutonic knights. On Poland’s tempting suggestion, the ruler of Lithuania grand duke Jagailo ascended the throne of Poland as Wladyslaus II, bringing his country in tow. The two were thus united, and together successfully defended themselves against the aggressors, decisively defeating them in 1410, at Tannenberg/Grünwald. (Remarkably, with considerable Russian and Tatar help!)
In that 1386 deal, each side saw itself as the winner. Lithuania was actually led to believe that their Jagailo was thus winning Poland for his happening nation. The Poles, naturally, thought otherwise, and their share of the pie was indeed bigger and sweeter. Jagailo ended up accepting Poland’s Catholic faith, and another binding string attached: the Polish princess Jadwiga, as his wife and the Queen of their joint kingdom. A propitious event saved the Liths from a further aggravation of anti-Polish animosity, when in 1772, Poland was first partitioned between Russia and Prussia, eventually completing the disappearance of the kingdom by the end of the eighteenth century. In 1795, Lithuania, too, became a part of the Russian Empire (the bad news), but on the upside, it now received a welcome separation from the Polish nemesis and also its spirit of independence was given a giant boost.
Gaining, at last, its full independence from Russia in 1918, Lithuania sought, and received, some protection from Germany, which did not help her however to get her Vilnius back, after Poland had avidly grabbed the city, and an awful lot of Lithuanian land with it.
The first President of independent Lithuania was her longtime nationalist revolutionary Antanas Smetona, born in 1874. Elected to the post in early 1919, he was not reelected the next year, and resented the fact of such playing democracy in the face of a war with Poland. After an intense shuffling in the shadows, which included brief imprisonment, in 1926 he successfully conducted a coup d’état, declaring himself President, and in 1928 he went much farther, dissolving the parliament and adopting a new Constitution, which turned Lithuania into a full-blown dictatorship.
In the 1930’s, all three Baltic countries, formerly part of Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, developed into fascist regimes, and were courting Hitler, in the hope of becoming Germany’s privileged satellites. The case of Lithuania was, however, very different from the other two, as, at the same time, Poland, also a quasi-fascist dictatorship, was steadily courting Hitler to allow the Polish re-annexation of Lithuania as part of the deal to establish a vibrant German-Polish partnership (only the irrationally arrogant Poles could expect their almighty neighbor to agree to anything but complete submission). Surely, Hitler had not a partnership at all in mind, but he was temporarily obliging the pesky Poles, such as “graciously” allotting them portions of a dismembered Czechoslovakia, after Munich 1938, for which Poland received the name of “hyena” from an utterly disgusted Winston Churchill. (For the record, the British declaration of war on Germany, on account of the 1939 invasion of Poland, did not happen on Churchill’s watch, but, in any case, such a concern about the “Polish hyena” would make no sense for the British, except for the considerations which I presented in my earlier posting The Stalin Hitler Pact.)
Terrified at the prospect that the Führer was leaning toward Lithuania’s archenemy Poland, Smetona sent his secret emissaries to Stalin, resulting in the super-secret 1938 treaty, pledging Lithuania into Moscow’s court, and, in substantiation of that pledge, revealing to Stalin the private communications between the three Baltic dictators, concerning their anti-Soviet activities and joint advances to Nazi Germany.
This whole layout became part of Moscow’s position in the negotiation of the 1939 Stalin-Hitler Pact, as a result of which the three Baltic states were chalked into the Soviet corner, and in 1940, ended up occupied by the Soviet troops. Smetona was encouraged to publicly oppose Stalin’s pre-occupation ultimatum, but it was apparently a staged play, and of the three Baltic dictators only two suffered the consequences of their love for Hitler: Karl Ulmanis of Latvia and Konstantin Päts of Estonia ended their lives in Soviet prisons, whereas Smetona was “allowed” to flee to the West, eventually settling down in 1941 in the United States, where Stalin had some plans for him, considering how many goods he had on him, which could always be used as leverage, in case the man should balk.
Unfortunately, however, Smetona was not to enjoy a long life in America. In January 1944, he was burned to death, under suspicious circumstances, in a fire at his son’s house in Cleveland, Ohio. Whether his death was an assassination (by a party unknown), or just a tragic accident, or even, perhaps, a benign American “eraser” effort to hide him from others’ watchful eyes, by giving him a new post-mortem identity (in case he had suddenly decided to cooperate with the authorities) is now a matter of personal detail, which has no relevance to the preceding story. Besides, I honestly have no idea what really happened to him in America, to be sure. This is certainly a matter, that merits further investigation by some interested enthusiast, perhaps, of Lithuanian descent…
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