TERRITORIAL DEFENCE IN LITHUANIA IN THE LATE 1930S ; ТЕРИТОРІАЛЬНА ОБОРОНА У ЛИТВІ В КІНЦІ 30-х РОКІВ ХХ СТОЛІТТЯ

Abstract

In the interwar years, Lithuania faced a wide range of military threats, for two decades the nation did not maintain any diplomatic or economic relations with its neighbouring state Poland, which had occupied her historic capital Vilnius, while the relations with Germany remained tense over the Klaipėda Region. The security situation took a turn for the worse in 1939–1940 with the threat from the USSR coming to the front after the annihilation of Poland, however Lithuania was forced to sign the mutual assistance treaty and permit the entry of 20 thousand strong Red Army troops into its territory. Hence, a small state of Lithuania was locked in by the hostile states that surpassed her in strength by several or many orders of magnitude. The Lithuanian armed forces were compelled to seek unconventional solutions for the organisation of national defence.This research, aimed at the identification of measures undertaken by the Lithuanian armed forces for the purpose of the enhancement of its military capabilities and the increase of countermobility facilities as part of its territorial defence system, is based on the analysis of archival sources. The Lithuanian army prepared several operation plans in 1936–1940: No. 1 "V" (Germany), No. 2 "V+L" (Germany + Poland), No. 3 "L" (Poland) and, on the basis of the latter, "R" (The Reds / Russia / The East – the meaning of letter R is not definite). The documents constituting plan No. 1 "V" (Germany) have been selected for the purpose of the analysis of territorial defence since they have come down to us intact while the documents pertaining to plan "R" were destroyed in July 1940. The degree of detail of plan No. 1 "V" (kept at the Lithuanian Central State Archives under f. 929 and f. 561) allows for a highly accurate reconstruction of the development and functionality of territorial defence during the interwar period and of the connections between territorial and regular military units in the event of war.We can conclude that the Lithuanian army, on the strength of the system of territorial defence (integrated into the overall national armed defence plans) as revealed in our research, hoped to slow down the penetration of enemy forces into Lithuania using these countermobility measures and thereby to "buy" time for the mobilisation and consolidation of its regular forces, whilst the action of guerrilla territorial units in the areas taken up by enemy was supposed to restrict enemy actions and withdraw as many soldiers from the rear zone of the front for protection purposes. In the rear area, the Lithuanian territorial units had to release, to the extent possible, their regular troops from the functions of defence and the maintenance of order. It was expected that defeat would be avoided in the event of war with a more powerful enemy due to the synergy of action of territorial and regular forces. There was a clear understanding that the outcome of the war would be determined not by the Lithuanian armed forces but by the success of the Allies (the cases of Belgium and Serbia in the First World War were regarded as examples for Lithuania in the upcoming war). The objective was to persist and survive, i.e. to preserve the nucleus of military forces and the government and proceed with guerrilla warfare in the occupied territories so that in the wake of an all-out war there would be a basis for the reconstitution of the Lithuanian state within its ethnographic boundaries. ; У статті проаналізовано проблему територіальної оборони у Литві в період між двома світовими війнами, у контексті національної безпеки Литви. Литва отримала багатий досвід партизанського спротиву в часи Війни за незалежність 1919 – 1920 рр. і конфлікту з Польщею у 1921 – 1923 рр. Завдячуючи такому досвіду, в країні була розроблена доволі унікальна система територіальної обо­рони, основою якої стала структура Союзу стрільців Литви (далі – ССЛ). На випадок війни організовані загони стрільців-партизан мали діяти поруч з части­нами регулярної армії. Воєнна доктрина Литви спиралася на синергію дій регу­лярних військ, формувань територіальної оборони і допомоги союзників – потужних держав регіону.