1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 20th of March 1939, Lithuania's foreign minister Juozas Urbšys walked into a meeting in Berlin that would end with his country losing its only window to the sea. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Germany's foreign minister, told him the terms: hand over the Klaipėda Region, or the Wehrmacht would march, and the Lithuanian capital Kaunas would be bombed from the air. The ultimatum was never put in writing. It carried no formal deadline. Yet it was unmistakable in its meaning.

  What made that March meeting so charged was not just the threat of force. It arrived just five days after Germany had swallowed Czechoslovakia whole. Lithuania already knew what German expansion looked like up close. The question the documentary asks is how a small Baltic nation arrived at the point where its foreign minister had forty minutes in a room with Ribbentrop to decide the fate of a region, a port, and a third of his country's industrial output.

• 2. The Territory at Stake

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  Klaipėda, known in German as Memel, had been one of East Prussia's important seaports before the First World War. Article 28 of the Treaty of Versailles detached it from Germany, and under Article 99, the Allied powers took over its administration, with France running the territory day to day.

  Lithuania made its claim on historical and demographic grounds. The region had a significant Lithuanian-speaking population, tied to the broader cultural zone known as Lithuania Minor. Crucially, Klaipėda was Lithuania's only outlet to the Baltic Sea. Poland also coveted the territory, and as the Allies stalled on a permanent decision, the region seemed headed toward the same ambiguous status as the Free City of Danzig.

  Rather than wait, Lithuania acted. In January 1923, it organized the Klaipėda Revolt, a move that had the backing of Soviet Russia and Germany. The region was attached to Lithuania as an autonomous territory, complete with its own parliament, the Klaipėda Parliament. It covered roughly 2,400 square kilometers and held a population of about 140,000. The 1924 Klaipėda Convention, signed by four powers, was meant to lock in that arrangement permanently.

• 3. Tensions Through the 1930s

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  Through the 1920s, Lithuania and Germany found common ground in their shared hostility toward Poland, and their relationship held. In January 1928, after prolonged negotiations, the two countries signed a border treaty that left Klaipėda on the Lithuanian side.

  That stability cracked once the Nazi Party took power in Germany, replacing the Weimar Republic. A breaking point came in February 1934 when the Lithuanian government arrested dozens of pro-Nazi activists. Germany's response was an economic boycott of Lithuanian agricultural goods. The boycott hit the farming region of Suvalkija hard, triggering violent protests from the farmers most affected.

  The situation shifted again after the referendum in Saar. Most of the convicted pro-Nazi prisoners received amnesty, and Lithuanian prestige slid both at home and within Klaipėda itself. One of those released was Dr. Ernst Neumann, the chief defendant from the 1934 trials. He walked free in February 1938 and took over as the leader of Klaipėda's pro-German movement.

  Adolf Hitler named the territory a personal priority in the spring of 1938, ranking it second only to gaining the Sudetenland. That same spring, during the Polish ultimatum to Lithuania in March 1938, Germany openly threatened to invade Lithuania if military conflict broke out, with the stated goal of seizing Klaipėda and a large portion of western Lithuania. A week after Lithuania accepted that Polish ultimatum, Germany delivered an eleven-point memorandum demanding freedom of movement for pro-German groups and a reduction of Lithuanian influence in the region. The memorandum was worded vaguely enough that Germany could later accuse Lithuania of breaching it at any point it chose.

• 4. A Region Slipping Away

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  By late 1938, Lithuania's grip on Klaipėda was loosening from within. Pro-Nazi propaganda spread through the region, and even parts of the Lithuanian population were caught up in it. The local government found itself unable to stop the harassment of Lithuanian organizations by Nazi activists.

  On the 1st of November 1938, outside pressure forced Lithuania to lift martial law and press censorship in the region. The political consequences were immediate. In the December elections to the Klaipėda Parliament, pro-German parties captured 87% of the vote, winning 25 of the 29 available seats. Ernst Neumann, now heading the pro-German movement, met with Hitler in December. Hitler told him the Klaipėda issue would be resolved by March or April 1939. Neumann and his allies began publicly demanding the right of self-determination and calling on Lithuania to negotiate the territory's political future.

  The parliament was expected to vote for reunification with Germany when it convened on the 25th of March 1939. Germany's official diplomatic channels stayed silent. Berlin's preference was that Lithuania would simply hand over the troubled region without a confrontation, in part because Germany was conducting sensitive discussions with Poland at the time about a possible anti-Communist alliance against the Soviet Union. A public stance on Klaipėda might have complicated those talks.

• 5. Forty Minutes in Berlin

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  Rumors reached Kaunas that Germany had concrete plans to take Klaipėda. On the 12th of March, Urbšys was in Rome, representing Lithuania at the coronation of Pope Pius XII. On his way back, he stopped in Berlin hoping to clear up what he was hearing.

  On the 20th of March, Ribbentrop agreed to see him. Kazys Škirpa, who had traveled with Urbšys, was asked to wait in a separate room. The conversation lasted about 40 minutes. Ribbentrop demanded the return of Klaipėda and made the military threat explicit. Lithuania was warned not to seek help from other nations. No formal written document changed hands. No deadline was named. But the message was precise: any clashes or German casualties would bring a military response.

  Lithuania quietly informed the other signatories to the 1924 Klaipėda Convention, since transferring the territory technically required their consent. The responses left no room for hope. Italy and Japan supported Germany outright. The United Kingdom and France expressed sympathy but declined to provide any material help, treating the crisis the same way they had treated the Sudeten question. The Soviet Union, in principle supportive of Lithuania, did not want to strain its relations with Berlin; it was already contemplating what would become the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Lithuanian diplomacy described accepting the ultimatum as a "necessary evil" that would at least preserve the country's independence, framed as a temporary concession.

• 6. Signing and Aftermath

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  At 1:00 a.m. on the 23rd of March 1939, Urbšys and Ribbentrop signed a treaty, backdated to take effect on the 22nd of March. Five articles governed the handover. Article I declared the Klaipėda Region reunited with the German Reich. Article III created a Lithuanian free-port zone within Klaipėda to address Lithuania's economic needs. Article IV bound both sides not to use force against the other or support third-party attacks on either.

  German soldiers had already entered the port before the ink was dry. Hitler arrived by sea, aboard the cruiser Deutschland, and personally toured the city and delivered a short speech. The armada that accompanied him included the cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, the light cruisers Nürnberg, Leipzig, and Köln, two destroyer squadrons, three torpedo boat flotillas, and one tender flotilla. Lithuania's entire navy at the time consisted of a single warship, the Prezidentas Smetona, a 580-ton converted minesweeper.

  For Lithuania, the financial damage was severe and immediate. Between 70% and 80% of its foreign trade had passed through Klaipėda. The region made up only about 5% of Lithuania's territory but held roughly a third of its industrial capacity. About 10,000 refugees, mostly Jewish, left the region and sought support from the Lithuanian government. In the months after the handover, bank withdrawals across Lithuania reached nearly 20% of total deposits. By the end of 1939, Germany accounted for 75% of Lithuania's exports and 86% of its imports.

  The political fallout was equally sharp. President Antanas Smetona's acceptance of a second ultimatum within just over a year deepened public dissatisfaction with his rule. The passive cabinet of Vladas Mironas was replaced by one headed by General Jonas Černius. For the first time since the 1926 coup, opposition figures entered government: Leonas Bistras of the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party became Minister of Education, and Jurgis Krikščiūnas of the Lithuanian Popular Peasants' Union became Minister of Agriculture. Both were officially listed as independent private citizens, since other parties remained banned. Four military generals also joined the cabinet. The loss of Klaipėda proved to be Germany's last territorial acquisition before the Second World War, and it left Lithuania drifting into the German economic sphere, a position that would soon be overtaken by a far larger shift: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact later in 1939 initially placed Lithuania in the German sphere of influence, before the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty reassigned it to the Soviets, setting the stage for the Soviet ultimatum of June 1940.