Lithuanian army Erchardt armoured cars during trayning excersize. 

Armoured car of Lithuanian army

When Slovakia declared independence (14th March 1939) and the Czech country was occupied by Germans (15th March), the rest of former Czechoslovak army was preparing to leave Carpathian Ruthenia. After the fight (14th-17th March) the army finaly retreated and Ruthenians had to face the Hungarian invasion alone. The new Ruthenian state (existed 15th-18th March) mobilized its "army" which wasn´t able to stop Hungarians and after a few days this area became a part of Hungary. 

About 1.500 Ruthenian defenders died in the war and about 4.500 were executed in the next weeks in Hungarian POW camps.

You can see Ruthenian soldiers armed with Czechoslovak machineguns ZB-7/24 Schwarzlose and ZB-26 in the photo.



Forgotten war of a forgotten state

THE GRIM SAGA OF THE LIENZ COSSACKS

The Lienz Cossacks were ‘white Russians’ who’d fought bitterly against communism and the rise of the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution. During the Second World War, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Lienz Cossacks sided with the Nazis in order to try the topple the communist regime and bring ‘freedom’ to their country.

The Lienz Cossacks who’d fought with the Germans were rounded up by the British. It was up to the United Kingdom to decide what to do with them.

Because of the brutality of the Cossack soldiers, who had murdered and raped their way along with the SS and the German army, the British wanted nothing to do with them and ‘repatriated’ these ‘Russians’ to the Soviet Union, where they ‘belonged.’
Trains and trucks were pulled up and Cossack soldiers were forced into them. As were their wives, families and children – many of whom were not even Russian, having been born in the years after the Lienz Cossacks had left Russia.

The Cossacks didn’t go willingly. British troops had to beat them into submission with billy clubs and rifle-butts. Eventually, almost 35,000 Cossacks were transported to their ‘mother country’ where the Soviets ‘welcomed’ them.

The vast majority of them were sent immediately to labor camps in Siberia, which were little better than the death camps the Nazis had built. Almost all of the Lienz Cossacks ‘repatriated’ back to Russia died in brutal suffering.

The ‘lucky’ ones didn’t even make it that far. Because many of the Cossacks weren’t born in Russia (their parents had left following the Russian Revolution) they were unable to be tried for treason as Soviet Citizens. Therefore the Red Army saved themselves the hassle of a military trial and executed them on the spot, with a bullet through the brains.