Klaipėdos universitetas

The war which covered the future territory of Lithuania in 1919 and 1920 after the end of the First World War has already been described several times by historians. The army loyal to the Lithuanian government in Kaunas took part in military action against three enemies: the Red Army, the Polish army and the West Russian Volunteer Army (a military formation of the Bermontians). When considering parallels, continuity and differences between the First World War and the three conflicts in Lithuania known as ‘the War of Independence’, historians have pointed out a crucial difference: the relatively small Lithuanian army was engaged in low-intensity military action. However, the question of the intensity of the combat has not specifically been addressed in research so far. This paper offers a new approach to analysing the intensity of the two-year war. For the first time, the authors have juxtaposed three data sets: analysing the number of days of combat, assessing the frequency and impact of the use of heavy weapons (artillery and/or aviation), and comparing it with data on the losses of the Lithuanian army’s manpower.

Between the First World War and the Second World War, approximately 280 thousand men served in the Lithuanian armed forces. This is a significant figure for a country that only had a population of two to 2.5 million. Even though the Lithuanian armed forces were only involved in active military operations and low-intensity fighting from 1919 to 1923, servicemen died during the entire period up to 1940. The numbers of deaths during the Wars of Independence are well known; however, the causes of death in the Lithuanian armed forces, both from 1919 to 1920 and in later years, have not been investigated in great depth. We understand that one cause of death in an active army is active combat. In the study of war, deaths in action are further classified into deaths caused by artillery fire, machine gun and rifle fire, bayonets, etc. This allows scholars to determine the effectiveness of weapons systems and tactical elements used on the battlefield. However, the focus of this article is the causes of soldiers’ deaths that are not directly combat related. In the first section, I discuss causes of death in the Lithuanian armed forces during periods of war and peace, and provide a host of examples, which include deaths caused by disease, accidents, homicide and suicide. In the last section, I present the results of quantitative analysis. The quantitative analysis is a case study of a single regiment that demonstrates the predominant causes of death from 1919 to 1940, with a separate analysis of causes of death for the period 1919 to 1920.