Editing Liepāja (section)

=== World War II ===
[[File:Karaflotes bazes izv liepaja.jpg|thumb|upright|Top secret USSR document about creating a closed military port in Liepāja. Signed by Stalin (note: there is a spelling mistake in the word "Liepāja" – ''{{lang|ru|Лепая}}'') (1951)]]
{{See also|Liepāja massacres}}

The ports and human capital of Liepāja and Ventspils were targets of [[Joseph Stalin]]. He signed the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop pact]] in part to gain control of this territory. When the Soviet Union [[Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940|occupied and annexed Latvia in 1940]], it nationalized private property. Many thousands of former owners were arrested and [[June deportation|deported]] to the gulag camps in [[Siberia]].

In 1941, Liepāja was among the first cities captured by the [[291st Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)|291st Infantry Division]] of [[Army Group North]] after Nazi Germany began [[Operation Barbarossa]], its war against the Soviet Union. German Nazis and Latvian collaborators virtually [[Liepāja massacres|exterminated]] the local Jewish population, which had numbered about 7,000 before the war. Film footage of an [[Einsatzgruppen]] execution of local Jews was taken in Liepāja.<ref name="filmabouthol"/><ref name="dochol"/> Most of these mass murders took place in the dunes of [[Šķēde]] north of the city. Fewer than thirty Jews survived in Liepāja by the end of the war.

One of the very few surviving films documenting the mass murder of Jews during the first stages of the Holocaust is a short film by a German soldier who witnessed the [[Liepāja massacres|massacres]] of Liepāja Jews in July 1941 near the city's lighthouse.<ref name="dochol" />

During the war, the German navy's U-boat crews received their torpedo training at Liepāja.

During the period of 1944–1945, as the Soviet Union began its offensive to the Baltic Sea, Liepāja was within the "[[Courland Pocket]]". It was occupied by the [[Red Army]] on 9 May 1945. Thousands of Latvians fled as refugees to Germany. The city had been devastated during the war, and most of the buildings and industrial [[Physical plant|plant]] were destroyed.