Kazys Škirpa

Kazys Škirpa (18 February 1895 – 18 August 1979) was a Lithuanian military officer and diplomat. He founded the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), which attempted to establish Lithuanian independence in June 1941.

Army career

In World War I, he was mobilised into the Imperial Russian Army and graduated from the Peterhof Military School. In 1917, he helped organise Lithuanian military units in Russia and attempted to form Lithuanian detachments in Petrograd. After Lithuania declared independence in 1918, he returned and was the first to enlist in the Lithuanian armed forces during the Lithuanian War of Independence. In January 1919, Škirpa was commandant of Vilnius and the men under his command raised the Lithuanian flag above Gediminas' Tower on 1 January 1919. After the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940, Škirpa fled to Germany and founded the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), a resistance organization whose goal was to liberate Lithuania and re-establish its independence by working with the Nazis. however, the Germans placed him under house arrest and did not allow him to leave for Lithuania.