| Republic of Lithuania Lietuvos Respublika |
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| Anthem Tautiška giesmė |
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| Lithuanian territory in yellow, orange, dark brown, pink, purple and navy | |||||
| Capital | Vilnius | ||||
| Language(s) | Lithuanian | ||||
| Government | Republic, Authoritarian state (1926-1940) |
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| President | |||||
| - 1919-1920, 1926-1940 | Antanas Smetona (first and last) | ||||
| History | |||||
| - Established | 1918 | ||||
| - Occupation followed by annexation by the Soviet Union | November 2, 1940 | ||||
The Republic of Lithuania was created in November 1918 after the King of Lithuania, who had been installed by German military occupation authorities during World War I, abdicated the throne. Antanas Smetona became Lithuania's first President. The state existed betweeen 1918 to 1940. It lost the territory of Memel to Germany in 1939 but gained territory from Poland after it was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The state was dissolved in 1940 after the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Lithuania, that became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, titled the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, then Lithuania was next occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944 as part of Reichskommissariat Ostland before being reoccupied and restored to Soviet control in 1944 by Soviet military forces.
Lithuania was initially a representative democracy but the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état forcefully overthrew the democratically elected Lithuanian President and restored Smetona and his fascist Lithuanian Nationalist Union (LTS) to power as the leader of an authoritarian state and associated with Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy, including Smetona's LTS attending the Italian Fascist-sponsored 1934 Montreux Fascist conference amongst other fascist movements.[1]