Northern Ireland | Northern Territory | Northern Pacific Railway | Kimberley, Northern Cape | Northern Illinois University | Northern Cape | Northern England | Army of Northern Virginia | Northern California | Northern Italy | Royal Northern College of Music | Northern Ireland national football team | Northern | Northern Hemisphere | Northern Exposure | Bukovina | Northern Ontario | Northern Province | Northern Mariana Islands | Northern League | Northern Rhodesia | United States District Court for the Northern District of California | Palmerston, Northern Territory | Northern Germany | Northern Wei | Northern Ireland Assembly | Katherine, Northern Territory | Northern Ndebele people | Great Northern War | United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois |
Therefore, the Wehrmacht had drafted a preemptive war plan based on Hitler's orders as early as mid-1940, soon after the Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
After the death in March 1940 Edvarts Virza, in an unstable Latvian political environment that was highly aware of the aggressive powers to both its east and west, Soviet forces began to enforce the secret parts of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on its neighbours, annexing: Estonia; Lithuania,; Bessarabia; Northern Bukovina; and the Hertza region.
During the war that percentage was halved, largely by the loss of the border areas of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina (to the former Soviet Union — now Moldova and Ukraine), Black Sea islands (to the former Soviet Union — now Ukraine) and southern Dobrudja (to Bulgaria), as well as by the postwar flight or deportation of ethnic Germans.