Around 100,000 ethnic German citizens were allowed to sell their land and property and leave the Baltic counties, and if they were racially acceptable, were resettled in Poland and given land and businesses in exchange for the money they had received from the sale of their previous possessions. By creating large numbers of small, nonviable farms, the Soviet regime intended to weaken the institution of private landholding so that later collectivization, a program of agricultural consolidation that was undertaken in the USSR a decade earlier with horrifying results, could be presented as an efficient alternative. The Red Army quickly absorbed the military forces of the Baltic states. Soviet security forces such as the NKVD, imposed strict censorship and press control. In each of the new republics, churches and ecclesiastical property were nationalized, religious education and religious publications were forbidden, seminaries and monasteries were seized (often for the Red Army), and many clergymen were arrested. Between July and August 1940, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian envoys to the United States and the United Kingdom made official protests against Soviet occupation and annexation of their countries. The United States, in accordance with the principles of the Stimson Doctrine (Sumner Welles' Declaration of July 23, 1940), as well as most other Western countries never formally recognized the annexation, but did not directly interfere with Soviet control. The Baltic States continued their de jure existence in accordance with international law. Diplomatic and consular representations of the Baltic States continued to function between 1940 - 1991 in some Western countries (United States, Australia, Switzerland). Members of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian diplomatic services in Western countries continued to formulate and express the official opinion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and protected the interests of these countries and their citizens abroad between 1940–1991, i.e., until the restoration of independence of the Baltic States. The Soviet Union reoccupied the Baltic states as part of the Baltic Offensive in 1944, a twofold military-political operation to rout German forces and the "liberation of the Soviet Baltic peoples" beginning in summer-autumn 1944, lasting until the capitulation of German and Latvian forces in Courland pocket in May 1945. An insurgency continued, resisting Soviet rule via armed struggle for a number of years. The Forest brothers, as they were known, enjoyed the material support among the local population, as well as from the British (MI6), American, and Swedish secret intelligence services. On January 12, 1949, in an effort to end the insurgency, the Soviet Council of Ministers issued a decree "on the expulsion and deportation" from Baltic states of "all kulaks and their families, the families of bandits and nationalists", and others.