On June 23, 1941, at 9:28 am, "Tautiška giesmė", the national anthem of Lithuania, was played on the radio in Kaunas. LAF member Leonas Prapuolenis read the independence declaration Atstatoma laisva Lietuva (Free Lithuania is Restored). Prapuolenis announced the members of the provisional government and also asked the people to guard public and private property, asked workers to organize protection of factories, public institutions, and other important objects, and asked policemen to patrol their territories preserving the general public order. The message was repeated several times in Lithuanian, German, and French.
The first meeting of the provisional government took place on June 24. LAF activist Juozas Ambrazevičius replaced Kazys Škirpa, who was under house arrest in Berlin, as the prime minister. The new government attempted to take full control of the country, establish the proclaimed independence, and start a de-Sovietization campaign. During its six-week existence, over 100 laws, some prepared in advance, were issued, dealing with de-nationalization of land, enterprises, and real estate, restoration of local administrative units, formation of police, and other issues. The government did not have power in the Vilnius Region, under the control of a different army group. Hoping to survive, the government cooperated fully with the Nazi authorities.
The Germans did not recognize the new government, but also did not take any actions to dissolve it by force (unlike the government of Stepan Bandera in Ukraine). At first, German military administration tolerated the activities of the government as it did not attempt to take control of civilian institutions. The Reichskommissariat Ostland, German civil administration (Zivilverwaltung), was established on July 17. Rather than use brute force, the civil administration slowly removed the government's powers (for example, not allowing it to print its decrees in newspapers, or broadcast radio announcements) and supplanted its institutions, forcing the provisional government to either self-disband or to become a puppet institution. Willing to cooperate if that meant recognition and some semblance of autonomy, the government did not agree to become an instrument of German occupation. The government self-disbanded on August 5 after signing a protest against the Germans usurping the powers of the Lithuanian government.
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File:Session of the Provisional Government of Lithuania.jpg|A session of the Provisional Government of Lithuania under the chairmanship of Juozas Ambrazevičius
File:Last session of the Provisional Government of Lithuania.jpg|Participants of the last session of the provisional government
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Aftermath and controversies
thumb|right|Funeral of the June Uprising casualties in [[Kaunas on June 26, 1941]]
Usurpation of public life continued after the demise of the provisional government. The Lithuanian Activist Front was banned in September 1941 and some of its leaders transported to concentration camps. In December, the last legal party of Lithuania, pro-Nazi , was also banned. Most of the laws adopted by the provisional government remained paper declarations. However, a couple of laws of no immediate interest to the Germans, including local administration and education, had somewhat lasting effects. The remaining government developed local administration staffed with Lithuanians. Thia allowed some passive resistance when German orders from the top could be blocked by the bottom. For example, Lithuanians resisted recruiting for a Waffen-SS division, quotas for forced labor in Germany, and the Germanization of Lithuanian schools. However, many museums, libraries, and other cultural centres were plundered by the Nazis, and the artefacts shipped to Germany. As they retreated from Lithuania, the Nazis burned hundreds of buildings, plants, bridges and railways to the ground before the advancing Soviet troops, and transported some of the disassembled machinery, inventories, and raw materials to Germany.
Despite its failure to establish independence and meager long-term results, as Kazys Škirpa summarized in his memoirs, the uprising demonstrated the determination of the Lithuanian people to have their own independent state and dispelled the myth that Lithuania had joined the Soviet Union voluntarily in June 1940. The uprising also contributed to unusually rapid German advances against the Soviet Union; Pskov was reached in 17 days. The events of June 1941 also caused some controversies. At the time, Lithuanian diplomats abroad, including former president Antanas Smetona and Stasys Lozoraitis, described the uprising as "Nazi-inspired". The Provisional Government has been criticized for antisemitic slogans and decrees, particularly the (Regulations on the Status of Jews) of August 1. Its military unit, the Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas (TDA), was employed by the Einsatzkommando and Rollkommando Hamann and local Lithuanian collaborators often drawn from the LAF in the mass executions of Lithuanian Jews in the Seventh fort of the Kaunas Fortress and in the provinces. Jewish survivors and Lithuanian historians have documented that members of the LAF, especially in Kaunas but also in other towns, committed indiscriminate and gruesome excesses against Jewish residents, including mass killings of unarmed civilians, including women and children, often before the Nazis arrived to take control, most notably characterized by the Kaunas pogrom but also in many other towns throughout Lithunania.