Peteris, - and Karlis Streips,

Had you been young men during the German occupation of Latvia, what would you have done? 

My previous question to you, Peteris, was real.  Which of the options I listed would have been your choice instead of serving in the Legion?  It’s much easier to focus on and criticize March 16 and to wish the Latvian Legion remembrance would just go away to Lestene or wherever, but it’s really avoiding the much bigger issue:  “What would you have done differently, young man, to escape wearing the despicable German uniform?” Peteri? Karli?  You could be among those Latvian Legion soldiers now being discarded to Lestene as an embarrassment to the trimda-born Janisi, Karlisi, and Peterisi they “saved” - and to the new, much braver, far more noble Latvia of today and its assortment of occupation-abdulinatie Latvians and others. 

History will no doubt view today’s Latvian leaders as truly worthy of the Latvian Nation’s trust and they will have our eternal gratitude for the bravery and courage of their deeds - unlike those Latvians who got us into the darn Legion mess - unless someone someday decides it just wasn’t very noble for a Nation to not honor with dignity the young soldiers it asked to go to war for every sorry Latvian ass.

War is ugly but no need to make it even uglier.

Re the Legion “saving” the trimda, Dr. Kārlis Kangeris --

Viens mīts par trimdas rašanos, kura radīšanā sevišķi aktīvi darbojušies bijušie Latviešu leģiona virsnieki un karavīru organizācijas, ir tāds, ka tikai Leģiona dēļ latviešiem dota iespēja atstāt Latviju, resp., ka tikai Leģiona pastāvēšanas dēļ vācieši tos glābuši no boļševisma.

“Latviešu leģiona cīņas prasīja 80 000 dzīvības upuru, tā glābjot ap 120 000 latviešu no otrās padomju okupācijas”. (Alfrēds Puķīte “Nerimtīgais cīnītājs”. DVM 1981, Nr.4.).

“Pēc divdesmit gadiem svešumā tūkstoši latviešu var pateikties leģionāru augumiem, dzīviem vai smiltīs iemītiem kauju grāvī, par iespēju pārkļūt pāri Baltijas jūrai bēgļu laivās. Karavīri deva brīvu pieeju jūrai, atturēdami ienaidnieka uzmākšanos”. (Andrejs Eglītis “Asiņainie brīvības sapņi”. DVM 1965, Nr.3).

“Tāpat lielākā daļa no mums, šodien brīvajā pasaulē esošajiem, par savu brīvību var pateikties latviešu leģionam. Ir ļoti apšaubāms, vai vācieši būtu latviešu evakuācijai atļāvuši lielo kuģu tonnāžu, ja tiem nebūtu bijis jārēķinās ar leģionu kā ar spēka faktoru militārajā laukā. [Arī bēgļu tiesības, kuras Himlers kā Vācijas iekšlietu ministrs piešķīra latviešim, uzskatāmas vienīgi par leģiona nopelnu]”. (Plkv.Arturs Silgailis “Latviešu leģiona nozīme”. DV 1958, Nr.4).

Visu cieņu latviešu leģionāru varonīgajai cīņai. Tomēr, tuvāk ieskatoties pašu vāciešu dokumentos, šim apgalvojumam, kas kļuvis jau par mītu, nav atrodams apstiprinājums. No Baltijas neizveda tikai vien latviešus un igauņus, kuriem bija “leģioni”, — tāpat izveda arī lietuviešus, kas atteicās veidot šādu “leģionu”. [Nemaz nerunājot par dažādām Krievijas teritorijā dzīvojošām tautām.] Pat leģionāru piederīgajiem evakuācijā nebija nekādu “privilēģiju”, ja neskaita to, ka latviešu leģiona ģenerālinspektora un Karavīru palīdzības pārstāvji drīkstēja tos mudināt uz evakuāciju. Ir pēdējais laiks būt godīgiem pret savu vēsturi.

“Trimdas sākumi un tālākā attīstība”

“Discarded to Lestene,” Ambersun? The Cemetery of the Brethren there is hardly a dustbin. Daugavas Vanagi is still seeking donations for the project—donate.

As to what I would have done—that would depend when and where I was born, wouldn’t it? Tens of thousands of Latvians were conscripted by the Soviets, too—does Visu Latvijai! honor them with a “karogu aleja”? Were I subject to the German draft, I probably would have served as a translator, like my father did. How would that change anything I said?

Vysu lobu,
/P

Peteris,
When the Latvians were conscripted by the occupying Germans, they were not blessed with your remarkable 20/20 hindsight or the world-wide internet. Well, you know that , but just seem to forget.  They were virtually and most definitely isolated from the rest of the world, unless reading German-Occupation Zeitung is your idea of being able to stay current.  And, lest we forget, militarily abandoned by the preoccupied West.  They definitely had more than a notion of what a repeat Soviet-takeover of Latvia would be about, right? 

It’s not for me to second-guess the thinking of Latvian leaders under German occupation who chose the course they did.  It’s not hard for me to understand why young, patriotic, traumatized Latvians in occupied Latvia would want to believe and hope that by getting any weapon in their hands, they just might be able to fight for Latvia. 

If Latvians were also grabbed by Soviets to fight against even other Latvians, was there even the slightest illusion that this was fighting for Latvia? Few, if any, were actually deluded that “excess” was not inherent in the Soviet “experiment” with human beings.  Was there any illusion that Soviet Russia would restore Latvian idependence if its cynically-sacrificed-as-gun-fodder soldiers re-occupied Latvia?  Even the sane or brainwash-spared Russians in Russia did not want the repeat of Soviet Russia, especially those having “camp” experience in the Gulag or survivors of various, including, Jewish, purges.  Robert Conquest, author of much including The Great Terror, shares in his 2005 Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History some Russian dark humor, roughly paraphrased - you could kill off both monsters of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia but you’d have to be alive to do it. 

To give national tribute to Latvia’s soldiers - who did not invite or desire either the Soviet or Nazi occupation of Latvia but who wanted Latvia’s freedom and independence while being forced by awful circumstances to fight in any army - is the right thing to do.  To personally lay flowers at your occupier- grandfather’s grave because he willingly or unwillingly served Stalin in Soviet-Russia’s triumph in re-occupying Latvia and imprisoning Latvia for fifty-plus years is the right thing to do.

PS My father is peacefully resting in Lestene.

Most of what you said above I can wholeheartedly agree with, Ambersun. But I think you’re intentionally missing every point I make.

I once brought up a gentleman I intensely dislike, Aleksandr Gilman, and how I could understand his position as he espoused it on TV quite clearly—in his view, the Legion defended the Third Reich whilst his relative was forced to leap across a minefield.

The Legion fought for Germany, Ambersun—intent has little to do with it. A German victory would have destroyed the Latvian nation. The Soviet victory did not destroy the Latvian nation. Was one occupier better than the other? Boil that down, please. Yes, you can say with conviction that most of the Holocaust in Latvia was finished by the time the Legion was formed. Fine. But the Holocaust was still going on. 

Is that the Legionnaires’ fault? Absolutely not—but I’ve said that again and again. So, please—commemorate the sacrifices of the Legionnaires. But please don’t pretend that the Soviet Union did not defeat Nazi Germany, and don’t pretend that Latvia would have benefited from a German victory. That’s not what you wish to do— but scroll up and see how I attempted to distinguish between honoring and glorifying.

The fact remains that Nazi Germany is something no one will revise their hatred for—‘cause it was hateful. You can try to explain that the Latvians who fought weren’t supporting Nazi Germany, ‘cause that’s true in their minds. You can make that understood. What you can’t do is try to overturn the fact that they were fighting for Nazi Germany, directed by German Nazis.

The Soviets were Allies of the West at the time—I’m sure you know the famous Churchill quote about a pact with the Devil. The entire free world was devoted to defeating Nazism. Nazism was defeated, Gott sei dank. The Legion fought on the wrong side, period. It’s not their fault, Latvia was not liberated, etc.

But you are not going to turn them into heroes, ever. Because they were not. Again—not their fault.

Honor them, bear flowers to their graves, explain the history, etc.—but give up on trying to redefine what is called a World War, because it was indeed a world war.

Well over a hundred thousand Latvian citizens died because of the Nazis—not just Jews or Gypsies, but your beloved ethnic Latvians (about 30 000). This all took place in the same mechanism that mobilized the Legion.

Go, mourn, honor—fine. But don’t expect a country that suffered mass murder to enjoy its glorification. It won’t happen—because it does not deserve glorification, period, whether such glorification might serve some Freudian purpose in excusing the fact that Latvia officially welcomed the occupiers in 1940 or not.

Regards,
/P

P.S. As to fighting for Latvia in your sense, again the Voltaire: “It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”

Peteris,
Please read No Simple Victory, World War II in Europe, 1939-1945, by Norman Davies.
The following is an interesting, thought-provoking review:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/no_simple_victory/

From the previous link, review by Michael Cook, MercatorNet:

More than 60 years have passed since the Second World War ended in Europe. Surely this is time enough to dispel myths and to establish a grand synthesis of “the Good War”, as Studs Terkel entitled his famous oral history. Yet despite the abundance of documents, history texts, movies and novels, the distinguished British historian Norman Davies finds that most notions of the war are based on “dubious historical assumptions”.

When pressed, most people’s knowledge of the war in Europe is highlighted in Steven Spielberg’s brilliant films Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List: the heroism of the “greatest generation” and the unspeakable depravity of the Holocaust. But terrible as these are, they leave most of what happened between 1939 and 1945 in darkness.

For example, what was the biggest battle of the war? Most Americans and British would probably say Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. Indeed, it was big—about 132,000 men died in six weeks. But in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s blitzkrieg towards Moscow, which lasted about six months, 1,582,000 died. If you could do sums in human suffering, the Eastern Front would easily win.

Or in which theatre did the armies fight the hardest? In terms of millions of man-months at war, it was also the Eastern Front. All told, the campaigns in North Africa, Italy and the Western Front absorbed 25.9 million man-months. The figure for the Eastern Front was 406 million.

Even the question of who won the war is hardly clear-cut. Nazi Germany undoubtedly lost. But if the liberal democracies were fighting to bring the light of democracy and freedom to Europe, it is hard to say that they triumphed. Eastern Europe disappeared behind an Iron Curtain erected by America and Britain’s erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. Despite the despicable nature of the regime and its paranoiac and bloodthirsty rule, the USSR “fought the final phase of the war as the strongest power in Europe”, with millions of people shackled to Communist regimes for more than 40 years. Astonishingly, the allies who had planned D-Day so meticulously failed to nail down what they meant by “spheres of influence”.

Bubble-bursting conclusions like this keep tumbling out of the pages of Davies’s book. He concludes that it was the Soviet Union which defeated the Nazi war machine, with the British and Americans providing little more than “a sound supporting role” in the European theatre. Lest he seem a revisionist leftist or left-over Stalinist or a cranky anti-American, he is not. As an Oxford don who made his reputation with God’s Playground, a fine history of Poland, he simply wants a history stripped of nationalistic bias. Europe at War is the latest installment in his efforts to emphasise the importance of the “peripheries” in contemporary history.

Davies’s survey opens with the apparently simple issue of when the war began. A new memorial in Washington DC, which was built for the sixtieth anniversary of its conclusion, bears the words “World War Two, 1941-45”. The Poles, the British, the Norwegians, the French, the Dutch, the Belgians and the Danes, amongst others, feel differently. Michael Caine, the British actor, is said to have withdrawn his children from an American school when they told him that the war began in 1941.

A balanced viewpoint matters. Unless the United States, the world’s dominant power at the moment, acknowledges the sufferings and contributions made by other countries in the past, it is sure to misjudge their motives and reactions in the present. After reading Europe at War, the American reaction to 9/11 immediately springs to mind. Davies points out that the human and material losses sustained by the Poles in 1944 Warsaw Rising were 60 times as great as New York suffered on 11 September 2001 – “a World Trade Center disaster every day for two months”. Some European countries endured suffering for which there are no words – and no Hollywood movies. Britain’s civilian losses amounted to 0.1 per cent of its population. This was lamentable, but how can it be compared to 18 per cent in Poland and 25 per cent in Byelorussia?

In his iconoclastic way, Davies pricks the bubble of complacent historians by constantly raising the twin issues of proportionality and criminality. The first is directed at his Western colleagues: “the largest space and the greatest emphasis [should] be given to the biggest and most decisive events”. It would be odd, he suggests, for a history of the War to focus on the campaign in Luxembourg. Similarly, a history of the War which devotes 50 pages to D-Day and 5 lines to the crucial Battle of Kursk, in which Hitler’s forces were finally whipped and forced to retreat, is simply not objective.

(cont’d from above)

Criminality is an issue for historians who want to depict World War II as “The Good War”, principally in Russia, but also in the liberal democracies. Stalin was every bit as evil as Hitler. While the Nazis built Auschwitz, where 450,000 are believed to have perished, the Soviet concentration camps were far more numerous and far bigger. The Dalstroy, in northeastern Siberia, is estimated to have devoured 3 million lives over about three decades. German treatment of its 5.2 million Soviet POWs was merciless, with most of them dying within a few months of capture. But about half of the 4.5 million German POWs held by the Soviets perished. Survivors did not return home until 1953. With Stalin as an ally, it is hard to characterize the conflict as a “good war”.

Furthermore, the liberal democracies, for all their insistence on high ideals, had a record which was far from spotless. Davies has a particular contempt for the carpet bombing of cities in Germany and elsewhere, in which tens of thousands of civilians were incinerated “for no known military purpose”. Thousands of soldiers were also forcibly repatriated by the Allies to the Soviets and shot immediately or sent to Siberia.

Apart from serving as a provocative icebreaker in conversations, Europe at War is a bottomless source of anecdotes and movie scenarios. In some respects an unconventional author (his short history of Poland opens with the present and concludes with the beginning), Davies divides his latest book into chapters on military action, diplomacy, stories of soldiers and stories of civilians. The latter are illuminating, gut-wrenching and sometimes entertaining. I had never, for instance, heard of Pearl Witherington, a young British woman in occupied France who ran a network of 1,500 agents and saboteurs. She was awarded an MBE for civil distinction, because only men were given Military Crosses. She declined, saying, “I have done nothing civil”.

Apart from serving as a provocative icebreaker in conversations, Europe at War is a bottomless source of anecdotes and movie scenarios.

Jēzus un Marija—do you ever read what you paste?

I’d love to read the book, but I have a long want list, an average income, and a frozen salary—eggs are almost a lats now (not a dozen but 10, and 90 s becomes more in dollars as we speak!).

If you think it will make me catch Dzintarsunitis—send it on!

Vysu lobu,
/P, a provocative icebreaker in conversations

Our ever suffering /politruk is again heroically waving his red flag:

“But the fact is that they fought for the Third Reich,”

Sheesh – nobody told us that, in August 1944 when we volunteered.

For the Third Reich in 1944?

Mr. L. L.

It seems to me that /politruk is hallucinating – talking on this forum to “Jēzus un Marija”

L.

The madness of myths - Edward Lucas
From The Economist, Nov 9th 2006
Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory, by Norman Davies

WHATEVER you think about the second world war is wrong, and this book will prove it. That, at least, is the contention of Norman Davies, a trenchant British-born historian whose scope, ambition and knowledge about Europe are unmatched. His aim in this new history of the war is to puncture the comfortable myths created by the combination of popular culture (especially in films) plus the self-centred history taught in schools.

Decades of junk history have given most if not all citizens of the countries that participated in it a picture of the war that is distorted, incomplete, or sometimes downright wrong. Britain’s much-praised Dunkirk spirit and suffering during the Blitz is a sideshow compared with the gore and grit of occupied Poland. Most countries define second world war “war crimes” as something committed only by Germany and her allies; difficult subjects, such as Allied atrocities or Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, get short shrift.

Mr Davies’s biggest demolition job is of the factual errors and ignorance that support the complacent national versions of wartime history. One notable example is the British myth that says that the island fortress stood “alone” against Hitler in 1940, which rudely neglects the efforts made by the Poles, Greeks and others.

But these pale beside the monstrous failure of the Western powers to appreciate, then or later, the nature of their Soviet ally. The biggest and bloodiest struggle by far of the European war was between two gangster regimes whose awful treatment of their own people and neighbours is unmatched before or since. That, argues Mr Davies, makes it hard if not impossible to say that the war was any kind of struggle between a good and evil side.

The Western alliance with Stalin and its consequences is the central theme of this book. But along the way the author pokes mercilessly at misapprehensions large and small. The war was not fought to stop the Holocaust. British and American readers may be surprised to learn (though they shouldn’t be) that their countries’ role in land warfare was so feeble. El Alamein, the much-praised British victory in north Africa, was a mere pub brawl compared with the battles of Midway and Stalingrad.

Mr Davies’s two main weapons are the devastating statistic and the unexpected comparison. Stalin’s death camps killed more people than Hitler’s. America’s army in 1939 was smaller than Poland’s. The casualties of the 1944 Warsaw uprising were the equivalent of the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre, every day for two months.

The effect is powerful and, for the most part, convincing. The war was an appalling and complicated mess, in which heroism, individual and collective, was balanced and often outweighed by cowardice, cruelty and incompetence, and—worse—dreadful compromises and surrenders dictated by realpolitik and dressed up in the language of patriotism and morality. After reading this book, not every reader will rethink his or her view of the war altogether, but most will find their thinking enriched and stimulated by new facts and viewpoints. The muscular prose and spiky jokes are treats too.
[. ...]

(my italics)

And what does this have to do with the subject at hand? Did I say Stalin was a nicer guy than Hitler?

Anyway, it’s taimauts for me—I’ll be overwhelmed by work for the next several weeks.

Vysu lobu,
/P

I chose not to jump in on this discussion earlier for all it does is reiterate what has been chewed and spit out many times before and was occupied. Peter C. and his great “wisdom” and “hindsight” will always be in disagreement with me and that makes me feel good. He can cut and paste all he wants to but that will not make him a writer.
I chose to honor the day by flying the Latvian flag lowered to honor the men and women who fought for Latvia.
My thoughts are that they fought for Latvia otherwise it would not have taken the “Russians occupiers” past 1967 to root out “bandits” . As my uncle ( a legionnaire) stated “ The Legion never surrendered but faded into the woods”. I remember the grandson of the partisan Leonīds Reimanis asking about information so I sent him photographs of his grave in Ogāles forest where he was killed by the Russians September 6, 1953 (a legionnaire) . He fought for Latvia.
Peter seems to think that by “Russia” winning , Latvia remained a country and as usual I disagree. There was mass deportation in 1949 and was going to be another in 1953-54 and probably one later until Latvia only had Russians residing in it. The only thing that stopped it was Stalin’s death and the many power struggles that came after in Moscow. Either way Latvia was not going to exist.
As Peter I will also be overwhelmed by having just returning from St. Louis and having tickets to the NCAA Tournament in Tampa Florida will be forced to leave the Midwest to several days of sunshine. If we win then I will be “forced” to go to Phoenix Arizona and after that to San Antonio Texas. What hardships.

Why don’t the Russians celebrate the memory of Latvian Rifles, who sacrificed so much to stop the German invaders from marching to Sanct Petersburg through Latvia?  Why didn’t the Soviets give credit to the Red Latvian rifles who faithfully guarded Lenin and his cohorts, and who were aways in the forefront, fighting for the Revolution?

The answer is very simple.  If they celebrated the accomplishments of the Latvian soldiers in the Soviet Union, they also would have to explain why so many of them were murdered during Stalin’s purges, why Latvian organizations were abolished and their property looted, and why so many Latvians were deported to Siberia as “fascists,” to freeze and starve in concentration camps.

Labrīt!

Can’t resist some comedy with my coffee.

Peter seems to think that by “Russia” winning , Latvia remained a country and as usual I disagree. There was mass deportation in 1949 and was going to be another in 1953-54 and probably one later until Latvia only had Russians residing in it. The only thing that stopped it was Stalin’s death and the many power struggles that came after in Moscow. Either way Latvia was not going to exist.

Nowhere do I say that Latvia remained a country (except, of course, de jure) with “Russia” (the USSR) winning. The fact is, though, that Latvia was not going to be a country with Nazi Germany winning, either. If you can speculate on whether all Latvians would have been deported under the Soviets, had Stalin lived—then you can also read about Generalplan Ost and German plans for the deportation of most Latvians and the colonization of Latvia by Germans and/or the Dutch. As it is, Stalin did die and Latvia still has Latvians in it—we’ve regained our independence. I’m not talking about taking a pick between Ostland and the Latvian SSR. I’ve said repeatedly that there’s no reason to prefer Stalin to Hitler —but there’s no reason to prefer Hitler to Stalin, either, and to do so is to denigrate the memory of those Latvians who opposed both regimes.

As to the Forest Brothers—Lithuania had a large resistance movement without having had a Legion.

Why didn’t the Soviets give credit to the Red Latvian rifles who faithfully guarded Lenin and his cohorts, and who were aways in the forefront, fighting for the Revolution?

They didn’t? Why do you think there’s a huge statue colloquially known as “three drunks,” depicting Red Riflemen, in front of the Occupation Museum—which was built as the Riflemen’s Museum? Why do you think songs like “Latvieši sarkano strēlnieku laukumā Spīdolas dziesmu dzied...” were performed at the Song Festival during the occupation?

Russian nationalists today (and others—Ukrainians, for example) obviously don’t honor the Red Riflemen—instead they blame them for being important to the imposition of Soviet rule. I think it is important to note that the Red Riflemen were not Latvian in terms of their citizenship—the Rīga Treaty of 1920 specifically disowns them, in fact.

Regards,
/P

I thought you were going to be busy. While being busy do some research about Lithuania. They had 56,000+ soldiers serving the Reich. When they found out that the Russians were at their door they tried to organize a l\Legion but it was to late. The number of Forest Brothers is not the issue here but were these people fighting for their country. Don’t muddle up excuses to defend yourself.