Latvian Legion
| Author | : Arturs Silgailis |
| Publisher | : R.J. Bender Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 264 |
| Release | : 1986 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
Latvian Legion
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Latvia in World War II
| Author | : Valdis O. Lumans |
| Publisher | : Fordham Univ Press |
| Total Pages | : 572 |
| Release | : 2006 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780823226276 |
Valdis Lumans provides an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of one of the most complex, and conflicted, arenas of the Second World War. Struggling against both Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia emerged as an independent nation state after the First World War. In 1940, the Soviets occupied neutral Latvia, deporting or executing more than 30,000 Latvians before the Nazis invaded in 1941 and installed a puppet regime. The Red Army expelled the Germans in 1944 and reincorporated Latvia as a Soviet Republic. By the end of the war, an estimated 180,000 Latvians fled to the West. The Soviets would deport at least another 100,000. Drawing on a wide range of sources--many brought together here for the first time--Lumans synthesizes political, military, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history. He moves carefully through traditional sources, many of them partisan, to scholarship emerging since the end of the Cold War, to confront such issues as political loyalties, military collaboration, resistance, capitulation, the Soviet occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Latvian role in the Holocaust.
Latvians in the Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS
| Author | : Rolf Michaelis |
| Publisher | : Schiffer Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 111 |
| Release | : 2012 |
| Genre | : Foreign enlistment |
| ISBN | : 9780764342622 |
Roughly 40,000 Latvians served in the Waffen-SS from 1943 to the end of war in the 15. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettische Nr.1) and 19. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettische Nr.2). They fought in Russia, Latvia, West Prussia and eventually Berlin in April 1945. This book is the complete operational history of this little-known unit and includes first-hand accounts, maps, and very rare war-era photographs, and soldbuchs.
Blood in the Forest
| Author | : Vincent Hunt |
| Publisher | : Helion and Company |
| Total Pages | : 290 |
| Release | : 2017-05-04 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1912866935 |
With original research and interviews with survivors, a journalist reveals the brutal yet forgotten battles in Latvia during the final months of WWII. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler’s bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles in the fields and forests of Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were trapped with their backs to the Baltic. Forced into uniform by Nazi and Soviet occupiers, Latvian fought Latvian – sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men died for little territorial gain in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, thousands of Latvians continued a war against Soviet rule from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, Vincent Hunt travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts, piecing together the stories of those who survived. He meets veterans who fought in the Latvian Legion, former partisans and a refugee who fled the Soviet advance to later become President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. A survivor of the little-known concentration camp at Popervale details his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archives, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated from Latvian, German and Russian, Hunt assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.
The Latvian Legion in Documents
| Author | : Mirdza Kate Baltais |
| Publisher | : Amber Printers and Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 196 |
| Release | : 1999 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
American Latvians
| Author | : Ieva Zake |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 204 |
| Release | : 2017-09-08 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1351532561 |
This book analyzes the political experience of a small and unique American ethnic group-American Latvians. This community was constituted by post-World War II political refugees, who fled Communism and arrived in the United States seeking safety and protection. For decades, they insisted on preserving their ethnic identity and therefore did not call themselves Latvian Americans. Instead, they formed a distinctive double identity, that is, they blended into the American society economically and socially, but refused to become assimilated culturally and politically. The book offers a detailed look into the life of this community of political refugees, which also provides a novel perspective on the Cold War as experienced by certain ethnic groups. From a theoretical point of view, the book makes two major contributions. First, it reasserts the need to understand the generalized category of "white Americans" or "white ethnics" with more nuance and attention to differences, and, second, it strengthens the so-called realist claim that refugees are not like other immigrants. In order to achieve these goals, the book provides compelling descriptions and interpretations of the most politically relevant moments in the experience of American Latvians in the period between the 1950s and the 1990s. Concretely, the book deals with topics as the American Latvians' anti-communist activism, the impact of the hunt for Nazis on Latvian emigres, the Soviet Union's anti-emigre propaganda campaigns and the exiled Latvians' involvement in the politics of national liberation in Latvia. The author strives to reveal the complexity of the refugee experience in the United States during the Cold War and its aftermath. Since such aspects of the life of ethnic groups in the United States have not been sufficiently studied, this book makes a substantial contribution to a fuller understanding of American immigration history and sociology of ethnic groups. It is well written, expertly organized, and will be of interest to a large readership at many levels of academia.
SS Foreign Divisions & Volunteers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, 1941–1945
| Author | : Ian Baxter |
| Publisher | : Pen and Sword Military |
| Total Pages | : 190 |
| Release | : 2021-12-08 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1399012991 |
Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs SS Foreign Divisions & Volunteers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia 1942 - 1945 describes how the occupying Nazis recruited Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian conscripts into the Waffen-SS. Unlike her Latvian neighbor, Lithuania had no plans to provide Germany with a National Legion. Although volunteers came forward, the majority did not. This was not the case for Latvia and Estonia, which undertook huge recruitment programs, and thousands of men were drafted into their own foreign legion of Waffen-SS Grenadier divisions. After intensive training, these divisions saw action on the Eastern front, around Leningrad, in the Ukraine, before vicious defensive operations as the Red Army smashed its way through the Baltic States in 1944. Even in the last dying weeks of the war, what was left of the Baltic soldiers of the 15th, 19th, and 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Divisions, continued to fight alongside their Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS counterparts until they were either destroyed or surrendered. The story of these divisions is graphically told with detailed captions and text together with many contemporary images in true Images of War style.
Defining Latvia
| Author | : Michael Loader |
| Publisher | : Central European University Press |
| Total Pages | : 270 |
| Release | : 2022-03-08 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9633864461 |
In just over a century, Latvia has transitioned from imperial periphery to nation-state, then Soviet republic, and finally following the collapse of the Soviet Union to an independent republic. Defining Latvia brings together the latest research on the multiple social, political, and cultural contexts of Latvia throughout this turbulent period. Its ten chapters are written by leading political scientists, historians, and area studies specialists from across Europe and North America. The volume moves beyond an exclusively political context to incorporate a variety of social and cultural perspectives, ranging from the experiences of Latvian mapmakers in the Russian Empire, to the participation of Latvians in the Wehrmacht and Red Army during World War II, Latvian national communism, and the development of extremist politics following Latvia’s accession to the European Union. Other chapters address developing trends in the fields of history and political science, including the history of antisemitism, memory, language politics, photography, and political extremism. Based on the book’s temporal span from the nineteenth century to the present, the authors and editors of Defining Latvia understand the construction of Latvian identity as a continuous and interconnected process across significant political and ideological ruptures.
Latvia
| Author | : Paul Brummell |
| Publisher | : Bradt Travel Guides |
| Total Pages | : 332 |
| Release | : 2024-06-07 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1804690406 |
The new, sixth and thoroughly updated edition of Bradt's Latvia remains the only standalone guide to this fascinating, ever-changing Baltic nation. This small, enchantingly varied country will appeal to culture vultures, history buffs, outdoors enthusiasts and foodies alike. Connections to the US abound: Prime Minister Krisjānis Kariņs was born in Delaware, while famous US-based Latvians include tailor Jacob Davies, credited with inventing jeans, and abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko.Latvia is best known internationally through its capital city Riga, whose centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site combining a medieval core providing testimony of its importance as a port of the Hanseatic League and an outer area containing the most extensive assemblage of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. Latvia is larger than West Virginia yet, with a population of under two million, is one of Europe's most verdant countries. A low-lying landscape of forests, lakes and marshes offers an increasing range of rural tourism options facilitated by recent EU infrastructural investments. Why not go hiking or kayaking in Gauja National Park, go cycling or explore Latgale's lakes? In summer, Latvia's Baltic Sea coast comes into its own: over 300 miles long, much comprising pristine sandy beaches backed by dunes. Seaside options range from cosmopolitan Jūrmala, once a favoured holiday destination of the Soviet elite, to out of the way idyllic spots the visitor will have to themselves. Latvia's complex history results in tourist attractions ranging from medieval castles to the Baroque splendour of Rundāle Palace, and from Daugavpils's Mark Rothko arts centre to a once-secret Soviet nuclear bunker. Latvian culture and identity reaches peak expression in the five-yearly Song and Dance Festival, involving forty thousand performers, but some prefer to relax in a combination of traditional saunas and modern spas. For something completely different, you could even visit Karosta former military prison, where the intrepid can book a night in a cell, sleeping on an iron bunk.Balancing coverage of the country's cultural attractions with guidance on where and how to enjoy its natural environment, Bradt's Latvia is the perfect guidebook to inform and inspire your visit.
