Valdis O. Lumans

While meant as a survey of the post-Cold War scholarship of the Latvian experience in World War II, Lumans comes with the attitude of one who grew up with Latvian refugee nostalgia in regards to the Interwar Latvian government, and who is dead serious about debunking misplaced notions of such nostalgia and the lingering sense of victimhood. Lumans builds on his studies of the SS colonial enterprise in Eastern Europe and, if nothing else, concludes that the remaining Latvian authorities gave away too much in their effort to win autonomy from the Third Reich. Perhaps all the choices were bad, but the line between coercion and willing cooperation was eventually crossed, if only because there was a lively subculture of anti-Jewish fascism in Interwar Latvia.

Much of this then comes down to how the Latvian Legion is to be regarded: Soldiers like any other defending their homeland? Victims of Nazi hegemony? Or just another element of Heinrich Himmler's Waffen-SS? On the existing evidence Lumans is unwilling to credit the nationalist interpretation with much validity and tends to regard the Latvian Legion as just another slice of the Nazi's criminal war machine. This is as compared to the Lithuanian experience where cooperation with Berlin was as grudging as possible.

Most certainly a worthwhile study.… (plus d'informations)