Latvians in the Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS

Latvians in the Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS PDF Author: Rolf Michaelis
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN: 9780764342622
Category : Foreign enlistment
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
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.

Latvians in the Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS

Latvians in the Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS PDF Author: Rolf Michaelis
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN: 9780764342622
Category : Foreign enlistment
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
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.

Hitler's Police Battalions

Hitler's Police Battalions PDF Author: Edward B. Westermann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
When the German Wehrmacht swarmed across Eastern Europe, an elite corps followed close at its heels. Along with the SS and Gestapo, the Ordnungspolizei, or Uniformed Police, played a central role in Nazi genocide that until now has been generally neglected by historians of the war. Beginning with the invasion of Poland, the Uniformed Police were charged with following the army to curb resistance, pacify the countryside, patrol Jewish ghettos, and generally maintain order in the conquered territories. Edward Westermann examines how this force emerged as a primary instrument of annihilation, responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of the Third Reich's political and racial enemies. In Hitler's Police Battalions he reveals how the institutional mindset of these "ordinary policemen" allowed them to commit atrocities without a second thought. To uncover the story of how the German national police were fashioned into a corps of political soldiers, Westermann reveals initiatives pursued before the war by Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create a culture within the existing police forces that fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as institutional norms. Challenging prevailing interpretations of German culture, Westermann draws on extensive archival research—including the testimony of former policemen—to illuminate this transformation and the callous organizational culture that emerged. Purged of dissidents, indoctrinated to idolize Hitler, and trained in military combat, these police battalions-often numbering several hundred men-repeatedly conducted actions against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, asocials, and other groups on their own initiative, even when they had the choice not to. In addition to documenting these atrocities, Westermann examines cooperation between the Ordnungspolizei and the SS and Gestapo, and the close relationship between police and Wehrmacht in the conduct of the anti-partisan campaign of annihilation. Throughout, Westermann stresses the importance of ideological indoctrination and organizational initiatives within specific groups. It was the organizational culture of the Uniformed Police, he maintains, and not German culture in general that led these men to commit genocide. Hitler's Police Battalions provides the most complete and comprehensive study to date of this neglected branch of Himmler's SS and Police empire and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust and the war on the Eastern front.

Armored Vehicles and Units of the German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei), 1936-1945

Armored Vehicles and Units of the German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei), 1936-1945 PDF Author: Werner Regenberg
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN: 9780764315558
Category : Armored vehicles, Military
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Covers the wide variety of vehicles used by the German police during World War II, as well as units and organization.

Defining Latvia

Defining Latvia PDF Author: Michael Loader
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633864461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
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.

American Latvians

American Latvians PDF Author: Ieva Zake
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 141284343X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
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 émigrés, the Soviet Union’s anti-émigré 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.

Police Battalions of the Third Reich

Police Battalions of the Third Reich PDF Author: Stephen E. Campbell
Publisher: Schiffer Military History
ISBN: 9780764327711
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The role that the German Police Battalions played in the destruction of the Jews and the Eastern European nationalities that the Third Reich had deemed superfluous or dangerous is little known. Only in the last fifteen years with the opening of the Soviet archives has their role in the deaths of millions become known. The German Police, often aided by local auxiliaries shot at close range over a million people in less than two years. Later in the war the battalions were formed into regiments and absorbed into the SS where they were active in the hunt for partisan bands behind the front lines. In this book you will find a history of each battalion and the men who participated in these actions. Many of these men who survived the war were never tried. Instead they continued their careers in law enforcement with many retiring with pensions from positions of importance.

Eavesdropping on Hell

Eavesdropping on Hell PDF Author: Robert J. Hanyok
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486481271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.

Police in Nazi Germany

Police in Nazi Germany PDF Author: Paul Garson
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445687178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Stunning images, many of which are previously unpublished, documenting how many German police officers became tools of the Nazi's holocaust agenda.

Latvia in World War II

Latvia in World War II PDF Author: Valdis O. Lumans
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 9780823226276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
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.

The Waffen-SS

The Waffen-SS PDF Author: Jochen Böhler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198790554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought - either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures - for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars - many of them included in this volume - The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genocide, in terms of everyday life, language, and ideological training? Did a common transnational identity emerge as a result of shared ideological convictions or experiences of extreme violence? In order to address these questions (and others), The Waffen-SS adopts an approach that does justice to the complexity of the subject, adding a more nuanced, empirically sound understanding of collaboration in Europe during World War II, while also seeking to push the methodological boundaries of the historiographical genre of perpetrator studies by adopting a transnational approach.