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.

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.

Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust

Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust PDF Author: Edward Anders
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 9984993183
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Edward Anders, son of Adolf Alperovitch (1897-1941) and Erika Sheftelovitch-Meiran (1895-1992), was born in 1926 in Libau, Latvia. He immigrated to the United States in 1949. He married Joan Fleming in 1955. They had two children.

Blood in the Forest

Blood in the Forest PDF Author: Vincent Hunt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781913336035
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Blood in the Forest tells the brutal story of the forgotten battles of the final months of the Second World War. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler's bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles along a front line of fields and forests in Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were cut off and trapped with their backs to the Baltic. The only way out was by sea: the only chance of survival to hold back the Red Army. 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, the author travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts from seventy years before piecing together for the first time in English 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 and founder of Riga's Jewish Museum, Margers Vestermanis has never spoken about his personal experiences. Here he gives details of the SS new world order planned in Kurzeme, his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With eyewitness accounts, detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archive, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated into English from Latvian, German and Russian, the author assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a tough, uncomfortable story of a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.

The Latvian Legion (1943-1945)

The Latvian Legion (1943-1945) PDF Author: Edmunds Svencs
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781506144702
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Latvian Legion was the largest Latvian military formation that served Nazi Germany from 1943 until the end of World War II. As the most decorated non-German Waffen-SS formation, it fought from the outskirts of Leningrad until the defensive lines of Berlin. However, it also has become a focal point of heated contemporary discussions between historians of Western Europe and the Russian Federation with accusations that the Latvian Legion engaged in war crimes and supported Nazi ideology. The author analyses the development of the Latvian nation, and what influence Russia and Germany have had on it; the creation of the Latvian Legion and what lingering effects it has on today's Latvia.

Driven West, Taken East

Driven West, Taken East PDF Author: VILNIS BANKOVI?S
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1514403633
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
THIS is a translation of a WWII memoir written by a Latvian who was conscripted into the German army in 1943 at age nineteen during the German occupation of the Baltic states. He was called out of his classes at a teacher preparatory institute, along with other boys of his age group, and drafted into the newly formed Latvian Legion, created by the Germans after their defeat at Stalingrad as an adjunct force against the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The memoir, written by Vilnis Bankovics and published in a second Latvian edition in August 2014 (Mansards), provides an eyewitness-participant account of the war in Russia and Eastern Europe that has remained largely unreported in English and American histories focused on Western Europe and the Pacifi c. As such, Bankovicss account is authentic history, told in spare, straightforward prose detailing the unalterable rush of events in the wars latter half and several varieties of captivity in the years afterward. The events he recounts form an absorbing story with a natural arc: the end of his carefree schooldays, induction, basic training in Germany, battles against the Red army, being wounded several times, losing his girl and his family in the war, being betrayed by the Germans and captured by the Russians. The second half of the book depicts nighttime interrogations; mass burials; a forced march to an overcrowded, typhus-affl icted prison; bodies littering the fields and roadsides and tossed like trash into burial pits; transportation by cattle car to a forced-labor camp in the Gulag above the Arctic Circle; illness and injury and near-starvation; but an ultimate survival and a return to the Baltic states and to Latvia at the end of his ordeal. The book draws its power from this last circumstance and the gradual revelation of an even more signifi cant kind of survivalpreservation of the authors own integrity and humanity despite the trials he undergoes. As the book shows, Vilnis Bankovics remains the thoughtful, generous, and sociable person he was before his ordeal began. Maris Roze

Exile from Latvia

Exile from Latvia PDF Author: Harry G. Kapeikis
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1425134009
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Exile from Latvia is the story of a young boy's experiences before, during and after World War II, told endearingly, to touch the heart. Driven from his beloved Latvia by the Soviet Army, Harijs' family flees to Germany in the hope of being captured by the advancing American forces. The family experiences hardships of all kinds - hunger, homelessness and air raids. They brush with death many times in many ways and their life is often punctuated with misunderstandings, both humorous and tragic. Presumed guilty they must prove their innocence. The continuous migration causes Harijs to lose friends constantly. These experiences shape Harijs' life, surprisingly, in a positive way, especially in the Displaced Persons' camp under dedicated teachers and scoutmasters. There are lighter moments as young Harijs discovers girls, often handling the developing attraction in awkward though humorous ways, eventually touching the heartstrings of a girl tenderly. There is laughter, love, grief, tears and longings of the heart. Finally the anticipation of an unexpected future replaces the memories of cruelty, atrocity, hate, betrayal, misunderstandings, ignorance and fear with commitment to meet the future with confidence. During the war years Harijs made friends only to lose them. He will not lose you. You'll move alongside him through the first-person escapades of a pre-teen boy looking for answers in a senseless world.

20th Century in Latvia

20th Century in Latvia PDF Author: Source Wikipedia
Publisher: University-Press.org
ISBN: 9781230653846
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 57. Chapters: Latvia in World War II, Military history of Latvia during World War II, Singing Revolution, Occupation of the Baltic states, Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, The Holocaust in Latvia, Baltic Way, The Barricades, Reichskommissariat Ostland, On the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, January Events, Occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union 1944-1945, Latvian Legion, Destruction battalions, Courland Pocket, Occupation of the Baltic republics by Nazi Germany, Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, Baltic Entente, Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany, Latvian partisans, 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers, The Singing Revolution, 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, Estonian Sovereignty Declaration, Maslenki, Latvian resistance movement, Latvian fleet that fought for the Allies in World War II, Latvian Central Council. Excerpt: The occupation of the Baltic states refers to the military occupation of the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union under the auspices of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 14 June 1940 followed by their forcible illegal incorporation into the USSR as constituent republics. On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR and within weeks occupied a significant part of it including the Baltic republics. In July 1941 the Baltic territory was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland of the Third Reich. As a result of the Baltic Offensive of 1944, Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states and trapped remaining German forces in Courland pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945. The Soviet "annexation occupation" (Annexionsbesetzung or occupation sui generis) of the Baltic states lasted until August 1991 when the Baltic states regained independence. The...

Military History of Latvia During World War Ii

Military History of Latvia During World War Ii PDF Author: Source Wikipedia
Publisher: University-Press.org
ISBN: 9781230483979
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 32. Chapters: Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, The Holocaust in Latvia, Reichskommissariat Ostland, Occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union 1944-1945, Latvian Legion, Destruction battalions, Courland Pocket, Occupation of the Baltic republics by Nazi Germany, Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany, 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers, 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, Maslenki, Latvian fleet that fought for the Allies in World War II. Excerpt: The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the Government of Latvia, the State Department of the United States of America, and the European Union, to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union ostensibly under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. When World War II started in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, Latvia had already come under the Soviet sphere of influence in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its Secret Additional Protocol of August 1939. In the reassessment period of the Soviet history that began during the Perestroika, the USSR in 1989 condemned the 1939 secret protocol between Nazi Germany and herself that had led to the invasion and occupation of the three Baltic countries, including Latvia. While Russia acknowledged in a treaty with Lithuania the adverse impact by the USSR on Lithuania's sovereignty prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, no such acknowledgment by Russia exists with regard to Estonia or Latvia, and the central authorities of the USSR did not acknowledge occupation prior to its dissolution. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Latvia's sovereignty was restored in 1991. The last Soviet troops withdrew from the Republic of Latvia in August 1994. M s esam k starp...

Latvia in World War II

Latvia in World War II PDF Author: Valdis Lumans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780082322627
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description


Latvia in World War II

Latvia in World War II PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Exhibitions
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description