Latvia TOURISM

History

---

Each year, since 1998, veterans of the World War II Latvian Legion and their family members, have gone to memorial services in churches and cemeteries in Latvia on March 16 to remember fellow soldiers that died in the war. During the German occupation of Latvia (1941-1944) over 100,000 Latvians were conscripted into combat units that fought against the Stalin's Red Army on the Eastern Front.

This annual remembrance of Latvians who wore German uniforms to fight against the  Soviet Union has generated political controversy, some minor protests and modest international media attention, largely because of misunderstandings about the historical role of the Latvian Legion during World War II. In some cases, the misunderstandings arise from a simple unfamiliarity with the facts. In others, there is a calculated attempt to misrepresent the role of Legion veterans, both today, and during World War II.

Most of the estimated 100,000 young Latvian men that made up the Latvian Legion were forcibly mobilized to fight on Germany's collapsing Eastern Front. Draft evasion was punishable by death. The Soviets were advancing, the Germans were retreating and the Latvians were called up to fill the gap. While Hitler's racist policies had forbidden the use non-German combatants in the early stages of the war, by 1943, desperation overruled discrimination. Similar non-German Waffen SS combat units were established in France, Italy, Hungary, Ukraine, Estonia and Belarus, all in a last ditch German effort to prevent defeat.

Hitler's mass extermination of Jews in Latvia had already ended in 1943, long before the Latvian Legion combat units were formed. This was recognized by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, when the Latvian Legion and other conscripted non-German Waffen SS units were exempted from criminal charges associated with the Nazi Holocaust.

The Latvians that were drafted into the Latvian Legion were neither Nazis nor fascists, nor did they wish to see a Nazi German victory in the war. They were young men, who had just seen their loved ones and friends executed and deported by the thousands by the departing Soviet regime. Stalin's brutal Russification of Latvia had been cut short by the German invasion in 1941, and there was every indication it would be resumed once the Soviet army pushed the Germans out and re-occupied Latvia.

Moscow has always viewed the Legion veterans as enemies of the Soviet state and sent them to Soviet labour camps after the war. When the USSR collapsed, the Russian government officially preserved this hostility and has routinely condemned the remembrance of the Legion veterans on March 16th in Latvia. This criticism, however, has often gone beyond the historical facts and wrongly accused the Latvian Legion of war crimes, fascism and complicity in the Holocaust.

History is always a subject of interpretation, and three brutal military occupations in a 5-year period during World War II, have made Latvia's history especially difficult for non-historians to understand. For Latvia, this was an especially tragic period when most who were caught between two invading armies became victims of forces far beyond their control.    

In recent years, some radical political groups have tried to disrupt the quiet March 16th  events to call attention to themselves and their political causes. They have been condemned by Latvian authorities as well as the former Legion soldiers. But most who go to church or cemeteries on that day have no political agenda whatsoever. They are simply paying their respects to 100,000 fathers, sons and friends who became tragic victims of a very costly and complicated war.

---

Latvia Tourism