Kicking off the Latvian Calendar Follies
The coming of March is the annual kick-off for Latvia’s annual “Calendar Follies”. The first date is, of course, March 16, when the World War II Latvian Waffen-SS or Legion is commemorated, protested, misrepresented and used as a toxic political icon. The other recurring dates are May 9, celebrated as Victory in Europe Day mostly by ethnic Russians and reviled by Latvian nationalists. On a more low-key scale, the next date is May 15, when some nationalists drive around in a “convoy” waving Latvian flags to commemorate the abolition of parliamentary democracy in 1934 by Kārlis Ulmanis, who would later effectively surrender the independent Latvian armed forces to the Soviets in 1940. That cleared the way for the German occupation authorities to form, (essentially conscript — either this or labor service under Allied bombs in Germany) a Freiwillige or volunteer Waffen-SS starting in 1943, bringing us back around to March 16.
Not knowing the subtleties and bizarre aspects of Latvian history (and 99.99% of the world doesn’t know this) it is reasonable to ask: what possible sense can in make to publicly commemorate and honor (the word is used) people who, for whatever reason, wore German uniforms and fought with German weapons mainly against the Soviet Union when it was clear that Germany, after much more epic bloodletting, would lose the war?
The “whatever reason” can sometimes be weakly argued — the fresh memories of Soviet terror in 1940–41- ignorance of the war situation under German censorship and isolation — vague hopes of being rewarded with “Latvian independence” in the highly unlikely case that the Germans somehow fought the Soviets to standstill or “won” on the Eastern front. There is also the argument that the valiant fight by the 19th Latvian Waffen-SS division (the other unit, the 15th had been evacuated to the West) kept the path open for Latvian refugees to flee (officially) to Germany and (clandestinely) to Sweden. However, Latvian forces comprised only a small percentage of the German order of battle in Kurzeme (Kurland) — some 189 000 Germans at the surrender in May 1945, and only 14 000 Latvians. The heavy armored units and air forces were also German. While there were undoubtedly heroic parts of the six big Kurland battles where Latvians were present, their contribution could not have been decisive.
It has also been said that one should honor the last remaining (90+ year-old) veterans of the Latvian Legion who fought valiantly against the Red Army (and conscripted Latvian units on the Soviet side?) and the many who fell in battle and didn’t live to see their generation grow old. Many others were taken prisoner by the Soviets and suffered various forms of repression from deportation to Siberia to lifelong stigma and the inability to get jobs or an education. But that would make March 16 the commemoration of suffering and a tragedy, with little need to emphasize the “heroic” contribution of the Legion…to what?
One part of the March 16 scenario that we have seen in Latvia for several years is a visit by the few remaining Legionnaires and their families and supporters to a soldiers’ cemetery in Lestene. That makes a bit more sense than the march to the Freedom Monument, which increasingly gathers various political crazies from both sides of the spectrum and continues to send incomprehensible signals to the outside world.
All of which makes the annual March 16 rituals all the more bizarre, especially as, looking from the outside, such events at best generate annual international media WTFs and, at worst, feed distorted narratives of a Nazi revival in Latvia, a favorite for the Russian media, which will be present along with all the usual players. At the end of the day, more bad PR for Latvia that cannot be mitigated by trotting out historians and political analysts who correct some of the worst distortions — no, the Waffen-SS was not the regular ethnic German Nazi Party fanatic, strangle your dog to graduate Regular SS, no, the Waffen SS did not participate in the Holocaust but was formed when the worst of the killing was over and yes, there was some overlap with some police brigades that may have done nasty stuff and do you want to see some charts and data as to how extensive this may have been?
Who needs this? Almost every World War II German-occupied European country could force itself, once a year, to explain and examine the fabric of its interaction with German military and police, if it decided to stage public events to remember and seemingly honor the participants who “fought Bolshevism” for Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Norway, etc. down to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. They don’t do it because while whatever happened back then and whatever people (Dutch “volunteers”, Grand Fenwikis) were thinking, the Germans/Nazis lost the war and being in the losing trenches in the wrong uniform will never, never look good in any sense.
I suspect that even the last of the old Legionnaires have had more than enough time to think about the past, to read some history and to realize that whatever they were thinking at age 18 or 20 or whatever it was, the bottom line on this horrific, at times seemingly heroic adventure was that it was a largely futile tragedy for Latvia. Thousands of young lives were lost, almost nothing was gained and some ambiguous and difficult to explain (to anyone outside) myths were spawned.
Unfortunately, Latvia continues to conduct these trying, expensive (thousands of riot police just in case) and image-suicidal public events year after year, even as the last of the 90+ year-old actual Legion veterans die off. Indeed, the event is at best — if there can be a best — an outpouring of emotion for part of the population who come with flowers, sing and do the whole tearful poor suffering nation and brave boys killed for …? scene. More sinister is that the event has already been partly hijacked for some years by the radical Latvian nationalist right — and I don’t mean the National Alliance (NA) alley-of-flags boys and girls. They should think things through themselves, but I am talking about the alt-right crowd and the real neo-Nazis who seriously think Germany winning the war may not have been a bad idea after all. There are still a few of them, but March 16 also allows them to feed and grow.
