Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940-46
Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940-46
(Basees/Routledgecurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies)
RoutledgeCurzon | 2004-10-28 | ISBN: 0415331935 | 272 pages | pdf | 4MB
Little has been written on the history of the Second World War on the experience of collaboration and resistance of the Baltic States. The struggle between Nazism and communism was at its sharpest in Latvia, where Latvians were fighting in the Latvian SS Legion as well as in the Latvian Division of the Red Army, hence making it a civil war. Covering the horrors that took place in Latvia from the beginning of the Second World War until 1947, this book focuses on the heart of the twentieth century: Stalinist industrialization, collectivization and political annihilation; Nazi expansionism and genocide; with in addition local nationalism, local nationalist rivalries, and local anti-Semitism. The author traces the developments in once particular region of Latvia, Daugavpils. There, the dilemma Hitler or Stalin, the ideological struggle of fascism or communism was more acute than anywhere else in Europe since the population was actively involved in establishing both.