I think the keyword here is “Waffen-SS” not “Latvian”. Fascists and racists come in all nationalities. The Dutch really hate nazis, but a sizeable portion of the population aided in the holocaust regardless.
That’s true, except people from Baltic countries, all of the Eastern Block, and notably Finns love the narrative of bad bad barbaric Russia that always oppressed them, and bad bad totalitarian USSR that was “worse than Nazis”.
Just recently certain Linus Torvalds expressed a interesting sentiment about being a Finn and knowing something about “Russian aggression”, well, Soviet-Finnish conflicts didn’t start with the Winter war, and the Winter war was preceded by a few suggestions ending in an ultimatum. By those suggestions Finland would receive far greater amounts of territory (in the areas it claimed before at that) than the stripe of land and a few small islands in artillery range of Leningrad it would be giving away. That’s rather soft if you consider the character of the preceding Soviet-Finnish war. And Finland’s participation in the blockade of Leningrad while allied with, well, Nazis makes the “worse than Nazis” argument more easily understandable and still wrong.
The area USSR wanted to take had parts of Finnish main defensive line at the very important Karelian Isthmus and areas they wanted to give were total wilderness. So it’s not that surprising it wasn’t agreed to, even if the total area was larger.
It did feel like the sort of deal Czechoslovakians were forced into. And we know what happened there. Same for Baltics.
Building a few more bunkers is easier than moving a city, especially in the 30s.
But to help your argument, there were plenty of propaganda pieces and Finnish communist organizations supported by the USSR before the war. So probably there were intentions of biting off more than expressed.
And to help mine (sort of, it’s an appellation to authority), I think I’ve read many notable figures, even Mannerheim himself, considered the proposed deal reasonable.
Comparing this to Czechoslovakia, USSR still took exactly what it initially demanded, and I don’t remember Nazis offering anyone anything in exchange. And comparing this to Baltics - there it was a different scheme, where IIRC their governments (small cozy authoritarian ones, which is very funny) asked USSR for protection (because Nazis were scarier), Soviet troops entered those countries and suddenly there were Soviet state institutions in place and plebiscites.
Percentage-wise Latvia had more % of population in SS than any other country including Germany so i think the “Latvian” part did played at least some role.
Ukraine actually had tiny % of nazis in WW2. It was like 250000 or so nazis compared to at least 7 million Ukrainian partisans and Red Army soldiers. It’s just that west after war absorbed, coddled and promoted the nazi survivors and after 1991 send them back with a huge propaganda bucks, and in 2014 helped them organize the coup.
It must’ve been that they were so active I got the impression there were more back then.
Also that there is an unhealthy amount of them in our time.
But thanks for correcting me.
It must’ve been that they were so active I got the impression there were more back then.
Well, they have access to the biggest and most pervasive propaganda machine in the history of mankind so their narration is the one that prevail in large part of the world.
Like the mere fact that a literal Waffen SS soldier participating in many atrocities was given applause in western parliament and that wasn’t met with unanimous condemnation and collapse of said parliament.
I think the keyword here is “Waffen-SS” not “Latvian”. Fascists and racists come in all nationalities. The Dutch really hate nazis, but a sizeable portion of the population aided in the holocaust regardless.
That’s true, except people from Baltic countries, all of the Eastern Block, and notably Finns love the narrative of bad bad barbaric Russia that always oppressed them, and bad bad totalitarian USSR that was “worse than Nazis”.
Just recently certain Linus Torvalds expressed a interesting sentiment about being a Finn and knowing something about “Russian aggression”, well, Soviet-Finnish conflicts didn’t start with the Winter war, and the Winter war was preceded by a few suggestions ending in an ultimatum. By those suggestions Finland would receive far greater amounts of territory (in the areas it claimed before at that) than the stripe of land and a few small islands in artillery range of Leningrad it would be giving away. That’s rather soft if you consider the character of the preceding Soviet-Finnish war. And Finland’s participation in the blockade of Leningrad while allied with, well, Nazis makes the “worse than Nazis” argument more easily understandable and still wrong.
The area USSR wanted to take had parts of Finnish main defensive line at the very important Karelian Isthmus and areas they wanted to give were total wilderness. So it’s not that surprising it wasn’t agreed to, even if the total area was larger.
It did feel like the sort of deal Czechoslovakians were forced into. And we know what happened there. Same for Baltics.
Building a few more bunkers is easier than moving a city, especially in the 30s.
But to help your argument, there were plenty of propaganda pieces and Finnish communist organizations supported by the USSR before the war. So probably there were intentions of biting off more than expressed.
And to help mine (sort of, it’s an appellation to authority), I think I’ve read many notable figures, even Mannerheim himself, considered the proposed deal reasonable.
Comparing this to Czechoslovakia, USSR still took exactly what it initially demanded, and I don’t remember Nazis offering anyone anything in exchange. And comparing this to Baltics - there it was a different scheme, where IIRC their governments (small cozy authoritarian ones, which is very funny) asked USSR for protection (because Nazis were scarier), Soviet troops entered those countries and suddenly there were Soviet state institutions in place and plebiscites.
Percentage-wise Latvia had more % of population in SS than any other country including Germany so i think the “Latvian” part did played at least some role.
Most of the Baltics and especially ukraine had large percentages of nazis.
Nothing has changed.
Ukraine actually had tiny % of nazis in WW2. It was like 250000 or so nazis compared to at least 7 million Ukrainian partisans and Red Army soldiers. It’s just that west after war absorbed, coddled and promoted the nazi survivors and after 1991 send them back with a huge propaganda bucks, and in 2014 helped them organize the coup.
I’m having trouble following your logic here. Ninety-something year old former Nazis led a coup in 2014? Try again.
It must’ve been that they were so active I got the impression there were more back then.
Also that there is an unhealthy amount of them in our time.
But thanks for correcting me.
Well, they have access to the biggest and most pervasive propaganda machine in the history of mankind so their narration is the one that prevail in large part of the world.
Like the mere fact that a literal Waffen SS soldier participating in many atrocities was given applause in western parliament and that wasn’t met with unanimous condemnation and collapse of said parliament.