Anderson, S. and Anderson, J.L.. Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League, Dodd, Mead, 1986, ISBN: 9780396085171. LINK

As Prof. Ieva Zaķe summarizes in her paper The Secret Nazi Network: Post-World War II Latvian Immigrants and the Hunt for Nazis in the United States:

In 1986, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson wrote that the participation of Eastern Europeans such as Latvians in the Holocaust was “one of the least-told stories in modern history”a because these people had been “recruited by American and British intelligence, brought into the United States and Canada, allowed to rise to prominent positions in their émigré communities, and ultimately to revise history.”b


aScott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: 1986), 12.
bIbid, 13.

Inside the League is among the earliest “exposés” alleging British and American intelligence knowingly recruited Holocaust collaborators as Cold War agents and whitewashed their past. "Latvian Nazis" are a feature common to this conspiratorial narrative, including the allegation that Daugavas Vanagi ("Hawks of the River Daugava"), founded by Latvian Legion1 veterans, is an organization of war criminals.

The Andersons' work is widely cited: in other books, academic and student papers, university course plans, and web sites from conspiracy-crackpots to the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Searching the title brought up multiple matches for “death squads.”

Even though Latvians comprise only a portion of the Andersons' conspiratorial pie, given the recognition accorded Jon Lee Anderson for his journalism2 and legitimacy accorded the book, we thought it worthwhile to examine the Andersons' narrative regarding Latvians.


1The Latvian Legion were Waffen-SS troops, functionally subordinate to the Wehrmacht structure, deployed on the Eastern Front against the Red Army.
2Scott Anderson is a novelist, and Jon Lee Anderson is an investigative journalist and long-time contributor to the New Yorker magazine, viz. www.newyorker.com/contributors/jon-lee-anderson. The authors are brothers.
Updated: September, 2023
  • Inside the league — Latvians feature prominently in the Andersons's exposé of "Nazis among us".
  • Nazis among us — Nazis infiltrators are plotting their return to power atop the "Fourth Reich".
  • Daugavas Vanagi — Denouncment of the Latvian veterans' post-war welfare organization as "council of war criminals", confused identities, and character assassination.
  • Appraisal — Ignorance would be an improvement.
  • View All
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