Anti-Bolsheviks = euphemism for Nazis“THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS, THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE ASC”
Bellant starts off with the direct predecessor of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) being "formed in 1943" by Hitler's allies." We examine some of his general assertions as well as what he has to say about the Latvians.
A booklet published in 1960 by the ABN 1acknowledged its members' alliance with Hitler: "That many of us fought on the German side against Russian imperialism and Bolshevism, was in our national interest . . . the fact that some of us fought on the German side against Russia can be justified from the national, political, and moral point of view."a
The ABN in more recent years has maintained the impression that they 2opposed the Nazis and Soviets simultaneously during World War IL This historically dubious impression is conveyed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN ) that leads ABN. But other groups that make up the ABN do not bother with an anti-Hitler pretense.
Other ABN affiliates include: . . .
WORLD FEDERATION OF FREE LATVIANS A member organization of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, the federation has branches in six countries. Its U.S. branch, the American Latvian Association, is active in the campaign against the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, discussed in the next section. The book Inside the League describes the ABN Latvian affiliate as 3“a band of Latvian leaders who assisted the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of their Baltic homeland.”b
a Niko Nakashidze, The Truth about ABN (Munich: ABN Press and Information Bureau, 1960), p. 14. Although the ABN claims a direct lineage from the 1943 Committee of Subjugated Nations (CSN), some scholars emphasize that the CSN went through a variety of splits and reorganizations immediately after WWII, and that ABN did not emerge in its current manifestation until several years after the war. b Anderson and Anderson, p. 45.
Bellant conveniently forgets that all of Eastern Europe was occupied territory. There was no local authority. The Germans were the sole option to fight against the Soviets. Whatever reasons Hitler had for invading Russia and exterminating the Jews of historically central Europe, a centuries-old cradle of Jewry, had no bearing on "alliances" against the USSR. Bellant's blanket projection of Nazi aims onto the peoples the Nazis conquered—for Latvia, a people already conquered by and brutalized for a year under the Soviets—is prejudiced and historically inaccurate.
The litmus test for the Baltics is Estonia. The Estonians raised the Estonian flag in Tallinn as the Nazis retreated. Yet even in retreat the Germans had no intent of acknowledging Estonia as regaining independence. Estonians fought the retreating Nazis and advancing Soviets on two fronts simultaneously, attempting to secure Tallinn. When the Soviets eventually "liberated" the city, it was the Estonian flag, not the Nazi swastika, the Red Army tore down.
Bellant sources his assertion of Latvian Nazism to a work utterly devoid of factual integrity regarding the Latvian Legion before, during, and after WWII. The claim of Latvian war crimes Bellant cites even misspells the accused: "The Latvian chapter of the League1 is controlled by the Danagaus [sic.] Vanagi ('Danaga [sic.] Hawks'). Operating out of Munster, West Germany, and publishing a newspaper in Canada, the Hawks are a band of Latvian leaders who assisted the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of their Baltic homeland." See our analysis of Inside the League — a work which offers not a single citation for its accusations against Latvians.
4The ABN is the high council for the expatriate nationalist groups that formed the police, military, and militia units that worked with Hitler during World War II. Some were organized as mobile killing teams that exterminated villages and sought to murder whole ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. These mobile killing teams are the forerunners of the modern death squad.
Bellant again ignores the fact of Nazi German occupation and Nazi management and responsibility for the execution of the Holocaust. German "mobile killing teams" went in immediately to exterminate local Jewry as the German front-line advanced. We acknowledge and denounce the crimes of collaborators who subsequently worked under German supervision; but those, such as Arājs Kommando in the case of Latvians, had nothing to do with post-war Latvian leadership.
| 1 | This is the cited authors' collective term for the organized league of Nazis who have infiltrated the U.S. and U.S. politics. |