AssessmentPolitical Agenda + Questionable Sources = Latvian Nazis
Among the sources in Bellant's bibliography:
WAR CRIMINALS AND NAZI COLLABORATORS IN THE U.S.
- Allen, Charles R. Nazi War Criminals in America: Facts...Action. New York: Highgate House, 1985.
- Blum, Howard. Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America. New York: Quadrangle, 1979.
- Lasby, Clarence. Project Paperclip. New York: Atheneum, 1971.
- Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: U.S. Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
OTHER WORKS OF INTEREST
- Anderson, Scott and Anderson, Jon Lee. Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd-Mead, 1986.
- Codreanu, Corneliu Z. For My Legionaries. Madrid, Spain: Editura Libertatea, 1976. This is an English translation of the original 1936 work.
- Cook, Fred J. The Warfare State. New York: MacMillan, 1962; Collier Books, 1964, 1969.
- Eisenberg, Dennis. The Re-emergence of Fascism. South Brunswick, New Jersey: A.S. Barnes, 1968.
- Sklar, Holly. Washington's War on Nicaragua. Boston: South End Press, 1988.
We have reviewed the highlighted books for their claims regarding Latvians and Nazism and found them wanting:
- Review ►Blowback — Simpson dennounces "the myth that the Baltic Waffen-SS legions were simply anti-Communist patriots," and falsely contends that "some of the Vanagis’ [sic.]1 leaders had served as the Nazis’ most enthusiastic executioners."
- Review ►Inside the League—A morass of misspellings, misidentification, misinformation and blatant falsehoods. In a work otherwise copiously annotated, the Andersons fail to provide a single source for their baseless accusations against Latvians.
While we have not read Howard Blum's book, in this online snippet he mistakenly accuses Latvians of graduating the "Nazi Baltic University in Pinnenberg, Germany.":
Blum's bogus allegation of a "Nazi Baltic University," snippet at Google Books™The Baltic University was founded after WWII to continue the education of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian refugees. Founded in Hamburg, it later moved to Pinnenberg. It had nothing to do with Nazism.
| Given Bellant's political agenda, we are unsurprised by Bellant's choices in sources. He embraces and weaponizes their historical fictions regarding Latvians, the Latvian Legion/Waffen-SS, and the Daugavas Vanagi. Bellant is correct in that the U.S. government's filing to deport Boleslavs Maikovskis was granted, based on allegations driven by his Soviet show trial; however, that he applied his signature to documents under the thumb of a belligerent military occupation where Germans regularly shot anyone who disobeyed does not make him a Holocaust participant. |
No stars | Right in one contention, wrong in all the rest. |
| 1 | Daugavas Vanagi, the post-WWII Latvian veterans (former Latvian Legionnaires) organization. The term, "Hawks of the River Daugava", is already plural. |