Plus antisémites que les baltes, faut aller chercher loin.
Le massacre de Poneriai, charmante petite forêt à côté de Vilnius, Lituanie, est un des pires qui furent assénés aux populations juives. Deux cents "soldats" lituaniens s'y montrèrent particulièrement zélés, pour 100 000 victimes assassinées par rangées, au bord de la fosse, à la mitraillette.
Il est à noter également que Himmler, sous les recommandations d' Heydrich qui avant de se faire buter à Prague organisa "la fabrique", déploya prioritairement à la garde des camps d'exterminations les SS baltes, et ukrainiens, auxquels leurs collègues nazis souchiens attribuèrent le très renseignant qualificatif de "chiens de sang".
Ton anticommunisme, mon Polo, te conduit à quelques errances, ce me semble. Les baltes s'occupèrent en priorité des juifs, pas des soviétiques.
Oh non, ce n'est pas par anticommunisme, mais par empathie.
Si vous prenez la 15ème division SS lettone, elle alla au front et même jusqu'à Berlin. Il me semble que son action dans l'ensemble a été purement militaire. Les gars qui s'y sont engagés l'ont fait avant tout par patriotisme, pas pour buter du juif.
Après, que parmi eux il y ait un certain nombre de farouche antisémite prenant plaisir à tuer des juifs, je ne le nie. Mais je reste convaincu que la motivation première est patriotique. Après la guerre est ce qu'elle est, et on ne peut pas dire qu'entre les soviétiques et les nazis il y avait un camp du bien vers lequel pencher.
Mais comme vous le dîtes, je ne suis pas spécialiste, mais d'après ce que je lis, les exactions à l'encontre des juifs sont essentiellement le fait de policiers lettons et des unités para-militaires. Pas des unités combattantes.
Motivation of Latvian Legionnaires
Conscription order
Oberführer Adolf Ax, commander of the 15th Division, reported on 27 January 1945: "They are first and foremost Latvians. They want a sustainable Latvian nation state. Forced to choose between Germany and Russia, they have chosen Germany, because they seek co-operation with western civilization. The rule of the Germans seems to them to be the lesser of two evils." This perspective resulted in part from the Soviet occupation between 1940 and 1941, called "The Year of Terror" (Latvian: Baigais gads) during which tens of thousands of Latvian families were executed or deported to Siberia with men separated from the women and children to break down resistance.
Legion command emphasized that the Latvians were fighting against Soviet re-occupation. Conscripts promised in the name of God to be subservient to the German military and its commander Adolf Hitler, to be courageous and to be prepared to give up their life in the fight against Bolshevism. Legionnaires hoped to fight off the Red Army until it was no longer a threat to Latvia and then turn against Nazi Germany, as a repeat of the Latvian War of Independence of 1918-1920, when Latvian forces expelled both Bolshevik and German forces. Legionnaires carried Latvian flags under their uniforms as a symbol of that hope. This sentiment was also reflected in one of the most popular Legion songs which went "We will beat the Russians now and we will beat the Germans after that" (with euphemisms for Russians and Germans). The Allies confirmed this as early as 1943, when a British investigative mission found Latvians stood against both their Soviet and German occupiers.
Latvians, as did the Estonians and to lesser degree Lithuanians, believed that the Western powers, especially Britain, would come to their aid as they had in 1918-1920. These hopes were bolstered by Allied communications received in November 1944 in which British command instructed them to hold Courland until a joint British-American fleet entered the Baltic. In fact, Churchill and Roosevelt had already privately consigned the Baltics to Stalin.
Allegations of war crimes involvement
Whether or not the Latvian Legion was involved in war crimes is a matter of controversy. Many Latvian historians maintain that the Latvian Legion itself was a front line combat unit and did not participate in any war crimes and state that the Latvian Legion, being an organization of conscripts, was exempt, qua organization, from the opinion rendered at Nuremberg trials, consistent with findings by post-war Allied authorities. Nor has any Latvian ever been accused of any war crime while a member of the Latvian Legion.
However, as earlier members of the Latvian fascist movement Pērkonkrusts and Holocaust participants such some 600 members of Arajs Kommando later made it into the Legion, the presence of these individuals as well as allegations against police battalions subsequent to the formation of the Legion have been used by Soviet and later Russian authorities to denounce the entire Legion as war criminals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_L ... gionnaires
