The Latvian Lost Cause: Veterans of the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion and Post-war Mythogenesis

The year 2022 represented an inflection point for the memory of World War II in Latvia. During the war, both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had occupied Latvia, which had been an independent nation-state since 1918; Latvia's de facto sovereignty was not restored until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In June 2022, the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, passed a law mandating the dismantling of all monuments glorifying the Soviet and Nazi regimes, including war memorials. ¹ In quick succession, 69 monuments relating to the Soviet Union's Red Army, which convey its self-proclaimed liberation of Latvian territory as well as celebrate its victory in World War II, were demolished across Latvia. Dozens of others were dismantled at the initiative of local municipalities. ²

Yet this process presented a paradox. Even while monuments to the Red Army — constructed during the period of Soviet rule over Latvia — were being demolished, monuments to the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion, a unit formed by Nazi Germany and ultimately commanded by German Waffen-SS officers, remained intact. In 2018, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia erected a monument — the ‘Latvian Beehive for Freedom’ — to honour Latvian Legionnaires who had been interned at a British-run prisoner of war (POW) camp in Zedelgem, Belgium. This monument attracted scrutiny and criticism — first by local Belgian activists, then in the international press — because it was perceived as glorifying collaboration with Nazi Germany. Furthermore, the vague and euphemistic text on an informational plaque told a simplified narrative about the Latvian Legion and elided the fact that at least several dozen Holocaust perpetrators formerly of the Arājs Kommando, under the overall command of the Security Service (SD) of the SS, had been interned there with the other Legionnaires. When an expert panel proposed the monument's removal, which was accepted (and later carried out) by the municipality, its decision was denounced in the Latvian press by multiple Latvian civil society organisations and by three members of the Latvian cabinet of ministers. ³

How is it possible that public commemoration of a combat unit embedded within Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS has not only endured long after the defeat of the Axis, but also that it has continued to spread in recent decades across Latvia and — as in the case of Zedelgem — to other locations abroad? Why would this project proceed with the assent — and, when perceived to be threatened from the outside, even the active defence — of the political establishment in Latvia? As Jan Gross notes, war not only represents a major myth-creating experience, but also that specifically in Eastern Europe it is ‘continuously a source of vivid […] legitimization narratives’. ⁴ Yet the question remains: how can a story that upholds the honour and righteousness of a military formation serving an occupying power exist under an overall national narrative that denounces foreign military occupation?

To address these questions, this article approaches the activities of veterans of the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion through the framework of mythogenesis. Having lost both the military fight and the overall struggle for inclusion in the post-war order constructed by the victorious Allies, Vita Zelče argues that Latvian Legionnaires fell into ‘the special category of double losers’. ⁵ Yet through tireless advocacy, these veterans became ‘victors of a lost war’, as phrased in a publication by the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. ⁶ As cultural leaders in the post-war West, these veterans and their advocates deployed mythologised memories of the Latvian Legion as a way of explaining the problems that they faced in exile and authored narratives that defended their choices in wartime and charted a path forward to vindication. ⁷

In order to explain the tenacious endurance of narratives that present the Latvian Legion as a heroic force for the nation, defeated in war yet vindicated, this article transnationally traces how veterans of the Latvian Legion and their advocates constructed their arguments and shaped public memory. Though this article is relevant for the field of memory studies (specifically, the concepts of collective memory, post-memory, as well as the memory wars that take place in contemporary Latvia and in many neighbouring countries), it is a historical study that considers Latvian Legion veterans (and their advocates) as historical actors across time and space. Assuming the roles of memory entrepreneurs — that is, those seeking ‘social recognition and political legitimacy of one (their own) interpretation or narrative of the past’ — these veterans established institutions, created media platforms and reshaped public discourse. ⁸ The networks and narratives constructed by these mythmakers are then subjected to comparative analysis with other traumatic defeats in history.

More specifically, the narrative around the Latvian Legion represents a paradigmatic example of ‘lost cause’ ideology. As David W. Blight argues, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy was a ‘core master narrative’ for white Southerners after the American Civil War, representing ‘on the broadest level […] a mood, or an attitude toward the past’. ⁹ The Lost Cause of the Confederacy emerged shortly after the defeat of the Confederate States Army in 1865, which thwarted the attempted secession of the Confederate States of America from the United States. For contemporary Latvia, a mythologised vision of the Latvian Legion represents a central component of its core master narrative of state continuity and resistance amid foreign occupations. As myths do not emerge unguided by human agency, I will explore this process and identify the actors that carried it out while highlighting the corresponding themes between the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and the predominant narrative of the Latvian Legion. ¹⁰

1. Historical and historiographical context

Though around 200,000 Latvians served in military formations during World War II, they did not do so on behalf of the Latvian state, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940, then by Nazi Germany from June to July 1941, until the return of Soviet rule beginning in summer 1944. Instead, Latvians served in the Soviet Union's Red Army and in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, many of them in special national formations. Under Nazi-German occupation, Latvians were initially only recruited for auxiliary and police roles, first in ‘self-defence’ militias, then in Sonderkommandos under the SD of the SS as well as in Schutzmannschaften (called kārtības palīgpolicija — ‘Order Auxiliary Police’ — among Latvians) under the German Order Police (OrPo). Over the course of 1941 to 1942, German authorities rejected two separate proposals for raising a Latvian national army to fight alongside the German Wehrmacht in exchange for Latvian autonomy or independence — one from the former leader of the fascist Thunder Cross Party, Gustavs Celmiņš; another from the former cabinet minister and general-director for justice in the Latvian ‘self-administration’ under the German occupation, Alfrēds Valdmanis. Instead, Adolf Hitler authorised and Heinrich Himmler implemented the unilateral formation of a Latvian Legion in the Waffen-SS in early 1943, leading to several mobilisation drives in German-occupied Latvia.

Officially called the Latvian-SS Volunteer Legion, the unit grew to include two divisions: the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) and the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian). Through general mobilisation in Latvia along with the consolidation of existing police and auxiliary units, the Latvian Legion came to encompass tens of thousands of Latvians. ¹¹ Despite its official designation as a ‘voluntary’ formation, it is commonly estimated that only around 15%–20% of Latvian Legionnaires were genuine volunteers, while the remainder were conscripts, mobilised in a process that violated the Hague Convention of 1907. ¹² However, such broad estimates and blanket statements about legality require subjective interpretation, as many Legion veterans profess that neither had they volunteered nor had they been forcibly conscripted. ¹³ The divisional commanders were always German SS personnel, along with a portion of the command staff, but the vast majority of personnel — officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and enlisted — were Latvians. The figurehead of the Latvian Legion was also a Latvian, Rudolfs Bangerskis, officially serving as its inspector general. Units of the Latvian Legion served on the Eastern Front, deployed to Russia, Latvia, and Germany over the course of 1943 to 1945. The 19th Division ended the war in the western Latvian province of Courland, an isolated pocket of resistance (or, in some conceptions, a ‘fortress’) from July 1944 onward, where its personnel largely went into Soviet captivity. The 15th Division ended the war in Germany, with most of its personnel surrendering to the Western Allies.

According to Valdis Lumans, the Latvian Legion ‘remains to this day the most scrutinized and contested subject related to Latvia's experience in World War II’, with debates involving veterans, historians, and politicians in Latvia and beyond. ¹⁴ Andrew Ezergailis has distinguished two major schools of thought about the Latvian Legion: the first, identified with high-ranking former Legion officer Arturs Silgailis, argues that Legionnaires ‘performed a heroic deed for the Latvian cause’; the second, identified with Latvian historian Haralds Biezais, instead contends that ‘Legionnaires were hoodwinked … to spill their blood for Hitler's Reich, and that it had nothing to do with Latvian nationhood or honor’. ¹⁵

Many works of scholarly and popular history have been published on the Latvian Legion, drawing from either of the approaches mentioned by Ezergailis — and occasionally combining the two — or instead seeking to vilify the unit. ¹⁶ Some popular histories published in contemporary Latvia or by members of the Latvian diaspora take the approach of heroic celebration. ¹⁷ Other scholarly and popular histories constitute a legalistic attempt to refute charges of Nazism or war crimes, which represents a continuation in many ways of a struggle waged by Latvian diaspora activists against Soviet disinformation that was spread during the Cold War. ¹⁸ By contrast, Russian historians often criticise ‘the idealisation of collaborationist formations, and sometimes even their presentation as “freedom fighters.”’ ¹⁹ Yet the contemporary Russian historiographical approach also incorporates both demonisation and ideologically charged accusations, frequently building on those Soviet-era historical fabrications that have also occasionally influenced Western authors. ²⁰ This article avoids alignment with any of these historiographical schools, and instead critically examines post-war mythmaking among Latvian Legionnaires and their advocates. By reorienting the focus and source base, this approach allows for new insights into the durability and transferability of Legionnaire narratives, which in turn can recontextualise the aforementioned debates.

Furthermore, by using a framework drawn from U.S. history, this article seeks to address two historiographical issues simultaneously. One is ‘the detachment of Eastern Europe from the global’ and specifically the ‘provincial “post-colonialism”’ of the Baltic States, which focuses on anathematising the Soviet occupation and is generally averse to historical comparison outside of the region. ²¹ During the first era of Latvian independence, historical studies in Latvia became deeply entangled with the Latvian state, at times becoming subordinated to foreign and domestic policy concerns. ²² Such entanglements have resumed since the restoration of independence in 1991. ²³ Kaspars Zellis argues that ‘the politicisation of history in Russia also indirectly promotes similar tendencies in Latvia, where the political climate and public opinion lead to expectations for historians to provide counter-arguments to the Kremlin's official statements on twentieth-century history’. ²⁴ Latvian historiography on the Latvian Legion has been thus both largely insular and defensive in its stance. ²⁵ American frames of reference can be and frequently have been transposed onto foreign historiographies. Yet American history can feature its own insularity, both from a cultural context of ‘American exceptionalism’ along with the notion that ‘American historiography does not travel well, and despite its quality, quantity, and sophistication, it has had relatively little impact on other historiographies’. ²⁶

Yet the application of the Lost Cause framework has great potential outside its original context, as Jenny Macleod argues. ²⁷ The Latvian experience of World War II differs in several profound ways from that of the U.S. South during and after the American Civil War: in the inverse positions of ethnic Latvians and Southern whites in preceding imperial and settler colonial dynamics, respectively; in the more recent foundation of the Latvian nation-state; and from the fundamentally exogenous sources of the conflict in Latvia. However, the shared grappling with traumatic defeat and the destruction of a previous way of life offers some instructive lessons. As Wolfgang Schivelbusch contends, ‘every society experiences defeat in its own way. But the varieties of response within vanquished nations […] conform to a recognizable set of patterns or archetypes that recur across time and national boundaries’. ²⁸ With Latvians fighting in national units on both sides, including on the territory of Latvia itself, the Latvian experience of World War II also assumed some qualities of a civil war. ²⁹ Like the American South in 1865 and Germany in 1918, Latvian Legionnaires ‘clung to visions if not of ultimate victory then at least of glorious defeat with flags flying’. ³⁰ Furthermore, Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II argue convincingly that ‘Americans have used a “Lost Cause” for political purposes not once, but twice, in our history’, first to reintegrate the U.S. South after the American Civil War, then to integrate Germany into the Western alliance system after World War II. ³¹ Smelser and Davies’ application of the ‘lost cause’ concept to the Wehrmacht's rehabilitation indicates its potential as a framework for the Latvian Legion.

To David W. Blight, the components of the Lost Cause include ‘organizations and rituals […] a public memory, a cult of the fallen soldier, a righteous political cause defeated only by superior industrial might, a heritage community awaiting its exodus, and a people forming a collective identity as victims and survivors’. ³² To avoid excessive redundancy, some of these components have been folded together for analysis as: ‘Organisations for a Heritage Community in Exile’, ‘Public Memory and Rituals’, ‘A Righteous Political Cause Defeated Only by Superior Industrial Might’, and ‘A Cult of the Fallen Soldier’. Together, these components constitute the basis for the Latvian Lost Cause.

2. Organisations for a heritage community in exile

Generated from the chaos and violence of the war, the Latvian diaspora was politicised, referring to themselves as ‘exiles’ rather than ‘refugees’, and was highly nationally conscious. In addition to more than 100,000 Latvian civilians who ended up in the Western zones of occupied Germany — both wartime shipborne evacuees and refugees who fled westward by other means — about 25,000 Latvian Legionnaires ended the war in the captivity of the Western Allies. ³³ Once released from POW and displaced persons' (DP) camps and permitted to emigrate, veterans of the Latvian Legion therefore represented a substantial proportion of the newly expanded Latvian diaspora in the West, especially in the early decades. In particular, they represented a sizable portion of the young and middle-aged men in the diaspora. Legionnaires also assumed a leading role in Latvian exile (trimda) organisations during the Cold War, often in ways disproportionate to their numbers.

Daugavas Vanagi (‘Hawks of the Daugava River’; DV), founded in December 1945, was the first new Latvian civil society organisation established in the wake of World War II. ³⁴ Initially addressing the practical concerns of Latvian Legionnaires in the Zedelgem POW camp resulting from the dissolution of the Latvian Red Cross, DV quickly expanded its purview well beyond its initial mission of ‘material and cultural relief’ to become a ‘welfare society’ with broad cultural and political ambitions. At its zenith, the organisation had nearly 10,000 members with chapters in a dozen countries. ³⁵ Over time, non-veterans entered the organisation, complementing the initial ‘hawks’ (vanagi) with growing numbers of ‘female hawks’ (vanadzes), youth members and ‘baby hawks’ (vanadzēni; those under the age of 16). The organisation also gathered a wide variety of cultural groups under its aegis: during the mid-1970s, this included 18 choirs, 16 theatre troupes, 45 libraries and 30 sports clubs. ³⁶ Former Latvian prime minister Ādolfs Bļodnieks characterises it as ‘one of the most influential and beneficial Latvian bodies in exile’. ³⁷ In the assessment of Andrew Ezergailis, it was ‘the largest Latvian exile organization […] span[ning] all the continents and countries of the free world’. ³⁸ Even the existence of a rival organisation, The Latvian Disabled Veterans’ Association (LKIA), did not significantly diminish DV's influence within the diaspora.

Former Legion officer Vilis Hāzners argues that ‘Latvian political leadership during the German occupation was generally in the hands of soldiers’. ³⁹ Thus, when veterans assumed leading roles in other Latvian diaspora institutions, it represented continuity. In the first attempt to create a global Latvian umbrella organisation, the Latvian National Council (LNP), DV was a participating body. Three of the twelve members of the LNP's presidium were former high-ranking officers of the Latvian Legion: Hāzners (as president), Vilis Janums, and Roberts Osis. ⁴⁰

In addition to being general secretary of DV for many years, Janums served as vice-president of the World Federation of Free Latvians, the successor to the LNP, as well as acting as head of the Latvian Central Committee (LCK) from 1950 to 1969. Another former officer in the Latvian Legion, Voldemārs Skaistlauks, served as the vice-chairman of the LCK. ⁴¹ Hāzners also served simultaneously as the chairman of the Committee for a Free Latvia and the committee's representative at the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN). Legion officers held prominent positions elsewhere across the diaspora as well: Arvīds Krīpens was the chairman of the Latvian Association of Australia; Jānis Zēgners was the chairman of the Latvian Central Council in Germany; Jānis Rudzītis was a long-serving vice-chairman of the Latvian Association in Brazil. Though Legion veterans had scattered across the globe, this did not diminish their influence. As Vilis Janums declared to a DV general meeting in Würzburg, Germany in 1949, ‘We are not the ones who will collapse or wither as the exodus continues, quite the opposite — our strength grows!’ ⁴²

All the while, numerous former Legionnaires — both within and outside of DV — emphasised that their struggle would continue until a victorious return to Latvia. Vilis Janums described DV as ‘a warrior tribe who fought with weapons in their hands in the recent past and are still fighting today, albeit with other weapons’. ⁴³ Ādolfs Blāķis claims that he transitioned from fighting ‘in a hot war’ in the Legion to engaging in ‘in a cold war’ with Allied occupying forces in Germany as well as participating ‘in the Latvian resistance movement […] in an underground war’. ⁴⁴ Similarly, Atis Homka fought ‘first with firearms in the Latvian Legion, after that with weapons of the spirit [ar gara ieročiem] in the West’. ⁴⁵ With the Latvian people in exodus, Andrejs Eglītis presented Legionnaires as collectively representing its Moses:

The entire Latvian diaspora [visai emigrācijai] must rise as one great legion of the Holy Spirit, the founders of whose order today rest in the battlefields of Courland and Pomerania, or in the blood of the Velikaya [River], as seen by our God […] the new tribes must be led fanatically toward the side of Latvia — our Latvia. ⁴⁶

In short, those who ostensibly fought for Latvia during the war would lead the trimda to ultimate victory, despite their previous military defeat.

This notion — that the true members of the nation could work to preserve both its institutions and essential values, even outside its borders following military defeat and capitulation — mirrors those established in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. In 1866, one of the originators of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, Edward A. Pollard, wrote, ‘all that is left for the South is ‘the war of ideas’[…]. There may not be a political South. Yet there may be a social and intellectual South’. ⁴⁷ In each case, the heritage community represents the distilled essence of the national community, which can continue the fight until it can complete the (figurative or literal) exodus back into the homeland and restore the old ways.

3. Public memory and rituals

Latvian Legionnaires did not just fill important leadership roles in trimda organisations, they also deeply shaped the public memory of World War II among the Latvian diaspora, before reshaping it in Latvia proper. Whereas some veterans of Axis forces preferred that others forget their wartime service, DV sought to remind the Latvian trimda community of a ‘symbolic debt’ that they owed the Legionnaires, ‘as warriors who lost the battle for Latvia's freedom and as victims of war [but] also as a relatively marginal social group [and] stepchildren of fate’. ⁴⁸ Ieva Zake argues that ‘uncompromising anti-Communism’ was a key element that held the ‘dual identity’ of American Latvians together, a means to proclaim loyalty to their new state while maintaining a connection to their old homeland. ⁴⁹ This post-war synthesis was most clearly, consistently and vociferously expressed by DV. Their commitment to non-recognition of Soviet annexation was demonstrated by DV's organisational discipline; once tourism became possible, DV members were forbidden from visiting the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) until the late 1980s. ⁵⁰

DV also had the power to discipline the Latvian diaspora in most Western countries. Whether or not their membership fully embraced the ‘extreme attitudes’ of Legion veterans, other Latvian trimda organisations generally refrained from publicly criticising DV. ⁵¹ Whenever segments of the diaspora community seemed to stray from the ‘activist spirit of the Legionaries’, they would earn a public rebuke from DV. ⁵² Beyond this, DV maintained a robust list of ‘enemies, enviers and adversaries’ (nedraugi, skauģi un ienaidnieki), which included: ‘Latvian social democrats and those influenced by their ideas’, the aforementioned rival LKIA, and those gathered around the enigmatic Alfrēds Valdmanis, a Latvian official who first collaborated with and then resisted the German occupation. ⁵³ Furthermore, when Latvian veterans of German units, generally, and those specifically associated with DV were targeted by Soviet influence campaigns starting in the 1960s, the Latvian diaspora largely closed ranks around DV and supported its ‘Truth Fund’ for legal defence and protection against the possible denaturalisation and extradition of Latvians for war crimes trials. Such solidarity extended both to falsely accused members and to those likely guilty of war crimes, for example, the former policeman Boļeslavs Maikovskis, a DV member (and former delegate to the American Latvian Association (ALA) and ACEN). ⁵⁴

Many high-ranking Legionnaires — including Rudolfs Bangerskis, Vilis Janums, Vilis Hāzners, Jūlijs Ķīlītis, and Oskars Perro — published their memoirs in exile, explaining their wartime actions to the Latvian diaspora. These memoirs supply details of interest to military historians, yet also collectively present a consistent narrative about the patriotism, honourable conduct, and bravery of the Legionnaires. Valdis Lumans argues that ‘much of the postwar image of the Latvian Legion as a noble and patriotic force dedicated to restoring Latvian independence can be attributed to [Arthur] Silgailis’, perhaps the second most prominent Latvian Legion officer due to his roles as ‘infantry leader’ for both divisions and chief of staff to Rudolfs Bangerskis. ⁵⁵ In his hybrid work of autobiography and military history — which, notably, was translated into English — Silgailis explicitly acknowledges the incomprehensibility to ‘the Western World’ of Latvians in Nazi-German uniform, but argues that his goal is to ‘leave to posterity a true picture of the Latvian Legion and its struggle’. ⁵⁶

DV also organised to produce an official history of the Latvian Legion. Towards that end, in December 1951, the DV board created an editorial committee consisting of former officers: Silgailis, Skaistlauks, Rūdolfs Kociņš, and Bangerskis (as chair). ⁵⁷ In 1957, Janums was added to the committee while the DV Central Committee (DVCV) reaffirmed the priority of this project. ⁵⁸ DV had inherited a private archive of official documents from the Latvian Legion General Inspectorate via the LCK. ⁵⁹ In the 1950s, this included 130 volumes of documents and thousands of photographs. ⁶⁰ This archive was jealously guarded; after portions had been loaned to the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University for safekeeping by the LCK, DV sought ‘to get the documents back into Latvian hands’, following ‘strong suspicions that [agents] of the Jew [Simon] Wiesenthal have rummaged through our documents and appropriated what they needed’ for prosecutions. ⁶¹ This project resulted in a comprehensive eleven-volume book collection, published from 1970 to 1993. ⁶² During the Cold War, when archives in Latvia were not fully open to Western researchers, the former officers of the Latvian Legion could act as gatekeepers and largely set the historical narrative themselves.

DV was also directly involved in the publication of periodicals, including the bimonthly journal, Daugavas Vanagu Mēnešraksts (‘Daugavas Vanagi Magazine’), and the weekly newspaper, Latvija Amerikā (‘Latvia in America’), both eventually based in Toronto but drawing on a global editorial staff. Daugavas Vanagu Mēnešraksts not only published articles, fiction, and poetry by numerous former Legionnaires, featuring many stories about the Legion, but it was also ‘widely read and influential’ among the Latvian diaspora. ⁶³ Latvija Amerikā was described by critics as a mouthpiece for DV, serving ‘to promote the political goals of this organisation … and it can target anyone who does not agree’. ⁶⁴ In short, DV and other trimda institutions provided a platform for veterans to circulate a certain narrative of the Legion, while dissenting voices found themselves largely shut out.

In April 1952, the DV board took up the suggestion of Vilis Janums to declare 16 March as Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires — now popularly known as either Legionnaire Day or simply by its date. ⁶⁵ This date was chosen because 16 March 1944 represented the first time that both divisions of the Latvian Legion fought together, holding off a major offensive by the Red Army along the banks of the Velikaya River in Russia. At the first celebration of Legionnaire Day in Brooklyn, NY in 1953, DV leaders declared that ‘the Latvian Legion won one of the biggest battles against tyranny’ and that Latvian Legionnaires ‘held their positions […] [they] fought for every foot of their land’. ⁶⁶

Legionnaire Day is noteworthy not simply as an invented post-war tradition by DV, which then spread across the diaspora and back to Latvia; its origins also distinguish it from other memorial days. Whereas many memorial or remembrance days mark the end of a conflict or commemorate significant losses incurred, Legionnaire Day is decidedly martial, observing a victorious battle (within a lost war), fought on foreign soil (though it is framed in terms of national defence), and on behalf of a foreign power (though the Latvian nature of the Legion is emphasised). But this triumphant vision whitewashes bleaker wartime assessments, as when Legion officer Pēteris Lapainis wrote in his diary that 16 March 1944 ‘was a black day’. ⁶⁷ It also troubled DV member and Legion veteran Rūdolfs Kociņš, who argued that ‘formally, 16 March is rather the day of the VI [SS Army] Corps and not of the [Latvian] Legion’, and believed that the battle featured ‘failure […] in no way deserv[ing] praise’, despite some acts of heroism by Legionnaires. ⁶⁸ Indeed, the March 1944 battles demonstrated the weaknesses of the Legion's logistics and personnel-replacement systems in the face of sustained combat and heavy casualties; shortly after the battles concluded, the Latvian Legion was ordered to withdraw 50 km westward. ⁶⁹

When Latvian independence was restored (de jure in 1990, de facto in 1991), a major goal of former Legionnaires in the West was achieved, along with the possibility of their return. Though Latvia had changed a great deal after a half-century of Soviet rule, for the exiles, ‘the image or story about the homeland is more important than the reality’. ⁷⁰ In Latvia, DV expanded its membership and reshaped political discourse. DV cultivated new rituals — such as a solemn annual march to the Freedom Monument in central Riga on Legionnaire Day — and established new networks. Local sympathisers with DV's war narrative — including nationalist right-wing political parties such as the Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK) and For Fatherland and Freedom (TB) — assumed positions of political prominence, which would even include veterans of the Latvian Legion, like the MP Visvaldis Lācis, who was elected to the Saeima and served from 2006 to 2011.

The culmination came in 1998, with the Saeima's codification of 16 March as Remembrance Day for Latvian Soldiers as well as its ‘Declaration on the Latvian Legion in World War II’. This act affirms that ‘the aim of soldiers who were drafted into the Legion or who joined it voluntarily was to protect Latvia from the restoration of Stalin's regime’ and furthermore obliges the Latvian government to ‘prevent insults against the honour and dignity of Latvian soldiers [i.e., Legionnaires] in Latvia and abroad’. ⁷¹ An informal prohibition on the participation of government ministers in 16-March events in Riga has remained in place since its disestablishment as an official holiday in 2000. Yet, some have defied this ban at the risk of being fired — for example, the Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development, Einārs Cilinskis — while others have publicly praised the Legion in other contexts — for example, the Minister of Defence, Artis Pabriks, who called Legionnaires ‘heroes’ and ‘the pride of the Latvian nation and Latvian state’. ⁷² Meanwhile, the chairman of the National Alliance (NA) — a political party uniting LNNK, TB, and All for Latvia! — Raivis Dzintars, insists that ‘16 March is a day of national resistance and unity, when every year the citizens of Latvia must show their ability to maintain their faith in the memory of their freedom fighters’. ⁷³ As NA does not represent the political fringe, rather a party firmly within the political mainstream that continuously participated in the governing coalition from 2011 to 2023, it functions as a vital pressure group for propagating Latvian Legion mythology from the halls of power. ⁷⁴ Though major counter-currents to the lost cause narrative of the Latvian Legion continue to exist in Latvian society, the aforementioned bases of support in politics, media, non-governmental organisations, and across the diaspora will likely preserve its public memory.

As Arthur Silgailis and other prominent Latvian Legion officers published memoirs and military histories among the Western trimda, so too did former Confederate General Jubal A. Early in 1866 from his exile in Canada. Being the first general from either side to publish his works about the American Civil War, Early was determined to set the narrative, and thus laid the groundwork for the Lost Cause. When he learned that one of the Confederacy's leading generals, Robert E. Lee, was writing his own history of the war in 1868, Early pleaded his case directly to Lee: ‘The most that is left to us is the history of our struggle, and I think that ought to be accurately written. We lost nearly everything but honor, and that should be religiously guarded’. ⁷⁵ Likewise, the early efforts of DV and individual Legion officers shaped public memory not only among the Latvian diaspora, but also eventually in Latvia itself; in a similar way, ‘as much as anyone, then, Jubal Early constructed the image of the Civil War that many Americans North and South still find congenial’. ⁷⁶

Parallels are also visible in the entanglements between veterans’ organisations and popular periodicals. The Confederate Veteran, a magazine characterised by David Blight as ‘the clearinghouse for Lost Cause thought’, became directly affiliated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and United Confederate Veterans (UCV). ⁷⁷ By 1900, it had accumulated more subscribers than any other periodical in the South. ⁷⁸ New commemorative dates on the calendar also buttressed public memory of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Whereas Legionnaire Day emerged under DV seven years after the war before spreading across the diaspora and then temporarily achieving official status in Latvia 46 years later, Confederate Memorial Day was first commemorated immediately after the American Civil War but took decades to assume prominence in the calendar. First cultivated informally by Ladies Memorial Associations, the holiday was carried forward by the UDC and UCV, finally achieving official status in various forms in the eleven former Confederate states from the 1870s to the 1930s, with some state recognition lasting to the present.

4. A righteous political cause defeated only by superior industrial might

Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues that ‘The one great consolation for the defeated is their faith in their cultural and moral superiority over the newly empowered who have ousted them’. ⁷⁹ Such patterns are deeply embedded in narratives of the Legion, where exponents imagine a righteous cause that was somehow either separate from or merely concurrent with the war waged by Nazi Germany. This righteous cause that animated the Latvian Legion and continues to form the basis of either its celebration or its exoneration can be broken down into roughly two parts: first, the defence of Latvia, in order to prevent a second Soviet occupation; second, the restoration of Latvian independence, either as a reward for loyal service to Germany, by waiting for the right moment to turn on Germany, or through the intervention of the Western Allies. In addition to articulated divergences from the occupying power in goals and ideology, a major point of convergence endures in the characterisation of the Soviet Union as a marauding horde of Asiatic barbarism (and thus also a ‘lesser evil’ compared with Nazi Germany), achieving victory through a combination of endless resources and Western betrayal. Both the aforementioned organisations and public memory constitute the media through which arguments supporting this righteous cause continue to be disseminated.

The idea of Latvian independence reforged through imperial military service emerged from Latvia's World War I experience, in which Latvians participated in national formations in the Imperial Russian Army, some of whom then helped to secure a military victory for the new Latvian state against the defeated German and Russian Empires caught in the throes of revolutionary collapse. During World War II, each of these justifications — narratives of national defence and a path to restored independence through German gratitude in shared victory, mutual German and Soviet collapse, or through Western Allied fiat — could function as motivating factors for Legionnaires. However, the former elides the fact that preventing a second Soviet occupation functionally meant preserving a murderous German occupation also inimical to Latvian independence, since Latvian Legionnaires served in German uniform and under German command. The latter overlooks the fact that neither independence nor autonomy were ever promised by the German authorities in exchange for military service, while repeating the post-World War I experience would have been implausible.

In primary sources from both during and after World War II, many Legionnaires assert that they were fighting first and foremost for Latvian independence. Vilis Hāzners contends that in 1941, ‘the Latvian soldier did not doubt for a single moment that he was fighting for a free, independent Latvia’ as ‘the German army was the only force at that time that fought Bolshevism and its terror with weapons’. ⁸⁰ Hāzners, like many others, consciously echoes the arguments of wartime proponents for collaboration with Germany. ⁸¹ This conception has, in turn, been adopted in both popular and scholarly works of history. ⁸² Yet Latvian independence was never formally on offer from Germany. As Kaspars Zellis notes, ‘the worse things became for Germany, the more Latvians were able to express their nationalism’, without any fundamental change in occupation policy. ⁸³ Even fairly late into the war, authority figures in the Legion often justified their struggle as one for ‘the future of the Latvian people’ or ‘eternal Latvia’, echoing long-standing euphemisms that circulated in the German occupation press. ⁸⁴ Some Legionnaires such as Ēriks Pārups were more clear-eyed at the time, recalling that ‘not in a single speech, article, or order did the Germans ever say that we were fighting for Latvia’. ⁸⁵ But many Legionnaires clung tenaciously to hopes that their fight was for Latvian independence to the end of the war or beyond. Just months after their defeat in the war, former Legion officers like Kārlis Lobe insisted that any future restoration of Latvian sovereignty would only be possible ‘as a result of our [i.e., Legionnaires’] struggle and sacrifices’. ⁸⁶ Despite the persistence of these feelings, the consensus position of Latvian historians today is that the structural limitations of the time would have prevented the Latvian Legion from achieving Latvian independence on the battlefield. ⁸⁷

Representing Nazi Germany — either explicitly or implicitly — as the lesser evil is also an important component of the righteous cause. The first year of Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1941 had culminated in the mass deportation of nearly 15,000 citizens of Latvia and the hurried extrajudicial executions of prisoners in June 1941, priming a substantial portion of the Latvian population for collaboration with Nazi Germany. In this context, preventing a second Soviet occupation constituted an important ‘negative goal’ that motivated Legionnaires. ⁸⁸ However, it must be noted that the popular term for the first Soviet occupation, Baigais gads (‘Year of Horrors’), was codified in the German occupation press; not only did it endure among the trimda, it also solidified the idea that the first Soviet occupation (1940–41) was dramatically worse than the German occupation (1941–45). ⁸⁹ Along with the Baigais gads concept, some other enmeshed elements of German propaganda persisted into the post-war era. As one 1960s DV pamphlet in West Germany framed it, having experienced the ‘Asiatic-Communist exercise of power […] [Latvians] protected their country with weapon in hand, in order to avoid a repetition of the 1940/41 Baigais gads’. ⁹⁰ Similarly, Visvaldis Lācis emphasises that ‘the swastika imposed by the Germans was easier [for Latvians] to bear’ than the graphic forms of torture endured by Latvians under ‘red terror’, as seen in the published images of the 1942 Baigais gads volume; put more simply, ‘had there been no Baigais gads, there would not have been a Latvian Legion’. ⁹¹ However, thirst for revenge represents neither a defensible long-term rationale for military service nor a plausible basis for the participation of the many Legionnaires mobilised years after Soviet atrocities had initially been revealed. ⁹²

Attempts to focus on the threat of Soviet reoccupation while ignoring the reality of the German occupation can lead to a paradoxical situation. When confronted with Nazi Germany's ultimate goals of colonising Latvia and Germanising ‘racially desirable’ Latvians (while expelling or killing others), former Legionnaires typically claim ignorance; as one Legionnaire put it, ‘Latvians were unfamiliar with German views and even less with their intentions’. ⁹³ Yet after the war, when such knowledge circulated more freely, former Legionnaires still rarely admit that the German occupation was more lethal for citizens of Latvia than the Baigais gads; one dissenting former officer concedes that ‘the consequences of the actions of our enemy, the Russian, and our ‘ally’, the German, are many times very similar’. ⁹⁴ This omission, combined with emphasis on the ‘negative goal’ of preventing Soviet occupation often replicates Nazi-German rhetoric on the ‘Crusade against Bolshevism’. Such a rejection of Nazi ideology combined with convergence on attitudes towards the Soviet enemy appears in the memoirs of Vilis Hāzners, who described a German SS officer who ‘was not a big National Socialist’ but believed that ‘the war was a necessary matter, because the Russians needed to be conquered and eradicated as a people’, adding, ‘that was also my own philosophy’. ⁹⁵ Incongruous statements of this nature have persisted in outward-facing media as well; for example, from the West German chapter of DV in 1966: ‘when Latvian soldiers fought together with their German brothers-in-arms against Soviet-imperialist Russia, it had nothing to do with Nazi ideology’. ⁹⁶

Furthermore, the idea of a complete firewall between the Latvian Legion and the Germanic Waffen-SS as well as between the motivations and beliefs of Latvian Legionnaires and the ideology of the SS is difficult to maintain in the face of evidence to the contrary. The Latvian Legion, like other non-Germanic units of the Waffen-SS, was distinct in significant ways from Germanic Waffen-SS units as well as from the Allgemeine SS and the SS-Totenkopfverbände. During the war, many Latvian Legionnaires resented German chauvinism and sought to centre Latvian culture and their own war goals whenever possible. ⁹⁷ Yet Latvian Legionnaires and their German SS counterparts occasionally bonded over their shared struggle — or simply over drinks. ⁹⁸ Some attachments endured thereafter, as evidenced by the ‘heartfelt comradely greetings’ sent by former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS commanders to their Latvian ‘brothers in arms’ in the 19th Division in 1953. ⁹⁹ The release of former 19th Division commander Bruno Streckenbach from Soviet captivity in 1955 prompted DV General Secretary Alfrēds-Jānis Bērziņš to seek ways to officially welcome his return to Germany. ¹⁰⁰ A factual, historical inquiry from DV representatives to a French veteran of the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division evolved into a friendly exchange, with the Frenchman waxing poetic about how ‘the old Waffen-SS’ was ‘a big family and the realisation of a true European community’. ¹⁰¹ In 1970, DV Australia created a commemorative battle flag (standarts) for the Latvian Legion with the SS motto, ‘my honour is called loyalty’, written on it in Latvian. This flag was gifted to the DVCV and displayed when celebrating its ‘Global Days’, a periodic gathering of DV members from across the world. ¹⁰² Finally, it must be noted that DV considers all Latvian units in German service to be part of the Legion, negating post-war apologia aimed at Western audiences that separate the ‘good soldiers’ (those fighting the Red Army in the field) from the ‘bad cops’ (those directly involved as perpetrators in the Holocaust and in anti-partisan repressions). ¹⁰³

An emphasis on instrumental cooperation with Nazi Germany can also be used to articulate the righteous cause of the Latvian Legion. In this interpretation, Latvians had no choice but to facilitate the creation of the Legion but hoped that they could eventually utilise it to achieve their own goals. Former Legion officer Jūlijs Ķīlītis acknowledges that at the time of the Legion's creation, some in Latvia thought that ‘it was inappropriate to sacrifice the blood of the nation for a lost cause’; nonetheless, Ķīlītis asserts that ‘when the war ended and the German army collapsed, [the Legion] would be the beginning of a new Latvian Army and a force that would be able to maintain peace and order in the homeland’. ¹⁰⁴ During the war, a popular song among Legionnaires was ‘First we’ll trounce the lice-ridden ones [the Soviets], then the Feldgrau ones [the Germans]’. ¹⁰⁵ This view, however, relies on wishful thinking. By necessity, this approach ignores the case of Lithuania, where — unlike Latvia or Estonia — local officials, realising that Lithuanian independence was not on offer from Germany, sabotaged the creation of a Waffen-SS Lithuanian Legion and prevented its formation. ¹⁰⁶ Independence achieved through instrumental collaboration with an imperial force would have required a repetition of Latvia's post-World War I experience, in which some Latvian Riflemen formerly in Imperial Russian Army service contributed to the victory of the Latvian provisional government over the Latvian Bolsheviks and pro-German forces — an unlikely scenario given the geopolitical circumstances of World War II. Post-war exponents of the Legion's righteous cause further assert that it was reasonable to believe that the Western Allies would restore Latvian independence in the event of a German defeat, despite repeated declarations by the wartime Big Three on their unbreakable unity and the consistent American and British refusal to apply the principles of the Atlantic Charter to the Baltic states. ¹⁰⁷

After World War I, many on the nationalist right came to claim that the German Army was ‘undefeated on the field of battle’ (im Felde unbesiegt). Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues that this represents ‘the German version of the universal loser trope that the vanquished side has not been bested in combat but rather ‘suffocated’ by the sheer mass of the enemy’. ¹⁰⁸ Legionnaires such as Oskars Perro maintain that ‘historically, Russian leaders have always done this: operated on the principle of using masses of people regardless of the losses’ and that ‘Russia's only strength were these masses of people’. ¹⁰⁹ Rolands Kovtuņenko asserts that ‘Russians have a herd instinct’ while ‘Latvians […] are individualists’, formulating a fundamental civilisational difference that manifested on the battlefield. ¹¹⁰ For the 19th Division, which remained in the field in the western Latvian province of Courland until the unconditional surrender of Germany, this has a natural appeal. In a speech in Melbourne, Australia, DV chairman Jānis Frišvalds declared that the Latvian Legion ‘was not destined to be on the winning side of the war, even though the Legion remained undefeated in battle’. ¹¹¹ A Legion veteran and the head of the Association of Latvian National Soldiers (Latvijas Nacionālo karavīru biedrība; LNKB), Edgars Skreija, addressed the crowd at Lestene for Legionnaire Day in 2010, declaring that ‘Fortress Courland remained unoccupied and the Latvian Legion was undefeated’. ¹¹² Together with Wehrmacht and other Waffen-SS units, the 19th Division had held off six separate Red Army offensives in Courland from October 1944 to May 1945, facilitating a narrative of resilience in the face of overwhelming odds:

May 8^th granted a physical victory to the Red hordes, although they failed to occupy Fortress Courland with their enormous superiority, remaining unvictorious there — such is the moral strength of the Legionnaires today. None of them has changed — whether in their homeland, in slave [labour] camps, or in a foreign land — their voice and hopes, their faith and conviction that their own sacrifice and heroic actions on battlefields have sealed the zeal of the Latvian soldier for the freedom of his people. ¹¹³

However, without the 19 German divisions also deployed in Courland, it seems inconceivable that a single Latvian Legion division could have endured on its own. But by emphasising German betrayal through unconditional surrender and Western betrayal through non-intervention against their wartime ally on the status of the Baltic states, the Latvian Legion can be presented as undefeated by military means.

Clement A. Evans, the leader of the UCV stated that ‘If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country’. ¹¹⁴ Similarly, the veterans of the Latvian Legion who ended up in Western Allied captivity at the end of the war faced a serious dilemma. They needed to explain their service on the side of Nazi Germany — and furthermore within the Waffen-SS, an organisation that was proscribed and vilified after the war — to the governments and publics of the Western Allies and countries formerly occupied by Nazi Germany. Additionally, they needed to justify their actions to the wave of Latvian refugees that had emerged in the context of their defeat. Like the Confederate ‘veterans and the [UDC who] continued to glorify the valor of Southern soldiers and to defend their honor as defensive warriors who were never truly beaten in battle’, Latvian Legionnaires presented themselves as brave and honourable defenders of the nation who stood firm until the end despite overwhelming odds, remaining unbeaten by their enemy. ¹¹⁵ To codify a narrative of righteousness, the mislaid hopes of many Latvian Legionnaires in wartime were retroactively transformed into the reasons that the Legion was created and the cause for which it fought. Similarly, while Confederate soldiers did fight to preserve slavery, that was not the primary cause that motivated many of them — instead, ideas of liberty, regional loyalty and/or patriotism, and protecting home and hearth. These more palatable motivations later came to be identified with the war effort overall, reframing their service as part of a righteous cause. ¹¹⁶

5. A cult of the fallen soldier

On the Eastern Front, many soldiers from both sides remained officially missing in action at the end of the war, their remains abandoned where they fell or hastily buried in unmarked or poorly marked graves. Since the 1990s, volunteers from Latvian civil society organisations have reinterred Legionnaires’ remains and marked burial sites. Yet this understandable practice also fosters the creation of monuments and inscriptions that reinforce the ‘lost cause’ narrative. Any attempt to commemorate a war through physical objects ‘unavoidably create[s] a distinct political landscape’, which in Latvia has featured a growing presence of tributes to the Latvian Legion. ¹¹⁷ Latvian Legionnaires are thus commemorated not just as victims of war, but also as heroes and martyrs for the Latvian national cause, despite serving in foreign uniform and lacking control over their mission.

At first, Legionnaires in the West had been buried at military cemeteries interspersed with German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel, for example at Lommel, Belgium; later, elements of the Latvian trimda also established small war cemeteries for Legion veterans in Australia, Canada, and the United States. ¹¹⁸ By contrast, in the Latvian SSR, memorials to the Latvian Legion were not permitted and informal ones were destroyed by state authorities as late as 1990. ¹¹⁹ Over the past 30 years, however, small memorials and markers have proliferated across Latvia, many with the financial support of organisations like DV. A memorial in the Lubāna Parish New Cemetery commemorates Latvian Legionnaires who have ‘fallen for the freedom of Latvia’. ¹²⁰ Similarly, a memorial at Zommeri Cemetery in Ozolnieki Parish commemorates ‘the Second World War Latvian soldiers who fell for the freedom of Latvia’. ¹²¹ A memorial stone dedicated to Latvian Legionnaires at the military cemetery at More, where a large battle was fought by the 19th Division in fall 1944, contains the words, ‘I believed [that] the fatherland would once again be free’. ¹²² According to one account, multiple busloads of Latvian schoolchildren visit the More battlefield each day. ¹²³ Unveiled in 2012, a monument in Bauska is dedicated ‘to the defenders against a second Soviet occupation’ — that is, Legionnaires, Latvian auxiliary police and an ad hoc local militia — and features the phrase ‘Latvia must remain a Latvian [latviešu] state’, associated with Latvia's interwar dictator, Kārlis Ulmanis. ¹²⁴

The practice of constructing tombs or monuments to the ‘unknown soldier’ is a modern one, which became widespread after World War I. Such a practice represents not only a practical solution to the matter of burying and marking unidentifiable or irrecoverable casualties of war, but also has important symbolic implications. As Benedict Anderson argues, such tombs are ‘saturated with ghostly national imaginings’, in that they really commemorate the immortal collective rather than the mortal remains of an individual soldier. ¹²⁵ The first such memorial to include Latvian Legionnaires was placed at the Estonian and Latvian veterans’ plots in Fawkner Cemetery, in Melbourne, Australia. A ‘Grave of the Unknown Soldier’ was dedicated in 1968 ‘To the eternal glory and memory to those Latvian sons who fought and fell for [the] liberty and independence [of] mother Latvia’, linking those who fought in the 1918–20 Latvian War of Independence with the Latvian Legion of World War II. ¹²⁶ Such claims were made explicit by members of the local DV chapter, expressing gratitude towards ‘all Latvian legionnaires for their irreplaceable gift; without it, none of us would be here’, that is, alive in Australia. ¹²⁷

Public calls for the reburial of Legionnaires at a centralised burial site resulted in the establishment of a new cemetery at Lestene, in Courland, in 1998. More than just a burial plot, this was envisioned as a ‘a new holy place and a grand ritual site’ and became ‘a national shrine’. ¹²⁸ More than 1000 Legionnaires have been interred there while over 17,000 Legionnaires and national partisans are commemorated by name in a stele. ¹²⁹ Since 2000, the Lestene Cemetery has possessed a monument to the unknown soldier, with the dedication, ‘we are awaiting the resurrection of justice’, conveying confidence that these soldiers will ultimately be vindicated. A sculpture by Arta Dumpe, Homeland Mother Latvia, attempts to symbolise the relationship of Latvia to the Latvian Legion through the metaphor of a mother grieving for the death of her son. Since its establishment, high-ranking government officials — including the speaker of the Saeima, cabinet ministers and the prime minister — have all made official visits to Lestene Cemetery.

The foundations of a cult of the fallen already emerged in 1944 in response to the deaths of two Legion officers. One of them, Voldemārs Veiss, is considered by Valdis Lumans to be the ‘founding father’ of Latvian armed formations under German command, having led auxiliary and police units in anti-Jewish and anti-partisan actions from summer 1941 onward. ¹³⁰ Later, commanding a regiment in the Latvian Legion, Veiss was not only the first Latvian to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, as Waff.-Standartenführer (Colonel), he was also the highest-ranking combat casualty in the Legion. Severely wounded by a grenade near Volkhov, Russia on 10 April 1944, Veiss died a week later in Latvia. He was buried in the Riga Cemetery of the Brethren — the central military cemetery of Latvia — in a large public ceremony. ¹³¹ The German occupation press venerated Veiss, declaring that ‘he died so that the Latvian people may live’. ¹³² The regiment Veiss had commanded was posthumously renamed in his honour.

Immortalised during the war as ‘The Colonel of Volkhov’ (Volhovas pulkvedis), Veiss had earned a reputation as a dedicated and professional soldier, yet also one willing ‘to follow the German line to the end’. ¹³³ In various trimda outlets since the war, Veiss has consistently been lauded as embodying personal uprightness, soldierly virtues and patriotic values. ¹³⁴ He was even the subject of a brief hagiographic biography, published in 1955. In it, Kārlis Lobe, another former Legion officer, saluted Veiss as a ‘true patriot and uniquely heroic Latvian warrior’; by remembering Veiss, Latvians can become ‘stronger in love for our own [people] and stronger in battle against the enemy’. ¹³⁵ Removed during the Soviet period, Veiss's headstone in the Riga Cemetery of the Brethren was restored in the 1990s, when his remains were joined by those of Bangerskis and Janums.

The case of Kārlis Aperāts is also illustrative. An officer in the interwar Latvian Army, Aperāts had been carried over into the Red Army after the Soviet occupation but deserted immediately following the German invasion in 1941, later volunteering for roles in the auxiliary police and in the Latvian Legion. In July 1944, Aperāts led a retreating battle group of Legionnaires in an attempted breakout to escape Red Army encirclement across the Zilupe (Sinyaya River) into Latvia. After being seriously wounded, Aperāts committed suicide in order to avoid capture; out of 740 soldiers under Aperāts's command, at least 328 were killed in action and as few as 60 escaped to German lines. ¹³⁶ In the German occupation press, another Legionnaire eulogised Aperāts:

With the [Lt.] Colonel's departure, the lifetime of a hero and a fighter has once again achieved its highest fulfilment. [Aperāts] remains on the battlefield, but the living will bring their colonel's faith and willingness to sacrifice for the fatherland further into their hearts. ¹³⁷

Aperāts was posthumously promoted to Waff.-Standartenführer (Colonel) and awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

After the war, Aperāts continued to be held up as a national hero and martyr among the Latvian diaspora and in post-Soviet Latvia. On the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Mozuli, the Rēzekne DV chapter erected a white wooden cross in Krivanda, Latvia — just three kilometres from the battle site, which lies across the Russian border. In 2003, ahead of the battle's 60th anniversary, this was supplemented with an engraved stone monument. Despite its remote location, every 16 July, a delegation commemorates Aperāts and his unit. In the past, this pilgrimage has included members of the Saeima, local elected officials and representatives of organisations such as DV and the LNKB. ¹³⁸

In the memory culture cultivated by DV, the heroic deaths of Legionnaires meant life for Latvians in both a literal and a figurative sense. The head of the Australian DV chapter, Valentīns Rolavs, argues that the wartime losses of Legionnaires had a direct and meaningful impact for the Latvian diaspora and by extension, the survival of the Latvian nation:

The Latvian people lost approximately 80,000 dead and missing in action in the ranks of the Legion and other [German] units […] It is also undeniable that only the battles and sacrifices of the Legion opened the possibility for 100,000 Latvians to find refuge in the free world. Practically speaking, one Latvian soldier's life has been paid for every free Latvian. ¹³⁹

Yet as martyrs, Latvian Legionnaires also provide something more intangible. In 1953, Legion veteran and DV Chairman Arvīds Lidacis wrote that ‘the cult of heroes is one of the deepest sources of life for a nation [tauta], if ‘life’ is understood as the full life of a people on their land, in their state, in their language and within their cultural values’. ¹⁴⁰ As he believed that interwar Latvia deservedly ‘honoured their heroes not only in their hearts, but also with their works — grand monuments’, so too should Latvians in a restored independent Latvia in the future. ¹⁴¹ Since then, memorials to the Latvian Legion have accumulated: first, a few in the West during the Cold War, followed by an increasing number in Latvia itself after the restoration of independence, along with a several other more recent ones erected abroad, such as the aforementioned monument formerly located at Zedelgem, Belgium.

These monuments, along with the memorial days spent at them and the tributes delivered to the fallen soldiers of the Latvian Legion, function much like the cult of the fallen of the Confederacy. Military cemeteries and monuments, including to the unknown Confederate soldier, reshaped the political landscape of the Southern United States in the decades after the American Civil War. As Lloyd Hunter argues, ‘it was at the cemetery that ex-Confederates transcended time in a symbolic meeting with the martyrs of the Lost Cause […] they spoke of sacrifice, death, and rebirth’. ¹⁴² Specific Confederate military leaders — including some who perished in battle — came to personify the Lost Cause; as Jubal A. Early wrote, ‘When asked for our vindication, we can triumphantly point to the graves of Lee and [Thomas ‘Stonewall’] Jackson and look the world square in the face’. ¹⁴³ The death of Stonewall Jackson came to be viewed as a tragic and decisive turning point in the war by advocates of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy; similarly, the passing of Voldemārs Veiss was perceived to have ‘deeply weakened the whole of Latvian society … [and] cast a black veil over [Latvians’] hope and faith’ to defend Latvian land from Soviet invasion. ¹⁴⁴ Though the last surviving veterans of the Latvian Legion are passing away, it seems likely that the cult of the fallen will persist through memorial sites and rituals associated with them.

6. Conclusion: a Latvian Lost Cause

Following a traumatic defeat in World War II that displaced them from their homeland, veterans of the Latvian Legion in the West created institutions to defend their perceived interests and spread their message, refined a sense of collective identity first forged in the war, and developed narratives that not only explained their cause in the face of defeat but also justified their participation in the armed forces of a previously hated enemy in many of the places where they now made their homes. This process mirrors the experience of decisive military defeats in other places across the 19th and 20th centuries, with some of the closest parallels visible among Axis-aligned forces in Latvia's neighbours — Estonia, Lithuania, and Ukraine — after the war, Germany following both world wars, and the U.S. South after the American Civil War. In each case, memory entrepreneurs among the vanquished side successfully reframed themselves as moral victors, eventually overshadowing those who defeated them in a regional, national, or even international context.

As in the cases of the postbellum American South and post-war West Germany, former officers of the losing side of a war could initiate campaigns to ‘establish the historical memory of war’. ¹⁴⁵ Latvian Legionnaires — especially high-ranking officers — worked to address the double dilemma mentioned previously of decisive defeat and objectionable alignment. They settled on an inward-facing message of righteousness and defiance and an outward-facing message of defensiveness and victimhood. Veterans of the Estonian Waffen-SS Legion — including the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) — also sought to liberate themselves from the ‘curse of the uniform’ that they had worn during World War II. Armed with legal arguments and political declarations made in the immediate post-war era by the Western Allies, their alignment with Nazi Germany and position in the Waffen-SS was reduced to happenstance, and their reputation was changed to the status of freedom fighters. ¹⁴⁶ Now, Estonian soldiers in German uniform are identified with Estonian patriotism, rather than with a foreign occupying power. ¹⁴⁷ Similarly, Ukrainian veterans of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) — sometimes known simply by its shortened German name, Waffen-SS Galizien — in the West relied on selectively constructed narratives as part of a ‘strategy of ambiguity’; on the one hand, they were victims of the German occupation, on the other, they were ‘anti-Communist and had joined the Division for “patriotic and religious reasons”’. ¹⁴⁸ This blending of narratives, in which soldiers could be both hapless pawns without agency and active patriots who fought for a righteous cause, has been relied upon by several post-war diasporas. Yet Ukrainian independence and the opening of Soviet archives did not allow contemporary scholars to dislodge the pre-existing narrative about the Waffen-SS Galizien established by the Ukrainian diaspora and far-right activists. ¹⁴⁹ Media reports on monuments erected to these formations — in Pärnu, Estonia in 2002 (later temporarily relocated to Lihula, Estonia in 2004) and Elora, Ontario, Canada for the Estonian Legion and in Oakville, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2021 as well as in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, United States in 2023 for the Waffen-SS Galizien — have provoked outrage but not succeeded in dispelling the myths surrounding these units.

The mythology surrounding the Latvian Legion does not represent the direct glorification of Nazism, yet the Legion as an institution remains inseparable from the context of Nazi Germany's occupation of Latvia and its war of annihilation waged against the Soviet Union. Beyond this, the mythology around the Legion represents the simplification of history and a conscious effort to combine deeply contradictory sets of ideas. As Ieva Zake notes, ‘a notable and quite influential part of American Latvian community built their interpretation of history around selective forgetting’ and perception of unfair treatment. ¹⁵⁰ In a similar manner to how Latvians in the Red Army have been left out of official public remembrance in contemporary Latvia, the thousands of African-American and white Southerners who fought for the Union were long excluded from any form of public commemoration in the U.S. South. ¹⁵¹ By contrast, Alan T. Nolan has noted how Confederate soldiers were always presented in romanticised and idealised terms, ‘invariably heroic, indefatigable, gallant, and law-abiding’. In this flattening of reality, Nolan contends that ‘in many ways [the average Confederate] was the principal victim of the Lost Cause myth’. ¹⁵² Generally speaking, the voices of Legionnaires who do not fit the established myths are dismissed or simply ignored. Consider the conclusions of one former Legionnaire, Jānis Zemītis, from his autobiographical account:

I saw nothing good in service [as a Legionnaire], nor have I gained anything, apart from rheumatism, catarrhal inflammation of the stomach, and a dislike of work along with the experience of standing on my own two feet. I have lost a lot during this time — [really] everything, because all I have left is my bare life and memories of the good times that I once lived. ¹⁵³

The focus on soldiers’ heroism and the malice of their enemies distracts from more fundamental questions about why these soldiers were fighting on the battlefield in the first place. While all lost causes centre on the need to compensate for defeat, they also often find it impossible to reckon with the most likely consequences of victory: in the case of the Confederacy, the preservation (and possible expansion) of racial chattel slavery; in the case of the Latvian Legion, controlled by Nazi Germany and subordinated to its objectives, the continued violent and genocidal transformation of Latvia (along with the rest of Central and Eastern Europe) to match Nazi imperial and colonial aims.

Ultimately, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy proved convenient for both regional identity and national consolidation. As Gaines Foster argues, by the 1890s, ‘Confederate memories no longer dwelled as much on mourning or explaining defeat; they offered a set of conservative traditions by which the entire country could gird itself against racial, political, and industrial disorder’. ¹⁵⁴ Similarly, the militant anti-Communism of Legionnaires helped to integrate them into the West in a Cold War context. Though their struggle was ultimately not decisive for the restoration of Latvian independence, their narratives have proved useful thereafter. In emphasising state continuity and the illegality of foreign occupations from 1940 to 1991 while in the shadow of a potentially expansionist and revanchist post-Soviet Russia, affirming the lost cause of the Latvian Legion provided a reassuring national myth of collective resistance. ¹⁵⁵ By contrast, questioning such narratives has only seemed to invite insecurity and disunity while affirming Russian national myths of World War II. ¹⁵⁶ However, by deconstructing the mythology of the Latvian Legion, this article demonstrates the contrived and contingent nature of this narrative — only one of multiple possible narratives about the war — and that the story of the Latvian Legion is only linked fundamentally to the Latvian state to the degree to which Latvian state actors and those able to shape state policy choose to make it. The case of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, which was dominant for so many decades but finally seems to be receding from American historiography, politics, culture, and public life, points to the possibility of revision or supplantation of even deeply embedded myths.