Customer Reviews

A dark period in the history of the Baltics - By: P. Stirling, 18 Feb 2006
Whilst an avid reader of WW2 East Front books, I bought this book more to read up prior to going on a touring holidayin Estonia.

This is one of the first books I have seen on the period immediately at the end of WW2 as the Russians are movingin to Estonia (for the 3rd time)and the aftermath of this where fighting continued into the early 1950s as the Estonian freedom fightersin the woods hoped that the west would eventually square up to the Soviet threat & start a third war. The Estonian's had a good idea of what they could expect when the Red Army came back & so started to prepare well before the German withdrawal & maybe gives an indication of why the Estonians & Latvians were not so averse to joining the German army (albeit many were latterly conscripted into the German army). Fighters comprised both ex-German army & ex-Red Army Estonian men, using ex-German army equipment & captured Red Army equipment. Usually operatingin isolated bands they did considerable damage to the Soviet's attempts to incorporate Estonia into the Soviet Union (robbing convoys & shooting soviet officials who treated locals harshly), as well as trying to halt the forced deportations of Estonians to the Soviet Gulags. The Soviets were forced to commit considerable resources to controlling this, but their usual attempts to get local informers made very slow progress & hampered their attempts to eliminate the 'bandits' who hidin underground bunkersin the vast woods supplied by local people. The wearyiness of waiting & the vigorous attempts of the Soviet & local militias eventually eliminated the active fighters & I recollect the last 'bandit was killedin the late 1950s. These were no nazi sympathisers (I believe the Bishop of Canterbury made such an uncharitable referencein the late 1940s), but people who had a taste of soviet repression courtesy of the Molotov/Ribbontrop pactin 1940 & had no intention of taking it again. A very interesting book with lots of anecdotal stories. A small insight into this relatively unknown period & I believe representative of similar struggles throughtout soviet occupied Europe - I recollect it talks of an estimated 250,000 people livingin the woodsin Eastern Europe immediately after the war & not just because they were refugees. The Baltics have plenty of memorials today to the people who died & were deported to the Gulags