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Comment by shitgoose | Hacker News Reader

In order to put this quick history in a broader context, you may want to mention that Latvia was part of Russian empire for 200 years before gaining independence around 1920. Soviets occupied Latvia 20 years later in 1940.

Statement about "Nazi war machine crushing Latvia" is not entirely accurate - on the contrary, Latvia was part of Nazi war machine: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Legion_Day

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Wikipedia article you are pointing at clearly says "The day has been controversial as the Legion is seen by some as Nazi and the Legion Day itself as a Nazi honouring, while others hold that the Legion was a purely military unit fighting against the Soviet Union that had occupied Latvia in 1940 and was not itself responsible for any of Nazi war crimes."

While you present that as clearly Nazi. That's not the case.

Still we can go even deeper in history and found some historic relations between Latvia and Germany.

Legion was not "purely military" unit, it was part of SS taking orders directly from Himmler. If that is not Nazi, then I don't know what is.

Digging deeper in history and discovering relations between Latvia and Germany will indeed lead to better understanding of Latvian mentality.

Germans had many allies during WWII, almost every country conquered by Germans had some "legion" in Werhmaht(name of german army), even in UK there was some nazi/german political party.

Latvian Legion was not part of Wehrmacht, but part of SS. Big difference, refer to Nuernberg trial for details.

It doesn't apply to Latvia specifically, but I recommend James Michener's "Poland", for an idea of how middle-european countries were occupied by one side or the other. It is a very engaging novel, of course fictionalized, but it's much more readable than "dry" history :)

The result being "who owns what" can be very muddy indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_(novel)

http://www.amazon.com/Poland-James-A-Michener/dp/0394531892

I would like to add an instructive story of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant there. It shows how new and profitable nuclear power plant was turned into a money-consuming hole by the political efforts of EU leaders. This story adds some additional point of view on the problems of Baltic states.

You know the old saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The fact that Latvia was part of Russian empire for 200 hundred years doesn't mean it was a part of its own will, just that it was occupied for that long. And since the Russia was an archenemy of Latvia, whoever came fighting against against Russia could only considered as an ally.

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