I did not know about the torn situation of Estonians between the Red Army and Hitler's army at the time. These lessons did not present in history classes throughout my education.
This is probably one of most truthful war movies I have ever seen. No Hollywood style guts and glory, heroes and cowards, patriots and traitors... just plainly human war conditions fill with survival, love, empathy, humanity and righteousness.
This was so for the rest of the Baltics as well, Latvia and Lithuania. Perhaps some other Eastern European countries as well, such as Ukraine (tried to declare independence from the Soviet Union when the war broke out, but the Germans wouldn't allow it) and Romania.
Btw, where are you from?
Hitler never tried to prevent Ukraine from declaring independence, in fact the German Army liberated Ukrainians from the Soviet Union during their campaign to stop the Communist Reds from taking over Europe.
shareYes, they liberated Ukraine from the Soviets and then occupied it themselves, just like they did with the rest of Eastern Europe. This did not mean that they, in any way at all, supported Ukraine's independence, or anyone else's for that matter. The leaders of the newly formed independent Ukrainian government were sent to concentration camps in Germany and any hope of future freedom was crushed, instead the Germans turned Ukraine into a Reichskommissariat led by a harsh Nazi gauleiter, Erich Koch.
This is believed by some to have been one of the major mistakes of Germany's Eastern policy in WW2. Occupying the Ukrainians instead of actually liberating them and making them an ally, thus contributing to the war effort. Their hatred for the Soviets could have been put to an excellent use and they could've put up a huge army, they had a population around 40 million. Instead they began to hate the Germans and turn on them.
Yes but the whole Ideology was that Slavs (even friendly ones) were inferior beings only good for being kept illiterate & used as slave labor to provide for the citizens of the Reich...
That being said, it seems lots of Eastern Europeans (Including in the Ukraine) view their service with Germany with pride.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
That was the official Nazi party line, but front-line Heer commanders from regiments right up to army groups made use of massive amounts of Slavs in their ranks, mostly as truck drivers and other non-combat roles, but as combat troops as well. An entire Soviet regiment surrendered and flipped to the other side, and the Germans kept them together as a fighting unit. Estimates are that 1.5 to 3 million former Soviet soldiers served directly in the Wehrmacht, and many millions more were drawn from Slav civilians. An inconvenient truth of history.
shareYes that's true and many of those ex Soviet soldiers were quite brave & loyal, sadly. Either way their choice was either being starved to death in a German labor camp or putting on a uniform & running the risk of being 'plugged' by the NKVD after the war.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
Yes, I hadn't thought of that side of it, either. If the choice was between being put in one of those massive open-air enclosures in the dead of winter with barely any food and typhus and dysentery so common it would make the choice of driving an ammo truck or staying in one of those hell-holes pretty easy to make.
shareCouldn't agree with you 2 folks more. Everything was on the line for every Balt, Finn, and as noted, Romanian in a very in-your-face way. No time to adjust or reason with the onslaught but simply a pure primal response to brutality, deprivation, murder, rape, and destruction. I won't assign guilt to entire ethnic groups but if I lived in Estonia I would be uneasy with all the Russian speaking people left after the Soviet collapse. As we now see Putin does use ethnicity for a reason to "liberate" which is unadulterated invasion as demonstrated in Ukraine, Georgia, and Crimea (also a part of Ukraine). History shows that Hitler used the exact excuse to invade Sudentenland and the Polish corridor, now Kaliningrad. And Stalin used this excuse to invade what was once Bessarabia (now Moldova) and Bukovina, also Romanian land.
In fact Putin recently called into question whether the Baltics independence was ever legitimate, as if the USSR or present day Russia has any lawful or authentic say in the matter.
Kaliningrad is not the Polish corridor, it was Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland. Kaliningrad is the old Prussian town Königsberg, located in the Prussian territory formerly called Ostpreussen.
Reality television spoils fiction.
You are right, I learned something I thought I knew. Thank you for the kind correction.
what ails most madmen is realitys grasp or escape, a paralysis of analysis
I fear your assessment of Putin wanting to create a Greater Russia that encompasses all areas in other sovereign countries with a Russian minority is spot on, a repeat of Hitler (and also Milošević). Geo-politically, I can see and understand Russia's fear of having NATO troops only hundreds of miles from Moscow instead of the thousands of miles that used to separate them, but that is no excuse to violate the sovereignty of independent nations as viewed by the UN and the rest of the planet.
Putin is a very dangerous man, and if he saw his and other like-minded and highly placed former KGB members in his government's power slipping to such a state that it could not be retrieved, I believe he would whole-sale invade and annex the Ukraine, Belarus, and even the NATO member states of the Baltics. He isn't a madman, but he is absolutely ruthless and will get away with as much as the world community lets him. I also could see Germany throwing in with Russia and China at some point as well if American power were to suddenly wane, or if the USA were torn apart by internal chaos.
I even have a pet theory than none other than Putin and the GRU, etc., are the real people pulling Donald Trump's strings exactly so they have a Manchurian Candidate-type POTUS that will break-up NATO and give Russia a free hand in re-conquest of *all* the former CCCP republics. Trump has pretty much stated as much in his foreign policy quips and praise of Putin... could he be the ultimate Putin-Troll? As outlandish as this may sound, time may prove my theory correct (though I hope I am wrong).