What Latvia Wishes From This War?Dr. Alfreds Bīlmanis, 1944

Soviet intents vs. Baltic rights and future role

The Baltic States present a stepping stone to the domination of all Northern Europe. In addition to the pro-Soviet Baltic governments, a pro-Soviet Polish Committee, a pro-Soviet German and Austrian Committee and Pan-Slavic committees for the Balkan Slavs and Central European Slavs have already been created in Moscow.

The mouthpiece of the Moscow rulers, the Moscow publication "War and Working Class" reveals (on June 19, 1943, as related by the Associated Press) that even a United States of Europe would be refused by the U.S.S.R. And in no case could an Eastern European Federation be created. Only the U.S.S.R. has a right to exist and endeavor to work for its security, which is conditioned by a complete subjugation of the small nations on Russia's western border. Thus between the German and Russian frontiers lie peoples subject to Soviet colonization.

But much as the U.S.S.R. has a right to organize its security, also other European nations have the same right.

To our understanding the peoples of Europe, also of Eastern Europe, will not submit to Bolshevik rule or preponderance. Only the restitution of the frontiers of Europe before the occupation of Austria by Germany presents a real solution to the post-war situation in Europe, which has to be conditioned by a complete disarmament of Germany and the actual neutralization of the Kiel Canal in order to make the Baltic Sea free again. The Baltic States as the natural guardians of the freedom of the Baltic Sea must also be reestablished. Their independence is the necessary equilibrium in Northern Europe, much as is independence of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. In the same way Poland's independence is the condition of an equilibrium in Central Europe. Poland should have restored to her the Polish inhabited territories of East-Prussia on the Vistula estuary and South-West Prussia. The myth about the historically Polish city 19 Danzig or Gdansk as a preponderantly German city belongs to the past: Gdansk is an old Polish city, just as Klajpeda or Memel is Lithuanian. It was very easy for Germany during its domination after the partitioning of Poland to colonize some Polish parts, or, as the Germans are doing now, to settle the German-Balts on Polish lands. This colonization is artificial, as was the colonization of Prussia, inhabited by people of the same race as the Latvians and Lithuanians. It does not matter that the Prussians now speak German; by race they still are not Germans and, as is known, East-Prusia was the most democratic part of Old-Germany except for the "Junker"-class of big landowners, who were of the same type as the Baltic German noble landowners in Latvia and Estonia. These junkers should be removed from Danzig and East-Prussia and an agrarian reform should be introduced to return to the people the land of which they have been robbed. The parts of East-Prussia inhabited by Lithuanians and adjacent to Lithuania should be given back to Lithuania, in the same way as the Polish inhabited parts adjacent to Poland should be returned to that country.

Even then there would remain Polish and Lithuanian minorities scat¬tered over Prussia, and thousands of Latvian speaking people along the Prussian Baltic Sea shore, around the Kurishe Haff and Kurishe Nederung, so called because of the Latvian Kurish fishermen and farmers inhabiting these lands still in the XVII century, as testified by German historians, f.i. Einhorn in his Historia Lettica of the XVII century.* The names of rivers, lakes and places in East-Prussia testify to the above mentioned facts. Also, many a place name and railway station and numerous family names have preserved their Old-Prussian character. In 1939 Hitler gave special orders to germanize these names, especially geographical names.

The kernel of Prussia purified of foreign German element could be the fourth Baltic State and could become also the fourth canton in the potential United States of the Baltic, should the Baltic States decide to create such a union after this war. This is quite likely, because there has always been a trend toward it. The Baltic States have a common geographic position, common economics, a common destiny, and are more or less equal in size, so that they could very easily, without fear of the preponderance of one of them, become a Union of States similar to Switzerland. The destiny of this Union would be to serve as a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe, as they served during the years after the first World War and until Hitler appeared.**