LATVIA: Das Baltikum

One cool midnight last week patrols trotted out of their barracks in Riga to take up posts along the empty streets of the 700-year-old city. Telephones rang in army and police posts all through Latvia, and in dozens of smaller towns and villages other patrols went out into the night. Nothing happened, because all good Letts stayed snug in their beds. Next morning they woke to martial law, machine guns posted round the headquarters of the Socialist party, a censored Press and a dictatorship ruling the country.

Except for smashing all opposition, the Government did not seem very different.

President Alberts Kviesis still ruled with the help of his military ally, Col. Jacobson. Charles Ulmanis succeeded bustling Adolfs Blodnieks as Prime Minister and General Janis Balodis again took over the Army. Gloomiest fact to the Lett-in-the-street was that no alcoholic beverages could be sold for two days. Suspicious correspondents, not at all satisfied with the obvious instigators of Latvia’s dictatorship, spotted the shadow of Adolf Hitler behind President Kviesis and his officers. Beyond the Polish Corridor and East Prussia, the Eastern shore of the Baltic is edged with little countries born of the War. Going north, they are Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and vast lake-riddled Finland. All of them were Russian provinces before 1917 and in all of them still goes on a constant struggle of German v. Russian influence. Latvia is mostly an agricultural country. The Letts are an amiable, broad-faced people. Russian for more than 100 years, the country was dominated for 700 years before that by German barons, holding the Lettish peasants as serfs. Today the upper classes and “best people” are still mostly of German descent.

Riga, its capital and chief port, is a German city. Founded by a handful of merchants from Bremen, it became one of the great ports of the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages, was captured by Peter the Great’s General Sheremetieff in i 710.

When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany the descendants of the German barons who went to Latvia with the Hanseatic traders suddenly discovered a good Baltic German firmly ensconced in the highest circles of Nazidom: Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, Chief of the Nazi Bureau of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Rosenberg helped organize the “League of the Baltic Brotherhood” to unite the Baltic states under Nazi guidance. A weekly Das Baltikum was established to preach the word. Latvian Germans hoped that, though breaking up the great German estates was one of the original Hitlerite tenets, a Fascist state might restore the lands and prosperity they lost after the War. Latvia’s little parliament, the Saeima, has only 100 members, representing some 25 parties. Dr. Rosenberg agreed with the German clique that the Saeima must go. Last week it went.

President Kviesis and Premier Ulmanis are both members of the Farmers Union, the party of rich farmers and landowners. German Nazis uttered not a peep in Latvia last week but in Riga beer cellars the rumor persisted that the Latvian Fascist society Katsuelit was back of the present coup d’etat and back of Katsuelit was Adolf Hitler, sponsor of Das Baltikum Nazification.