As far as the other details of the document are concerned, I cannot define my position. It deals with many shootings of a police nature, matters clearly connected with combat activity, and I cannot make any statement about this, since it obviously refers to the time of the retreat.
The Document USSR-41 deals with the report of the Extraordinary State Commission on matters in Latvia. I would like to correct and say that the headquarters of the Foreign Minister were not at Riga, but that he had his regular office exclusively in Berlin.
In Paragraph 4 it is said:
“The Germans confiscated the country of the Latvian peasants for their barons and landowners, and mercilessly exterminated the peaceful population—men, women, and children.”
I would like to state in this connection that not a single farm was given up to the German barons of former times during the period of civilian administration, but the German administration of the country issued a decree which, in my opinion, was a singular, progressive piece of legislation. For this land, belonging to Germans for 700 years and expropriated by the young Estonian and Latvian Republics almost without compensation, could certainly have been returned easily to the Germans. But I signed a law in March, either 1942 or 1943—I do not know—the so-called Restitution Law (Reprivatisierungsgesetz), which legally guaranteed the Estonian and Latvian peasants the German property ceded to them at that time and handed over by solemn charters. With the occupation by the Soviet Union, a collectivization of this private farm property was introduced, and what it deals with is that this collectivization was abolished and therefore the former owners of 1919 came again into possession of their property.
I would like to mention the following in explanation of this statement. On Page 2 it is stated:
“For more than 3 years the Germans have made it their task to destroy factories, public works, libraries, museums, and homes in the Latvian cities.”
I myself have been in Latvian art museums, have seen a great Latvian art exhibition; I have been in the Latvian State theater, in which all performances were in the Latvian language, with just a few German guest conductors and singers. Factories were not destroyed in these 3 years of administration but their productivity was increased by numerous German machines. Of course this caused many protests from the native owners, because it was accompanied by an uncertainty about their own participation; but in any event there was no destruction, rather an increase in productive capacity.
And finally, as far as the archives and libraries are concerned, I have already said what is necessary in connection with Document 035-PS.
In regard to the extermination of 170,000 civilians, I cannot take any position as to what transpired in the police camps on grounds of police security. I would like to point out, however, that according to official statements of the indigenous administration, in the first place more than 40,000 Estonians in Estonia and more than 40,000 Latvians in Latvia were deported to the interior of Soviet Russia after the Red Army occupied these countries. And further that a large number of Latvians and Estonians volunteered to fight the Red Army and that at the retreat hundreds of thousands of Estonians and Latvians asked to be taken, to the Reich and many actually arrived there. The entire population of Latvia was about 2 million. That the German authorities should have shot 170,000 Latvians seems improbable in the highest degree.