Escape from Berlin: The Incredible Journey of the Latvian 15th SS Janums Battle Group April 1945

Описание: Escape from Berlin: The Incredible Journey of the Latvian 15th SS Janums Battle Group April 1945
With Vincent Hunt
Part of our 1945 series
   • 1945  
Also part of our Third Reich and German Forces playlist
   • Third Reich and German Forces  
And also our Battles for Netherlands, Belgium and Germany series
   • Battles for Netherlands, Belgium and Germany  

Today we tell the extraordinary escape of the Latvian 15th SS Division from certain death in 1945, as captured in First Lieutenant Edvīns Busmanis' diary. The dramatic escape of the Latvian 15th SS Janums Battle Group south of Berlin to surrender to the Americans on the Elbe saved 900 men from a pointless death slowing the Red Army assault on Berlin in 1945. Unable to return to a homeland occupied by the Soviet Union, many veterans came to the UK to work, and stayed.

Their stories add to the sharp observations and vivid descriptions of Battle Group adjutant Edvīns Busmanis, who kept a detailed diary of what happened. This lay unpublished in the archive of the War Museum in Riga for many years until it was passed today's guest as part of his research into the 15th Division.

The wartime footage referenced in the show
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/...

Buy the book:
UK https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/978180...
USA https://bookshop.org/a/21029/97818045...

Vincent Hunt is a documentary journalist and award-winning BBC producer. Crossing Latvia interviewing people who suffered at the hands of the KGB or fought against their system of totalitarian control he sets the political and social context of what Communism actually meant in this Baltic state: interrogation, surveillance, deportation and often death. This is his second book about Latvia's recent history, following on from Blood in the Forest - the end of the Second World War in the Courland Pocket (Helion 2017) which detailed the six desperate battles by German and Latvian forces to halt the Red Army advance into Latvia. His work explores pan-generational trauma, forgiveness and legacy, with the journey to see the landscape now an important part of understanding sorrow, loss and memorial for those left behind. His first book Fire and Ice (The History Press, 2014) was a journey across Arctic Norway meeting people affected by the Nazi scorched earth retreat of 1944 and the forced evacuation of the region. Along the way he discovered the shocking stories of 13,700 Soviet prisoners worked to death in sub-zero conditions or murdered by their Nazi captors.

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