15.sējums - Valsts prezidenta kanceleja

170 Latvija nacistiskās Vācijas okupācijas varā
The main sources of information are the archives of Latvian embassies in the West. For
decades they were not open to historians. In an unfavourable international climate during the
Cold War, the use of these documents could have negatively influenced Latvia’s continuity
as a de iure subject of international diplomacy. Therefore the embassies were reluctant to
open their archives to public scrutiny, and historians had access only to the documents that
were gradually made public in US (National Archives, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library) and
British (Public Record Office) archives. These, however, reveal only the Western and not
the Latvian diplomats’ own point of view.
From the late 1990s on, the archives of Latvian embassies in the West have been
gradually transferred to Latvia. They have been organised and made available to researchers
in the last few years. Among them are the archives of the Latvian embassies in the USA,
Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland and others that are now located in the State Historical
Archives of Latvia and in the Archives of the Foreign Ministry of Latvia. They contain invaluable
information about the activities of Latvian diplomats in the West during World War II: all
kinds of diplomatic and consular documents; diplomatic and personal correspondence; the
diaries of K. Zariņš and V. Salnais; diplomatic correspondence with various Western institutions;
materials from meetings of Baltic ambassadors; press surveys prepared by embassy
staffs; summaries of radio broadcasts and newspaper reports in Nazi-occupied Latvia, edicts
and regulations of the German occupation regime obtained during wartime; correspondence
with Nazi-occupied Latvia and other materials.
These documents can serve as a basis for future research, which should aim at finding
out what was the reaction of Latvian diplomats to Latvia’s occupation by Nazi Germany;
what Latvian diplomats knew about the situation and events in Latvia during the occupation;
how they obtained information and how complete or reliable it was; what was the diplomats’
point of view about the situation in Latvia based on this information and whether it changed
during the war; did information flow from the West to Latvia as well; how did the diplomats
deal with the information obtained; to what extent did it reach Western institutions and what
was their reaction to the information received. These are important research topics that now
can and should receive scholarly attention.