My grandfather returned to a very muddled political situation in 1919. This outline may be useful in keeping track of the names and places mentioned in this section.

In 1917, the Germans overran the rest of Latvia, as Russia disintegrated into revolution and civil war. In March 1918, the new Soviet Russian government surrendered large areas of the former Russian Empire to Germany, ending WWI on the eastern front.

Germany then launched its great summer offensive against France, and its failure led to revolution and a new German government which surrendered to the Allies in November 1918.

One week after the armistice the Latvians declared their independence, opposed by a local government of Baltic Germans (whose military arm was the local Landwehr), anti-communist White Russians, and freebooting remnants of the German army, which was officially no longer supposed to be there.

The Latvian units of the tsarist Russian army had gone over to the Reds at the beginning of the Russian civil war, and led the communist offensive from the east, overrunning Riga and most of the Latvia in the winter of 1918-1919. They were halted, with many of the Latvians going over from the communists to the national army; and the Germans and Latvians, fighting together, recaptured most of the country in the spring of 1919.

The leader of the German forces, Count Rüdiger von der Goltz, turned against the Latvians and Estonians, who had driven the communists from the northern part of Latvia. In June 1919 Goltz was stopped at the battle of Cesis [Ger. Wenden], northeast of Riga, and agreed, under Allied pressure, to subordinate his forces to the Latvian government. He withdrew to Jelgava, southwest of Riga, and secretly prepared for another attack against the Latvian government, while the front against the communists held stable in eastern Latvia. It was there that my grandfather was imprisoned that summer.

In October 1919, Goltz's forces advanced as far as the west bank of the Daugava River at Riga. The Latvians stormed his positions in November 1919, with artillery support from Allied ships on the river, and drove the Germans away.

Goltz, defeated, returned to Germany permanently, and the remnants of his forces came under the command of the Latvian army. The Latvians, aided by Polish troops, drove the Red Army from the eastern part of the country in January 1920, and a peace treaty was signed ending hostilities with the Soviet Union.

By Peter Kalnin

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