Pictured: Estonia’s, Latvia’s, and the Third Reich’s Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Karl Selter, Vilhelms Munters, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, respectively) meeting in Berlin to sign their nonaggression pacts.
The Treaties of Non‐Aggression between the German Reich and the Republics of Estonia and Latvia were actually both signed on June 7, but were unratified until July 24, so today is a good time to discuss them. David M. Crowe’s The Baltic States and the Great Powers: Foreign Relations, 1938–1940 is one of the few works (in English) that I could find on this subject. Concerning the Baltic states, Adolf Schicklgruber
felt they were some of Germany’s most important trading partners and should “lead an independent, ordered national life of their own” based on trade with Berlin.
Hence,
While the German–Lithuanian talks were taking place in Berlin, Reich officials approached the Estonian and Latvian ministers in [Berlin] about possible nonaggression pacts. On April 28, Ribbentrop told Edgar Krievinš, the Latvian minister, that the Reich was ready in principle to conclude a nonaggression treaty with Latvia based on full reciprocity and asked him to see if Riga was interested in such an accord.
If the response was affirmative, he would give him a draft of the agreement. The following day, the [Reich’s] foreign minister made the same offer to Karl Tofer, the Estonian minister. In the meantime, Weizsäcker instructed [the Reich’s] ministers in Estonia and Latvia to gauge the interest of the Päts and Ulmanis governments in such pacts.
The Wilhelmstrasse also informed its legation in Kaunas that under certain circumstances it would consider rewriting the Memel treaty to conform with the proposed accords with the other Baltic countries.
[…]
Selter and Munters signed the agreements on the morning of June 7, and Hitler received Munters at 11 A.M. During the forty‐five minute meeting that followed, the Führer dominated the conversation with a monologue on Germany's import–export difficulties.
He tried to impress on Munters the value of trading with Germany, emphasizing that the Reich wanted to buy products from other countries as much as it wanted to sell German goods to them. Hitler stated that short‐term trade ties were of no value to the Reich and that he wanted agreements that lasted twenty to thirty years.
(These improved relations with the Estonian and Latvian régimes facilitated the Third Reich’s plea to Baltic Germans to relocate.)
Quoting ‘Homesick Tourists’ and the Changing Place of Baltic Germans in Latvia’s Historical Memory:
Before and after 1933, German [Fascists] made attempts to attract the ‘racially valuable’ Baltic Germans to their movement but never achieved much success as far as the Hirschenhof colonists were concerned. In the mid‐1930s, it was mainly parts of the Hirschenhof youth who, under the influence of school teachers sent from Germany, sympathized with Hitler, but young people didn’t have sway over the traditionalist peasant community.
Things changed radically in 1939, following the publication of the German–Soviet non‐aggression pact and Hitler’s declaration that all Baltic Germans should return “home to the Reich,” because otherwise they would be conquered by the Soviets. An agreement was reached between the [Third Reich] and the governments of Estonia and Latvia on the resettlement of ethnic Germans. The attitude of Latvians is well illustrated by President Ulmanis’ sentence: “Let them go. But there shall be no return.”
The conditions were not discussed with those subject to resettlement. They were ordered to sell all their property, livestock, agricultural machinery etc. to a specially appointed government commission at low prices in order to get a corresponding worth of land and equipment at the new location. The campaign was carried out very quickly. By the end of 1939, more than 50,000 Germans were resettled from Latvia to formerly Polish regions of Warthegau and West Prussia. Another 10,000 followed them in 1940 and 1941.
Coupled with their reluctance (for most of the year) to sign any further treaties with the U.S.S.R., it should be easy to see why the Soviets were uncomfortable near the Baltic régimes. Example:
One scenario, Molotov said, might be that the Estonian or Latvian military would use “German officers or instructors,” who could transform “those armies into instruments of aggression against the Soviet Union.” […] The new interpretation of indirect aggression reflected a Soviet concern, shared by the British, of a possible pro‐[Reich] tilt by Latvia and particularly by Estonia.
These fears had intensified since the conclusion of the nonaggression treaties with [the Third Reich] and the visit of a number of high‐level [Reich] military and diplomatic officials to Estonia in the latter part of June, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr (military intelligence service), and Colonel Franz von Bentivengi had visited the Estonian capital about June 20, followed ten days later by General Franz Haider, the chief of the Army General Staff, and several diplomats closely associated with Ribbentrop.
Estonia in particular was the most pro‐Reich of the Baltic states, so its cooperation was the easiest to win:
The Reich’s ties with Estonia during this period were much more positive and were strengthened by the pro‐German slant of some of its leaders and its reassurances of neutrality during the Polish–Lithuanian crisis earlier that spring.
Berlin was extremely interested in two British‐built submarines that the Estonian régime owned (and fetishized). After much hesitation it was almost ready to trade both to the Third Reich, but Soviet intervention prevented the transaction.
While I was unable to find any works on the trading between the Baltics and the Third Reich, I did find this out about Latvia:
When the Reich began to implement this new form of trade arrangement in fall 1933, officials aimed it at “markets ruled by German merchants, especially Southeastern Europe and the Northern European states.” Consequently, a German Foreign Office brief prepared for Munters’s visit alluded to “the repressive measures against German influence in the Latvian economy” as a point of discussion with the Latvian foreign minister.
These issues were also brought up in an article, “Latvian Economic Bolshevism,” that appeared in the [NSDAP’s] daily, Volkischer Beobachter, on the eve of Munters’s visit that criticized the Latvian government for its “policy of compulsory liquidation of private undertakings and introduction of State capitalism.”
The policy, it was felt, was designed “to curtail the means of existence of the Baltic Germans and gravely to damage Reich-German economic interests.” These efforts, the article went on, could seriously affect German–Latvian trade, which had a 17 million lat balance in Riga's favor for 1937, particularly in light of Germany’s export and trade imbalance problems throughout Europe.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Of course, there is more to say about Baltic collaboration with the Axis, but for simplicity’s sake I tried to focus on the pre‐1941 era.
Other events that happened today (July 24):
1943: Through Operation Gomorrah, British and Canadian aeroplanes bombed Hamburg by night, and U.S. planes bomb the city by day. By the operation’s end in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.