Blood in the forest

"While the world waited for Hitler's downfall, more than half a million men fought the six battles of the Courland Pocket in western Latvia. Blood in the Forest builds a vivid picture of a savage episode at the end of WWII through eyewitness accounts and stories told here for the first time. In October 1944 Nazi forces pushed back from the Eastern Front were cut off and trapped with their backs to the Baltic. The only way out was by sea: their only chance of survival to hold back the Red Army. Latvians fought on both sides-some against a second Soviet occupation, some against the Nazis. Many had no choice, forced into battle against their fellow countryman-sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men of all nations died in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, a partisan war against Soviet rule continued from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, the author travels through Courland meeting veterans, survivors of the Holocaust, former partisans and a refugee who later became President. He also discovers the true story of Crocodile Dundee, a soldier who survived this hell. This is the tough, uncomfortable story of the place where the final surrender of WWII was signed, and of a nation both consumed by war and at war with itself."--Publisher description.