If history is written by the victors, then it can be surmised by the tourist.
A local joke here is that Estonia’s greatest natural resource is it’s sarcism, with its populace shouting “Next”, as one military force leaves and another rolls in. At approximately half the size of Ireland, Estonia has seen its borders overrun and its people subjecated by invaders armies over the past seven hundred years.
The most astonishing fact that I’ve uncovered about this little country is that during World War II it allied itself to Germany. When confronted with the choice of Hitler or Stalin as its Protector in 1941, remarkably Hitler was seen as the lesser of these two evils.
Once the centuries of Russian control was shattered by the German push to the east, the Estonian people saw the German army as one of liberators and enlisted to make sure that the attrocities that befell their nation in the past would not happen again.
Yet amongst the celebration of the eventual Allied victory were the forgotten people of Estonia, whose brief existence as an Independent nation between the wars was extinguished. Estoniadidn’t fight for Hitler’s Germany, but rather they fought against the Red Army and horrors they knew, quite rightly would befall them should their shadowy allie fall.
From what I have discovered WWII is viewed here, as a fight for liberation pure and simple. Estonians fought not just alomgside the Germans, but also the Finnish Army and when the war was lost they fought guerilla action against the occupying Red Army .
Fears of Soviet reprisals unfortunately manifested and decades would pass before the latest and hopefully the last of these foreign invaders would depart. And thus ends the lesson.
Estonia is now a free country, a part of the European union, NATO and currently my home.
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