ABSTRACT
Friedrich Schwung remained Gebietskommissar for Daugavpils, or Dünaburg as the Germans referred to it, until 19 August 1942. During his tenure of office the German administration gradually distanced itself from those Latvians who had first come forward to support them. Their agenda for an ethnically pure Latgale hampered the smooth administration of the region. There was a logic to targeting the Russian community in Latgale, once the ‘Jewish Question’ had been resolved. It was among Russians that there were the first signs of resistance to the regime established by the Nazis. When Moscow did not fall to the German Army in November 1941, there were some, particularly in the Russian Old Believer communities, who thought it worth while to help Red Army men who were trapped far behind the front line and constantly on the run. The Nazis stamped out this form of resistance with merciless executions of guilty and innocent alike. Apparently secure as 1942 began, the Daugavpils authorities faced the misery of a typhus epidemic and unremitting economic shortages. This misery, combined with the Red Army’s spring counter-offensive, prompted a second wave of rather fitful resistance and the formation of the first loosely organised partisan groups.
