ABSTRACT
For most of Herman Riecken’s tenure of office as Daugavpils Gebietskommissar he found himself at the centre of a tripartite conflict that was impossible to resolve. He wanted to take forward Schwung’s policy of wooing the Russian population, and thus distancing them from the partisans. The security forces preferred to tackle the partisans head on, and by so doing drove more and more people into their arms. By the time Riecken’s mutli-ethnic self-administration was in place in November 1943, the partisan movement was unstoppable.
