I
THINK it
likely that most of the executioners at Riga were
Latvians, under German officers. Jim Bacques is a
good friend: a former novelist, he let me read Other
Losses when still in typescript and I advised him
then that for that kind of work he needs 100 percent more
documentation up his sleeve to answer the vicious counter
attacks that would come. He went back and did more
research before publication, and still more after.

His disadvantage: he is not a trained historian (nor for that matter am I, and is it a disadvantage?); his advantage — he came and comes with none of the intellectual baggage that incorrigible revisionists carry around with them.

That said, I think he was deeply shocked at the levels to which his opponents stooped in destroying him after
Other Losses. Stephen Ambrose, for whom I have great respect, particularly erred in that respect.