The Hardest Choice
“To resist or not?”—it’s a question that has followed humanity through every age. Some approach it with fiery conviction, insisting resistance is always a duty. Others counsel patience, compromise, or submission. But the truth is more complicated. It is easy to speak boldly about resistance when the risks are hypothetical. It is much harder when you are the one staring down the consequences.
Dictated by circumstances
I grew up in a country that was occupied during the Second World War, and later spent decades guiding people across old battlefields. One lesson becomes clear the deeper you look: whether to resist or not depends entirely on circumstances.
A recent journey to the Baltic states—Latvia and Lithuania—brought this into sharp relief. These small nations, with populations numbering barely in the millions, were crushed between empires. First one side, the German Empire, then the other, the Russian Empire.
Later on, a secret pact—the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement—divided them between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. What followed was deportation, forced resettlement, executions, and the relentless conscription of local men into foreign armies.
Not all what it seems
Latvians had little choice. Some were driven into Soviet “volunteer” units. Others were drafted into German ranks, despite international law forbidding an occupier from conscripting its subjects. The Germans sidestepped this by calling their drafts “voluntary.”
One of these formations was the Latvian Legion, a force of more than 110,000 men compelled to fight under the German banner against the Soviets. For many of them, this was not about Nazi ideology. It was about survival and the dream—however fragile—of eventually reclaiming Latvian independence. They sang battle songs cursing both Germans and Soviets. They insisted on wearing the Latvian flag instead of Nazi insignia. To them, defeating the Soviets was the first step to freedom, even if it meant temporary service under another oppressor.
The cost was staggering. Between 30,000 and 50,000 never came home. Those who did bore the stigma of serving under the Waffen-SS, despite the fact that the Legion was recognized at Nuremberg as a combat unit, not involved in atrocities. It was not until the late 1990s that thousands of them were finally laid to rest in Latvia’s Brothers’ Cemetery at Lestene.
The question remains: resist or not
Across the ocean, another community faced its own resistance dilemma. Japanese Americans, locked in internment camps by their own government, were told they could prove their loyalty by joining the U.S. Army. Many did, and served with distinction. Others refused. These “no-no boys” believed it was impossible to fight for a country that stripped them of civil rights and branded them suspect. Their choice to resist meant prison, shame, and lifelong marginalization—but it was, for them, a moral stand.
The dilemmas of Latvians in uniform or Japanese Americans behind barbed wire were different in detail, but bound by the same question: when the system itself is unjust, what does resistance mean? Sometimes it means picking up a rifle. Sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it means enduring, simply to carry memory forward. And sometimes, resistance can even take the form of mockery—holding a mirror up to power with parody and satire, exposing its contradictions more effectively than argument alone.
But one lesson cuts through time: injustice does not vanish because good people remain silent. Compliance only strengthens those who abuse power. History warns us that waiting for the “right moment” often means waiting until it is too late.
And so the question returns to us, here and now. The uniforms and camps may look different, but the demands are familiar: obey, comply, stay quiet. Yet every generation must decide whether to bow, whether to bide time or whether to resist. And only time will show the consequences of those hard choices.
These reflections were inspired by a visit to Latvia and Lithuania as part of a familiarization trip for tour operators and travel writers, organized by Military Heritage Tourism and the Latvian Country Tourism Association. To learn more about the military history of the Baltic region, visit militaryheritagetourism.info.
From the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, “I refused to register. I knew it would only lead to trouble. Later on I regretted not telling everyone around me to do the same.”