Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes

A firsthand account of Latvia during World War II: “A British diplomat’s wife’s beautifully observed eye-witness account of the Soviet occupation.” —Condé Nast Traveler

With her husband in the British Foreign Service, Peggie Benton had already lived through the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938 and had settled comfortably into the day-to-day life of Riga, the capital of Latvia. But the country’s uneasy history with Russia and tensions brewing with Germany just prior to the outbreak of World ...