Paula Oppermann, “Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia”

Co-sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies, Mosse Lectures, George L. Mosse Program in History, Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies at the College of Charleston, UW-Madison Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, UW-Madison Center for German & European Studies, and the UW-Madison Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia.

College of Charleston Mosse Lecture
Paula Oppermann, Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025).

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Founded in 1932, Thunder Cross (Pērkonkrusts) was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth century. Its motto—“Latvia for Latvians!”—echoed the ultranationalist rhetoric of similar movements throughout Europe at the time. Unlike the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy, however, Thunder Cross never succeeded in seizing power. Nevertheless, Holocaust historian Paula A. Oppermann argues, its movement left an indelible mark on the country. The antisemitism at the core of Thunder Cross’s ideology remained a driving force for Latvian fascists throughout the twentieth century, persisting despite shifting historical and political contexts.Thunder Cross is the most comprehensive study of Latvia’s fascist movement in English to date, and the only work that investigates the often neglected continuities of fascist antisemitism after World War II. Formulated as an empirical case study, this book draws on international and interdisciplinary secondary literature and sources in seven languages to broaden our understanding of fascism, antisemitism, and mass violence from Germany and Italy to the larger European context.

Authored by

Paula A. Oppermann is a Research Associate of the Berlin Historical Commission and editor of the volume Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei über die Provinz Brandenburg und die Reichshauptstadt Berlin 1933 bis 1936, Teilband II: Die Reichshauptstadt Berlin [The Situation Reports of the Secret State Police on the Province of Brandenburg and the Reich Capital Berlin 1933 to 1936, Part II: The Reich Capital Berlin]. She studied history and Baltic Studies at Greifswald University and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Uppsala University. She received her terminal degree from the University of Glasgow in 2022 with a study of Latvia’s fascist Party, Pērkonkrusts [Thunder Cross], from the interwar to the postwar period. From 2022 to 2023 she served as Research Associate in the Department of Contemporary History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and managed the cooperation with the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History. In addition, she is active in the area of historical education, including as Research Associate in the documentation center Topography of Terror in Berlin and in the Wiener Holocaust Library of London.

Comment by

Molly Pucci is an Assistant Professor of Twentieth Century European History. Before coming to Trinity, she was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. She holds a PhD in history from Stanford University and an MA in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from Harvard University. Her first book, Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe was published by Yale University Press in 2020. She is currently working on an international history of radical leftist activism and revolutionary ideas in law, legal theory, and political trials in the 1920s and 1930s.

Chaired by

Chad S.A. Gibbs is a historian of the Holocaust, antisemitism, and war and society. His work is devoted to understanding the timing, choices, and tactics of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Chad makes extensive use of oral history sources and practices both inside and outside the classroom. In that area, he holds ongoing positions as an Affiliated Researcher at the USC-Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and a Scholar Interviewer with the USC Shoah Foundation.