No sympathy for Waffen-SS Estonian recruits

What you say about the Waffen-SS recruits reflects the volunteer SS legions that originated from the West. The situation in the East was different. While the western SS volunteer legions such as the French, Norwegian, Dutch, etc, were indeed as you say "zealous anti-communists, not independence fighters", the men in the Estonian legion were drafted forcefully. They were given a choice of either doing labor up to a year somewhere in Germany or to join the legion, which was why the ultimatum was proposed in the first place. Only in that sense was it voluntary. Of course, most men chose the legion because they saw it as an opportunity to defend Estonia against the communists whom they considered far worse than the Nazis.

I hope you are aware of the events in Estonia that took place in 1939 and 1940, the occupation and annexation by the Soviet Union and all the terror that followed. It was something that every family in Estonia had somehow been affected by, a family member that was deported or executed or lost their home as a result of Stalin's scorched earth policy, etc. This was something that no Estonian could forgive the communists, hence why they were more open to Nazi collaboration, for they were the only one's that kept the Red Terror away.

Towards the end of the war, as the Soviets advanced on Estonia in 1944 and Germany's position became more and more weaker, reports were sent to Berlin weekly by the German officers in Estonia that the Estonians were willing to turn their backs on the Germans as soon as a third party entered and offered Estonia its independence, for example the UK or France. For this reason, the German officers weren't very trusty of the Estonian troops, either.

You're completely wrong in your assessment that that everyone could have understood the long term aim of the Nazis. Yes, people were aware that they were now living in something called a Reichskomissariat that is controlled by the Nazis, but nobody was aware of their colonization plans, just like only a handful of people were aware at the time of the Nazi's crimes against humanity, such as the mass murdering of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and other minorities. The colonization didn't begin during the war, the Nazis were planning to wait until after to begin executing their plans, so the Estonian people didn't even feel any ethnic changes in its society, unlike in Soviet Estonia where immigrants and their descendants nearly made up 40% of its population in 1989.

I have to agree with what you said about post-war Estonia. The Germans had plans to deport half of the Estonian indigenous population to Arkhangelsk and other far-away places in Russia, so their victory would have been catastrophic and destructive for the Estonian people. And they would have done it in a quick few years, unlike the Soviets who encouraged mass immigration into Estonia from other Soviet states during the course of 45 years with a long-term aim of russifying the Estonian population.

Although, I wouldn't say that Estonia left the USSR peacefully. There were no people being killed on the streets or any violent demonstrations, but it was very clear that the USSR had every intention of keeping Estonia in the Union. They even sent tanks to the capital. Estonia regained its independence thanks to the bold politicians of the time who had the courage to use the momentum of the 1991 August coup in Moscow and declare re-independence. It was a combination of courage, luck and historical momentum. Had the USSR been any stronger to impose its will on its neighbors, they would have done it. Even now in 2016 there is no love lost in Estonia-Russia relations.

You couldn't be more wrong. As shown in the film, Estonians were taken away and murdered or sent to gulags by the tens of thousands prior to the invasion of the CCCP by Germany and her allies. There is the example of a day 500 priests were collected in a single village by the Soviets and all murdered in cold blood, a smaller scale Katyn, and one repeated numerous times.

You seem to have a very limited knowledge of how Estonia fared under rule by the CCCP; the Baltic men who joined the SS later, as the other poster has pointed out, were not motivated at all by any ideology such as the Scandinavian and other western Europeans who joined the SS. The Baltics, similar to the Poles in the Soviet Sector before Barbarossa, had lived under the murderous terror of Stalin and the NKVD and were fighting against who they rightly viewed as monsters.

Estonians were slated for mass deportations after the end of the war in the German plans, but the Balts were *not* viewed as untermensch like the Slavs were, but similar to Magyars in Hungaria, Romanians, Bulgarians, Italians, so there is a good likelihood that plan for any of the Baltic countries would ever have been carried out. In any case, none of the Estonians knew about the German plan so it is a completely moot point that you only bring up to aid in presenting a false narrative of what really went on in Estonia and to Estonians by under the Soviets, and what were the actual very real compelling and justified motivations of Balts who joined the SS.

Shame on you for trying to distort and twist the motives of good men who fought for their country against a brutal oppressor and white-wash the terror that happened under Stalin in the Baltics (one out of many other places, especially post-war Poland).

And here we have the two sides:
One, the mehmet's comment, misinformed and with little logic to reach justified conclusions.
The second, the answers to mehmet's comment, much better informed and much more logical.