Anti-Soviet formations had sprung up in the Baltic States to hasten and harass the Soviet retreat as soon as Operation Barbarossa had been launched. But on 17 July 1941 Hitler declared:
"It must always be a cast-iron principle that none but Germans shall be allowed to bear arms. Even when ... it might seem expedient to summon foreign peoples to arm, it would be folly to do so. One day it would be sure to prove our absolute and irretrievable undoing. Only the Germans must be permitted to bear arms."
Halik Kochanski (2022) Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, pp. 167-168.
