The Estonian World Council (EWC) was formed in 1955 by the anti-communist émigré groups that led their ethnonationalist communities in Canada, the US and Sweden.1 Canada’s Estonian Central Council (ECC), being "the most vibrant upholder of Estonian culture abroad" and "the model for all other Estonian communities,"2 still plays a central role in the EWC. For example, ECC president Markus Hess, founder of the international Black Ribbon Day movement, is an executive member of the EWC.3

The EWC has always aligned itself with other anticommunists groups through networks such as the Baltic States Freedom Council (BSFC), the Baltic World Conference, the CIA’s National Committee for a Free Europe and the Captive Nations movement.4

The EWC worked with other fascist-led global pacts like the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). In 1958, EWC propaganda was beamed at the USSR using an ABN radio station in US-armed, fascist Taiwan. Its broadcasts, in "languages of the enslaved [i.e., Soviet] peoples," included talks by political extremists that the ABN called "Estonian statesmen and politicians living in North America." Overseeing these programs was Ludwig Katona, the ABN representative to the Asian People’s AntiCommunist League’s headquarters in Taipei.5 To describe his leadership of the "ABN Mission," this Hungarian "freedom fighter" said he was "in close contact with the Embassies of the anti-Communist countries" and the World AntiCommunist League.6

One of the most active EWC propagandists in the 1950s, '60s and '70s was Gerhard Buschmann, an Estonian of German heritage. In 1940, he joined the Nazi military intelligence agency, Abwehr. In 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, he, like so many Estonians, welcomed the Nazis as liberators. To serve them, he went to German-allied Finland in 1941 and took part in the "formation and training of the Erna Group,"11 an Estonian volunteer force that was battling their shared Soviet enemy.

As a Nazi Oberleutnant (Senior lieutenant) Buschmann’s main role in WWII was to create and lead the Sonderstaffel Buschmann. This special squad, which was "initially subordinated to the Commander of the SS and Police in Estonia," began patrolling the Gulf of Finland in early 1942. In December, his unit was "under the command of a Special Aviation Group that answered directly to Heinrich Himmler."12 By early 1943, Buschmann had 200 personnel and 40 to 50 aircraft.13 In April, his unit joined the Luftwaffe and most of its squadrons fought as night bombers on the Eastern Front.14 Buschmann was then deployed to a German intelligence unit at Siverskaja airbase near Leningrad.15 It was crucial in the genocidal, 900-day Siege of Leningrad16 in which German and Finnish forces killed over one million Soviet civilians, and killed or captured an additional million Red Army troops.

When the Red Army rid Estonia of the Nazis in mid-1944, Buschmann had already fled to the "Dabendorf propaganda school," near Berlin. As Chief of Staff to Luftwaffe General Heinrich Aschenbrenner, Buschmann set up a Nazi air force for Vlasov’s antiSoviet "Russian Liberation Army."17

To reward his important work for the Third Reich, Buschmann received several Nazi medals including two Iron Crosses.18

After the war, Buschman continued his crusade "in Germany from 1946 to 1961 in the East European section of the U.S. Army."19 Data on his job "as an advisor to the US occupation headquarters in Munich" has been declassified. An FBI file about his work for the US G-2 army intelligence agency in the early 1950s says he recruited "a convinced, if not fanatical antiSemite" Russian informant who had been sentenced in France to 20 years hard labour for being a Nazi collaborator.20 A later file, code named "Redcoat" (the CIA’s Soviet/Eastern European Division), released by the CIA under the 2008 "Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act," mentions California "intelligence assignment" run by Buschmann in 1961.21

"[T]he first air unit was the personal initiative of an Abwehr officer born in Estonia, Gerhard Buschmann, who was convinced that the German Navy would support the establishment of an Estonian air squadron to patrol the Gulf of Finland. Accordingly in February 1942 the 'Buschmann Special Squadron' (Sonderstaffel Buschmann) began patrols, and by early 1943 had 200 personnel flying 40-50 Estonian, Latvian and German aircraft. In April 1943 the unit formally joined the Luftwaffe." Source: Estonian aircraft used by the Sonderstaffel Buschmann (SB), German Aviation 1919-1945.

Buschmann spoke for many Estonian émigré groups pushing NATO’s Cold War objectives. As a representative of the EWC, Estonian WWII vets and the Estonian diaspora, Buschmann was mentioned in the US Congress in 1970 and 1971.22 About 230 articles in ten Estonian publications mention him.23 For example, Võitleja (The Combatant), the Toronto-based global publication for anticommunist Estonian veterans, praised Buschmann’s Nazi war record and his role as a "leading figure in many international political organizations."24

Soviet media, translated in a declassified CIA document, decried Buschmann’s collaboration with the Nazis, his work as "a CIA agent" and his 1966 ascension to the top post in the Estonian American war-veterans’ group based in Washington, DC.25 The Combatant celebrated the news that Buschmann had been elected chairman of the US "Freedom Fighters Organization."26

The "mock trial" was organized by two powerful far-right organizations (Twin City Publishing and Young Americans for Freedom).30 At its conclusion, the Soviet embassy in Washington was bombed. Newspapers spread unfounded accusations by anticommunists involved in the trial that communists themselves had bombed the Soviet embassy. One article noted that:

Another trial witness, Herbert Philbrick, who had infiltrated the Communist party for the FBI throughout the 1940s, "said it was quite likely that communists did the bombing" because "one of their main aims is to discredit the entire anti-Communist movement throughout the world."32

Fred Schlafly, one of the mock trial’s prosecuting attorneys, "said Russian effort[s] to blame the bombing on some conservative ‘fanatic inflamed by the mock trial’ was typical of the communists." He similarly blamed John F.Kennedy’s assassination on communism.33

A decade later, papers reported on a "melee" during a protest of 2,000 émigrés outside the Soviet’s UN mission. At this 1978 event, some "demonstrators bombarded officers with stones, eggs and firecrackers and a scuffle between police and demonstrators ensued." (The event was organized by far-right East European émigré groups including the Estonian World Council, the Lithuanian Canadian Community, the World Federation of Free Latvians.) Four people were treated in hospital for injuries sustained during the "melee," including a policeman. Two antiSoviet protesters were arrested for "disorderly conduct."34 This violence, unlike the bombing ten years earlier, could not be blamed on the Soviets. When event organizers35 publicized this rally in their far-right Ukrainian publication, they claimed that "over 8,000" had attended and bragged that it was "widely reported" in the mass media. However, they failed to make any mention of the protesters’ violence.36

The EWC’s strategic forgetting

This neglect to report on their supporters’ violence actions reflects a broader pattern evident within antiSoviet émigré communities. For decades ethnonationalist organizations representing the anticommunist diaspora from Eastern Europe have neglected to account for their historic complicity in Nazi atrocities such as the Holocaust. For its part, the EWC has yet to acknowledge its historic links to the profascist ABN, to the CIA’s far-right front organizations, or its close relations with Nazi Estonian war heroes like Gerhard Buschmann.