The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Paula Oppermann has been awarded an 2026 AABS Book Prize Honorable Mention for her monograph Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia.
The 2026 award covers books published in 2024 and 2025. The 2026 Book Prize Committee selected the awardee from a pool of books that were nominated by the publishers, authors, or their colleagues. The Committee noted the high level of all nominated books and thanks everyone who submitted a nomination.
Paula A. Oppermann‘s research focusses on the history of antisemitism, fascism, and the Holocaust in Latvia and Germany. She studied History and Baltic Studies at the University of Greifswald and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Uppsala University. In 2022, she received her PhD from the University of Glasgow with a dissertation on Pērkonkrusts, which was published in 2025 by Wisconsin University Press under the title “Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia“.
Book Abstract
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.