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In May 1919, an American motion picture crew filmed a German firing squad executing eighteen Latvian Bolsheviks at Jelgava. The story behind this episode illustrates how Latvia became a fiercely contested battleground in the months after the Armistice ended the Great War. The shocking film footage may have persuaded Woodrow Wilson and the peacemakers in Paris to rein in the rampant Germans, whose policing of the Baltic they had tole-rated as a way to prevent Russian Bolshevism from spreading westward. The execution footage was included in the documentary film Starvation, which premiered in New York City in January 1920, the first of its countless appearances over the decades in films about the World War I and the Russian Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the shooting of 18 Latvian Bolsheviks by nine German rifleman near Riga, Latvia on May 26, 1919. It is mentioned that Howell Foreman, captain at the U.S. Army witnessed the killings and U.S. Army lieutenant Frank Johnson, who happened to be a newsreel cameraman, recorded the shooting scene. It is mentioned that the film stirred many controversies during the First World War and was also presented at the Peace Conference held at Paris, France.