Among everything else, nationalist resistance struggle (or conflict between opposing ideologies) is an emotional quantity and at times also part of national identity. Similarly to all other guerrilla wars and other forms of armed resistance that are found in history, the resistance in Estonia that followed the Second World War, in other words the forest brother movement, was not a ‘gentleman’s war’ on the part of either of the opposing sides. The current reporting on the resistance struggle was also at the same time more or less a ‘psychological war’ for cheering on one’s own side and demonising the opposing side.

Although to some extent, Estonian resistance fighters-forest brothers themselves also reported on their activity in self-published publications in the period after the Second World War, that which was published in the Soviet press nevertheless reached the broader public in the Estonian homeland. The Soviet press naturally portrayed those who resisted the regime as nationalist criminal offenders. Yet this propaganda probably had a greater effect in a longer-term perspective. For this reason, rumours were the primary sources of information that shaped opinion for years.

Here one further kind of alternative to Soviet propaganda is under consideration, namely expatriate literature published on this theme. It admittedly could not affect resistance or attitudes in Estonia to any great extent, yet on the other hand it energised the fighting spirit of the expatriates. From the viewpoint of the forest brothers, expatriate literature was at the same time the only public source that in essence was continuously sustained for decades and which sympathised with their actions.

Hundreds of writings that in some way conveyed information on the post-war resistance that was taking place in Estonia were published over the years in expatriate literature, ranging from brief news items to lengthy and quite detailed serials. Hence it can be said that expatriates were aware of the existence of resistance, yet the reporting on that resistance was exceedingly eclectic, starting from isolated objective overviews, proceeding to the retelling of rumours, and ending with tall tales in the literal sense. Cold War propaganda was also behind the above-mentioned fabrications to some extent, yet the roots of stories that belonged to the sphere of fantasy nevertheless lie primarily in vagueness of sources. As a rule, the scant information that was available could not be corroborated. There were practically no authentic witnesses from Estonia whatsoever starting from 1946, yet as a rule, those who fled to the West in 1944–1945 were themselves not directly associated with the forest brother movement. Additionally, newspapers were conspiratory regarding their sources to such an extent that the suspicion often arises that the particular individual in question who somehow managed to escape from Estonia might himself be a fabrication.

In addition to information obtained from escapees, there are apparently even more writings of the kind where the sources were former prisoners of war who had been repatriated to the Estonian homeland. Yet as a rule, they nevertheless had rather little contact with forest brothers and similarly, their recollections ordinarily reflect various hearsay, which they had seen and heard in imprisonment in Estonia as prisoners of war.

As the irony of fate would have it, it seems that in some cases, information from Soviet sources in particular is the most objective. While it was admittedly cluttered with propagandistic balderdash (or invective directed at class enemies), Soviet sources were nevertheless conditionally authentic and referred to real events and people (ordinarily materials on some show trial).

At this point, we could conclude by asking: did the articles published in expatriate Estonian newspapers also somehow affect expatriate Estonian writing of history and thereby also indirectly the history writing of today? The answer could be that this was not particularly so, yet they no doubt contributed to the development of a general understanding, thereby also indirectly affecting understandings in Estonia after the restoration of its freedom.