Latvia lost its independence. The 1940s and World War II's aftermath Occupation of Latvia and suppression of Scouting In June 1940, the Soviet Union's occupation of Latvia took place. Scouting was suppressed and Klētnieks' Scout handbook was destroyed by communist agents appointed to abolish Scouting. A wave of arrests followed the Soviet takeover. "The Soviet repressive authorities regarded all organizations and parties of independent Latvia, including the Boy Scouts, as fascist or counterrevolutionary", concluded a University of Latvia study in 2005. The Latvian Scout president, Kārlis Goppers, was executed after a Stalinist show trial and Scouting went underground. Arvīds Brēdermanis was arrested as a spy and imprisoned in a Soviet gulag for fifteen years. With Scouting officially disbanded in Latvia, Klētnieks resumed his studies at Latvian University, earning a degree in mathematics in 1942. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Latvia during World War II, forcing Soviet withdrawal. By October 1944, the Red Army had regained control of most of Latvia, including its capital, Riga, and Klētnieks was in a German displaced persons camp. After the war ended, he remained at Camp Kathann near Hersbruck, in the American occupation zone of divided Germany. A former Nazi concentration camp, it was used for Latvian displaced persons in the postwar Latvian diaspora. Klētnieks served as Scout Executive-in-exile for the 4,000 Latvian Scouts there until 1950. While in Germany, he resumed writing, including magazine articles for fellow Latvian exiles and a book, Latviešu skautisma trīsdesmit gadi, 1917-1947 ("30 Years of Latvian Scouting, 1917–1947"), published in 1947. Also that year, his research into Latvian chronology issues from the 16th to the 20th centuries, Pētījums par chronologijas problēmām Latvijā XVI-XX gadsimta ("An examination of the problems of chronology in Latvia from the 16th to the 20th centuries"), was published. In the United States Klētnieks and his family went to the United States as refugees in May 1950, sponsored and given shelter by a Boy Scouts of America (BSA) official, E. Urner Goodman, at his Bondville, Vermont, summer home, Innisfree. Goodman was the BSA's National Program Director at the time, as well as the celebrated founder of the Order of the Arrow. While staying with the Goodmans, the Klētnieks family appeared at a Brattleboro, Vermont, church in December 1950, where they spoke of their wartime experiences as exiles and recalled Christmas in Latvia, singing the songs of their homeland to the delight of those who