 Preparations for partisan operations in Courland were begun during the German occupation, but the leaders of these nationalist units were arrested by Nazi authorities.Longer-lived resistance units began to form during the last months of the war; their ranks were composed of a good number of Latvian Legion soldiers as well as civilians.On 8 September 1944 in Riga, the leadership of the Latvian Central Council adopted a Declaration on the restoration of the State of Latvia.