Finland in World War II (E) PDF

Finland in World War II
History of Warfare
Editors
Kelly DeVries
Loyola University Maryland
John France
University of Wales, Swansea
Michael S. Neiberg
United States Army War College, Pennsylvania
Frederick Schneid
High Point University, North Carolina
VOLUME 69
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hw

Finland in World War II
History, Memory, Interpretations
Edited by
Tiina Kinnunen
Ville Kivimäki
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: Unto Pusa, Kaatunut sotilas (“Fallen Soldier,” 1948, Ateneum Art Museum),
© Finnish National Gallery / Central Art Archives, photo Hannu Aaltonen.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Finland in World War II : history, memory, interpretations / edited by Tiina Kinnunen, Ville
Kivimaki.
p. cm. -- (History of warfare, ISSN 1385-7827 ; v. 69)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20894-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939-1945--Finland.
2. World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--Finland. 3. World War, 1939-1945--Finland--
Historiography. 4. Collective memory--Finland. 5. Karelia (Russia)--History--20th century.
6. Karelia (Russia)--Annexation to Finland. I. Kinnunen, Tiina. II. Kivimäki, Ville.
D765.3.F474 2012
940.53'4897--dc23
2011035773
ISSN 1385-7827
ISBN 978 90 04 20894 0
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
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Fees are subject to change.
CONTENTS
List of Figures, Maps and Tables..............................................................vii

Acknowledgements ....................................................................................xi
List of Abbreviations ............................................................................... xiii
List of Contributors ...................................................................................xv
Introduction: Three Wars and Their Epitaphs: The Finnish
History and Scholarship of World War II ............................................1
Ville Kivimäki
Part one
Politics and the military
1. Finland and the Great Powers in World War II:

Ideologies, Geopolitics, Diplomacy ...................................................49
Henrik Meinander
2. The Politics of an Alliance: Finland in Nazi Foreign
Policy and War Strategy ......................................................................93
Michael Jonas
3. The Finnish Army at War: Operations and
Soldiers, 1939–45 ...............................................................................139
Pasi Tuunainen
Part two
Social frameworks, cultural meanings
4. Wars on the Home Front: Mobilization, Economy

and Everyday Experiences ................................................................191
Marianne Junila
5. Meaningless Death or Regenerating Sacrifice? Violence
and Social Cohesion in Wartime Finland .......................................233
Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas Tepora
vi contents
6. Families, Separation and Emotional Coping in War:

Bridging Letters between Home and Front, 1941–44 ...................277
Sonja Hagelstam
Part three
Ideologies in practice
7. War and the Emerging Social State: Social Policy,

Public Health and Citizenship in Wartime Finland ......................315
Helene Laurent
8. Limits of Intentionality: Soviet Prisoners-of-War
and Civilian Internees in Finnish Custody .....................................355
Oula Silvennoinen
9. Greater Finland and Cultural Heritage: Finnish
Scholars in Eastern Karelia, 1941–44 ..............................................395
Tenho Pimiä
Part four
Wars of memory
10. Shifting Images of “Our Wars”: Finnish Memory
Culture of World War II ..................................................................435
Tiina Kinnunen & Markku Jokisipilä
11. “Karelia Issue”: The Politics and Memory of
Karelia in Finland.............................................................................483
Outi Fingerroos
12. Varieties of Silence: Collective Memory of the
Holocaust in Finland .......................................................................519
Antero Holmila
Selected Bibliography: Studies on Finnish History in
World War II in English .........................................................................561
Index .........................................................................................................565
LIST OF FIGURES, MAPS AND TABLES
Introduction
Fig. A. After a Soviet air raid, summer 1941..........................................11
Fig. B. Finnish soldiers with Panzerfausts at the battle of
Tali-Ihantala on the Karelian Isthmus, 30 June 1944 .......................12
Fig. C. The idyll of Finnish-occupied Eastern Karelia:
Karelian girls returning from school, May 1942 ...............................31
Fig. D. War’s gendered roles: a member of the Lotta Svärd
Organization feeding a wounded soldier, August 1941 ...................32
Chapter 1
Fig. 1.1. A German fighter plane and a group of Stukas from
Detachment Kuhlmey in Southeastern Finland, July 1944 .............84
Fig 1.2. September 1944: The Soviet escort guards of the Allied
Control Commission arriving at Malmi airport in Helsinki...........85
Map 1.1. Finland, Northwestern Soviet Union and the Baltic
States between the World Wars ...........................................................52
Map 1.2. Finland, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region,
June 1940 ................................................................................................65
Map 1.3. Finland and the Eastern Front, 1943–44 ................................77
Chapter 2
Fig. 2.1. President Risto Ryti, Field Marshal Keitel,
Adolf Hitler and Marshal Mannerheim during Hitler’s
surprise visit to Finland on Mannerheim’s 75th birthday,
4 June 1942 ...........................................................................................126
Fig. 2.2. A German placard welcoming the Finnish
troops to burned-down Muonio during the Lapland War,
October 1944 .......................................................................................127
Chapter 3
Fig. 3.1. Finnish ski troops of the Winter War ....................................179
Fig. 3.2. Finnish defenders on the Karelian Isthmus during
the Soviet summer offensive, mid-June 1944 ..................................180
viii list of figures, maps and tables
Map 3.1. The Winter War, 30 November 1939 – 13

March 1940 ..........................................................................................146
Map 3.2. Finnish-German Offensive, July–December 1941 ..............155
Map 3.3. Fourth Strategic Offensive of the Red Army,
Summer 1944 .......................................................................................161
Map 3.4. The Lapland War, September 1944 – April 1945.................170
Table 3.1. Military Casualties in Finland’s Three Wars,
1939–45 ................................................................................................172
Chapter 4
Fig. 4.1. Women in the fields, July 1941 ...............................................211
Fig. 4.2. Young anti-aircraft auxiliaries, autumn 1944 ........................212
Fig. 4.3. Masses in motion. Civilians waiting for the train
to leave Helsinki after the outbreak of the Winter War,
December 1939....................................................................................225
Fig. 4.4. The last transportation of Ingrian Finns taking ship
from German-occupied Estonia to Finland, June 1944. ................226
Map 4.1. Evacuations and Resettlements of the Civilian
Population in Finland and Soviet Karelia, 1939–45 .......................228
Table 4.1. Evacuations and Resettlements of the Civilian
Population in Finland and Soviet Karelia, 1939–45 .......................229
Chapter 5
Fig. 5.1. Memorial Day for the Fallen at the Hero’s
Cemetery in Vyborg, May 1943 ........................................................265
Fig. 5.2. Dead Finnish soldiers on the Karelian Isthmus,
June 1944 ..............................................................................................266
Chapter 6
Fig. 6.1. A mailbox at the River Svir frontlines, March 1942 .............285
Fig. 6.2. Wedding at the military hospital, September 1941 ..............286
Chapter 7
Fig. 7.1. The members of the Lotta Svärd Organization
and nurses attending the evacuees in June 1941 .............................344
Fig. 7.2. A Finnish “war child” from the Karelian Isthmus
on his way to Sweden, May 1944.......................................................345
list of figures, maps and tables ix
Chapter 8
Fig. 8.1. Soviet prisoners-of-war in the early stages
of the Continuation War, August 1941.............................................383
Fig. 8.2. Civilian internees of a concentration camp in
Petrozavodsk returning from their day’s work, April 1942 ...........384
Chapter 9
Fig. 9.1. “Finland and her natural eastern frontiers” ..........................405
Fig. 9.2. The interior of the Alexander-Svirsky monastery
church, May 1942 ................................................................................406
Chapter 10
Fig. 10.1. Väinö Linna (1920–1992) in 1989 ........................................459
Fig. 10.2. The statue of Marshal Mannerheim in Helsinki
on his birthday, 4 June, which is also the annual Flag Day
of the Finnish Defence Forces ...........................................................460
Chapter 11
Fig. 11.1. Finnish Karelian evacuees, March 1940 ..............................503
Fig. 11.2. Kauko Räsänen, Äiti Karjala (“Mother Karelia,”
1993, Lappeenranta), pietà memorial for the fallen soldiers
who have been buried in the ceded Finnish Karelia ......................504
Chapter 12
Fig. 12.1. A rare picture of the small field synagogue
established by the Finnish Jewish soldiers at the
River Svir in 1942 ................................................................................524
Fig. 12.2. Marshal Mannerheim visiting the Helsinki
synagogue on Independence Day to honor the Finnish Jews
fallen at the service of the Army, 6 December 1944 .......................525
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As the editors of the book we are grateful to Hannu Linkola for draw-
ing the maps; to Hannu Tervaharju for the many translations; to Alison
Bryant for language consultancy and indexing; to Jussi Jalonen for his
comments and proofreading; to Janne Hallikainen at the Finnish
Defence Forces Photographic Centre for his invaluable helpfulness
with the illustrations; to Irmeli Jung, Tero Leponiemi and Pirita
Reinikainen for their photographs, and Tero also for his expertise with
the photo editing; as well as to WSOY Photo Archives, the Jewish
Community of Helsinki and the Finnish National Gallery / Central Art
Archives for their permissions. Prof. Henrik Meinander kindly
arranged the facilities for our small workshop at the University of
Helsinki in December 2009. The funding by the Department of
Geographical and Historical Studies at the University of Eastern
Finland and by the Academy of Finland through the research projects
“The Wounds of War: Histories of Trauma and Coping” and “Male
Citizenship and Societal Reforms in Finland, 1918–60,” led respec-
tively by Prof. Juha Siltala at the University of Helsinki and Prof. Pirjo
Markkola at the Åbo Akademi University, has contributed substan-
tially to the book.
Mr. Julian Deahl and Mrs. Marcella Mulder at Brill have given us
their support and help throughout the project. Finally and most impor-
tantly we would like to thank the writers of the book for taking up the
task so willingly and for their great commitment.
Tiina Kinnunen & Ville Kivimäki

Joensuu and Tampere, May 2011
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
KA Finnish National Archives

KA/SArk Finnish National Archives at Sörnäinen, former
Military Archives
SKS KRA Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Outi Fingerroos, PhD, adjunct professor, researcher in ethnology at the

University of Jyväskylä, has written her doctoral dissertation (2004) on
the funeral tradition of the Karelian refugees in Finland. She has stud-
ied the postwar history and the utopic memory of Karelia and Finland.
Her other research interests include oral history research, the Civil
War of 1918 in Finland, ethnicity and ritual studies.
Address: Department of History and Ethnology, P.O. Box 35, 40014
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
E-mail: oufinger@jyu.fi
Sonja Hagelstam, MA, doctoral student of ethnology at the Åbo

Akademi University, is preparing her doctoral dissertation, which
focuses on the meaning and function of wartime correspondence
between soldiers and their families. Her research interests are in the
study of everyday life, home and family, interpersonal communication
technologies and material culture.
Address: Åbo Akademi, Faculty of Arts, Fabriksgatan 2, 20500 Åbo,
Finland
E-mail: sonja.hagelstam@abo.fi
Antero Holmila, PhD, lecturer in history at the University of Jyväskylä,

completed his doctoral dissertation (2008) on the early interpretations
and perceptions of the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish
press in the immediate postwar years. His thesis will be published by
Palgrave in 2011. He has studied the Finnish memory culture of war,
especially in relation to the Holocaust and other mass atrocities. His
other research interests include the transition from war to peace at the
end of World War II and sporting history.
Address: Department of History and Ethnology, P.O. Box 35 (H), 40014
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
E-mail: antero.holmila@jyu.fi
Markku Jokisipilä, Doc.Soc.Sc., researcher, academic director of the

Baltic Sea Region Studies at the University of Turku, has written his
xvi list of contributors
doctoral dissertation (2004) on Finnish-German relations during

the Continuation War, 1941–44. He has also studied the role of
World War II in the continuous construction and maintenance of
Finnish national identity. His other research interests include the
transformation of the historian’s profession in the age of digital
technology and the role of sports in the cultural conflicts of the Cold
War.
Address: Department of Contemporary History, 20014 University of
Turku, Finland
E-mail: jokisip@utu.fi
Michael Jonas, PhD, lecturer and postdoctoral research fellow in

modern history at the Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg,
received his PhD from the University of Helsinki with a thesis (2009)
on the German-Finnish relations in the late 1930s and World War II,
essentially a comprehensive biographical study of the German ambas-
sador to Helsinki, Wipert von Blücher. His main research interests
are in the history of international relations, in particular German
and British foreign policy from the late nineteenth to the mid-
twentieth century, and in comparative history as well as the history of
historiography.
Address: Chair of Modern History, Helmut-Schmidt-University, P.O.
Box 700822, 22008 Hamburg, Germany
E-mail: mjonas@hsu-hh.de
Marianne Junila, PhD, senior lecturer in history at the University of

Oulu, has written her doctoral dissertation (2000) on the coexistence
of the Finnish civilian population and the German soldiers in Northern
Finland, 1941–44. Her main research interests are in the social history
of the twentieth century. She has written on issues related to children,
childhood, migration and healthcare with a focus on the questions of
power and gender in history.
Address: Department of History, P.O. Box 1000, 90014 University of
Oulu, Finland
E-mail: marianne.junila@oulu.fi
Tiina Kinnunen, PhD, adjunct professor, senior lecturer in history at

the University of Eastern Finland, has written her doctoral dissertation
list of contributors xvii
(2000) on Ellen Key’s reception in the early German women’s move-

ment. She has studied the Finnish memory culture of war and espe-
cially the postwar history of the members of the wartime Lotta Svärd
Organization. Her other research interests include the gendered his-
tory of history writing and nationalism.
Address: Department of Geographical and Historical Studies,
University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland
E-mail: tiina.kinnunen@uef.fi
Ville Kivimäki, MA, doctoral student of history at the Åbo Akademi

University, is preparing his doctoral dissertation on war traumas,
military psychiatry and the Finnish soldiers’ war experience during
and after the Continuation War of 1941–44. His general research inter-
ests are in the cultural history of nationalism, war and masculinity
in twentieth century Finland, and in the history of mentalities and
emotions from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Address: Yliopistonkatu 39 C 21, 33500 Tampere, Finland
E-mail: ville.kivimaki@abo.fi
Helene Laurent, MD, M.Soc.Sc., doctoral student of history at the

University of Helsinki., is preparing her doctoral dissertation on the
development of child health care legislation in Finland. Her general
research interests are in the social history of medicine, especially in the
impact of war and societal crises on social and health policies in the
twentieth century.
Address: Department of Social Science History, P.O. Box 54, 00014
University of Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: helene.laurent@helsinki.fi
Henrik Meinander, PhD, professor of history at the University of

Helsinki, has written and edited books and articles on Nordic sports
and educational history, Finnish and Nordic political and cultural his-
tory, Finnish historiography and Finland in World War II. His History
of Finland: Directions, Structures, Turning Points has been published by
Hurst/Columbia University Press in 2011.
Address: Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies,
P.O. Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: henrik.meinander@helsinki.fi
xviii list of contributors
Tenho Pimiä, PhD, University of Jyväskylä, wrote his doctoral disserta-

tion (2009) on the Finnish ethnological activities during World War II,
when scholarly work was closely connected to the idea of building
Greater Finland. Pimiä’s main research questions have been to what
extent was the Finnish research of folk culture ideologically loaded and
in which way it had a common base with the German Volkskunde.
Address: Kivitie 4, 37200 Siuro, Finland
E-mail: tenhopimia@gmail.com
Oula Silvennoinen, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Helsinki, wrote his doctoral dissertation (2008) on the Finnish-German
security police cooperation from the 1930s until the end of World
War II. The work has also been translated into German and Estonian.
Silvennoinen has published on the history of police institutions and on
the memory political questions. His current research deals with
Finland’s history with the Holocaust and the Finnish memory policy
strategies in coping with a politically sensitive past.
Address: Department of World Cultures, P.O. Box 59, 00014 University
of Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: oula.silvennoinen@helsinki.fi
Tuomas Tepora, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Helsinki, has recently (2011) finished his doctoral dissertation on the
interplay between notions of sacrifice, nationalism and collective sym-
bols in Finland, 1917–45. His general research interests are in the cul-
tural history of war in early twentieth-century Finland, in nationalism
and religious studies and in the history of emotions.
Address: Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies,
P.O. Box 4, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: tuomas.tepora@helsinki.fi
Pasi Tuunainen, PhD, adjunct professor, senior lecturer in history

at the University of Eastern Finland, completed his doctoral dis-
sertation (2001) on the role of presidential advisors in U.S. Vietnam
policy-making. He has published works on the history of the art of war,
especially encirclement tactics. He has also studied the adaptation pro-
cess of military innovations by the Finnish Army as well as its combat
effectiveness, control and command and military leadership issues
during World War II, in the context of the Winter War in particular.
list of contributors xix
His other research interests include the history of Finnish peacekeep-

ing forces.
Address: Department of Geographical and Historical Studies,
University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland
E-mail: pasi.tuunainen@uef.fi
INTRODUCTION
THREE WARS AND THEIR EPITAPHS: THE FINNISH

HISTORY AND SCHOLARSHIP OF WORLD WAR II
Ville Kivimäki
The Finnish participation in World War II started with the Soviet

artillery barrage on the southeastern border and with air raids against
Finnish towns on 30 November 1939. The last shots of 1939–45 in
Finnish territory were fired between Finnish and German patrols
in the northwestern corner of Finnish Lapland on 25 April 1945.
In between, Finland fought three wars, each of them connected but
also distinctly different from each other. First, in the Winter War of
1939–40 Finland had to face alone the Soviet aggression originating
from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. Despite forcing
the Red Army to compromise its invasion objectives and preserving
its independence, the country was left shaken, with large territories
ceded to the Soviet Union. After that Finland experienced a 15-month-
long peace from 13 March 1940 to 25 June 1941; the so-called Interim
Peace, which was a period of profound changes in Finnish foreign pol-
icy and orientation leading to the Finnish participation in Operation
Barbarossa. During the so-called Continuation War from June 1941 to
September 1944, Finland waged war side-by-side with Germany; first
in 1941 to conquer back the lost territories of the Winter War and to
take Soviet Eastern Karelia, and then in the summer of 1944 to prevent
the Red Army from occupying the country. Again, Finland managed to
emerge from the war as a wounded but sovereign state: unlike any
other warring country in continental Europe, with the obvious excep-
tion of the Soviet Union, Finland was never occupied by a foreign
power. Finally, according to the armistice terms with the Allied Powers,
Finland fought a campaign against the German troops in Northern
Finland. This Lapland War lasted from September 1944 to April 1945,
although the active period of fighting between the former “brothers-
in-arms” was practically over by the end of November 1944. Finland
signed the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, the most crucial ramifications
2 ville kivimäki
being the permanent loss of Finnish Karelia1 and the large war repara-
tions paid to the Soviet Union. Both of these had already been agreed
on in the original armistice terms of September 1944.
On two occasions the Finnish wartime decision-making can feasi-
bly be seen as having affected the developments of World War II at
large. In the final stages of the Winter War in March 1940 the Finnish
government turned down an offer by Great Britain and France to inter-
vene in the Finnish-Soviet war by sending a military expedition
through Northern Norway and Sweden. Instead, the Finns accepted
the Soviet peace terms and stepped out of the war. Such a limited
intervention would hardly have saved Finland militarily, but it could
have had unpredictable consequences in bringing the Western Powers
into conflict with the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940 and in put-
ting the neutral position of Sweden into question. The second occa-
sion came in September 1941, when the Finnish Army had a fully
realistic chance to seal the siege of Leningrad by advancing the remain-
ing 60 kilometers to meet the German Army Group North. Again, the
exact consequences are impossible to know, but nevertheless such
an operation would have seriously hampered the prospects of defend-
ing Leningrad. Despite the heavy German pressure, for political rea-
sons the Finns refused to attack further and were consequently saved
from guilt in the human tragedy of besieged Leningrad. Besides these
two occasions a separate Finnish peace with the Soviet Union, which
was seriously contemplated by various political circles in 1943 and
in early 1944, would have had important consequences in the Baltic
Sea region and in Scandinavia, but hardly any decisive effects for the
general development of World War II. Similarly, the Finnish defensive
success in the summer of 1944 (or the contrafactual collapse of the
Finnish defenses, for that matter) did of course shape the postwar his-
tory of Finland and, consequently, all of Northern Europe. It also
affected the German military decisions on the northern sectors of the
Eastern Front. But it cannot plausibly be said to have had any real ram-
ifications for the end result of World War II in Europe.2
1
“Finnish Karelia” refers to Karelia, which was part of Finland before World War II.
Its population was Finnish and the area consisted of the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga
Karelia. Finnish Karelia must be separated from “Eastern Karelia” or “Soviet Karelia,”
which has never been part of Finland and the Karelian population of which, unlike the
Finnish Karelians, is an ethnic Finnic people of its own. See Map 1.1 in Henrik
Meinander’s chapter for the geographical boundaries of the different Karelias.
2
These are the most feasible cases; there are, of course, innumerable what-if
scenarios being tossed around by both historians and military history enthusiasts.
introduction: three wars and their epitaphs 3
From the point of domestic politics, the Finnish case in World War
II is an example of surprising continuity in the midst of extreme vio-
lence and radical political turmoil in Europe. All through the war
years, Finland remained a parliamentary democracy, albeit with nota-
ble restrictions,3 and the strong Social Democratic Party was a key
agent in the government—indeed an exceptional case among the coun-
tries that fought together with Nazi Germany. Important political
changes took place after the Continuation War: the Finnish Communist
Party was legalized and gained an electoral victory together with left-
ist socialists in March 1945; the small fascist party was banned; and
eight Finnish wartime politicians were sentenced to prison in the
so-called War Guilt Trials in 1946. Yet to a great extent the same
people, who had already held key offices in 1939 or who had earned
their spurs in the war effort against the Soviet Union, governed the
country, occupied central positions and led the armed forces in the
postwar years. This continuity is most clearly depicted by Marshal
C.G.E. Mannerheim, who, after having been the commander-in
-chief of the Finnish Army in 1939–44, acted as the state president in
1944–46 and was buried with great national honors in 1951. Postwar
Finland took a path towards Nordic democracy and neutrality; it was
spared the fate of the Baltic States and the people’s democracies of
Central and Eastern Europe.
Such is the framework for the “great story” of Finland in World
War II. Seen from 70 years retrospectively, this political and military
history forms the core of a Finnish grand narrative, which, especially
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, has been crowned with
the attributes of success, righteousness and glory in national commem-
orations. Nevertheless, the wartime decisions and policies with their
outcomes, which now seem logical and clear, were far from that at the
time—they were often reached after complex and arbitrary develop-
ments, had realistic options and fully unintended consequences, and
were shaped by factors outside the control of Finnish contemporar-
ies. Furthermore, the streamlined narrative of 1939–45 overshadows
With serious effort, for instance, the Finnish Army could have also cut the Murmansk
Railway in 1941 and again in 1942, but this would hardly have had such dramatic con-
sequences as the collapse of Leningrad in the autumn of 1941.
3
The communists had been outlawed and persecuted in the 1920s and 1930s and
remained so until the autumn of 1944. During the Interim Peace and the Continuation
War the inner circle around President Risto Ryti and Marshall Mannerheim exercised
sufficient power, especially in Finnish foreign relations, to bypass the parliamentary
system.
4 ville kivimäki
various political, social and cultural issues, the history of which gives a
much more nuanced and controversial picture of Finland in World
War II than a mere consideration of political decision-making and
operational military history would allow. From the 1980s, and espe-
cially from the 1990s onwards, the history of Finland in World War II
has been celebrated as a story of national survival and determination,
but there are also darker aspects in this history to be studied and
remembered. Their integration into the Finnish history of 1939–45 is
essential for a balanced understanding of the past; it is also essential for
seeing Finland in the bigger picture of World War II.
It is the task of this book to introduce the reader both to the politi-
cal and military history of Finland from 1939–45 and to the multitude
of ideological, cultural and social topics rising from and giving shape
to the Finnish war experience. This introductory chapter will first dis-
cuss the issue of “Finnish exceptionalism” in World War II—a rather
deep-rooted idea that the Finnish history of 1939–45 was separate
from the general context of World War II elsewhere in Europe. This
tendency to understand Finland’s war history in a narrow national
context—separate and exceptional—has been reflected in Finnish his-
toriography, too; or further, it has to a major degree been created by
Finnish historical scholarship. Yet the question of “exceptionalism” is
worth considering, and it will be explicitly or implicitly present in
many of the following chapters: What was special or indeed excep-
tional in the Finnish experience and history of World War II? Or can
Finland be seen just as a case among others—in some important ways
distinctive, but in many more ways connected to the general trends
and developments of the great conflict? What is the wider European
historical context that is best suited to making Finnish history under-
standable? After some preliminary notes on the question of exception-
alism the first section of this introduction will then present a general
Finnish historiography of World War II, and the second section will
introduce the themes of the following chapters.
Finnish Exceptionalism
The idea of Finnish exceptionalism in World War II both as a tendency

in Finnish history writing and as a popular Finnish self-understanding
has its obvious origins in the Winter War. From 30 November 1939
until 13 March 1940 Finland fought a lone war against its eastern
neighbor, and the war left the Finns with mixed feelings of national
pride and isolation. This experience was accentuated by the keen inter-
est of the international press in Finland’s struggle: the winter of 1939–
40 was Finland’s moment in the international spotlight, and foreign
journalists praised the bravery of this largely unknown small country
in its lonely victimhood. The Winter War and the events following it
contributed to set Finland apart from its natural reference group
of other Nordic countries, with which it shared most in historical,
political, cultural and social terms. Although the Winter War certainly
gave rise to sentiments of compassion and Nordic solidarity towards
Finland, Sweden nevertheless remained neutral and Denmark
and Norway were soon occupied by Germany. Thus, the Danes and
the Norwegians experienced the same country, which the Finns in
1940–41 increasingly came to see as their only possible help against the
Soviet Union, as their own brutal occupier.
The Winter War also separated Finland’s fate from the other co-
victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, namely the Baltic States and
Poland. United by their vulnerable position between Germany and the
Soviet Union and by their new or regained independence in 1917–18,
there had been plans in the 1920s and the early 1930s to build a
so-called “border-state entente” between Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Poland, but in the end to no true effect. The events of
1939–40 left Finland as the sole country in the group to preserve its
independence, and the later military and political developments in
World War II and in the postwar era only further underlined Finland’s
different path. But there were other distinguishing factors than
the consequent German / Soviet occupations in 1939–40, 1941 and
1944–45, as Henrik Meinander will discuss in the following chapter.
The Finnish political system throughout the interwar years had been
parliamentary democracy, whereas Poland and the Baltic States were
inclined to autocratic or (semi-)dictatorial solutions of various degrees.
Indeed, after Germany had occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938–39,
Denmark and Norway in the spring of 1940 and France and the
Benelux countries in May–June 1940, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland
remained the only sovereign democracies in continental Europe.
Finland was the only one directly threatened by the Soviet Union and
the only democracy to join Operation Barbarossa, whereas Sweden
and Switzerland could hold on to their neutrality.
This brings us to the most politicized and debated area of Finnish
exceptionalism. After Finland chose to participate in the German
6 ville kivimäki
invasion of the Soviet Union, it found itself in the reference group of

Hungary and Romania, also partly Italy, Bulgaria and the German
puppet-states of Slovakia and Croatia—and even Japan—rather odd
bedfellows from the prewar perspective. By its political system and
culture, Finland clearly stood out from this group, although it would
also be wrong to see the above-mentioned countries as an otherwise
uniform group. Yet anti-communism and Russophobia were major
ideological trends in Finland, and the common enemy in the east
together with the German influence brought the above-mentioned
countries closer. But as Michael Jonas will demonstrate in his chapter,
Finland’s position in the war in the east was in many ways relatively
exceptional—as was its postwar history compared to that of Germany’s
eastern allies. Nevertheless, Finnish postwar historiography went
much further to distinguish the Finnish case from the greater scheme
of Operation Barbarossa by developing a “separate war thesis”: accord-
ingly, Finland fought its war in 1941–44 independently and separately
from Germany and its “satellites” as the continuation of its own Winter
War. The obvious idea was to distance Finland as far as possible from
the contagious matter of Hitler’s criminal policies and Nazism. The
separate war thesis will be discussed and commented on below as part
of Finnish historiography and further in the coming chapters. Suffice it
to say that in the overall light of historical knowledge—and despite the
fact that there was no legally binding political alliance between Finland
and Germany—this thesis has by now lost most of its academic cur-
rency: willingly integrated into the German war planning, economi-
cally dependent on German imports and with an army of over 200,000
German soldiers situated in Northern Finland, just to list the most
striking examples, the idea of a “separate” Finnish war against the
Soviet Union comes close to absurdity. Had the German Blitzkrieg of
1941 succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union, the Finns would have
been ready to conform to the “New Order” in the east and in the whole
of Europe.
Yet one more historical factor speaks for Finnish exceptionalism in
1939–45. Finland’s participation in the Holocaust was restricted to
handing over eight refugee Jews to the Germans in 1942, whereas the
Finnish Jews did not experience any persecution during the war years,
thus making Finland a special case in the Nazi German orbit.4 As the
4
There is some ambiguity as to the exact number of Jews handed over to the
Germans by the Finns and whether these handovers can be seen as participation in
later chapter by Oula Silvennoinen shows, the wartime history of

Finland has its own dark record in the treatment of Soviet prisoners-
of-war and the Russian population of Finnish-occupied Eastern
Karelia. Yet the fact that the Finnish participation in the Holocaust was
very limited has helped to set Finland apart from the general history of
World War II, in which the suffering and extermination of European
Jewry has a central significance.
There are indeed grounds to emphasize Finnish exceptionalism,
especially if one focuses on the hygienic sphere of high-level foreign
policy and political history. Finnish history in 1939–45 was in many
ways special—but so was that of, say, Denmark, Lithuania or Hungary,
depending on the chosen context and perspective. The fact that Finland
was able to preserve a degree of political autonomy obviously greater
than that of the occupied or otherwise more vulnerable countries
helped the Finns to shape their own history to a more substantial
extent, thus strengthening the claim of exceptionalism. But when stud-
ying the everyday history of war, the exchange of ideas, ideologies
and goods, or the phenomena of human experience and memory of
war, the argument of exceptionalism becomes all the more irrelevant
and the interdependence of various historical phenomena over the
national borders all the more relevant. National identities, and the
“exceptional” national histories, on which they are based, do matter,
and they are interesting to study as such, but they should not blind
us from seeing their wider contexts and links—and often their nature
as nationalist constructions, in which history writing has had an essen-
tial role. Furthermore, seeing Finland as a singular agent with a mono-
lithic national history distorts the complexity of the Finnish society at
war. Being a multifaceted country in the midst of modernization, war-
time Finland was a product of disparate and conflicting political, social
and cultural factors. Thus the history of Finland in 1939–45, too, is
obviously a combination of very different and often contrary trends
and aspirations. It is a challenge for a book like this to present the
reader with a reasonably coherent picture of Finnish history in World
War II while at the same time avoiding oversimplification and neglect
of the many histories beneath this grand narrative.
the Holocaust—the above-mentioned eight refugee Jews seem to be the clearest case of
collaboration (see Antero Holmilas chapter in this book). Furthermore, as Oula
Silvennoinen shows in his chapter, there were 47 Jews in the group of 521 Soviet pris-
oners-of-war which the Finns handed over to the Germans, but it is not clear whether
their Jewish identity had a role in the act.
8 ville kivimäki
Perhaps the very question of exceptionalism can be somewhat

misleading. In a global conflict such as World War II there simply can-
not be purely separate national histories. During the Continuation
War, for instance, the Finnish fighter pilots, flying German-produced
Messerschmitts, were combating Soviet pilots flying American Aira-
cobras. These Airacobras had been delivered to the Eastern Front as
a Lend-Lease Aid via the Murmansk Railway, which the Finnish-
German troops threatened to cut in 1941. This, among other things,
had brought Finland to war with the British Commonwealth in
December 1941. One ideological impetus in motivating the Finnish
advance into Soviet Eastern Karelia in 1941 was the strong anti-
Bolshevism combined with aggressive nationalism—important factors
in prewar Finland, but hardly exceptionally Finnish features in the
Europe of the 1920s and 1930s. To return to the Finnish pilots, the
bread in their canteen had probably been made from German-exported
grain, which, in turn, the Germans had confiscated from occupied
Poland and the Ukraine or bought from co-belligerents Romania and
Hungary. The imported grain prevented the Finnish home front from
starving in 1942–44; it also bound Finland closer to Germany. The
dogfighting in the air may have been observed by Estonian soldiers
serving in the Estonian volunteer regiment of the Finnish Army. The
later fate of these men was to lose their lives or to be deported to Siberia
for “betraying their Soviet homeland”—a tragic and absurd conse-
quence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. But before this the
volunteers took part in fighting against the Soviet attack on Finland
in June and July 1944—an offensive which was made possible by
the German retreat from the outskirts of Leningrad in the winter of
1943–44 and which was coordinated with the Allied landings in
Normandy. Such examples could be continued further and further: the
point is that since Finland was part of an international conflict of
unforeseen global dimensions, it would be impossible to understand
the nature of this history in hermetically national terms.
The history of World War II has been predominantly written from
the perspective of the great powers at war, the Anglo-American narra-
tive often overshadowing the histories of the small and middle-sized
nations and the crucial significance of the war in the east. It might
serve the scholarship of World War II better to include more strongly
both the smaller countries at war and the social, economic and cul-
tural intertwinements of war with the mainstream military history
of 1939–45. In the case of smaller European countries it would also be

useful to study the ideological context of war with some less totalizing
conceptual blocks than fascism equated to Nazism, communism
equated to Stalinism and liberalism equated to the Anglo-American
model. Naturally crucial concepts in Finnish history too, they never-
theless fail to capture the reality of ideological drives at work in
wartime Finland, whereby nationalist conservatism connected to tra-
ditional Germanophilia and Russophobia, social democracy and agrar-
ian centrism connected to political reformism and anti-Bolshevism,
and liberalism connected to Nordic orientation and constitutional
legalism were major factors. Even Finnish communism and fascism
cannot be understood simply as domestic imitations of Stalinism and
Nazism: they had their own peculiarities and frictions with their par-
ent ideologies. All in all, hardly any country or people is “representa-
tive” of the experience of World War II, but nor is there any country
that would have been wholly unique and separate from the wider
European context.
I. Finnish Scholarship of World War II: A Concise Historiography
National Frames: Disputes and Perspectives from the 1940s

to the 1980s
The earliest histories of Finland in World War II were written by army
officers, who had served in the war and who thus often brought their
personal viewpoints and recollections to their narrative. The focus of
these early military histories was operational: this best suited both the
writers’ professional ambitions and the understanding of “military his-
tory” as an applied science in the service of the armed forces. The expe-
rience of the summer battles in 1944 was still fresh in their minds, and
to explain this dramatic battlefield history was a major concern for
the officers-turned-historians. By confining their accounts to the oper-
ational and practical questions of warfare the military historians
were safe from the more sensitive political and ideological issues of
Finland’s recent wars. In the politically fragile postwar situation—the
Soviet-led Allied Control Commission had left Finland only a few
years earlier in 1947—there was certainly some reason for caution. Yet,
as far as the greater context of World War II was touched upon, in the
early histories there was no question of the legitimacy and basically
10 ville kivimäki
defensive nature of Finland’s wars in 1939–45.5 Most importantly,

the posthumously published memoirs of Marshal Mannerheim in
1951–52 were a determined defense of Finnish wartime politics and
military decisions. They made no concessions towards a more critical,
not to mention pro-Soviet, interpretation.6
The early military histories and Marshal Mannerheim’s autobiogra-
phy were accompanied in the 1950s by the memoirs of some leading
Finnish wartime politicians. All in all, the grand scheme regarding
Finland’s participation in World War II remained the same. The aggres-
sive nature of the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 was not censored
in these works, and the history of the Winter War together with the
lack of other foreign political alternatives for Finland in 1940–41
explained the new war in 1941.7 There was no need for self-condemna-
tion or moral reconsideration: Finland had fought its wars candida pro
causa ense candido, “with pure arms on behalf of pure goals,” as had
been the motto of Mannerheim. Thus, despite the War Guilt Trials of
1945–46, the basic line of reasoning regarding Finland’s political posi-
tion and decisions during the war remained largely coherent with the
dominant wartime narrative.
As in many other countries, the “official” military history of Finland
in World War II was written under the auspices of the Finnish Army.
The work by the Office of Military History took off in 1951 with the
history of the Continuation War (and, more marginally, the Lapland
5
For the early military history, Colonel Eero Kuussaari & Vilho Niitemaa, Suomen
sota vv. 1941–1945: Maavoimien sotatoimet (Helsinki, 1948); General Harald Öhquist,
Talvisota minun näkökulmastani (Porvoo, 1949); Colonel Wolf H. Halsti, Suomen sota
1939–1945, Vols. 1–3 (Helsinki, 1955–57); Major Lauri Jäntti, Kannaksen suurtais-
teluissa kesällä 1944 (Porvoo, 1955); General K.L. Oesch, Suomen kohtalon ratkaisu
Kannaksella 1944 (Helsinki, 1956); as well as from the German perspective, General
Waldemar Erfurth, Der finnische Krieg: 1941–1944 (Wiesbaden, 1950; Finnish ed.
transl. General W.E. Tuompo in 1951); the memoirs of General Lothar Rendulic,
Gekämpft, gesiegt, geschlagen (Wels, 1952); General Hermann Hölter, Armee in der
Arktis (Bad Nauheim, 1953).
6
Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim, Muistelmat, Vols. 1–2 (Helsinki, 1951–52; Swedish,
English and German ed. in 1951–54); as well as General Erik Heinrichs on Mannerheim,
Mannerheim Suomen kohtaloissa, Vols. 1–2 (Helsinki, 1957–59).
7
Former minister of defense Juho Niukkanen, Talvisodan puolustusministeri kertoo
(Porvoo, 1951); former foreign minister and the key social democratic leader Väinö
Tanner, Olin ulkoministerinä talvisodan aikana (Helsinki, 1950); idem, Suomen tie rau-
haan 1943–44 (Helsinki, 1952); former foreign minister Carl Enckell, Poliittiset
muistelmani, Vols. 1–2 (Porvoo, 1956); as well as the memoirs of the German minister
to Helsinki, Wipert von Blücher, Suomen kohtalonaikoja: Muistelmia vuosilta 1935–44,
transl. Lauri Hirvensalo (Porvoo, 1950; German ed. in 1951).
Fig. A. After a Soviet air raid, summer 1941. The bombings from 25 June onwards
gave Finland an official casus belli, but the Finnish Army had been mobilized already
after mid-June and the Finnish participation in Operation Barbarossa had been agreed
on. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 23152.
12 ville kivimäki
Fig. B. Finnish soldiers with Panzerfausts at the battle of Tali-Ihantala on the Karelian
Isthmus, 30 June 1944. From the 1990s onwards at the latest, Tali-Ihantala has become
an iconic event for the national history and memory culture of World War II in
Finland. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 155340.
War) and resulted in the colossal 11-volume Suomen sota 1941–1945

(“Finland’s War 1941–45”) published between 1951–65. Here, again,
the approach was almost exclusively limited to military operations and
organization, and political issues such as the Finnish occupation of
Soviet Eastern Karelia or Finnish-German relations were discussed
only very generally and in their relation to actual military affairs. Thick
in military historical detail and jargon, there was not much room for
the war beyond the frontlines and headquarters, either.8
It took an impact from abroad to cause a debate to flare up on
Finnish participation in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in
1941. In 1957 American scholar Charles L. Lundin published his study
on Finland in World War II. Lundin left no doubt about the blatant
nature of the Soviet attack in 1939, and he was not wholly unsympa-
thetic to Finland’s difficult foreign political position after the Winter
War. Nevertheless, he denied that Finland was a mere victim caught
between the two totalitarian regimes of Soviet Union and Germany:
the Finns were not completely innocent in raising Soviet suspicion
against Finland before the Winter War and Finland had actively sought
to ally itself with Nazi Germany in 1940–41, thus compromising its
democratic principles and political system.9
The debate that followed Lundin’s study is in all likelihood the most
discussed issue of Finnish history, a sort of Finnish Historikerstreit,
and it has continued in various forms and arenas until today. The his-
tory of the debate has also created a historiography of its own.10
In short, Lundin’s challenge was taken up by Professor Arvi Korhonen,
whose study of Finland and Operation Barbarossa in 1961 staunchly
supported the interpretation of Finland being a passive victim of war, a
“driftwood” in the rapids of great power politics, fighting only to save
its independence. First of all, there would have been no Continuation
War had the Soviets not invaded Finland in 1939. And further, Finland
8
Suomen sota 1941–1945, Vols. 1–11 (Helsinki, 1951–65, Vol. 11 in 1975).
9
Charles L. Lundin, Finland in the Second World War (Bloomington, IN, 1957).
10
Best summarized by Professor Timo Soikkanen in his articles “Uhri vai hyök-
kääjä? Jatkosodan synty historiankirjoituksen kuvaamana” in Jatkosodan pikkujät-
tiläinen (2005) and “Objekti vai subjekti? Taistelu jatkosodan synnystä” in Sodan totuu-
det (2007), to which this sub-section, too, owes a great debt; in English, see Markku
Jokisipilä, “Finnish History Culture and the Second World War,” in Bernd Wegner
et al., eds., Finnland und Deutschland: Studien zur Geschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
(Hamburg, 2009), pp. 174–91.—See the chapters by Henrik Meinander, Michael Jonas,
Tiina Kinnunen & Markku Jokisipilä and Antero Holmila in this book.
14 ville kivimäki
fought its own “separate war” against the Soviet Union in 1941–44,
without being allied to Germany.11 Korhonen’s argument was indirectly
supported by Tuomo Polvinen’s research in 1964, the explicit aim of
which was to study the politics of the great powers towards Finland
in 1941–44. Its merit was in embedding the Finnish case in the wider
context of World War II, but it also reduced Finland to an object of
forces outside of its control and influence. Finland’s destiny had been
decided in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 and conse-
quently at the negotiation tables and cabinets of the great powers, not
in Helsinki.12
The debate was not over yet, and in the 1960s it raised wide public
interest outside academic circles. The issue was evidently central for
the core Finnish self-understanding, for the experience and memory of
war and for the changed postwar political situation. Again, the new
initiatives in the debate came from outside Finland, when British his-
torian Anthony F. Upton and American historian Hans Peter Krosby
published their studies on Finland during the Interim Peace of
1940–41. Both of them emphasized that Finland had not merely been
an object of foreign powers, but a subject capable of and responsible for
its own decisions. And this conscious choice in 1941 had been to inte-
grate Finland into the German orbit and to take part in Operation
Barbarossa. The Soviet bombing raids against Finland on 25 June 1941
were not the true cause of war; Finland was already determined to join
the German invasion and in reality there was no such thing as Finland’s
“separate war.” Yet Upton and Krosby made serious efforts to under-
stand the historical circumstances of the Finnish decision and showed
a great deal of sympathy towards the small country they studied;
indeed, Upton dedicated his work “to the Finnish people” and Krosby
considered the Finnish participation in war in 1941 as the best availa-
ble choice.13 Yet the reception of the two studies by Finnish academia
11
Arvi Korhonen, Barbarossa-suunnitelma ja Suomi: Jatkosodan synty (Porvoo,
1961). Korhonen had defended this interpretation already soon after the war in
his anonymously published book in the United States, Finland and World War II:
1939–1944, ed. John H. Wuorinen (New York, 1948).
12
Tuomo Polvinen, Suomi suurvaltojen politiikassa 1941–44: Jatkosodan tausta
(Porvoo, 1964); followed later by his Suomi kansainvälisessä politiikassa 1941–1947,
Vols. 1–3 (Porvoo, 1979–81).
13
Anthony F. Upton, Finland in Crisis 1940–1941: A Study in Small-power Politics
(London, 1964); Hans Peter Krosby, Suomen valinta 1941 (Helsinki, 1967). Also on the
role of the Finnish Pechenga nickel concession in international diplomacy, Hans Peter
Krosby, Nikkelidiplomatiaa Petsamossa 1940–1941 (Helsinki, 1966; English ed. in
1968).
was rather cool and annoyed: these “foreigners” passing their judg-
ments could not understand the Finnish viewpoint and the excep-
tional features of Finnish history.
Although the debate on the separate war thesis and Finland’s deci-
sion in 1940–41 continued, it suffered from the lack of more specific
academic research. Next to Korhonen’s and Polvinen’s work, there was
practically no new Finnish history writing regarding the issue in the
1960s. Almost the sole exception was Mauno Jokipii’s study on the
Finnish Waffen-SS volunteer battalion in 1968, which of course linked
in to the more general question of Finnish-German relations. The bat-
talion had already been secretly recruited in the spring of 1941, well
before Operation Barbarossa, and it operated on the Eastern Front
until 1943. Thus its history emphasized the Finnish connection to
Germany’s war in the east.14 After a long pause, Finnish scholarship on
World War II began to accumulate during the 1970s. The leading
perspective was that of high-level political history, and as a conse-
quence of the earlier debate the major research question was to study
the available options for Finnish foreign policy during and after the
Winter War. Had there been other alternatives than the orientation
towards Germany and if so, why did they not materialize? How did
Finland’s isolated geopolitical position in and after 1940 affect its for-
eign policy? And could the Winter War have been avoidable in the first
place? New studies on Finland and the Western Powers in 1939–40
and on Finnish-Swedish relations showed that Finland’s room for
maneuver in foreign policy was indeed limited. But they also showed
that Finland was not just a passive object in the escalating European
conflict: active diplomacy was pursued and several options were kept
on the table. Finland was an active agent in its own history.15
14
Mauno Jokipii, Panttipataljoona: Suomalaisen SS-pataljoonan historia (Helsinki,
1968; 2nd complemented ed. 1969); later also from a comparative perspective idem,
Hitlerin Saksa ja sen vapaaehtoisliikkeet: Waffen-SS:n suomalaispataljoona vertailta-
vana (Helsinki, 2002). Also relevant hereby is Helge Seppälä’s early study on Leningrad
in Finland’s wartime history and on the role of Finland in the siege of the city, Taistelu
Leningradista ja Suomi (Porvoo, 1969).
15
On the Allied foreign policy and intervention plans during the Winter War, Jukka
Nevakivi, Apu jota ei pyydetty: Liittoutuneet ja Suomen talvisota 1939–1940 (Helsinki,
1972; English ed. in 1976); on the foreign political background of the Winter War,
Juhani Suomi, Talvisodan tausta: Neuvostoliitto Suomen ulkopolitiikassa 1937–1939
(Helsinki, 1973); on Germany and the Winter War, Risto O. Peltovuori, Saksa ja
Suomen talvisota (Helsinki, 1975); on British policy towards Finland, Martti Häikiö,
Maaliskuusta maaliskuuhun: Suomi Englannin politiikassa 1939–40 (Porvoo, 1976);
16 ville kivimäki
In the 1980s, after a long ongoing debate and with a growing amount
of new research available on various aspects of Finland at war, some of
which will be discussed below, there were also highly critical Finnish
voices on the aims and nature of Finland’s participation in Operation
Barbarossa. Officer and military historian Helge Seppälä represented
the most poignant criticism in 1984: according to Seppälä, “adventur-
ous” politics had brought Finland to war in 1941 and Finland was, in
essence, one of the German satellites on the Eastern Front.16 Finally a
moment for synthesis came in 1987, when Mauno Jokipii published his
research Jatkosodan synty (“The Birth of the Continuation War”). This
massive 750-page work thoroughly documented and analyzed the
Finnish-German military cooperation in 1940–41. Jokipii’s main thesis
was that Finland was unquestionably and willingly integrated into
the German offensive plans from relatively early on and that this hap-
pened because of conscious decisions within the inner circle of the
Finnish political and military leadership. But Jokipii also showed that
this development was quite understandable after the experience of the
Winter War and under continuing Soviet pressure.17
Meanwhile in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Finnish schol-
arship of World War II was expanding in new directions. Influenced by
the separate war debate, but not only limited to the issue of Finnish-
German relations, the question of Finland’s own war aims in 1941
attracted academic attention. Important hereby was Toivo Nygård’s
doctoral dissertation on the prewar idea and practical efforts to create
“Greater Finland” by attaching Eastern Karelia and other areas of
Northwestern Russia to Finland.18 Handling influential ideology of
early independent Finland, this history set up the background for the
Finnish war aims in 1941, which was the object of Ohto Manninen’s
study Suur-Suomen ääriviivat (“The Outlines of Greater Finland,”
1980). Manninen’s argument was twofold: the Finns clearly had
on Finnish-Swedish relations and state union options after the Winter War, Ohto
Manninen, Toteutumaton valtioliitto: Suomi ja Ruotsi talvisodan jälkeen (Helsinki,
1977).
16
Helge Seppälä, Suomi hyökkääjänä 1941 (Helsinki, 1984).
17
Mauno Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty: Tutkimuksia Saksan ja Suomen sotilaallisesta
yhteistyöstä 1940–41 (Helsinki, 1987); for an earlier attempt at a synthesis of German-
Finnish relations in 1940–44, Olli Vehviläinen, ed., Jatkosodan kujanjuoksu (Porvoo,
1982).
18
Toivo Nygård, Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten auttaminen: Aatteellinen heimo-
työ itsenäisessä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1978).
far-reaching expansive aspirations in 1941, but they were based on the

post-Winter War need for creating better security for the Finnish
heartland. Accordingly, the Finnish leaders kept options available, but
did not bind themselves too closely to any exact aims of conquest in the
war in the east.19
The wartime history of Greater Finland and the Finnish occupation
of Soviet Eastern Karelia in 1941–44 was given its first scholarly pres-
entation in 1982, when Antti Laine published his study. Detailed and
unembellished, Laine did not shun away from the grim facts of the
Finnish occupation policy. Laine’s work can indeed be considered
pathbreaking: for the first time in Finnish academic research on World
War II, the similarities as well as the differences in Finland’s war-
time policies to those of German occupation policies in the east were
openly discussed. Furthermore, deviating from the tradition of purely
military and political history of war, Laine paid attention to the social
history of the Finnish occupation from the perspective of the Eastern
Karelian civilians.20
This widening perspective was not only due to Laine’s insight, but
it reflected a more general change in the perceived scope of writing
the history of war. The tradition of military history written mainly by
professional soldiers, on the first hand, and the prolonged for-and-
against quarrelling around the separate war thesis, on the other, had
clearly overshadowed a major part of Finnish history in World War II.
The idea that the history of war should be confined to purely military
and political matters was outdated, and the social, economical and cul-
tural issues of wartime Finland had been left unstudied. In the mid-
1970s a large research project “Finland in the Second World War,” with
the aim of writing a more complete history of Finland at war, had taken
shape and it continued to the 1980s. Although the project could not be
realized in its original schedule, it finally resulted in a three-volume
work Kansakunta sodassa (“Nation at War,” 1989–92), which succeeded
in extending the Finnish historiography of war to the home front,
19
Ohto Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvalli-
suudesta Suomen Saksan-politiikassa 1941 (Helsinki, 1980).
20
Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot: Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema suoma-
laisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982). For later studies on the issue,
Jukka Kulomaa, Äänislinna: Petroskoin suomalaismiehityksen vuodet 1941–1944
(Helsinki, 1989); Helge Seppälä, Suomi miehittäjänä 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1989); lately
also Osmo Hyytiä, “Helmi Suomen maakuntien joukossa”: Suomalainen Itä-Karjala
1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
18 ville kivimäki
evacuees, rationing, culture, censorship, children and so on. As such it

was the first Finnish attempt to write a comprehensive social history,
or Gesellschaftsgeschichte, of war. The perspective of the work was
national: the idea was to include the history of “ordinary people” within
the grand narrative of Finland at war.21 The project and its social his-
torical paradigm were accompanied by studies on the economic
history of war.22
The end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s seem to have
provided the momentum for a self-critical turn in the Finnish writing
on war history. This may have been partly caused by the strong leftist
trend at the Finnish universities and society at large, which then, with
some delay, became visible in studies and perspectives. This was also
the time when the Holocaust had finally become a focal topic in
Western publicity and research. As Antero Holmila will discuss in
detail in his later chapter, Finland’s history regarding the extermina-
tion of European Jews also came under scrutiny. The initiative came
from outside academia, when journalist and non-fiction author Elina
Suominen (later Sana) published her book on the Finnish deportation
of eight refugee Jews, who ended up in the hands of the German
Gestapo. Suominen saw this as Finland’s participation in the Holocaust,
a comparatively small but important act of collaboration with the Nazi
extermination policy.23 Suominen’s book was followed by Taimi
Torvinen’s academic research on refugees in Finland before and during
World War II, which was more reserved in its conclusions. Still later
on, Suominen’s argument was attacked by historian Hannu Rautkallio,
who denied the deportation’s link to the Holocaust and saw it as a nor-
mal wartime security operation: according to Rautkallio, the eight Jews
were deported as a part of a larger group and their Jewishness played
21
Kansakunta sodassa, Vols. 1–3, eds. Silvo Hietanen et al. (Helsinki, 1989–92).
22
On the terms and ramifications of the wartime Finnish foreign trade, Ilkka
Seppinen, Suomen ulkomaankaupan ehdot 1939–1944 (Helsinki, 1983); on the ques-
tion of postwar reparations to the Soviet Union, Hannu Heikkilä, Liittoutuneet ja kysy-
mys Suomen sotakorvauksista 1943–1947 (Helsinki, 1983; English ed. 1988); on the
Pechenga nickel mines in international politics, Esko Vuorisjärvi, Petsamon nikkeli
kansainvälisessä politiikassa 1939–1944: Suomalainen todellisuus vastaan ulkomaiset
myytit (Helsinki, 1990). Besides the work of Professor Erkki Pihkala on the wartime
economy as part of the general Finnish economic history, the most comprehensive
study on the issue is Ilkka Nummela, Inter arma silent revisores rationum: Toisen maail-
mansodan aiheuttama taloudellinen rasitus Suomessa (Jyväskylä, 1993).
23
Elina Suominen, Kuoleman laiva S/S Hohenhörn: Juutalaispakolaisten kohtalo
Suomessa (Porvoo, 1979).
no role in the incident.24 As we will see, this debate returned to public

attention later in 2003–05.
Nevertheless, the question of anti-Semitism was never central to
the Finnish history and historiography of World War II. The Finnish
Jewish population was very small and it was altogether saved from
the Holocaust. Yet there was a question of xenophobia and racism,
which was much more central for Finnish culture: the tradition of
Russophobia. Historian Matti Klinge had already written on prewar
Finnish Russophobia in the 1970s and Charles L. Lundin had dis-
cussed the matter at some length when he explained the Soviet pre-
war suspicions regarding Finland. The widespread Finnish animosity
towards the Russians was also more or less explicitly present in the
studies on Greater Finland and the occupation of Eastern Karelia.
In 1986 Heikki Luostarinen’s doctoral dissertation on the enemy image
of Russians and the Soviet Union in the Finnish conservative and right-
wing press during the Continuation War focused on the issue in detail
and showed the deep racial hatred in the wartime media and mental-
ity. Luostarinen also compared his Finnish findings to the German
war propaganda and thus situated Finland within the wider context of
the ideological warfare in the east. Luostarinen’s dissertation was the
first Finnish work in which new theoretical approaches—semiotics,
structuralism and the critique of ideology—were applied to a historical
study of war. Maybe revealingly, Luostarinen’s academic subject was
not history, but communication theory and mass media.25
After a slow start during the early postwar decades, in little over
ten years from the mid-1970s onwards the Finnish historiography
of World War II had taken some important steps from the black-
and-white separate war debate towards a more nuanced and colorful
(or better, grey-shaded) picture of war. Dark and hidden topics had
been brought onto the research agenda, and the strictly military and
24
Taimi Torvinen, Pakolaiset Suomessa Hitlerin valtakaudella (Helsinki, 1984);
Hannu Rautkallio, Ne kahdeksan ja Suomen omatunto: Suomesta 1942 luovutetut
juutalaispakolaiset (Espoo, 1985). Rautkallio has continued the debate in his later pub-
lications on the issue.
25
Heikki Luostarinen, Perivihollinen: Suomen oikeistolehdistön Neuvostoliittoa
koskeva viholliskuva sodassa 1941–44, tausta ja sisältö (Tampere, 1986); also an earlier
study of Finnish war propaganda, Touko Perko, TK-miehet jatkosodassa: Päämajan
kotirintaman propaganda 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1974). Around the same time as
Luostarinen’s work, the treatment and fate of the Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finnish
custody became an issue, albeit in a less academic fashion, in novelist Eino Pietola’s
documentary book Sotavangit Suomessa 1941–1944 (Jyväskylä, 1987).
20 ville kivimäki
political history of war had been supplemented with social, economi-

cal and cultural approaches. Yet the more traditional issues of military
and political history were far from settled, either.
Rehabilitation and Myth Breaking: National Reassessments from the

1980s to the 2000s
In the 1970s and 1980s the Office of Military History and later the
Department of History at the National Defence University continued
to work on the official military history of World War II. A four-volume
history of the Winter War was published in 1977–79, and, as time had
passed since the original Suomen sota 1941–1945, the Continuation
War received a new six-volume history in 1988–94.26 The focus of these
works was quite strictly on Finnish military affairs, operations and
organizations, the histories of which were now meticulously written
down for the whole of 1939–45. As the viewpoint of the officers and
headquarters was dominant and the writers did not aspire to step out-
side the genre of traditional military history, the result was a detailed
but conventional history full of tactical arrows, orders-of-battle and
military jargon—familiar to professional soldiers and military history
enthusiasts, but only of limited value for a wider understanding of the
Finnish society at war. Furthermore, as the history of the Lapland War
in 1944–45 had been greatly neglected in earlier research, officer and
historian Sampo Ahto wrote the still-pivotal study on the subject in
1980. Ahto’s study, too, was centered on the military operations; never-
theless, its merit was in attempting to take into account the experience
and mentality of the ordinary soldiers on both sides of the Finnish-
German conflict, even if only as anecdotes.27
The political context of writing the Finnish history of World War II
changed dramatically at the beginning of the 1990s, when the Soviet
Union ceased to exist. During the earlier decades, as we have seen,
Finnish historiography was hardly self-censored or pro-Soviet, but the
sensitive political relations with the eastern great power certainly
required some moderation. Also, the tensions in domestic politics had
made many war-related issues highly politicized in the 1960s and
1970s: contrasting views on the history of 1939–45 (and on the Civil
26
Talvisodan historia, Vols. 1–4 (Porvoo, 1977–79); Jatkosodan historia, Vols. 1–6
(Helsinki, 1988–94).
27
Sampo Ahto, Aseveljet vastakkain: Lapin sota 1944–1945 (Helsinki, 1980).
War of 1918) were still fundamental for competing political identities

and for the different variations in national self-understanding. The
new politics of the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union and the domestic eas-
ing of the fear of communism already in the 1980s made way for less
cautious interpretations of the past wars; indeed, for a “neo-patriotic”
turn later in the 1990s.
Although the proper place of “neo-patriotism” was not so much in
research as in popular presentations of the war, there seemed now to be
a demand for writing the history of 1939–45 from a more “rehabilitat-
ing” perspective. Consequently, a number of biographies on wartime
generals appeared from the end of the 1980s onwards. Even if compe-
tent as academic studies, the subtext of these works has also been to
pay homage to the Finnish military leadership and soldiers in war.28
The real curiosity of the Finnish “great men genre” in academic research
is that there exists no updated biography of Marshal Mannerheim.
Mannerheim has enjoyed vast popularity in a multitude of non-fiction
books and presentations, but his status as a national champion has
not yet attracted any critical academic treatise. Nevertheless, the fric-
tions in personal chemistry and the shape of operational planning
at the Finnish High Command—and partly also Mannerheim’s role
hereby—has been studied to some extent.29
Probably the most prominent figure in the Finnish military history
of the last two decades has been Ohto Manninen, long-time profes-
sor of history at the National Defence University. He has been highly
influential in contributing to the historiography of Finnish political
and military history in 1939–45 in various research articles, work
groups and popularizations. Having utilized also the Russian archives,
which partly opened to foreign scholars in the 1990s, Manninen has
emphasized the difficult position of wartime Finland between the two
28
E.g., among others, Martti Turtola, Erik Heinrichs: Mannerheimin ja Paasikiven
kenraali (Helsinki, 1988); idem, Aksel Fredrik Airo: Taipumaton kenraali (Helsinki,
1997); idem, Jääkärikenraali Einar Vihma: Ihantalan taistelun ratkaisija (Helsinki,
2005); Helge Seppälä, Karl Lennart Oesch: Suomen pelastaja (Jyväskylä, 1998); Mikko
Uola, Jääkärikenraalin vuosisata: Väinö Valve 1895–1995 (Helsinki, 2001); Päivi
Tapola, Ajan paino: Jalkaväenkenraali K.A. Tapolan elämä (Helsinki, 2004); Jukka
Partanen, Juha Pohjonen & Pasi Tuunainen, E.J. Raappana: Rajan ja sodan kenraali
(Helsinki, 2007); Jarkko Kemppi, Jalkaväenkenraali A.E. Martola (Helsinki, 2008).
29
Lasse Laaksonen, Eripuraa ja arvovaltaa: Mannerheimin ja kenraalien hen-
kilösuhteet ja johtaminen (Helsinki, 2004); also Mikko Karjalainen, Ajatuksista operaa-
tioiksi: Suomen armeijan hyökkäysoperaatioiden suunnittelu jatkosodassa (Helsinki,
2009).
22 ville kivimäki
totalitarian regimes, and the decisive role of the Molotov-Ribbentrop

Pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 in the further develop-
ment of Finnish wartime history. Regarding the Continuation War,
he has also continued to support the decisions of Finnish wartime
leaders and the separate war thesis; the very exceptional and independ-
ent role of Finland in relation to the German war in the east.30
After the disputes on Finnish-German relations and on the Finnish
war aims in 1941 had dominated so much of the earlier field of
research, the history of the Winter War gained new attention in the
1990s. If there had been any more doubts on the Soviet aims of con-
quering the whole of Finland, on the tragic consequences of this sce-
nario or on the justified nature and necessity of the war on the Finnish
side, the new political and military history of 1939–40 did its best to
push such doubts aside.31 In research as well as in popular commemo-
rations, the winter of 1939–40 presented a great Finnish national nar-
rative par excellence; it lacked the troublesome and less elevating
aspects of the Continuation War. Besides the strong consensus in
research, the one debate about the Winter War touched upon its final
stages in March 1940. First, Lasse Laaksonen’s doctoral dissertation
on the condition of the Finnish troops at the end of the Winter War
showed that the battle-fatigued Finnish Army was at the edge of col-
lapse under ever-increasing Soviet pressure. This result hit the myth
that the Finns could have continued their fight with possible support
from the Western Allies.32 Second, Professor Heikki Ylikangas claimed
that the Finnish government accepted the harsh Soviet peace terms of
March 1940 because the Germans would already have informed key
Finnish politicians of their imminent plans to invade the Soviet Union.
Thus, the initial decision to integrate Finland into the not-yet-named
Operation Barbarossa would have been made very early in 1940. This
new version of the origins of the Continuation War caused much alarm
30
E.g. Ohto Manninen, Molotovin cocktail—Hitlerin sateenvarjo: Toisen maailman-
sodan historian uudelleenkirjoitusta (Helsinki, 1994); idem, Stalinin kiusa—Himmlerin
täi: Sota-ajan pieni Suomi maailman silmissä ja arkistojen kätköissä (Helsinki, 2002).
31
Olli Vehviläinen & O.A. Ržeševksi, eds., Yksin suurvaltaa vastassa: Talvisodan
poliittinen historia (Helsinki, 1997); Ohto Manninen & O.A. Ržeševksi, eds., Puna-
armeija Stalinin tentissä (Helsinki, 1997); Ohto Manninen, Miten Suomi valloitetaan:
Puna-armeijan operaatiosuunnitelmat 1939–1944 (Helsinki, 2008); Timo Vihavainen
& Andrei Saharov, eds., Tuntematon talvisota: Neuvostoliiton salaisen poliisin kansiot
(Helsinki, 2009).
32
Lasse Laaksonen, Todellisuus ja harhat: Kannaksen taistelut ja suomalaisten jouk-
kojen tila talvisodan lopussa 1940 (Helsinki, 1999).
and dispute, but Ylikangas got very little support for his interpreta-
tion.33 Besides the political and military issues of 1939–40, the “Spirit
of the Winter War”—the surprising unanimity and determination
against the backdrop of the Finnish Civil War and prewar political
divisions—has required a scholarly explanation.34 Quite recently stud-
ies on the Winter War have focused on Finland’s struggle as it was
seen abroad.35
It was not only the history of the Winter War, which gave rise to
the sentiments of national pride and patriotism in the 1990s. The
defensive battles in the summer of 1944 were also increasingly cele-
brated as an epic of national survival. Although the official military
histories had by no means downplayed the importance of halting
the Soviet offensive in 1944 nor depicted it as a military defeat, the
experience of 1944 had been much more controversial than that of the
Winter War. Now, from the end of the 1980s onwards, the battles of
1944 came to be widely understood as a clear and glorious victory,
albeit as a defensive one.36
However, notwithstanding the political history of the Finnish-
German “brotherhood-in-arms,” the military aspects of the Continua-
tion War could not be comprehended without references to its gloomy
and even inglorious chapters. A pioneering study appeared in 1995,
when Jukka Kulomaa published his doctoral dissertation on military
desertion, evasion and their countermeasures in the Finnish Army of
1941–44. The phenomena in Kulomaa’s study were in stark contrast to
the cherished ideal of the Finnish Army: despite their unquestionable
military achievements, Finnish soldiers also evaded their service,
objected to orders they received, lost their nerve or chose to desert.
33
Heikki Ylikangas, Tulkintani talvisodasta (Helsinki, 2001); contra Ohto Manninen
& Kauko Rumpunen, eds., Murhenäytelmän vuorosanat: Talvisodan hallituksen kes-
kustelut (Helsinki, 2003), followed by a debate in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja journal
in 2003–04.
34
Sampo Ahto, Talvisodan henki: Mielialoja Suomessa talvella 1939–1940 (Porvoo,
1989); recently also Olli Harinen, Göran Lindgren & Erkki Nordberg, Talvisodan Ässä-
rykmentti (Helsinki, 2010).
35
On the Winter War and Italy, Pirkko Kanervo, Italia ja Suomen talvisota: Il Duce
Mussolini maailman urheimman kansan apuna (Helsinki, 2007); on the Winter War in
foreign press, Antero Holmila, ed., Talvisota muiden silmin: Maailman lehdistö ja
Suomen taistelu (Jyväskylä, 2009).
36
In research, this trend manifested most clearly in U.E. Moisala & Pertti Alanen,
Kun hyökkääjän tie suljettiin: Neuvostoliiton suurhyökkäys kesällä 1944 Karjalan kan-
naksella veteraanitutkimuksen ja neuvostolähteiden valossa (Helsinki, 1989); also Tapio
Tiihonen, Karjalan kannaksen suurtaistelut kesällä 1944, Vols. 1–3 (Helsinki, 1999).
24 ville kivimäki
Finally in 1944, the Army itself used draconic measures to subdue

the desertions. Kulomaa managed to combine the traditional perspec-
tive of military history with the analysis of interacting social, politi-
cal and psychological factors. He also documented reliably an issue,
which had caused much speculation and rumors ever after the war: the
number of court-martialed and executed Finnish soldiers during the
Continuation War. In this regard his work was soon supplemented by
Jukka Lindstedt’s thorough study of wartime capital punishment in
general.37 The dramatic events following the Soviet offensive against
Finland in June 1944 continued to attract both public and academic
attention. In particular, the Army’s countermeasures against desertion
and the alleged shooting of a much greater number of Finnish soldiers
by the military in 1944 caused ruction among scholars.38
What has been central in these approaches and disputes is that the
classic idea of military history, its bird’s-eye view on battlefields and
soldiers, has been challenged by the less “official” and staff officer-
dominated perspectives. This is not to say that the traditional military
history would not do well in Finland—it enjoys great success in
book markets and libraries. The histories of military events have been
pursued to the level of even the smallest of military units.39 But aca-
demically speaking there seems to be very little that the study of
Finnish operations in 1939–45 could offer, if such a study were not
combined with the analysis of wider social, cultural and psychologi-
cal factors or at least with a consideration of politics, logistics, training
and motivation. In this regard the most valid Finnish study on the
soldiers’ socialization and mentality remains Knut Pipping’s classic
sociological treatise in 1947, in which he closely analyzed the behavior
37
Jukka Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin? 1941–1944: Sotilaskarkuruus Suomen armei-
jassa jatkosodan aikana (Helsinki, 1995); Jukka Lindstedt, Kuolemaan tuomitut:
Kuolemanrangaistukset Suomessa toisen maailmansodan aikana (Helsinki, 1999).
38
These allegations were supported by Heikki Ylikangas, Romahtaako rintama?
Suomi puna-armeijan puristuksessa kesällä 1944 (Helsinki, 2007); and opposed by
Jukka Kulomaa & Jarmo Nieminen, eds., Teloitettu totuus—Kesä 1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
Also the traumatic collapse of the Finnish defense of Vyborg on 20 June 1944 gained
attention, Eero Elfvengren & Eeva Tammi, eds., Viipuri 1944: Miksi Viipuri menetet-
tiin? (Helsinki, 2007).
39
There exists an impressive quantity of more or less qualified Finnish histories on
specific battles, events, locations and areas, prominent officers and soldiers, service
branches, units and equipment in war, the totality of which cannot be described here
at any reasonable length. The periodical of Finnish military history Sotahistoriallinen
Aikakauskirja has been important in contributing to this genre of studies.
and attitudes inside one Finnish infantry company by utilizing his own
wartime observations.40
As with the biographies of Finnish generals, the post-Soviet atmos-
phere seemed to call for the re-evaluation of the wartime political
leadership, the War Guilt Trials of 1945–46 and the dissolution of vari-
ous national defense, right-wing and nationalist organizations as had
been required by the armistice terms in the autumn of 1944. Here,
too, the scholarly ambitions were accompanied by a will to rehabilitate
the leaders and organizations concerned from the “shame and unjust”
they had suffered after the war.41 Yet more relevant for Finnish politi-
cal history was the question of why postwar Finland did not follow
the path of Central and Eastern European people’s democracies and
remained, instead, a Nordic democracy and a free-market economy.
A number of studies on the postwar Finnish political left, international
position and general domestic political developments took on this
issue and showed the importance, among other factors, of intact politi-
cal and administrative structures not shattered by occupation, of
social democratic anti-communism backed by the Western Powers
and of the relative unwillingness of the Finnish communists and the
Soviet Union to seize power by pure force after 1944.42
After Mauno Jokipii’s study in 1987, the Great Debate on Finnish-
German relations before and during the Continuation War had been
40
Knut Pipping, Kompaniet som samhälle: Iakttagelser i ett finskt frontförband
1941–1944 (Turku, 1947; Finnish ed. in 1978); now available also in English, Infantry
Company as a Society, ed. and transl. Petri Kekäle (Helsinki, 2008).
41
Mikko Uola, “Suomi sitoutuu hajottamaan…” Järjestöjen lakkauttaminen vuoden
1944 välirauhansopimuksen 21. artiklan perusteella (Helsinki, 1999); Lasse Lehtinen &
Hannu Rautkallio, Kansakunnan sijaiskärsijät: Sotasyyllisyys uudelleen arvioituna
(Helsinki, 2005); as well as the biography of President Ryti, Martti Turtola, Risto Ryti:
Elämä isänmaan puolesta (Helsinki, 1994); also the wartime history of the Civil Guards
Defense Corps, banned in the autumn of 1944, appeared, Kari Selén & Ali Pylkkänen,
Sarkatakkien armeija: Suojeluskunnat ja suojeluskuntalaiset 1918–1944 (Helsinki,
2004). For earlier studies on the War Guilt Trials, postwar political history and the
Allied Control Commission in Finland, Aulis Blinnikka, Valvontakomission aika
(Porvoo, 1969); Hannu Rautkallio, Suomen suunta 1945–1948 (Espoo, 1979); Jukka
Tarkka, 13. Artikla: Suomen sotasyyllisyyskysymys ja liittoutuneiden sotarikospolitiikka
1944–1946 (Porvoo, 1977).
42
On the political history of the postwar years in general, Osmo Jussila, Suomen tie
1944–1948: Miksi siitä ei tullut kansandemokratiaa (Porvoo, 1990); on Finnish com-
munists and social democrats, Hermann Beyer-Thoma, Vasemmisto ja vaaran vuodet,
transl. Marjaliisa Hentilä (Helsinki, 1990); Kimmo Rentola, Kenen joukoissa seisot?
Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota 1937–1945 (Porvoo, 1994); Mikko Majander,
Pohjoismaa vai kansandemokratia? Sosiaalidemokraatit, kommunistit ja Suomen kan-
sainvälinen asema 1944–51 (Helsinki, 2004).
26 ville kivimäki
given some academic respite. Nevertheless, the issue returned to the

agenda in the 2000s, when first Markku Jokisipilä in 2004 and then
Michael Jonas in 2009 published their doctoral dissertations. Instead
of the origins of the Continuation War in 1940–41, Jokisipilä studied
Finnish-German relations in the latter stages of the war, most impor-
tantly in the summer of 1944. He demonstrated how vague the claim
of Finland’s separate war was in light of the Finnish dependency
on German economic and military support. Michael Jonas analyzed
the long line and frictions of German policy towards Finland in the
1930s and 1940s by focusing on the German minister to Finland,
Wipert von Blücher. Drawing from the German archive material and
perspective, Jonas set Finland in the context of overall German war
planning and strategy (and the lack of them). Although highly critical
of the excusive Finnish postwar historiography, both Jokisipilä and
Jonas also brought new information on the exceptional features of the
Finnish-German relationship: clearly, Finland was not just a German
satellite, but a case of its own, evading any easy generalizations and
moralizations.43
The fact that there was no binding political alliance between Finland
and Germany in World War II did not mean that there was no close
cooperation on the level of everyday practices, policies and per-
sonal connections. Oula Silvennoinen’s doctoral dissertation in 2008
on the cooperation of the German and Finnish security police in
1933–44 has been the most important academic contribution in this
respect: by examining the mostly secret liaisons it also revealed the
extent and limits of the Finnish security officials’ knowledge of and
involvement in the Nazi war of annihilation in the east.44 On the other
hand, the studies on Finnish scientists and scholars in World War II
made clear the strong orientation to Germany both before and dur-
ing the war. Finnish universities and researchers were not especially
“Nazi-minded,” but the traditional links to Germany as well as the
43
Markku Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia? Suomi, Hitlerin Saksan liittosopimus-
vaatimukset ja Rytin-Ribbentropin sopimus (Helsinki, 2004); Michael Jonas, Wipert von
Blücher und Finnland: Alternativpolitik und Diplomatie im “Dritten Reich,” PhD thesis
(University of Helsinki, 2009), with German and Finnish editions to be published by
Schöningh and Gummerus in 2010. Also on Finland in the German press after the
Winter War and during the Continuation War, Risto Peltovuori, Sankarikansa ja ka-
valtajat: Suomi Kolmannen valtakunnan lehdistössä 1940–1944 (Helsinki, 2000).
44
Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisi-
yhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
“brotherhood-in-arms” in 1941–44 kept them close to German aca-

demic circles and paradigms.45
Silvennoinen’s dissertation had been preceded by a revisited debate
in 2003–05 on the Finnish relationship to the Holocaust and the geno-
cidal Nazi policies in general. The debate was born of Elina Sana’s
(née Suominen) new book on the alleged Finnish handing-over of
communist and Jewish prisoners-of-war to the Germans during the
Continuation War. The source material and method of Sana’s work
were not academically sufficient; nevertheless, the book’s findings were
enough to raise doubts as to whether the Finns had been more involved
in Nazi policies than earlier histories had depicted.46 Consequently,
a large research project took off under the auspices of the Finnish
National Archives with the aim of documenting all the Finnish war-
time and postwar deportations of soldiers and civilians as well as the
prisoner-of-war and civilian internee deaths during World War II.
Thus, both the wartime deportations to Germany and the much larger
postwar deportations of Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union were
included. One of the project’s most important results was in establish-
ing the mortality figure of Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finnish custody,
whose history belongs to the grimmest chapters of wartime Finland.47
Antti Kujala’s study on the actual killings of prisoners-of-war by the
Finns complemented the picture.48 Finally, the harsh fate of the Finnish
45
On Finnish researchers in World War II, especially on their relations to Germany,
Marjatta Hietala, ed., Tutkijat ja sota: Suomalaisten tutkijoiden kontakteja ja kohtaloita
toisen maailmansodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006); as well as on Finnish researchers and
cultural policy in Eastern Karelia, partly influenced by the German scholarship and
links, Tenho Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta: Suomalaistutkijat miehitetyillä alueilla
1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2007). Also Britta Hiedanniemi’s earlier study on German cul-
tural relations and propaganda on Finland is interesting in this regard; Britta
Hiedanniemi, Kulttuuriin verhottua politiikkaa: Kansallissosialistisen Saksan kulttuu-
ripropaganda Suomessa 1933–1940 (Helsinki, 1980).
46
Elina Sana, Luovutetut: Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle (Helsinki, 2003).
47
As an overview on this research, Lars Westerlund, ed., POW Deaths and People
Handed Over to Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report by the
Finnish National Archives (Helsinki, 2008); see also the English website of the project,
http://kronos.narc.fi/frontpage.html; as well as on the earlier research on the postwar
deportation of Soviet citizens back to the Soviet Union, Heikki Roiko-Jokela, Oikeutta
moraalin kustannuksella? Neuvostoliiton kansalaisten luovutukset Suomesta 1944–1955
(Jyväskylä, 1999); Jussi Pekkarinen & Juha Pohjonen, Ei armoa Suomen selkänahasta:
Ihmisluovutukset Neuvostoliittoon 1944–1981 (Helsinki, 2005).
48
Antti Kujala, Vankisurmat: Neuvotosotavankien laittomat ampumiset jatkoso-
dassa (Helsinki, 2008); as well as Heikki Roiko-Jokela, ed., Vihollisen armoilla:
Neuvostosotavankien kohtaloita Suomessa 1941–1948 (Jyväskylä, 2004).
28 ville kivimäki
prisoners-of-war in Soviet hands was also examined—the topic had

not been considered quite politically correct during the Soviet era.49
During the 1990s and 2000s the military and political issues of
Finland in World War II gained an expanding amount of academic
studies, which consequently gave rise to a further set of questions.
In general, the Finnish historiography of war seems to have split to cre-
ate two trends: first, especially in popular presentations, there has been
a bid to rehabilitate and foster the “patriotic heritage” of Finland at war
after the earlier restraints; and second, especially in academic disserta-
tions, the idealized and glorified wartime history has called for “myth
breaking” and critical views. Both trends share the national frame-
work, inside of which they mostly discuss and pose their questions; the
issue at stake is Finland’s history as a nation. The scholarly initiatives
hereby have mostly been in finding unexplored topics and source
material and not so much in new theoretical approaches: the questions
of military and political history have been answered with the relatively
traditional methodology of historical scholarship. Meanwhile new the-
oretical trends in history writing were also starting to make their
appearance in the historical study of war.
Social and Cultural History of War from the 1990s onwards

Despite the busy Finnish academic activity around the issues of war
from the 1970s onwards, the general view of Finland at war remained
seriously partial. The most apparent lack in almost all of the above-
mentioned studies was the near-total absence of women. Even in
Kansakunta sodassa of 1989–92, which must be seen as the most social
history oriented work of the whole war so far, the role of women was
still marginal and the traditional themes of warfare and politics took
up the majority of the presentation.50 Although women’s studies had
become a major trend in Finnish historical scholarship by the end of
the 1980s, the history of war seemed to be a field of study written by
men, about men and for men.
49
Dmitri Frolov, Sotavankina Neuvostoliitossa: Suomalaiset NKVD:n leireissä
talvi- ja jatkosodan aikana (Helsinki, 2004); Timo Malmi, Suomalaiset sotavangit
Neuvostoliitossa 1941–1944: Miehet kertovat (Jyväskylä, 2001).
50
Revealing the state of affairs, the eight members on the advisory board of
Kansakunta sodassa were all men, and among the 13 writers of the three volumes there
were only two women.
This is not to say that the history of the Finnish home front had been
wholly neglected. Besides Kansakunta sodassa, a number of specific
studies had appeared by the beginning of the 1990s.51 Nevertheless, the
role of wartime women as historical agents—not merely as the objects
of man-made history—remained unwritten. A path-breaking work in
this regard was Naisten aseet (“Women’s Weapons”) edited by Riikka
Raitis and Elina Haavio-Mannila in 1993. For the first time, women’s
history in war was written on its own terms; a history of women’s active
participation in making wartime Finnish history, not simply subordi-
nate to “more serious and important” manly matters.52 Followed soon
by Maarit Niiniluoto’s study on the entertainment and home front cul-
ture in 1939–45, in which wartime mentalities, social interaction and
gender relations were articulated, the picture of war in Finnish histori-
ography was about to expand.53 This did not only concern women’s
history and the home front. The men in the trenches had also escaped
the view of traditional military history, which had focused so domi-
nantly on the military operations as if they were maneuver exercises in
general staff training. Now, at the end of the 1990s, the idea of writing
the social or everyday history of ordinary people gave voice to the war
experiences of Finnish soldiers and civilians, although there is still
much to be studied in this respect.54 Marianne Junila’s doctoral disser-
tation in 2000 on the Finnish civilian population and the German sol-
diers in Northern Finland in 1941–44 is as yet the most comprehensive
academic study on the wartime home front, and it brought to the fore
51
E.g., an early presentation on the changing moods and attitudes on the Finnish
home front during the Continuation War, Kotirintama 1941–1944, eds. Martti Favorin
& Jouko Heinonen (Helsinki, 1972); on the war damage, civilian evacuations and
reconstruction in Northern Finland, Martti Ursin, Pohjois-Suomen tuhot ja jälleenra-
kennus saksalaissodan 1944–1945 jälkeen (Rovaniemi, 1980); on the politics of reset-
tling the Finnish Karelian evacuees, Silvo Hietanen, Siirtoväen pika-asutuslaki 1940:
Asutuspoliittinen tausta ja sisältö sekä toimeenpano (Helsinki, 1982); on the history of
the Ingrian Finns evacuated to Finland in 1943–44, Pekka Nevalainen, Inkeriläinen
siirtoväki Suomessa 1940-luvulla (Helsinki, 1990); on law enforcement in war, Tuija
Hietaniemi, Lain vartiossa: Poliisi Suomen politiikassa 1917–1948 (Helsinki, 1992).
52
Riikka Raitis & Elina Haavio-Mannila, eds., Naisten aseet: Suomalaisena naisena
talvi- ja jatkosodassa (Porvoo, 1993).
53
Maarit Niiniluoto, On elon retki näin, eli: Miten viihteestä tuli sodan voittaja;
Viihdytyskiertueita, kotirintaman kulttuuria ja Saksan suhteita vuosina 1939–45
(Helsinki, 1994).
54
For a pioneering Finnish study in the everyday history of war, Maria Lähteenmäki,
Jänkäjääkäreitä ja parakkipiikoja: Lappilaisten sotakokemuksia 1939–1945 (Helsinki,
1999); later also Heikki Annanpalo, Ritva Tuomaala & Marja Tuominen, eds., Saatiin
tämä vapaus pitää: Tutkija kohtaa rovaniemeläisveteraanin (Rovaniemi, 2001).
30 ville kivimäki
a question which also has been studied elsewhere in Europe: the

socially and culturally problematic relationships between local women
and foreign soldiers. Junila also showed the political dimensions of
the home front, when Finnish-German relations met and shaped the
everyday practices of wartime in Northern Finland.55
Two previously discussed trends—the rehabilitation of the wartime
“national heritage” and the call to write women’s history in war—met
in the 2000s, when an academic research project on the Lotta Svärd
Organization was carried out under the auspices of the Finnish Lotta
Tradition League. Lotta Svärd had been the most important women’s
civic national defense organization in prewar and especially wartime
Finland. Being closely connected to the Civil Guards Defense Corps
and ideologically to nationalist conservatism, it had been banned by
the armistice treaty and the Allied Control Commission in late 1944.
Now in the post-Soviet atmosphere of the 1990s, the history of the
organization and women’s participation in the Finnish war effort
through it was academically reassessed.56
Next to women, the history of wartime childhood and youth had
been greatly neglected and was studied more widely only in the 2000s.57
Important in this regard was the four-volume work Sodassa koettua
(“Experiences of War,” 2007–09), the first two volumes of which were
exclusively written about the war’s manifold effects on Finnish child-
hood and youth and on the role of children in the Finnish war effort.
55
Marianne Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä: Suomalaisen siviiliväestön ja saksa-
laisen sotaväen rinnakkainelo Pohjois-Suomessa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2000). In the
Finnish case the German soldiers were not occupiers but “brothers-in-arms”; yet the
issue of women’s required chastity connected to Finnish national honor remained
much the same as in the case of the occupied countries.
56
The project covered the complete history of the Lotta Svärd from 1920 onwards,
altogether four monographs published by 2010. On the wartime history of the Lotta
Svärd, Pia Olsson, Myytti ja kokemus: Lotta Svärd sodassa (Helsinki, 2005); also out-
side the project from a cultural history perspective, Kaarle Sulamaa, Lotat, uskonto ja
isänmaa: Lotat protestanttis-nationalistisina nunnina (Helsinki, 2009).
57
An early study on the Swedish aid and sponsorship especially regarding the
Finnish children, Aura Korppi-Tommola, Ystävyyttä yli Pohjanlahden: Ruotsin ja
Suomen välinen kummikuntaliike 1942–1980 (Helsinki, 1982); on the Finnish “war
children” sent to Sweden and Denmark, Heikki Salminen, Lappu kaulassa yli
Pohjanlahden: Suomalaisten sotalasten historia (Turku, 2007); on the children and
youth in the Lotta Svärd and the Civil Guards, Seija-Leena Nevala, Lottatytöt ja sotilas-
pojat (Helsinki, 2007); on the boys’ experience of war and war-affected fatherhood,
Erkki Kujala, Sodan pojat: Sodanaikaisten pikkupoikien lapsuuskokemuksia isyyden
näkökulmasta (Jyväskylä, 2003).
Fig. C. The idyll of Finnish-occupied Eastern Karelia: Karelian girls returning from
school, May 1942. At the same time almost 24,000 people of the area, mainly ethnic
Russians, were interned in the camps. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic
Centre SA 87446.
32 ville kivimäki
Fig. D. War’s gendered roles: a member of the Lotta Svärd Organization feeding a
wounded soldier, August 1941. Lottas’ work was crucial for the Finnish war effort, and
they also had a symbolically important position as the bearers of “Finnish woman-
hood.” Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 36571.
The discussion was now expanding outside the traditional war-related

themes to include, for instance, the psychological, cultural and genera-
tional issues of war.58 Relevant motivation hereby was Marja Tuominen’s
doctoral dissertation from 1991 on the generational conflict in the
Finnish 1960s, which did not actually study war, but nevertheless
touched upon the psychological heritage of the wartime era as it was
challenged by the children of the war generation.59 The two latter vol-
umes of Sodassa koettua focused on the home front in general, picking
up unstudied themes and contributing to an updated concise history of
Finnish society at war.60 Furthermore, besides the experiential and
emotional consequences of war, the short- and long-term ramifica-
tions of World War II to Finnish society at large have been gaining
increasing attention, together with the political and social coping and
transition strategies in 1944–45 and after.61 Also, the postwar histories
of war veterans and invalids have been studied, albeit mostly from the
perspective of their organizations and associations.62
As we can see, one of the main veins in recent Finnish studies on
war has been to understand the researchers’ field of interest much
more extensively than as strictly military and political history. There
is actually a conceptual problem in the very name of Finnish military
history: the Finnish term for military history translates as “war his-
tory” (sotahistoria, with the same connotations as the earlier German
Kriegsgeschichte) and thus has its obvious limitations in grasping
the widening scope of war-related studies. The available term militääri-
historia, which might better include the multitude of historical phe-
nomena outside the martial events and which is not so compromised
58
Sodassa koettua, Vols. 1–2: Haavoitettu lapsuus / Uhrattu Nuoruus, ed. Sari Näre
et al. (Helsinki, 2007–08).
59
Marja Tuominen, “Me kaikki ollaan sotilaitten lapsia”: Sukupolvihegemonian kriisi
1960-luvun suomalaisessa kulttuurissa (Helsinki, 1991).
60
Sodassa koettua, Vols. 3–4: Arkea sodan varjossa / Yhdessä eteenpäin, eds. Martti
Turtola et al. (Helsinki, 2008–09).
61
Petri Karonen & Kerttu Tarjamo, eds., Kun sota on ohi: Sodista selviytymisen
ongelmia ja niiden ratkaisumalleja 1900-luvulla (Helsinki, 2006); also an earlier and
more traditional work on the Finnish transition to the postwar, Jukka Nevakivi et al.,
Suomi 1944: Sodasta rauhaan (Helsinki, 1984).
62
On the Finnish war veteran organizations, Tero Tuomisto, Eturintamassa vete-
raanien hyväksi: Rintamaveteraaniliitto 1964–2004 (Helsinki, 2004); and Kaarle
Sulamaa, Veteraania ei jätetä: Suomen Sotaveteraaniliitto 1957–2007 (Helsinki, 2007);
on the war invalids and their rehabilitation and families, Irmeli Hännikäinen, Vaimot
sotainvalidien rinnalla: Elämäntehtävänä selviytyminen (Helsinki, 1998); and Markku
Honkasalo, Suomalainen sotainvalidi (Helsinki, 2000).
34 ville kivimäki
by the long tradition of operational staff histories, is not very well

established in Finnish usage. Having the “military” as its defining
attribute may restrict its application, too. Many of the present research-
ers studying the Finnish wartime in 1939–45 would probably have dif-
ficulties in identifying themselves as “war” or “military” historians, and
these labels are now largely reserved for the traditional branch of mili-
tary history, which, again, is largely confined to studies made at the
National Defense University and to the ever-popular genre of battle
documentations, soldier’s biographies and unit histories.
Indeed, there seems to be quite a chasm in perspectives between
traditional military history and the new initiatives to study war. This is
the case especially when one looks at the (still very few) Finnish cul-
tural histories of war, to which the changing general paradigms in his-
tory writing and methodology have given impetus. After Heikki
Luostarinen’s above-mentioned work in 1986, the next study on war
inspired by new cultural theory appeared in 1995, when Anu Koivunen
published her thesis on the wartime Finnish film.63 Drawing from
the theoretical premises of Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, Michel
Foucault and Julia Kristeva, among others, Koivunen studied the films
as a discursive gender technology representing and constructing war-
time and postwar Finnish womanhood. Quite emblematically for the
coming cultural studies on war, Koivunen’s work took up the issue of
the nation and nationalism itself, and the theoretical concept of gender
occupied a central position in her analysis. Just as with Luostarinen,
the subject of Koivunen’s thesis was not history but media research.
Finally in 2006, when Ilona Kemppainen published her doctoral dis-
sertation on the culture of soldiers’ deaths in wartime Finland, the
Finnish cultural history of war received its first full-blooded mono-
graph in the sense that it applied the developments and concepts of
cultural (and gender) theory within the historical scholarship.64
Kemppainen analyzed the nationalist ideology embedded in the sol-
diers’ sacrifice and thus the self-image of the wartime Finnish nation
and people. Her main interests were in the constructions of ideal
63
Anu Koivunen, Isänmaan moninaiset äidinkasvot: Sotavuosien suomalainen
naisten elokuva sukupuoliteknologiana (Turku, 1995); later also Tuula Juvonen’s queer
theoretical study on Finnish homosexuality, which briefly discussed the wartime his-
tory, contributed to this field, Varjoelämää ja julkisia salaisuuksia (Tampere, 2002).
64
Ilona Kemppainen, Isänmaan uhrit: Sankarikuolema Suomessa toisen maailman-
sodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006).
manliness and womanhood, especially motherhood, in the representa-

tions and practices of military death and burials.
At about the same time as Kemppainen’s dissertation, the new cul-
tural, social and psychohistorical perspectives on wartime Finland
were brought together in the edited volume Ihminen sodassa (“Human
in War,” 2006).65 Drawing ideas from the internationally emerging
“new military history” and from the German “history of experiences”
(Erfahrungsgeschichte), this book was a critical opening on the prem-
ises and nature of writing the history of war in Finland. Some useful
discussion on the issue followed, but the precise effect of the work on
Finnish historiography is yet to be seen. Not so much a concise over-
view of the whole Finnish society at war as a collection of new ideas
and themes, many of the book’s articles were written by doctoral stu-
dents, whose dissertations are now about to be finished.66 The relevant
themes hereby include, for instance, the gendered aspects of war and
the military, social, cultural and psychological factors in the formation
of war experiences, the issues of memory and the substance and scope
of Finnish wartime nationalism. Indeed, one unifying theme in the
newest publications and in the ongoing research projects on the cul-
tural history of war seems to be to take the wartime nation as an ana-
lyzable object for a treatise, whereas the earlier studies have taken the
nation and national perspective as the axiomatic framework for schol-
arly work. Also war’s brutal history has recently been revisited in the
book Ruma sota (“The Ugly War,” 2008), which had the explicit aim of
deconstructing the glorified history of war and focusing on the actual
violence and adversities largely hidden in the “official” military histo-
ries.67 But the cultural and psychohistorical approaches are not limited
only to revealing the violence and aggression of war: the collective
“Spirit of the Winter War,” for instance, deserves a thorough cultural
and psychological analysis.68
65
Tiina Kinnunen & Ville Kivimäki, eds., Ihminen sodassa: Suomalaisten kokemuk-
sia talvi- ja jatkosodasta (Helsinki, 2006).
66
Published at the same time as the writing of this introduction are Anders Ahlbäck,
Soldiering and the Making of Finnish Manhood: Conscription and Masculinity in
Interwar Finland, 1918–1939, PhD thesis (Åbo Akademi University, 2010); Tuomas
Tepora, Lippu, uhri, kansakunta: Ryhmäkokemukset ja -rajat Suomessa 1917–1945,
PhD thesis (University of Helsinki, 2011).
67
Sari Näre & Jenni Kirves, eds., Ruma sota: Talvi- ja jatkosodan vaiettu historia
(Helsinki, 2008).
68
On the “Spirit of the Winter War” and the constitutive image of the Soviet threat
in the Finnish press in this regard, Sinikka Wunsch, Punainen uhka: Neuvostoliiton
36 ville kivimäki
An important branch in the cultural histories of war has been the

study of the memory and commemoration of war. Influenced by oral
history tradition in general and by the folkloristic memory studies of
Ulla-Maija Peltonen on the Finnish Civil War of 1918, the memory
culture of 1939–45 is at the moment attracting a growing amount of
research. Sirkka Ahonen’s study on the memory of World War II in
shaping the historical consciousness and national identity of Finnish
youth in the 1990s has been very illuminating on the continuing sig-
nificance of past wars to present Finnish self-understanding.69 As we
have seen above, the Finnish postwar politics of memory have had an
effect on academic historiography, too; other memory-related topics in
recent Finnish research include the memories of the Karelian evacuees
and the issue of the Lotta Svärd in the Finnish memory culture of war.70
Finally, there are historically relevant literary studies published on war
in Finnish postwar fiction, especially on the key role of author Väinö
Linna and his Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier, 1954) in cre-
ating the still-dominant Finnish narrative of war.71
By now, the reader may well be exhausted by the bibliographical
detail and crisscrossing tendencies of Finnish history writing, although,
for reasons of economy, the presentation above is limited almost
exclusively to scientific monographs and excludes the plethora of pub-
lished articles, chapters and non-fiction on war. Although there are, of
kuva johtavassa suomalaisessa sanomalehdistössä maaliskuusta 1938 talvisodan päät-

tymiseen maaliskuussa 1940 (Rovaniemi, 2004); from the perspective of military
sociology combined with the insights of cultural studies, Juha Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja
sotataito: Kansalaissotilas- ja ammattisotilasarmeijan rakentuminen 1920- ja 1930-
luvulla “talvisodan ihmeeksi” (Helsinki, 2008).
69
Sirkka Ahonen, Historiaton sukupolvi? Historian vastaanotto ja historiallisen
identiteetin rakentuminen 1990-luvun nuorison keskuudessa (Helsinki, 1998).
70
For the earliest treatise to discuss the memory and heritage of war, Lauri Haataja,
ed., Ja kuitenkin me voitimme: Sodan muisto ja perintö (Helsinki, 1994); on the Finnish
Karelian evacuees, Tarja Raninen-Siiskonen, Vieraana omalla maalla: Tutkimus karja-
laisen siirtoväen muistelukerronnasta (Helsinki, 1999); on the members of the Lotta
Svärd in the postwar period, Tiina Kinnunen, Kiitetyt ja parjatut: Lotat sotien jälkeen
(Helsinki, 2006); on the Finnish memory and historiography of war in general, Markku
Jokisipilä, ed., Sodan totuudet: Yksi suomalainen vastaa 5.7 ryssää (Helsinki, 2007).
71
On the Finnish war fiction in general, Juhani Niemi, Viime sotien kirjat (Helsinki,
1988); on Väinö Linna and his continuing influence, Jyrki Nummi, Jalon kansan
parhaat voimat: Kansalliset kuvat ja Väinö Linnan romaanit Tuntematon sotilas ja
Täällä Pohjantähden alla (Porvoo, 1993); Yrjö Varpio, Väinö Linnan elämä (Helsinki,
2006); Antti Arnkil & Olli Sinivaara, eds., Kirjoituksia Väinö Linnasta (Helsinki, 2006);
recently on Yrjö Jylhä, the celebrated poet of the Winter War, Vesa Karonen & Panu
Rajala, Yrjö Jylhä: Talvisodan runoilija (Helsinki, 2009).
course, plenty of important topics still left unstudied, especially with

the insight of new methodologies, it is fair to say that the history of
World War II is hardly a “silenced” or “censored” theme in Finnish
historiography—quite the contrary. Wartime history has attracted
heavy multivolume compilations at regular intervals, but they have
been closer to semiofficial repetitions of the grand national narrative
than innovative reinterpretations of the wartime past.72 At the moment
the problem in Finnish studies on war lies rather in the lack of over-
views integrating the multitude of current perspectives and research
results than in the lack of actual research. Henrik Meinander’s recent
study on the year 1944 as it was experienced in Finland is an important
exception, as it combined both the traditional military and political
histories and the new culturally and socially oriented studies. It also
went further to outline the history of emotions in war.73 Such an inte-
grative effort is also the task of this present volume.
The second serious handicap of the Finnish historiography of
World War II is that publications in English are lacking. The best con-
cise presentation at the moment is Olli Vehviläinen’s Finland in the
Second World War, published in 2002.74 It works well as a handbook on
the general military and political aspects of Finland in 1939–45, but
naturally it cannot discuss the newest issues in the Finnish history
writing of the 2000s. Next to Vehviläinen and to a number of scientific
articles in English on specific war-related themes, a bibliography of
which can be found at the end of this book, there is very little, if any-
thing, available in English on Finland in World War II. Interestingly,
the history of the Winter War has created a small sub-genre of military
history published in the United States and Great Britain, but its aca-
demic quality is quite weak and it rather reflects a Cold War era
fascination with Finland’s “epic” good-versus-evil struggle against the
72
Besides the official military histories and the multivolume series mentioned
above: Suomi taisteli: Sotiemme suurlukemisto, Vols. 1–6, eds. Jukka L. Mäkelä & Helge
Seppälä (Porvoo, 1977–80); concise handbooks on the Winter War, Talvisodan pikku-
jättiläinen, and on the Continuation War, Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen, both eds. Jari
Leskinen & Antti Juutilainen (Helsinki, 1999 and 2005); Suomi 85: Itsenäisyyden puo-
lustajat, Vols. 1–4, eds. Lauri Haataja et al. (Espoo, 2002–03), followed by Ari Raunio
& Juri Kilin, Itsenäisyyden puolustajat: Sodan taisteluja, Vols. 1–2 (Espoo, 2005); in
Swedish, Finland i krig, Vols. 1–3, ed. Henrik Ekberg (Espoo, 2000–01).
73
Henrik Meinander, Finland 1944: Krig, samhälle, känslolandskap (Helsinki,
2009).
74
Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia,
transl. Gerard McAlester (Basingstoke, 2002).
38 ville kivimäki
communist super power.75 Symptomatically, the Finnish Continuation

War, fought together with Nazi Germany, has not attracted the same
interest, and its written history in English is practically non-existent.
The near-absence of up-to-date English presentations on Finnish
wartime history has sometimes given birth to claims abroad that the
Finns have an embellished or idealized picture of their past. This may
well be true as a characterization of the popular Finnish mentality
about the wars of 1939–45; it may also be true for parts of Finnish
historiography. Yet, as this introduction has hopefully shown, it would
be a false generalization as regards Finnish history writing on war
taken as a whole. During the last three to four decades the grey, dark
and outright inglorious chapters of the war have made their way into
academic research and partly also into the public consciousness, even
if sometimes after painfully slow proceedings and strong protests.76
Furthermore, although there certainly are powerful (neo-)patriotic
currents in narrating Finnish history in World War II, there is no
longer such a thing as a monolithic, unequivocal Finnish historiogra-
phy of 1939–45. As with the other branches of historical research,
the time of an easily definable national paradigm is also over in the
historical study of war; instead, a more heterogeneous, theoreti-
cally oriented and critical scholarship will be dominating in academic
research.
Why, then, does the Finnish history of 1939–45 and its conse-
quent historiography raise a continuous demand for myth breaking
and critical deconstruction? The reason may be in the nationally cru-
cial nature of these past wars rather than in the content and style of
their written histories, which, at least regarding the current serious
academic works, cannot be said to openly mythologize or glorify the
war. Still central for the Finnish identity and nation building, the wars
75
Allen F. Chew, The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War (East
Lansing, MI, 1971); Eloise Engle & Lauri Paananen, The Winter War: The Russo-
Finnish Conflict, 1939–40 (London, 1973); William R. Trotter, Frozen Hell: The Russo-
Finnish Winter War 1939–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991); Carl Van Dyke, The Soviet
Invasion of Finland 1939–40 (London, 1997); Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia’s
Invasion of Finland, 1939–40 (New York, 2008).
76
What, indeed, would be a completely unstudied “taboo” of the Finnish wartime
past? Such topics might still be found from the margins of society. The harsh treatment
of conscientious objectors, a majority of whom were Jehovah’s Witnesses, would
deserve a study, as well as the starvation among Finnish mental asylum inmates during
the Continuation War—a topic which is touched upon by Helene Laurent in her later
chapter.
of 1939–40 and 1941–44 necessitate both public and scholarly atten-

tion on a regular basis. There is no reason to expect this to fade away in
the near future; writing about the events of World War II in Finland
still means writing about the relevant, contemporary Finnish self-
understanding of the 2010s. It might be this keen exercise of repetitive
revisits and reinterpretations—a kind of academic ritual encircling
the core of war—that reveals the mythological quality of the past wars
for today’s Finnishness. Ironically, the very efforts of myth breaking
seem to become part of the expanding myth of war, notwithstanding
the best academic aspirations to the contrary.
II. Current Volume
Our present book is divided into four parts, the subjects of which
naturally overlap, but which nevertheless focus, respectively, on dis-
tinctive themes of political and military history; social relations and
experiences; ideologically influenced practices; and, finally, the mem-
ory and commemoration of World War II in Finland. Part One,
“Politics and the Military,” addresses issues that have for decades been
central in the historiography regarding Finland in World War II,
namely the politics, diplomacy and military operations. Yet the
approaches hereby aim at challenging the national paradigm of a sepa-
rate Finnish war, which has influenced much of the Finnish scholar-
ship until recently. Chapter 1 of the book, written by Henrik Meinander,
examines Finland’s geopolitical position in Northern Europe and
answers the question of how changing German-Soviet relations and
the later events of World War II influenced the decision-making
processes in Finland before and after the outbreak of the Winter War,
during the Interim Peace of 1940–41 and during the Continuation War
of 1941–44. As a result of his analysis, Meinander underlines that
geography played a crucial role, but that it does not suffice as the only
explanation for Finland’s history in 1939–45. Consequently, the politi-
cal and ideological currents of both prewar and wartime Finland
are examined against the background of geopolitical changes. Anti-
communism, Germanophilia and Scandinavian orientation shaped
Finnish politics and mentality during the period in question. The
chapter is concluded with a brief look at Finland on the eve of the
Cold War. Part of the new postwar political orientation was the War
Guilt Trials in 1945–46, in which prison sentences were passed on the
40 ville kivimäki
leading Finnish wartime politicians. In the end the “normalization” of

Finnish-Soviet relations after 1944 did take place surprisingly swiftly
and with a fortunate outcome for Finnish postwar history.
Finland’s relations with the Third Reich in general and Operation
Barbarossa in particular have been sensitive issues in Finnish postwar
political memory and historiography. Today, historians mostly refute
the concept of a separate war, dominant since the war ended, and
emphasize Finland’s military and economic dependency on Germany
in 1941–44. In 1941, suffering from the losses of the Winter War,
Finland willingly joined the new war against the Soviet Union and took
responsibility for a strategically important northeastern front sector
close to Leningrad. Chapter 2 by Michael Jonas offers an in-depth anal-
ysis of the Finnish-German alliance in 1940–44. Jonas examines the
different stages of the relationship with relevant comparisons to the
German-Romanian relationship of the same period. He situates
Finland in the grand scheme of German war strategy and planning, but
also shows the difficulties posed to the Germans by the Finnish reluc-
tance to submit their independent decision-making to German influ-
ence. By looking at the history of Finnish-German wartime relations in
detail, Jonas makes it clear that the issue of co-belligerence avoids too
easy categorizations and judgments: although the Finnish separate
war thesis is clearly outdated in its exculpatory nature, the Finnish case
in the German orbit had its exceptional features and cannot be charac-
terized as a capitulation to German-controlled politics.
Chapter 3 by Pasi Tuunainen offers a concise chronological over-
view of the main military events for Finland in 1939–45, including a
discussion of the prewar preparations and training. Tuunainen con-
cludes that, in terms of military effectiveness and innovativeness, the
Finnish Army in World War II performed reasonably well. Most
importantly, it did not disintegrate at the crucial moments of March
1940 and in the summer of 1944. On the contrary, it was able to stop
the advances of the Red Army—in 1944 with substantial assistance
from Germany—and to make the Soviet leaders to look for a political
settlement instead of occupying the country militarily. Tuunainen’s
analysis is deepened by military sociological and social psychology
viewpoints. According to him, the most important factor explaining
the Finnish combat effectiveness was the human element. The Finnish
soldiers were properly trained and their fighting spirit and morale were
high enough for the tasks they were required to fulfill. Although there
were some serious cases of demoralization, the soldiers largely accepted
the core purposes of these tasks, especially in the defensive battles of

1939–40 and 1944.
Part Two, “Social Frameworks, Cultural Meanings,” historicizes eve-
ryday life on the front, the home front and the interaction between
these two by drawing on social and cultural history approaches. It also
pays attention to the political and national dimensions of the war expe-
riences. First, in Chapter 4, Marianne Junila sketches the economic and
social framework of the Finnish wartime home front and society at
large. The wars of 1939–45 demanded a total mobilization of economic
and human resources, plus a state-controlled steering of the public
mind. In the Finnish case this mobilization succeeded comparatively
well in creating a sustainable war effort and in stabilizing the society at
war. Yet it took a heavy toll on people’s lives and endurance; these eve-
ryday burdens of the home front have often been overshadowed by the
focus on a purely military and political history of war. The experiences
and social ramifications of 1939–45 also greatly shaped Finnish society
through new encounters, policies and interactions. An interesting case
of its own is the relations between Finnish civilians and German sol-
diers in Northern Finland in 1941–44, which Junila also discusses.
In Chapter 5 Ville Kivimäki and Tuomas Tepora study the cultural
history of wartime Finland and emphasize that the social cohesion of
the Finnish national community at war was largely determined by how
successfully the soldiers’ violent deaths were given a regenerative,
nationally unifying meaning. This creation of social cohesion in 1939–
45 was especially crucial against the background of the bitter Finnish
Civil War in 1918 and the prewar political and cultural tensions of
Finnish society. In 1939–40, the fratricidal violence of 1918 was undone
through reconciling sacrifices in a fight against the external enemy.
In their analysis Kivimäki and Tepora conclude that Finnish society
was, by and large, able to consign a continuing collective significance
to soldiers’ and civilians’ hardships and suffering. In this process, the
funerals of the fallen soldiers together with other commemorations
played a crucial role. There was, however, an important difference
between the Winter War and the Continuation War, so that in the
course of 1941–44 the sacrifices became experienced in more down-
to-earth terms as general war-weariness took its toll. Also the direct
experiences of meaningless violence contributed to corrode the “cru-
sader spirit” of the offensive of 1941.
Wartime social cohesion was not only established through the
national cult of the fallen soldiers and through the various policies of
42 ville kivimäki
the state authorities. The war period was characterized by the experi-
ences of violence and forced separation between family members, and
this resulted in severe mental and material insecurities. On a personal
level these challenges underlined the importance of emotional trust
and support given to one’s loved ones; a capacity to share meanings and
to find comfort. Based on her in-depth analysis of the interplay and
dialogue between the soldiers and their families during the long
Continuation War of 1941–44, Sonja Hagelstam shows in Chapter 6
that the notion of two separate, even antagonistic, spheres of the front
and the home front in war has to be revised. She shows how the rela-
tionship between family members was maintained through written
correspondence during the long-term separation. The regular exchange
of letters lessened the risk of soldiers’ alienation from the civilian
sphere and contributed to the bridging of the spatial and experiential
gap between front and home, which must be seen as one central factor
in sustaining the prolonged war. Hagelstam emphasizes the historical
and social role of emotions in war; a subject that has not yet been fully
integrated into the studies on war.
Part Three, “Ideologies in Practice,” examines the transformation
of Finnish prewar and wartime social and political ideologies into
everyday practices. The advances in the field of social policy had
long-term effects on Finland’s future. The postwar construction of the
Finnish welfare state has been narrated as a success story, although its
roots have seldom been traced back to the war years. Chapter 7 by
Helene Laurent addresses the prewar and wartime developments in
this respect. The war’s ramifications for Finnish social policy and citi-
zenship are discussed, with a focus on health issues. In addition,
Laurent studies the practical implementation of the Finnish social
policy ideology and the crucial role of international contacts and
aid for Finland at war. In Western Europe, the experience of World
War I had generally increased the state’s responsibility and role in the
lives of its citizens. In Finland these state-centered ideas of social
policy were largely neglected until the latter half of the 1930s, and then
the outbreak of World War II brought to a halt a number of emerging
new initiatives. Due to the difficult economic circumstances after the
war, they had to be postponed until the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless,
as Laurent argues, the war years also acted as a kind of catalyst, a
period of experiment and rehearsal for the new social policies and
practices, in which the state and its institutions would have a key role.
In particular, Finnish health policies for children and mothers took
many important steps during the war years and paved the way for the
emerging social state.
The treatment of Soviet prisoners-of-war and the Finnish occupa-
tion of Eastern Karelia in 1941–44 have been sensitive spots in the
Finnish collective memory of war. Chapter 8 by Oula Silvennoinen
reveals these often grim and until recently scarcely researched aspects
of wartime Finland. The fate of both prisoners-of-war and the Russian
population of Eastern Karelia reflect the anti-Bolshevist and
Russophobic trends in Finnish nationalist ideology. Silvennoinen
addresses the question of how Finland dealt with enemy nationals and
whether the international stipulations concerning their treatment were
followed. He concludes that in 1941–44 at least 19,085 Soviet prison-
ers-of war out of the total of approximately 65,000 died in Finnish
custody and that at least 4,279 civilian internees of Eastern Karelia died
in Finnish camps. The most fatal period was the “hunger winter” of
1941–42, when the Finnish authorities’ inability to adhere to the needs
of the starving inmates bordered on intentional negligence. These
fatalities had an ethnic character, as the Russians suffered worst and
the prisoners and internees with Finnic ethnicity were given privileged
treatment. Silvennoinen also studies the German prisoner-of-war
administration in Northern Finland and the close cooperation between
Finnish and German officials. The Finnish authorities handed over 521
Soviet political officers and active communists to the Germans, among
them also 47 soldiers identified as Jews.
In prewar and wartime Finland academic research—particularly in
humanities—was also permeated with nationalist ideology. In Chap-
ter 9 Tenho Pimiä discusses the role of Finnish researchers in the con-
struction of “Greater Finland,” which had motivated the occupation of
Soviet Eastern Karelia in 1941. The beginning of the Continuation War
seemed to open up unprecedented opportunities for ethnological
research in Eastern Karelia. In accordance with the expansionist poli-
tics, the Finnish scholars wanted to justify the occupation of Eastern
Karelia by proving that the region had an organic connection to Finland
through a common past and culture. Consequently, as Pimiä shows,
one of the largest projects recording and collecting Finnic cultural her-
itage was realized in the occupied regions between 1941–44 in coop-
eration with Finnish scholars and the military administration. In
addition, the Finnic prisoners-of-war and the Ingrian Finns trans-
ferred to Finland in 1943–44 attracted academic attention. Yet the
Greater Finland idealism and the scholarly enthusiasm of the Finnish
44 ville kivimäki
researchers had to meet the harsh realities of Eastern Karelia: the

results of mapping living cultural heritage and Finnic roots were mostly
disappointing. Finally in 1944, after the Finnish retreat from Eastern
Karelia, the project and its nationalist motivations faded into
oblivion.
Part Four, “Wars of Memory,” describes the long shadow and the
continuing national significance of World War II in Finland. The
Finnish memory cultures of war have been shaped by their changing
political and cultural contexts in the long postwar period. Yet despite
the varying emphasis, nuances and forms of expression, the funda-
ments of remembering the wars of 1939–45 have remained largely the
same: the Winter War and the Continuation War are presented as a
great epic of national survival and victimhood, whereas the Finnish-
German “brotherhood-in-arms” and the Lapland War of 1944–45 have
remained marginal issues in public commemorations. Chapter 10 by
Tiina Kinnunen and Markku Jokisipilä focuses on the general trends in
the Finnish memory culture from the 1940s to the present day, with a
detailed discussion on the current Finnish trend of “neo-patriotism.”
Although the long postwar period—characterized by the pressure to
accommodate Finnish public discussions to the political demands and
sensitivities of the Finnish-Soviet relationship—certainly suppressed
such voices, which could have been interpreted as overtly revanchist or
critical of the Soviet Union, the public commemorations of war in
Finland were hardly as self-censored and repressed as they are now
sometimes suspected to have been. As Kinnunen and Jokisipilä show,
there have been several simultaneous and conflicting memory trends
in postwar Finland: the unbroken fostering of the “wartime heritage,”
the leftist and pacifist challenges to this national epic, the (neo-)patri-
otic glorification of the war and the diverse reminiscences of different
Finnish memory communities—now also including the groups that
were earlier pushed to the margins. For a “post-nationalist” interpreta-
tion of World War II to gain ground also in Finland, the public com-
memoration of war should be more open to recognize the suffering
and violence on both sides of the conflict and to overcome the black-
and-white dichotomy along the national borders, which so often still
dominates in the Finnish narratives of war.
The most dramatic national loss brought on Finland by World
War II was the Soviet annexation of Finnish Karelia, first in March
1940 and then for good in September 1944. In political and economical
terms this meant the ceding of one of the most vital Finnish regions,
and in social and psychological terms the difficult resettlement and

readjustment of over 400,000 evacuees. Furthermore, Karelia had
had a special place in Finnish nationalist thinking and imagination—
something similar to Alsace-Lorraine in French nationalism. In
Chapter 11 Outi Fingerroos discusses the different stages of the “Karelia
issue” in Finnish politics and memory culture. She shows how the
Finnish focus on Karelia has changed from the expansive Greater
Finland ideas of the early twentieth century to the postwar claims to
restitute the Karelian Isthmus and Vyborg back to Finland. The latter
aspect of the Karelia issue is still relevant in present-day Finland, and it
is intertwined with the personal memories of loss and nostalgia in the
Finnish Karelian memory culture. The Karelian evacuees and their
descendants have upheld their hopes of returning to their old home-
steads in Finnish Karelia. Fingerroos studies in detail the story of one
Karelian evacuee, and she utilizes the concepts of utopia and pilgrim-
age to understand the enduring need of the Finnish Karelians to visit
and imagine their own, lost Karelia in modern Russia.
As mentioned above, the history of the Holocaust has not had an
integral place in the understanding of Finnish history in World War II.
The book is concluded by Chapter 12, in which Antero Holmila ana-
lyzes the Finnish attitude to the Holocaust from the wartime to the
present. First, Holmila briefly sums up the history of Finnish Jewry
during the war years and discusses the extent of Finnish cooperation
with the Nazi policies of extermination. A crucial event in this was the
Finnish handing-over of eight refugee Jews to the Germans in 1942; an
event, the nature of which has caused disputes over the purposes and
motivations of the Finnish authorities responsible. Second, Holmila
records the troublesome entry of the Holocaust into Finnish public
consciousness and historiography. Following the separate war thesis,
the general Finnish attitude regarding the extermination of the
European Jewry has been to see it as a tragic phenomenon of World
War II, which nevertheless has no connection to the Finnish history
of 1939–45. Those historical instances, which have brought Finland
closest to the Holocaust, have been pushed aside from the grand narra-
tive of Finland at war. Yet, as the Holocaust has a central place in the
memory of World War II and in the emerging European historical
identity, Finnish “exceptionalism” in this regard causes problems for
contemporary Finnish history politics in its integration into the wider
European context.
***
46 ville kivimäki
All the chapters of the present book are studies in their own right, and
they can be read independently. Yet we would like to encourage a
reader with limited knowledge of Finnish history to start with Henrik
Meinander’s chapter, which will give a good basis for understanding
the more specific themes in other chapters. For those readers who
might want to find further reading on Finnish wartime history, at the
end of the book we have compiled a selected bibliography on scholarly
monographs and articles currently available in English. Finally, a note
on the book’s illustrations: Most of the photographs have been chosen
from the wartime collections of the Finnish Defence Forces
Photographic Centre (the so-called “SA Photos”). They present the
official and controlled view of the war as depicted by the photogra-
phers working for the armed forces in 1939–45. Thus this illustrated
narrative running parallel with the written chapters is as much a story
of the construction of the Finnish self-image in war as it is a photo-
graphic documentation of the wartime past.
PART ONE
POLITICS AND THE MILITARY
CHAPTER ONE
FINLAND AND THE GREAT POWERS IN WORLD WAR II

IDEOLOGIES, GEOPOLITICS, DIPLOMACY
Henrik Meinander
The construction of the Finnish nation and state had essentially been a
chain reaction of two earlier major wars in Europe. The first occurred
in 1808, when the Napoleonic Wars reached Finland. The Russian
Emperor Alexander I had promised Napoleon that he would force
Sweden to join the Continental Blockade against Great Britain. He
therefore ordered an invasion of the eastern part of the Swedish
Kingdom. In 1809, the parties signed a peace treaty, which not only
pledged Sweden to join the blockade, but also obliged Sweden to cede
over a third of its territory, which was joined to the Russian Empire as
the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. This way the country would
gradually transform into a state within the state, simultaneously as
Finnish nationalism took shape. When the next Armageddon broke
out in Europe in 1914, Finland was already a self-conscious nation,
which, after the Bolshevik Revolution had began in Petrograd in the
autumn of 1917, took the next step and declared its independence on
6 December 1917.
The sovereign Republic of Finland was in this sense a lucky outcome
of two large conflicts in Europe. Yet the same driving forces in European
power politics, which in 1917 had given birth to the republic, turned
out two decades later to be a severe threat to its development and exist-
ence. Precisely as in other newborn states in Eastern Europe in the
aftermath of the Great War, Finland would during the following dec-
ades be confronted with a number of domestic conflicts, which often
were also nurtured by a problematic relationship with the former rul-
ing state, which in the Finnish case was Russia in its new shape of the
Soviet Union. At the outbreak of World War II, the future of Finland
seemed much like that of the Baltic States and Poland. But the Finnish
destiny took another path, and when the war ended six years later,
Finland stood out as the only one of all the new states from 1917–20
that had been able to avoid either Soviet or German occupation.
50 henrik meinander
Needless to say, this had a decisive impact on the political and societal
development in postwar Finland and explains also why the war period
is still understood as the main chapter in the patriotic narrative of
Finnish national history.
How unique was the Finnish experience of World War II, in the end?
Is it possible that it in some sense actually fits rather well into a geopo-
litical pattern in Northern European history? In the following I will
discuss this question by analyzing the political and ideological contexts
of wartime Finland. However, I start with a review of Finland in inter-
war Europe in order to give the reader the larger picture of why the
country was dragged into the gradually enlarging conflict in the
autumn of 1939. And I conclude with a brief look at Finland on the eve
of the Cold War in Europe.
I. Escalating European Conflict
Anti-Communism, Germanophilia and Western Ideals

In his classic work on “the short twentieth century,” British historian
Eric Hobsbawm emphasized how strongly the two world wars were
intertwined by characterizing the interwar epoch (1918–39) as a “pro-
longed armistice.” This characterization is indeed also accurate for
Finland. The country declared its independence in December 1917 in
the middle of the turmoil, which World War I had caused in the Russian
Empire. Two months later the country was again dragged into the con-
flict, when the upheavals in Russia also spread to Finland. In January
1918, the Finnish Social Democratic Party chose to follow a revolu-
tionary road to power and the Finnish Red Guards took over control of
Southern Finland. The government escaped from Helsinki to Vaasa to
establish a “White” army to defeat the insurgents and to disarm the
Russian troops still in Finland. The basis for this army was the so-called
Civil Guards, originally formed to restore and keep order in the midst
of the escalating political turbulences of 1917. A short but bloody civil
war ensued. Not least due to efficient German military expedition, the
war ended in a total victory for the White troops over the Reds in May
1918. Both sides of the conflict had used violent rhetoric and terror,
but the fate of the defeated was the most severe. During the Civil War
and in its aftermath, almost 20,000 Reds perished in prison camps and
in executions.
finland and the great powers in world war ii 51
Against this bitter background, it may seem surprising how soon the
parliamentarian order was re-established and the social democrats
could return to the public political arena. This was related to the
German defeat in World War I, which further strengthened the
Entente-oriented, democratic forces in Finland. In July 1919, Finland
was constituted as a democratic parliamentarian republic with a strong
presidential power. Nevertheless, the experience of civil war had far-
reaching consequences for the conception of an independent Finland
and its relationship to what would later become the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. Among the victorious Whites, the Civil War had
from an early stage been called the War of Liberation, or the Freedom
War, which implied that it was not only or even primarily understood
as a war against domestic socialists but against revolutionary Russia,
which was seen as threatening the newly-gained Finnish independ-
ence. Even if the countries signed the Tartu Peace Treaty in the autumn
of 1920, in which Soviet Russia recognized Finland as a sovereign state,
their ideological polarity and mutual suspiciousness would remain
strong throughout the interwar years.1 Between 1918–22, several
Finnish volunteer units took part in military expeditions against the
Red Army troops in Estonia, Eastern Karelia and the Ingria region
with the aim of defeating the Bolshevik revolutionaries and expanding
the Finnish borders. Although not officially backed by the Finnish gov-
ernment, these expeditions certainly contributed to the troublesome
nature of Finnish-Soviet relations during the interwar period.
Anti-communist feelings and measures thus had a decisive impact
on the political and societal development in interwar Finland. An
important stronghold for the anti-communist attitudes was the Civil
Guards Defense Corps, which had constituted the backbone of the
White Army in 1918 and remained a crucial part of the Finnish national
defense system up until the end of World War II. Its members were
mainly recruited from the peasantry and middle classes, who shared
anti-communist values but were predominantly in favor of the parlia-
mentarian democracy dictated by the constitution of 1919. However,
the Civil Guards also attracted a number of influential right-wing radi-
cals and militant nationalists, who had a less respectful attitude towards
1
Risto Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland (Berkeley, CA, 1988); Ohto
Manninen, ed., Itsenäistymisen vuodet 1917–1920, Vol. I–III (Helsinki, 1992–93).
52 henrik meinander
Map 1.1. Finland, Northwestern Soviet Union and the Baltic States between the World
Wars.
the constitution and tried to use the Civil Guards for their own politi-
cal aims.2
But anti-communism was a much more widespread phenomenon in
Finland than that. A common source of inspiration for this was a
deeply rooted Russophobia in Finnish society, which had been reacti-
vated during the last decades of the Russian reign and could be freely
expressed after independence had been achieved in 1917. The outspo-
ken anti-communism was in this sense smoothly in line with the
Finnish nationalism and would therefore not be understood as an
especially radical or extreme opinion. Quite the opposite—the easiest
way to earn a reputation as an “unpatriotic citizen” susceptible to high
treason was to say something positive about the Soviet Union. This was
actually the case also among Finnish social democrats. After the failed
revolution, the Finnish socialists had split into a social democratic and
a communist party. The former took a clear distance from the commu-
nist ideology and developed into a consequent defender of the parlia-
mentarian constitution of 1919. The latter was again gradually
forbidden to function in public life and transformed into a Moscow-
controlled underground movement, which was fiercely hunted by the
Finnish security police.3
As is known, strong anti-communist opinions were also common-
place in many other countries in interwar Europe. In the shadow of the
extreme fascism and Nazism in Italy and Germany, a wide range of
anti-communist demands and strategies were expressed and put in
practice in different parts of the European continent. The Finnish anti-
communism naturally had much in common with the fear of socialist
upheavals in the other newborn states in Eastern Europe, which had
also gained their sovereignty through revolutions and civil wars.
However, a closer comparison also reveals some substantial differ-
ences. In the Baltic States and Poland, the anti-communist opinion led
to political measures, which step by step limited parliamentarian
democracy and enforced autocratic structures. Finland was also shaken
by anti-communist demonstrations and terror by the populist right-
wing and increasingly radical Lapua Movement in 1929–32, which
2
Martti Ahti, Aktivisterna och “Andersson” (Helsinki, 1991); Kari Selèn, Sarkatakkien
maa: Suojeluskuntajärjestö ja yhteiskunta 1918–1944 (Helsinki, 2001).
3
Kari Immonen, Ryssästä saa puhua… Neuvostoliitto suomalaisessa julkisuudessa
ja kirjat julkisuuden muotona 1918–1939 (Helsinki, 1987); Kimmo Rentola, Kenen
joukoissa seisot? Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota 1937–1945 (Porvoo, 1994).
54 henrik meinander
forced the parliament to further sharpen the legislation against com-

munist activities in society.4
But these restrictions would not result in a deconstruction of the
parliamentarian constitution. A clear majority of the bourgeois parties
were boldly against any further constraints of political rights. In 1932,
the Lapua Movement was dissolved after a disastrous coup d’état
attempt, and although it was soon reborn as a fascist party, it gained at
most only seven percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections in
the 1930s. The leading role in domestic politics was instead taken by
the moderate centrist parties and social democrats, which in 1937 fol-
lowed a Scandinavian pattern and for the first time formed a large coa-
lition together. This paved the way for a number of reforms, which
together with strong economic growth enforced the national consen-
sus and will to defend the country together.5
It was not a coincidence that Finland developed more in a Scan-
dinavian than in a Baltic direction. One apparent reason for this was
the strong law-and-order tradition in Finland, which had been estab-
lished during the Swedish epoch and functioned as an efficient shield
against Russification attempts during the nineteenth century. This con-
stituted a trust in the legal order, which survived both a socialist revo-
lution in 1918 and lawbreaking right-wing radicalism in the early
1930s. Another Scandinavian pattern in Finland was its dynamic civic
society, which functioned both as a school in democratic procedures as
well as a driving force behind social reforms and national consensus.
Furthermore, geography played a crucial role. Finland was for his-
toric reasons in a cultural and social sense a Swedish society. The Baltic
and Polish societies were again formed through a multifarious interac-
tion between different cultures and great powers, which in combina-
tion with their geographic site made their political priorities more
complicated during the interwar period. The Finns saw the Soviet
Union as their only possible enemy, whereas the Baltic and Polish peo-
ples, unfortunately placed between the two totalitarian great powers,
were almost equally and sometimes even more afraid of a German
aggression. All these factors had dramatic consequences for the coun-
tries in question from the very start of World War II, and they partly
4
Juha Siltala, Lapuan liike ja kyyditykset 1930 (Helsinki, 1985); Risto Alapuro,
Suomen synty paikallisena ilmiönä 1890–1933 (Helsinki, 1994).
5
Timo Soikkanen, Kansallinen eheytyminen—myytti vai todellisuus? Ulko- ja sisä-
politiikan linjat ja vuorovaikutus 1933–1939 (Helsinki, 1984).
explain the countries’ different fates during the wartime and the
Cold War.
Another feature of interwar Finland was a Germanophile attitude
among certain layers of the bourgeoisie and ruling elites. A considera-
ble part of Northern Europe could be described as a cultural periphery
of Lutheran Germany. Even if World War I ended in a German defeat
and an enforcement of the Anglo-American impact, this trust and
admiration of German culture remained significant in Sweden and
Finland up until the 1940s. Very few sympathized with Hitler and the
Nazi ideology, but reasonably many wanted to believe that Nazism
could have a culturally and militarily empowering effect on Germany,
which was, not surprisingly, seen as the state which most possibly
could and would give the Soviet Union a fight.6
This Germanophile attitude was neatly combined with an anti-
communist and Russophobic stance, not least among those bourgeois
Finns who understood their independence as the result of a Finnish-
German struggle in 1918 against the revolutionaries and their Bolshevik
supporters in Russia. This was especially the case within the leading
layer of military officers, who in most cases had been given their first
professional training as volunteers in the Imperial German Army dur-
ing World War I. About 2,000 young Finnish men had secretly been
enrolled in a volunteer battalion in the German Army, and after their
participation as the White officer cadre in the Finnish Civil War, the
elite among them would continue as officers in the swiftly organized
Finnish Army. The Army was thus in many respects built up in accord-
ance with German military traditions. By the mid-1930s, a number of
these so-called Jäger officers had reached the rank of generals and colo-
nels and were understandably smooth in the communication with
their German colleagues.7
But as emphasized above, this did not imply that the leading layer of
the Finnish Army would have consisted of keen Nazi sympathizers.
The crucial ideological bond between the Jäger officers was the shared
6
Britta Hiedanniemi, Kulttuuriin verhottua politiikkaa: Kansallissosialistisen Saksan
kulttuuripropaganda Suomessa 1933–1940 (Helsinki, 1980); Lisa Sturfelt, Eldens åter-
sken: Första världskriget i svensk föreställningsvärld (Lund, 2008); Johan Östling,
Nazismens sensmoral: Svenska erfarenheter i andra världskrigets efterdyning (Stockholm,
2008).
7
Kari Selén, C.G.E. Mannerheim ja hänen puolustusneuvostonsa 1931–1939
(Helsinki, 1980); Martti Turtola, Erik Heinrichs: Mannerheimin ja Paasikiven kenraali
(Helsinki, 1988).
56 henrik meinander
experience of the last war and the mutual anti-communist commit-

ment, which was equally strong also among those Finnish officers who
had served in the Russian Army before 1917. To the latter category
above all belonged nobleman Gustaf Mannerheim (1867–1951), com-
mander-in-chief of the Finnish Army both in 1918 and throughout
World War II, who had served in the Imperial Russian Army for three
decades before the Bolshevik Revolution. Due to his imperial back-
ground Mannerheim was not only a sworn anti-communist; he was
also clearly Entente-oriented and preferred alliances with the Western
Powers and the Scandinavian countries rather than with Germany.8
All in all Finland clearly developed in a Western and Scandinavian
direction during the interwar period. The parliamentarian backing of
the governments became gradually stronger and even if the German
recovery under Hitler was welcomed as a counterpoint to the Soviet
Union, most Finns had as their normative ideal the lifestyle and politi-
cal culture in the Western liberal democracies. This was clearly demon-
strated in the parliamentary elections in 1933, 1936 and 1939. The
social democrats and the centrist Agrarian League increased their
number of seats in each election and received more than two-thirds of
all votes in 1939, whereas the small fascist party lost half of its votes in
the same election and won just eight out of 200 seats.9
Prewar Plans and Diplomacy

During the 1930s, Mannerheim acted as chairman of the Finnish
Defense Council. A dominant feature in his military strategy of that
time was to build up a Finnish-Swedish military alliance, which could
enforce security in the northern half of the Baltic Sea and thereby make
the great powers less inclined to drag the region into a new large-scale
war. This failed because the Swedish government was not prepared to
advance without an acceptance of the plan both from Berlin and
Moscow. The Soviet leadership suspected that a Finnish-Swedish alli-
ance would serve German interests, and its distrust was further
strengthened by the ignorance of the Finnish government towards dis-
creet Soviet invitations to security cooperation.10
8
J.E.O. Screen, Mannerheim: The Finnish Years (London, 2000).
9
Vesa Vares, “Suomen paikka Euroopassa maailmansotien välillä” and “Suomi dik-
tatuurien kontekstissa,” in Erkka Railo & Ville Laamanen, eds., Suomi muuttuvassa
maailmassa: Ulkosuhteiden ja kansallisen itseymmärryksen historiaa (Helsinki, 2010).
10
Selén, C.G.E. Mannerheim, passim.
The Soviet military strategy was based on the assumption that

Finnish soil would in one way or another be utilized by German mili-
tary forces in an attack against Leningrad and its other northwestern
realms. This suspicion was further nurtured by the reluctance of
the Western Powers towards Soviet security demands in the Baltic
region during their alliance negotiations in the summer of 1939. Stalin
became even more convinced that the Western Powers had nothing
against a Soviet-German war, and on 23 August 1939, the Soviet gov-
ernment instead signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. The pact
included a secret appendix, in which Finland and the Baltic States
together with Eastern Poland and Romanian Bessarabia were classified
as a Soviet security zone. One week later German troops began the
invasion of Western Poland, which meant the start of World War II,
and step-by-step the Soviet Union would gain most of what it had been
promised in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. After the Soviet invasion of
Eastern Poland in mid-September, the Baltic States were swiftly forced
to allow Soviet military bases to be established on their territory. In
early October 1939, the Finnish government was invited to similar
negotiations in Moscow, which however reached a dead end in mid-
November. Two weeks later, the Red Army began a massive invasion of
Finland.11
Could Finland somehow have avoided this so-called Winter War
and all its grave consequences? The question has been asked repeatedly
since the start of the Soviet invasion on 30 November 1939. Some claim
that the Finnish government could have prevented the war or at least
prolonged the negotiation process by having a more flexible and hum-
ble attitude towards territorial demands by the Kremlin leadership.
According to the outspoken Stalin, who took part in some of the nego-
tiations, the security of Leningrad demanded both adjustments of the
borderline on the Karelian Isthmus and a Soviet navy base at the
Finnish south coast. Otherwise some great power—meaning clearly
Germany—would land on the southwest Hanko Peninsula, west of
Helsinki, and march towards Leningrad.
The Finnish negotiators tried to reassure Stalin that Finland would
defend its territory against all intruders, but with no effect. Soviet espi-
onage had kept Stalin well informed of the contacts between Finnish
11
Ohto Manninen, Stalinin kiusa—Himmlerin täi: Sota-ajan pieni Suomi maailman
silmissä ja arkistojen kätköissä (Helsinki, 2002), pp. 13–25; Norman Davies, Europe at
War: No Easy Victory (London, 2007), pp. 133–53.
58 henrik meinander
and German military leadership. He could therefore not take the

Finnish neutrality declarations seriously, nor place any trust in coun-
try’s parliamentarian democracy, which according to the communist
ideology was a passive tool for capitalist and fascist interests. And even
if Finland had been able to stay aloof of the great power conflict, this
would not have been in the long-term interests of the Soviet leader. In
the autumn of 1939 Stalin aimed for a restoration or, if possible, an
enlargement of the imperial Russian borderlines of 1914.12
The Finnish government could certainly have chosen a softer line in
the negotiations, which would have made the Winter War avoidable.
But this would presumably have resulted in Finland, exactly as with the
Baltic States in 1939–40, gradually losing control over its territory and
thereafter being totally overtaken by the Soviet military. Even if the
Finnish leadership was unaware of the secret appendix in the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact, it understood this danger and let that dictate its hold-
ing in the Moscow negotiations. In other words, the mutual mistrust
between the parties was much too deep to be repaired in the midst of
an escalating war between great powers. The Germanophile, Russo-
phobic and anti-communist attitudes in interwar Finland had self-
evidently been continuously nourished by the Soviet-led communist
agitation and espionage in the country. Simultaneously, the Soviet
leadership was unable to see that Finland had developed into a plural-
istic society, in which the moderate working class was equally prepared
to defend its country and where a strong majority of the population
was far more attracted by the Scandinavian and Anglo-American life-
style than by fascist solutions.
In addition to this, both sides took their decisions based on wrong
presumptions. The Finnish line was in many respects drawn by foreign
minister Eljas Erkko, who was convinced that the Soviet leadership
was bluffing when it spiced its territorial demands with threats of
military actions. According to Erkko, the Soviet Union could not pos-
sibly ignore the strong public backing, which Finland got from the
Western Powers and Scandinavia during the negotiations. Thus, he did
not inform his government that the Swedish prime minister Per Albin
Hansson had already emphasized to him in October 1939 that Sweden
could not give Finland military support if the Finns were attacked.
12
Tuomo Polvinen, J.K. Paasikivi: Valtiomiehen elämäntyö, Vol. 3: 1939–1944
(Helsinki, 1995), pp. 3–63.
As the owner and chief editor of the largest newspaper in Finland,
Helsingin Sanomat, he instead gave spread to the international voices
in favor of Finland, which naturally further strengthened the domestic
“not-an-inch” attitude towards the Soviet territorial demands.13
The miscalculations were monumental also on the Soviet side. The
most obvious blunder was the assumption that the Finnish people had
neither the will nor the capacity to defend itself efficiently against a
massive offensive. The Soviet intelligence was severely weakened by
Stalin’s Great Terror in 1936–38 and in the late 1930s delivered ideo-
logically charged and unrealistic reports from Finland, which indi-
cated that the country was politically deeply divided and therefore
open for an easy Soviet invasion. The Soviet military leadership, equally
reduced by the Great Terror, was thus enticed to draw up an operation
plan for a swift occupation of Finland. The Red Army was supposed to
arrive in Helsinki in ten days and reach the Swedish border in the
north some weeks later. The easy takeover of Eastern Poland had clearly
given the Soviet generals a very inaccurate picture of the military
capacity of the Red Army.14
The Winter War

The order to occupy Finland came directly after the negotiations in
Moscow had failed in mid-November. On 26 November 1939, the
Soviet troops arranged a fake provocation at Mainila village close to
the Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus. This gave the Soviet lead-
ership reason to intensify its media campaign against the Finnish gov-
ernment and disclose their non-aggression pact from 1932. The mobi-
lization of a 450,000-strong and heavily equipped army had already
begun in October in order to soften the Finnish spirit and was now
thrown with full force over the Finnish border. Against the intruders
on 30 November stood 250,000 Finnish soldiers, who despite their
serious lack of heavy weaponry soon proved to be able and motivated
combatants. The Soviet Air Force directed numerous simultaneous air
raids on Finnish towns, as well as on strategically important infrastruc-
tures and industrial sites. The offensive advanced however slower than
13
Ohto Manninen & Raimo Salokangas, Eljas Erkko: Vaikenematon valtiomahti
(Helsinki, 2009).
14
Ohto Manninen, Molotovin cocktail—Hitlerin sateenvarjo: Toisen maailman-
sodan historian uudelleenkirjoitusta (Helsinki, 1994), pp. 38–83.
60 henrik meinander
expected, and after one week of fighting the Red Army encountered its
first big troubles in the Ladoga Karelia. Soon the resistance had also
grown strong on the Karelian Isthmus, and before the year had ended,
a number of Soviet divisions had been stopped and encircled by the
lonely roads, which cut into the large woods in Eastern and Northern
Finland.
This decisively strengthened the Finnish fighting spirit and also con-
siderably improved the inner cohesion of the home front and civic
society at large. A number of prolonged societal conflicts were under
these circumstances laid down or even solved. The most important was
an agreement between the employer and labor organizations, which
was a bold signal that the social democrats and their numerous voters
would stay in line to the bitter end. In the political arena this was
confirmed by the social democrats maintaining their key role in the
government throughout all the war years. Another remarkable
improvement was the swift smoothening of the earlier often sticky
relations between the Finnish-speaking majority of the population and
its Swedish-speaking minority. The outcome of this positive experience
of a mutual trust and shared destiny would gradually build up a collec-
tive memory of the “Spirit of the Winter War,” which since then has
been regularly used in the political rhetoric in times of large crises.
The Finns were favored not only by an extremely cold winter, diffi-
cult terrain and good fighting spirit. Equally important was that the
Soviet units were usually led by weakly trained army commanders,
who were forced to follow extraordinary orders from their political
officers. But from February 1940 onwards, the greatly increased Soviet
superiority in the number of troops and weaponry became decisive.
When the Red Army reached the outskirts of the city of Vyborg in early
March, the Finnish government was ripe for peace. After a feverish
negotiation process, the states signed a peace treaty in Moscow on
13 March 1940, in which the Karelian Isthmus, Ladoga Karelia, Salla
region and the northern tip of the Pechenga region became Soviet ter-
ritories. Furthermore, several Finnish islands on the Gulf of Finland
were annexed by the Soviet Union and the Soviet military was allowed
to rent a navy base at Hanko Peninsula for the following 30 years
(see Map 1.2 on p. 65). The human losses were also severe. Almost 28,000
Finns (about 27,000 soldiers and 1,000 civilians) died in the war.
Thereby the 105-days long Winter War had come to an end. Pasi
Tuunainen presents in a following chapter of this book a comprehen-
sive analysis of the military operations during the war. But if we want
to understand why Stalin signed a peace treaty with Finland in March

1940, although the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact still gave him free hands
to fulfill the occupation of the country, it is not enough to look only
at the development on the Finnish-Soviet front. A more crucial reason
to Stalin’s change of mind concerning Finland was clearly how the
European war had begun to take shape in the other parts of the
continent.
The battle between Germany and the Western Powers during the
winter of 1939–40 was for good reason called the Phoney War. This
meant that the Finnish Winter War was often in the center of interna-
tional attention during the first wartime winter. The Polish campaign
had been completed so swiftly that the moral indignation over the
harsh fate of the country had difficulty in finding public expression. In
the Finnish case it was clearly different. Within two weeks of the out-
break of the attack against Finland, the Soviet Union was demonstra-
tively expelled from the League of Nations on 11 December 1939 as a
manifest aggressor state. Soon the public sympathy for Finland was
given even greater coverage, even though not a single state was pre-
pared to support Finland with regular troops in its fight for existence.
Journalists from almost every part of Europe and the Western hemi-
sphere arrived in Helsinki and wrote from there numerous war reports,
in which the war was regularly described as the modernized version of
the fight between David and Goliath.15
Despite a strong domestic critique, the Swedish government stuck to
its original plan and stayed aloof from the Winter War. However, from
the very outbreak of the war, it gave Finland substantial economic and
humanitarian help. Furthermore, it sold considerable amounts of its
weaponry reserves to Finland, and, as the war continued, over 8,000
Swedes would enroll as volunteers in the Finnish Army and take part
in some major fights in Lapland. The Swedish strategy was dictated by
its non-alliance foreign policy, established in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, which had kept the country out of wars since 1814 and had given
it good economic profits during World War I. This balancing policy
would be the first priority for the Swedish leadership also throughout
World War II. And as in 1914–18, its most valuable national resource
were the iron ore mines far up in the north. During World War II,
15
Antero Holmila, ed., Talvisota muiden silmin: Maailman lehdistö ja Suomen
taistelu (Jyväskylä, 2009), passim.
62 henrik meinander
Sweden would deliver between 20 and 35 percent of the iron ore the
German war industry consumed. Northern Sweden was thereby strate-
gically extremely important for Germany and, for the same reason, it
awoke the early interest of the Western Powers.16
In December 1939, the British and French governments began to
plan a large-scale military expedition to Northern Scandinavia. The
Norwegian and Swedish governments, however, were utterly against
the plan, even if it was described to them as a military expedition,
which would also support Finland in its Winter War. They feared that
this would only trigger a preventive counter-attack by the German
military forces and open a new front in Northern Scandinavia, which
thereby would drag both countries into the war. The Finnish govern-
ment was soon informed of the British and French plans. It was clearly
in Finnish interests to keep them alive, even if the exact size and mis-
sion of the Franco-British expedition remained diffuse up until the
Finnish-Soviet peace was reached. The longer the Winter War contin-
ued, the more desperately the Finnish government searched for any
military or diplomatic help it could get to survive militarily and remain
independent. After the expectations of Swedish participation had defi-
nitely faded away, some members of the Finnish government would
cling to the hope that Franco-British military help against the Soviet
Union was a true option.17
However, most of them were awoken from their daydreams by
Marshal Mannerheim, who pointed out that the vaguely promised
Western troops would not make a difference anyway. The usage of this
option was therefore in the first place diplomatic. Mannerheim had
good reasons for his claim. Already in January 1940, Stalin had changed
strategy when it became clear that a complete occupation of Finland
would take too long and could drag the Soviet Union into a direct war
against the Western Powers. A confrontation in Northern Scandinavia
was not the only openly debated scenario. Another was a Franco-
British raid against the Soviet oil resources in the Black Sea region,
which in fact was a more severe threat against the German-Soviet alli-
ance, since the motorized German Army was increasingly dependent
16
Alf W. Johansson, Per Albin och kriget: Samlingsregeringen och utrikespolitiken
under världskriget (Falköping, 1985), passim; Wilhelm Agrell, Fred och fruktan: Sveriges
säkerhetspolitiska historia 1918–2000 (Lund, 2000), pp. 83–5.
17
Johansson, Per Albin och kriget, pp.112–39; Polvinen, J.K. Paasikivi 1939–1944,
pp. 64–147.
on the energy supplies in Romania and the Soviet Union. And even if
a war between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers would not
necessarily follow from a Franco-British expedition to the Swedish
iron ore fields, Germany would not let this happen without strong
counteractions.18
The Kremlin leadership naturally analyzed these threats also together
with their German allies, but the true impact of this communication
on the handling of the Finnish case is not known. Anyhow, first Stalin
pushed aside the puppet government of expatriate Finnish commu-
nists, which he had named at the outbreak of the war to take over in a
Soviet-controlled Finland. Then he gave orders to the Red Army to
intensify the offensive to soften the Finnish side, and finally he offered
a peace treaty to the Finnish government. Hectic peace diplomacy
began via Stockholm. In early March 1940, the Finnish government
responded that it was prepared to negotiate on the harsh peace offer by
the Soviet Union. The alternatives were scarce. The human losses
increased rapidly on the Finnish front and the Army was implacably
pushed backwards on the Karelian Isthmus by the huge firepower
superiority of the enemy.19
The Soviet Union refused to accept an armistice during the negotia-
tions to maximize the pressure on the Finnish government. The
Western Powers continued therefore to urge Finland to put forward an
official request for military support, which had repeatedly been post-
poned due to the strong resistance from Stockholm and Oslo. In
response to this, the Finnish government declared that the Western
Powers would receive a request for help if the peace negotiations in
Moscow failed. The idea was to use the possibility of a help request as a
trump card in the negotiations, and even if the peace conditions were
not softened, it filled its function in this sense. Contrary to its great
power habits, the Soviet leadership would not sharpen its demands
during the negotiations. Stalin’s keenness to end this badly fought war
and reach an agreement was also strongly supported by the Swedish
government, which by all means wanted to avoid an involvement in a
large-scale war.
18
The classic study on the larger context is Max Jakobson, The Diplomacy of the
Winter War: An Account of the Russo-Finnish War, 1939–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1961).
19
Polvinen, J.K. Paasikivi 1939–1944, pp. 96–120; Michael Jonas, Wipert von
Blücher und Finnland: Alternativpolitik und Diplomatie im “Dritten Reich” (Helsinki,
2008), pp. 105–58; Lasse Laaksonen, Todellisuus ja harhat: Kannaksen taistelut ja
suomalaisten joukkojen tila talvisodan lopussa 1940 (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 210–350.
64 henrik meinander
In this way the Winter War developed into a much larger European
question than the existence of a peripheral Nordic country. The longer
it continued, the more it increased the military pressure on the other
Scandinavian countries. And once the Franco-British plans of a
Scandinavian expedition became more substantial and information of
it reached the German military headquarters, Hitler ordered an occu-
pation of Norway, which had neither the capacity nor the will to resist
a possible Western intervention. The British presumed that Germany
would not gain sufficient strategic advantages from such a preventive
attack and that the British naval superiority anyhow minimized such
risk. Both presumptions proved wrong. Hitler was under no condition
prepared to give the Western Powers a grip on the Norwegian coast
and the Swedish iron ore fields, which would have easily given them a
foothold also to the Baltic Sea. On 9 April 1940, the German Army
rapidly took over Denmark, landed in Norwegian coastal towns and,
during April and May, occupied the whole of Norway despite the
Franco-British military expedition, which had arrived too late and in
too small numbers.
Thus, the outbreak of the Winter War contributed indirectly to the
German occupation of Denmark and Norway. This gave some later
commentators the reason to claim that an avoidance of the Winter War
might have saved the Scandinavian countries from being involved
in World War II altogether. One of them was actually Marshal
Mannerheim, who argued in his memoirs that this would have been
possible if the Scandinavian countries had only built up a credible
defense alliance. Another spokesman of the same opinion was the
Norwegian diplomat Einar Maseng who, in connection with his ser-
vice in Moscow during the Winter War, had already warned his gov-
ernment of the consequences of taking too soft a line towards all
potential intruders and blockades.20
However, most analyses on the issue have concluded with an oppo-
site contra-factual assumption. Finland would have been dragged into
the war anyhow due to its geographical position in the immediate
vicinity of Leningrad, and this above all because it was still classified in
Moscow as part of the Soviet security zone. Also, for similar reasons it
is unlikely that either Germany or the Western Powers would have
respected the neutrality of Norway after the war had begun to expand
to a global confrontation between the great powers. Thus the small
20
Gustaf Mannerheim, Minnen, Vol. II: 1931–1946 (Helsinki, 1952), pp. 445–6.
Scandinavian countries played a role throughout the war, which was

dictated by the priorities of and moves by the great powers. The
Scandinavian realm was important to blockade, master or invade for
two main reasons: to get a grip on the Swedish iron ore and on the
Leningrad region. Put slightly differently, for the great powers wartime
Scandinavia was primarily a question about resources and transport
lines, not about culture, ideology or demography.21
Map 1.2. Finland, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region, June 1940.
21
Henrik Meinander, Finland 1944: Krig, samhälle, känslolandskap (Helsinki,
2009), pp. 216–22.
66 henrik meinander
The Winter War gave the Finnish leadership a harsh lesson in these
priorities. The Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union in March
1940 was thus, neither in Helsinki nor in Moscow, understood as a
definite solution but rather as a temporary move. This meant that the
Finnish search for robust allies would continue on many fronts and by
the end of 1940 had brought Finland closer and closer to military
cooperation with Germany. But before this step had definitely been
taken, many other alternatives were tested and tried. One thing was
clear anyhow. After the Winter War, the Finnish government was pre-
pared to do almost whatever it took to avoid being forced again to
defend its independence and national existence alone. This motive had
a formative impact on both Finnish foreign policy and national iden-
tity for many decades.
II. Finland and the War in the East
Alliance with Germany

The Winter War had been a tough test for the Finnish-German rela-
tionship; not least for the rather strong Germanophile wing of the
national elite, for whom the German-Soviet alliance and the conse-
quently cold attitude of the German leadership towards Finland during
the Winter War had been a shock. But gradually the Finnish govern-
ment began to get discreet diplomatic signals from Berlin that Germany
was not indifferent towards Finland. The first more significant sign of
this had already been seen during the Winter War. In late February
1940, a Finnish politician returned from Berlin with a strictly confi-
dential message from Hermann Göring, who urged Finland to reach
peace with the Soviet Union, even on heavy conditions, because the
losses would eventually be returned when the great European conflict
was over.
This advice was used to persuade reluctant members of the Finnish
government to accept the Moscow Peace Treaty in March 1940. Some
Finnish scholars have even claimed that the acceptance of the peace
conditions was the first conscious step towards the military alliance
with Germany.22 This interpretation is disputable, keeping in mind that
22
Heikki Ylikangas, Tulkintani talvisodasta (Helsinki, 2001), pp. 220–45.
no one could foresee how and when the Soviet-German alliance would
be dissolved. The main strategy for the Western-oriented Finnish lead-
ership (prime minister Risto Ryti, foreign minister Väinö Tanner and
Marshal Mannerheim) up until the autumn of 1940 seems rather to
have been to keep all options open.
The most difficult task was to establish a constructive relationship
with the Soviet Union, which sharpened its demands on Finland dur-
ing the summer of 1940 concurrently as it definitely occupied the Baltic
States and transformed them into Soviet republics. This was naturally
not a coincidence. Both measures were rooted in the secret security
zone agreement in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which Moscow was
keener than ever to fulfill after Germany had occupied Denmark,
Norway, France and the Benelux countries. A major subject of the
Finnish-Soviet dispute was the significant nickel concession of the
Pechenga mines far north in Finnish Lapland. Germany had begun to
show an interest in the mine concession, which was owned by a British-
Canadian company. This increased the Soviet efforts to get the conces-
sion in order to hinder the Finnish government from buying political
support from Germany. The tug-of-war reached its climax in February
1941, when the Finnish government had received confirmation of
German support and definitely declined the Soviet demands of shared
control over the concession.23
Up until December 1940, the future had seemed rather unsure for
Finland. In June 1940, the Finnish government signed a large trade
agreement with the Soviet Union, but it was little implemented due to
the political friction. The overseas import of food supplies, energy and
other necessary raw materials was again severely strangled by the war.
Sweden gave generous credits and eagerly sold metal products, but was
almost as isolated and could therefore not sell substantial amounts of
food supplies to Finland. Thus, Finland was left with two choices. The
first was to establish a security alliance with Sweden, which could
strengthen and maintain Finnish neutrality in the midst of the
European war. Both governments showed readiness to reach a solu-
tion, which would have meant a state union with the Swedish monarch
Gustaf V as head of the state. But when the plan was presented in Berlin
23
yhteistyöstä 1940–41 (Helsinki, 1987), pp. 142–61; Esko Vuorisjärvi, Petsamon nikkeli
kansainvälisessä politiikassa 1939–1944 (Helsinki, 1990), pp. 52–172.
68 henrik meinander
and Moscow in December 1940, neither of the great powers was pre-
pared to accept the proposed status quo in the Baltic Sea region.24
It was not only the secret agreement in the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, which ruled out a Swedish-Finnish union and neutrality status.
Soviet foreign minister Molotov had, during his visit to Berlin in
November 1940, pointed out that the Soviet leadership wanted to bring
the Finnish question to a solution. Hitler had replied that he did not
want a war in the Baltic Sea region and that his country needed the
Finnish wood and nickel supplies. Behind the German rejection was in
fact another, more substantial reason. Already in July 1940, Hitler had
decided to invade the Soviet Union the following year and concluded
that he could count on support from the Finnish and Romanian armies,
not least since both countries were under increasing pressure from
Moscow.
The first concrete sign that Germany might have its own plans for
Finland came in August 1940, when the inner circle of the Finnish gov-
ernment received a secret offer from Berlin. The German Army wanted
to transfer troops in Northern Norway through Finland and offered in
exchange to sell modern weaponry to Finland. The proposal was
immediately accepted and, during the autumn of 1940, it led to a
warm-up of the Finnish-German relationship. However, the Finnish
leadership was so far not given any clear-cut military guarantees and
continued therefore at the same time with its alliance negotiations with
the Swedish government. The turning point came in December 1940,
when both dictatorships had rejected the Finnish-Swedish union plan
and, directly thereafter, Berlin for the first time confidently revealed
the Operation Barbarossa plan for the Finnish leadership. This left
Finland with only one realistic solution, not least since the Germans at
the same time informed the Finnish leadership of the secret agreement
in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact from 1939. Former prime minister
Risto Ryti, having become the state president in December 1940, and
Marshal Mannerheim decided to accept the German bid, but revealed
this only to key ministers in the government.25
The secret planning of the military cooperation began in January
1941, and in late March the Finnish leadership was informed that the
24
Ohto Manninen, Toteutumaton valtioliitto: Suomi ja Ruotsi talvisodan jälkeen
(Helsinki, 1977), passim.
25
Polvinen, J.K. Paasikivi 1939–1944, pp. 211–50.
offensive would probably begin on 22 June. It was agreed that six

German divisions should take operational responsibility for the north-
ern half of the Finnish border and that in return the Finnish Army
should advance into Soviet Eastern Karelia and meet the troops of the
German Army Group North at River Svir between the lakes of Ladoga
and Onega. The Germans would invade Leningrad. The preparations
continued in good order and when Hitler launched the attack in
Midsummer 1941, the Finnish Army stood at the front fully mobilized
and better equipped than ever waiting for Mannerheim’s offensive
order, which was deliberately delayed to give the impression that
Finland had been forced into the new conflict.26
After the war, the Finnish leadership was heavily criticized for its
decision to join Germany in the attack against the Soviet Union, which
in 1945–46 resulted in the Finnish War Guilt Trials and jail sentences
for eight wartime politicians, including former president Ryti. The
defendants maintained that Finland had never signed a political agree-
ment with Germany. They claimed that the country had been forced
into the war by Soviet air strikes and throughout the years 1941–44 it
had fought its own separate war for purely national reasons. This was
clearly not the whole truth. Correctly enough, no official agreement
was signed and the Finnish participation in the war was restricted to
the plan drawn up with the Germans in January 1941. But it did not
follow that Finland was a passive victim of the development that led to
the outbreak of the war, or that the warfare at the Finnish front sector
was separated from the battles concurrently fought on its northern and
southern wings. Hitler was well aware that the Finns were not attracted
by the Nazi ideology and accepted that Finland kept a political distance
towards Germany and other allies. For him it was enough at this stage
that Finland freely joined the war and took responsibility for a strategi-
cally important northeastern front sector close to Leningrad.27
This indeed happened, and from a military point of view Finland
can actually be considered the most important German ally on the
Eastern Front, for over three years manning hundreds of frontline kil-
ometers without requiring German military presence. But how could
the Finnish population accept a military alliance with Germany if it
26
Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty, pp. 301–452.
27
Hjalmar J. Procopé, ed., Fällande dom som friar: Dokument ur Finlands krigsan-
svarrighetsprocess (Stockholm, 1946), pp. 87–232.
70 henrik meinander
was so immune to the Nazi ideology? The bitter experience from the
Winter War was clearly the strongest motive. The fear of again having
to fight alone against the Soviet Union was palpable and was nourished
by the pressure Moscow put on Finland during the Interim Peace in
1940–41. The first Finnish reactions to the news of German troop
transports through Finland in September 1940 were therefore an over-
whelming and scarcely hidden feeling of relief—Finland was after all
not left alone. And the German activity gradually reinforced the hope
that Hitler’s Germany would do what it originally had promised to do,
fight communism and crush the Soviet Union.28
It was not only the Finnish bourgeoisie, which welcomed this turn in
the Finnish-German relationship. Many social democrats also saw it as
a clear improvement in national security and were even prepared to
express something positive about Nazi society. All this made the secret
preparations for the next war together with the Germans rather smooth
and unproblematic. The press censorship remained intact and neither
was parliament prepared to question the German orientation in public,
although some social democrats and liberals were most irritated, when
they were confidently informed of the forthcoming mobilizations of
the Finnish Army in early June 1941. Popular opinion was in most
respects equally positive, with the obvious exception of the Finnish
communists, who despite strong support from the Soviet Union had
severe difficulties getting their voice heard. In addition to the sense of
relief and growing trust in Germany, many Finns were mourning the
loss of Finnish Karelia, not least over 400,000 evacuated inhabitants
who had lost their homes and private properties. This created a vague
hope that the German orientation somehow could make the difference.
When the general mobilization of the Finnish Army began on 10 June
1941, few conscripts refused to follow the order. The common mood
was hopeful rather than troublesome.29
The warm-up of the Finnish-German relationship had by then
almost reached its peak. During the autumn of 1940, cooperation was
intensified in many fields, not least in culture, sport and science, and in
April 1941, a German industry exhibition was arranged in Helsinki,
during which the Nazi Swastika and Finnish flags flew together in
28
Bernd Wegner, “Das Kriegsende in Skandinavien,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der
Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 8 (Munich, 2007), pp. 963–72.
29
Henrik Ekberg, Führerns trogna följeslagare: Den finländska nazismen 1932–1944
(Espoo, 1991), pp. 168–220; Turtola, Erik Heinrichs, pp. 163–80.
many places in the city centre. The most enthusiastic proponents of

this development were, naturally, a number of Finnish fascist and other
radical nationalist organizations. They could hardly resist expressing in
public their visions of the so-called Greater Finland, the old nationalist
dream of expanding Finnish territory far eastwards into Russian
Karelia. The Finnish leadership was not indifferent to these daydreams.
Despite their Western sympathies, both President Ryti and Marshal
Mannerheim were convinced in the spring of 1941 that Germany could
beat the Soviet Union in a swift Blitzkrieg. In May 1941, President Ryti
discreetly asked two scholars to write a scientifically formulated study,
in which it was “proven” that Soviet Eastern Karelia belonged to
Finland for both geographical and cultural reasons. One month later a
leading Finnish historian received a similar request from the president,
who also needed political and strategic arguments for such an expan-
sion. Both books were written to persuade the decision-makers in
Berlin of the future Finnish territorial claims in the east, and they were
consequently published first in German.30
The Continuation War

The Finnish government and population were thus strategically and
mentally prepared for the new war. In fact, the Finnish Army and its
related services would from the start mobilize a larger proportion
(16 percent) of the country’s population than any other European
nation at the time. In the morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler made his
famous radio speech, in which he declared war on the Soviet Union
and mentioned that “the brave Finnish comrades-in-arms” would take
part in this huge offensive. The latter information did not correspond
with the Finnish strategy of disguising their participation in the war as
a defensive reaction to Soviet attacks. The German authorities thus sof-
tened their formulation the same day by describing Finnish involve-
ment as “shouldering a European anti-communist frontier” together
with Germany and Romania.31
The dilemma was soon solved. The Soviet Air Forces directed strikes
against Finnish airports and other military sites used by the German
30
Väinö Auer & Eino Jutikkala, Finnlands Lebensraum: Das geographische und
geschichtliche Finnland (Helsinki, 1941); Jalmari Jaakkola, Die Ostfrage Finnlands
(Helsinki, 1941).
31
Helsingin Sanomat, 23 June 1941.
72 henrik meinander
armed forces. Civilian targets were also attacked. This gave the Finnish
parliament reason to announce on 25 June 1941 that Finland was again
at war with the Soviet Union. Next day President Ryti gave a radio
speech in which he accused the Soviet Union of beginning the war and
described the new conflict as Finland’s second defense war. He care-
fully avoided mentioning the military preparations together with
Germany, but emphasized that the war was now fought together with
the “successful German armed forces,” which would guarantee a lucky
outcome of the defense war and put a definite end to the eastern threat
to Finland.32
During the first month of war, the German-Finnish master strategy
worked out according to the original plans, as the German Army had
reached the outskirts of Leningrad at rapid speed and the Finnish
Army began its own offensive north of Lake Ladoga with success.
Mannerheim was also eager to give bold statements. He had already
given the new war a Finnish expression, the Continuation War. On
10 July 1941, he revealed in a famous order of the day—the so-called
“Scabbard Order”—that the aim of the offensive was not only to recon-
quer the territories lost in the Winter War: “The freedom of Karelia
and a great Finland are glimmering in front of us in the enormous
avalanche of world historic events.”
The Western Powers required an immediate explanation for
Mannerheim’s order from the Finnish government, which answered
that his vision did not reflect an official line. This was not a fully honest
explanation. Even if the Finnish and German leaderships had not
agreed upon any specific future borderlines, they had certainly agreed
on a plan, in which the Finnish Army should advance far into Soviet
Eastern Karelia and keep its positions there until the war was over. This
was indeed what the Finnish Army did. The Finnish offensive was
decisively facilitated by the simultaneous German operations, which
forced the Red Army to split its forces along its whole western border.
In early December 1941, the Finnish Army reached its intended posi-
tions in Eastern Karelia and was called to a halt by Mannerheim. The
Finnish leadership was not prepared to deliver more than originally
promised to its German brother-in-arms, and this was due to two
things.
32
Helsingin Sanomat, 26 June 1941.
First, the German eastward offensive had been a swift Blitzkrieg only
during the first two months. In the autumn of 1941, it was increasingly
obstructed by both the Russian winter, which arrived early and was
even harsher than usual, and the stubborn resistance of the Red Army.
In such a situation the Finnish leadership was cautious not to let the
Army bleed more than necessary and rejected repeatedly German
requests for a stronger support for their attacks on Leningrad and the
Murmansk Railway. Plus the longer the war continued, the more the
Finns had to consider the possibility that the Soviet Union could sur-
vive and even beat its enemies. This prospect was also partially behind
the second reason for the Finnish resistance to mount further offensive
operations. Despite the outbreak of the war, the Finnish government
had maintained diplomatic ties to Great Britain and the United States,
which generally speaking stood ideologically much closer to Finland
than the German Nazi regime. Regardless of how the war would end,
the Finnish leadership was thus strongly motivated to preserve good
relations with the West as much as possible. Throughout the war,
Finland rejected an official political alliance with Germany and claimed
consistently in its westward communication that Finland fought its
own defensive war against the Soviet Union. On 11 November 1941,
the Finnish government sent a lengthy explanation to Washington DC,
in which it was emphasized that Finland fought its own war free of any
political bonds to Germany.33
The timing for this statement was not a coincidence. The Western
Powers had repeatedly demanded a Finnish withdrawal from the war
and sharpened their voice in the autumn of 1941, when the Finnish
Army began to threaten the railway connection between Murmansk
and Central Russia, via which a large proportion of the Western mate-
rial support to the Soviet Union was delivered. Great Britain had prom-
ised its Soviet ally to declare war on Finland if the Finns did not halt
their offensive. In November 1941, it sent this ultimatum to the Finnish
government, which however neither for military nor diplomatic rea-
sons could reveal that the request would very shortly be fulfilled. On 7
December, the Finnish Army had reached its most eastern destination
and halted its offensive for good.
33
Tuomo Polvinen, Suomi kansainvälisessä politiikassa 1941–1947, Vol. 1:
Barbarossasta Teheraniin (Helsinki, 1979), pp. 118–9.
74 henrik meinander
But this was too late. The day before, on the Finnish Independence
Day, the British government declared war on Finland, and from that
moment the 3.7 million Finns were officially fighting against not only
the mighty Soviet Union but also the whole British Commonwealth.
Even if their armed forces never met on the battlefield, the British war
declaration undoubtedly complicated the Finnish diplomacy and
resulted in Finland having to also sign a peace treaty with Great Britain
in Paris in 1947. As is known, early December 1941 was also a turning
point in the war from a global perspective. The same day as the Finnish
Army halted its offensive in Soviet Eastern Karelia, Japanese Air Forces
conducted a devastating strike on Pearl Harbor. Within a few days of
the outbreak of the Pacific War, Germany had also declared war on the
United States, which meant that the conflict had truly escalated into
world war. The Axis Powers still had the initiative, but self-evidently
the American entry into the war had a decisive impact on develop-
ments in the longer run. Within a month, the consequences of the
Pacific War were also felt at the Finnish-Soviet front. Stalin had received
advance information of the Japanese attack south- and eastward in the
Pacific, and in November 1941 he had already ordered the transfer of
20 Soviet divisions from the Far East to the European war scene. This
gave the Red Army a momentous boost in the defense of Moscow, and
in January 1942, the Red Army also increased its pressure on the
Finnish-German front sector to secure the threatened Murmansk
Railway connection.34
The Finnish High Command naturally followed the development on
this larger war scene and had by then become increasingly pessimistic
about the possibilities of a German military victory on the Eastern
Front. During the winter of 1941–42, Marshal Mannerheim also
received alarming reports about how the Germans had gravely missed
their chance to win over the population of the conquered areas in the
Soviet Union by treating them with horrific brutality. This not only
destroyed the credibility of the anti-communist arguments in the Nazi
propaganda, but also cast a shadow on their Finnish brother-in-arms,
who had emphasized that they, too, fought a war against communism
and for the freedom of the Karelian people. In addition, the Finnish
authorities had severe difficulties in feeding the population prop-
erly during the first winter of war and in keeping alive their Soviet
34
Polvinen, Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 93–170.
prisoners-of-war and interned civilians. In this way, Finland had

encountered a number of new difficulties in the ongoing war. In early
January 1942, the Finnish government received information via
American diplomatic sources of the Soviet peace demands towards
Finland, which would essentially have meant a return to the borderline
of 1940. Such a solution in that moment, however, would have been
disastrous for Finland. Even if a German military victory seemed less
and less probable, Finland could not cut ties to Germany without seri-
ous consequences for its already constrained defense capacity and food
supply situation.35
The German Army still had a strong grip on the Baltic region and
Scandinavia. Its troops in Northern Finland and around Leningrad
showed no signs of weakness and were well equipped not only to sup-
port the Finnish front sector, but also to press the Finnish leadership to
continue the fight against the Soviet Union. In addition to that, Finland
was heavily dependent on import of food supplies, artificial manure
and many other necessities from German-occupied Europe. Obvious
reasons for this were the permanent lack of labor force, the difficulties
of reactivating agriculture in the recaptured Finnish Karelia and the
geopolitically isolated location of Finland with all the import routes
under German control. On top of this came the unfavorable climate in
1941–43, which together with the other shortcomings decreased
domestic grain production by over 35 percent from the prewar level.
Without the import of German produced artificial manure the fall
would have been twice as great, which taken together meant that
two-thirds of the Finnish grain demand in 1941–44 was secured by
Germany.36
The German leadership naturally utilized this reliance to keep
Finland in line. But at the same time they were themselves dependent
on Finnish military support, which was essential for their control of
the Baltic Sea and its coastal regions. The material support to the Finns
was thus prioritized, in fact so highly that Finland was the only German
ally that was allowed to buy German goods on credit. This mutual
35
Seppo Myllyniemi, Suomi sodassa 1939–1945 (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 317–20;
36
Kari Nars, “Suomen sodanaikainen talous ja talouspolitiikka,” in Taloudellisia
selvityksiä 1966, Suomen Pankin taloustieteellisen tutkimuslaitoksen julkaisuja A:29
(Helsinki, 1966), pp. 83–101; Artturi Lehtinen, “Sotatalous 1939–1945,” in Eino
Jutikkala et al., Itsenäisen Suomen taloushistoriaa 1919–1950 (Porvoo, 1967),
pp. 133–96.
76 henrik meinander
dependency explains why President Ryti hardly ever found reason to

emphasize to his German counterparts that Finland was fighting its
separate war. Such a claim was equally problematic for public use in a
domestic context, because it could easily have been interpreted by the
Germans as a sign of Finnish double-dealing, and it was therefore used
predominantly only in confidential communication with American,
British or Swedish politicians, diplomats and journalists.37
Towards Armistice
The massive German defeat in Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–43 was
the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Army, and the definite turning
point on the Eastern Front came in July 1943, when the German armed
forces’ last attempt to regain the initiative from the Soviets was crushed
in the great tank battle at Kursk. During the next twelve months, the
Red Army advanced towards East Prussia, Poland and the Balkans and
in the summer of 1944 forced the Finnish Army to retreat from the
Karelian Isthmus and its positions in Eastern Karelia. This develop-
ment intensified the Finnish efforts to put an end to the alliance with
Germany and boosted the so-called peace opposition within the
Finnish parliament, which from the autumn of 1943 onwards urged
the government to begin peace talks with the Soviet Union.
Since the autumn of 1941, the Finnish government had declined a
number of Soviet peace signals or invitations, which had required a
return to the borderline of 1940 and a break with Germany. The situa-
tion changed after the top conference in Tehran in late November 1943,
where the Allied Powers agreed among many other things that Finland,
contrary to the Baltic States, could remain a sovereign state if it accepted
the Soviet peace demands. Why was Finland spared? Stalin did not
nourish any warm feelings towards the bourgeois Finland, which since
1918 he had understood as a German satellite state and which, accord-
ing to the communist view, through its engagement in Operation
Barbarossa had revealed its true fascist sympathies. Stalin’s original
choice concerning Finland had been to annex Finland back to the
Soviet/Russian Empire in one form or another and thereby strike out
the threat it constituted towards the security of Leningrad and
Northwestern Russia. However, the ongoing war had revealed that the
price for a military invasion of Finland was high and when both
37
Meinander, Finland 1944, pp. 19–23.
Map 1.3. Finland and the Eastern Front, 1943–44.

78 henrik meinander
Roosevelt and Churchill spoke in favor of Finland in Tehran, Stalin

admitted that a people that had fought so bravely had earned the right
to be considered if it accepted his peace demands. Stalin clearly thought
that he could get a tighter hold of Finland after the war had ended, and
in the postwar power politics this did actually happen to a considerable
extent.38
President Roosevelt’s view on Finland was vaguely positive, which
was not only due to Finland’s Nordic democracy and its heroic struggle
in the Winter War. The Finnish government had refused numerous
German proposals to cut off the Murmansk Railway and get actively
involved in the offensive against Leningrad. This clearly saved some of
Finland’s reputation in Washington and resulted in the two countries
maintaining diplomatic relations. Thus, the United States never
declared war on Finland and mediated many peace probes between
Helsinki and Moscow throughout the war. During the Winter War,
prime minister Churchill had expressed his appreciation of the Finnish
society and fighting spirit, but after the birth of the Allied Powers
would take a more critical standing towards Finland and finally let his
government declare war on Finland in December 1941. However, this
did not mean that he became indifferent towards Finland. When its
future for a while was on the Tehran conference agenda, Churchill
eagerly defended the Finnish case, not least because it was in line with
his main vision, the establishment of a European United States, which
he planned as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and at the same time
to secure the British Empire.39
In January 1944, the Red Army broke the siege of Leningrad and
forced the German troops in this front sector into a hasty retreat to
Northern Estonia. The following month Soviet Air Forces bombed a
number of Finnish cities to hasten the peace process. At the same time
the Allied Powers intensified their media campaign and diplomatic ini-
tiatives in favor of a separate Finnish peace. Now, the Finnish leader-
ship was prepared to have preliminary peace talks in Moscow, even if it
was skeptical about the possibility of starting formal negotiations while
38
Polvinen, Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 290–1; Charles E. Bohlen, Witness of
History 1929–1969 (New York, 1973), pp. 150–1; Timo Vihavainen, Stalin ja suoma-
laiset (Helsinki, 1998), pp. 206–30.
39
R. Michael Berry, American Foreign Policy and the Finnish Exception: Ideological
Preferences and Wartime Realities (Helsinki, 1987), pp. 327–91; Markku Ruotsila,
Churchill and Finland: A Study in Anticommunism and Geopolitics (London, 2005),
pp. 121–34.
the German forces maintained their strongholds in Estonia and

Lapland. These suspicions soon proved to be correct. In addition to an
immediate end to the Finnish-German alliance, Moscow demanded
very large war reparations worth 600 million US dollars, which resulted
in a Finnish rejection of negotiations on these terms in the spring of
1944.40
The Allied Powers naturally condemned this rejection as short-
sighted and fatal for Finland, and from then on even the British media
was increasingly harsh in its critique of the Finnish-German military
alliance. Swedish public opinion, which was influential in Finland due
to the widespread use of the Swedish language, had also strongly advo-
cated a separate Finnish peace and criticized the wait-and-see policy of
the Finnish government. But after the heavy Soviet peace demands had
been published, such condemnations became less frequent, not least
because it was understood that a peace treaty on such terms could
make Finland unable to defend its sovereignty.41
Finnish public opinion was strongly restricted by the government-
issued press censorship, which forbade the media to discuss the differ-
ent peace options or criticize the domestic and German leadership.
However, news reports from the European battlefields and overseas
were freely published and the Finnish population also received regular
information from Allied sources through foreign radio broadcasts,
imported newspapers and journals, which during the spring of 1944
strengthened domestic demands for a swift peace with the Soviet
Union. The strongest advocates in the parliament of a fast lane to peace
were social democrats, liberals and their supporters, whereas the con-
servatives and the Agrarian League together with the tiny fascist party
clung to their belief in the German military capacity and were thus
utterly against a separate treaty with the Soviet Union.42
The Finnish government and High Command had few illusions left
about the outcome of the war. But as long as the German armed forces
kept their positions in Northern Europe and the Finnish front sector
remained stable, the government decided to follow up how the
openly forecasted landing of the Western Allies on the Atlantic coast
would change the warfare on the Eastern Front. In April 1944, Hitler
40
41
Rein Marandi, Med grannens ögon: Finlands fortsättningskrig 1941–1944 i svensk
pressdiskussion (Ekenäs, 1970), pp. 205–8; Meinander, Finland 1944, pp. 90–8.
42
Meinander, Finland 1944, pp. 90–108, 223–32.
80 henrik meinander
confidentially ordered a weapons and grain embargo on Finland as a

protest against its peace approaches, which worsened the Finnish food
shortage and increased the dependence on German military support in
the event of a large-scale Soviet attack. However, at the same time many
hoped that the awaited landing in the west would drive the Red Army
to concentrate its troops against the German front sectors in order to
rush to Central Europe. Gradually, this wishful thinking also gained a
foothold in the Finnish High Command and resulted in the signs of
Soviet troop concentrations against the Finnish front sector being
ignored and interpreted as a diversion.43
In fact, Stalin had decided to give the Finnish front sector a decisive
strike before the Red Army began its mighty Operation Bagration
against the German forces in Belorussia. The Finnish question had to
be solved before the race to Berlin began and the proper moment for
this was when the Western Allies had landed in Normandy and fought
to get a grip on the French coast. If the Western Allies succeeded in this
attempt, the Red Army would begin its offensive from the east. If they
failed—which was a genuine possibility—Stalin might have delayed or
limited the well-prepared offensive into Belorussia, because the
Germans would otherwise have had more military resources available
for the Eastern Front.44
The plan to take Finland out of the war was approved by Stalin in
May 1944. The offensive on the Karelian Isthmus was ordered to start
five to ten days before Operation Bagration, which was a fourfold larger
offensive (2.5 million Soviet soldiers) than the operation against the
Finns. Three days after D-Day in Normandy, on 9 June 1944, the Fourth
Strategic Offensive of the Red Army began against the Finnish posi-
tions. Within ten days, the Red Army crushed two Finnish defense
lines and advanced 100 kilometers to the city of Vyborg. But after that
the Finnish Army’s defense capacity grew stronger. Operation Bagration
took off on 22 June, and from then on the Soviet troops on the Karelian
43
Lasse Laaksonen, Eripuraa ja arvovaltaa: Mannerheimin ja kenraalien hen-
kilösuhteet ja johtaminen (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 248–58; Aimo E. Juhola, Jyri Paulaharju
& Georg-Eric Strömberg, Päämajan hukatut kuukaudet: Tilannekuvan hahmottuminen
Kannaksella 1944 (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 157–8; Karl-Heinz Frieser, “Das Ausweichen
der Heeresgruppe Nord von Leningrad ins Baltikum,” in Deutsche Reich, Vol. 8,
pp. 516–8.
44
Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: Global History of World War II
(Cambridge, 1994), p. 675; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: Den röde tsarens hov
(Stockholm, 2004), p. 475.
Isthmus could not get further reinforcements. At the same time more
Finnish troops were concentrated on this front sector, with decisive
support from the German Luftwaffe. After two additional weeks of
fierce battling, Stalin halted the main offensive on the Karelian Isthmus
and gave order to restart the peace talks with Finland, which paved the
way for the Armistice Treaty in September 1944.45
Yet the path to peace was far from easy. When the defense on the
Karelian Isthmus was on the edge of collapse in mid-June, Marshal
Mannerheim as the Army’s commander-in-chief applied anew directly
to Hitler to lift the weapons embargo on Finland, this time with a posi-
tive reply. Finland would get weaponry and troop support as long as it
continued to fight. During the following two weeks, a substantial
amount of German anti-tank weapons and air support was received,
which together with a German infantry division proved to be essential
for the Finnish fighting capacity and spirit.
An often forgotten chapter in the Finnish-German military alliance
is that in the summer of 1944 it indirectly exerted a severely weakening
impact on the German armed forces on the Eastern Front. Despite
numerous and increasingly desperate demands from his generals,
Hitler was utterly against a retreat from the Baltic region to East
Prussia, even if this would clearly have shortened the German line of
defense and improved the situation of the thinly-deployed German
troops. Hitler was well aware that the Finnish government strived to
get out of the war and reach a separate peace with the Soviet Union. To
prevent this from happening he prioritized holding on to the southern
coast of the Gulf of Finland in Estonia. Hitler also decided to send sub-
stantial military support to the Finnish Army in June–July 1944; arma-
ment, air units and even infantry, which would have been greatly
needed elsewhere against the gigantic Operation Bagration. All in all,
this contributed to the crushing defeat of the German armed forces in
Belorussia in late June and July 1944. Furthermore, as the Germans
stubbornly clung to the Baltic region until the autumn of 1944, their
Army Group North was consequently encircled in the so-called
Courland Pocket west of Riga for the rest of the war.46
The Finnish political and military leadership experienced a nerve-
racking week between 19 and 26 June, during which it had to react to
45
Manninen, Stalinin kiusa, pp. 246–58; Meinander, Finland 1944, pp. 175–270.
46
82 henrik meinander
two opposite but equally harsh bids. The first came from Hitler, who
sent his foreign minister von Ribbentrop to Helsinki on 22 June to
force the Finnish government to finally sign a political treaty with
Germany in exchange for the delivered military support. The second
came from the Soviet leadership, which in its reply on 23 June to a
Finnish peace proposal practically demanded unconditional surrender
from the Finnish government before any peace negotiations could
begin.
The German initiative was presumably a reaction to an information
leakage about the Finnish peace proposal to the Soviet Union. After
frenetic discussions, the Finnish leadership saw itself forced to reach
some kind of agreement with Germany, not only because of the Soviet
capitulation demand, which was not considered as an alternative. The
Finnish Army retreated during these days to a new defense line, and as
the outcome of the ongoing struggles was very unsure, it would not
have been wise to risk German military support by bluntly rejecting
the demand of a political agreement. It was thus decided that President
Ryti should send a personal letter to Hitler, in which he promised that
no Finnish government or official authorized by him would start peace
negotiations without consultations with Germany.
The Finnish government was not prepared to back the agreement
officially and it had no chance to pass through parliament, either. Hitler
agreed therefore to Ryti’s letter, even if he must have understood that it
left the door open for a separate Finnish peace once the Red Army’s
offensive had been halted. As hinted before, Hitler seldom nourished
unrealistic expectations concerning the alliance with Finland. The cru-
cial thing was to keep the Finns fighting, and if this was ensured by
Ryti’s personal commitment, the German leadership was prepared to
accept it and utilize the commitment maximally in German war propa-
ganda. Equally predictable was the sharp criticism, which the Finnish
government got both from the Allied Powers and Swedish public opin-
ion, when the notice of this so-called Ryti-Ribbentrop Agreement
reached international media. What was left of the Finnish claims of a
“separate war,” asked sarcastic commentators in the Swedish newspa-
pers. Even the United States government protested strongly against the
decision by finally cutting off its diplomatic relations with Finland.47
47
Markku Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia? Suomi, Saksan liittosopimusvaatimuk-
set ja Ryti-Ribbentrop-sopimus (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 355–63.
The Finnish government could self-evidently not express its motives

at this critical moment, but when the question was raised at the Finnish
War Guilt Trials in 1945–46, former president Ryti defended his line by
emphasizing the necessity to stabilize the front before the peace pro-
cess could begin. This had hardly been possible without the military
support from Germany, which had convinced him of the need to give
Hitler the required promise, especially since his legal advisers ensured
him that it did not bind his successor. The survival plan of the Finnish
leadership was thus first to secure German military support and stop
the Soviet offensive, then to replace Ryti with a new president who was
free to restart the peace talks, and finally to wait until the German mili-
tary capacity in the Baltic region had become so weak that a separate
peace treaty or armistice could be reached with the Soviet Union with-
out the risk of serious German counteractions.48
In July 1944, the first step was taken. The Soviet offensive had been
warded off and secret peace talks began in Stockholm, which as before
functioned as the diplomatic channel for Finnish-Soviet contacts. The
next step was taken in August 1944. The commander-in-chief of the
Army, Marshal Mannerheim, replaced Ryti as state president and
confidently informed the German allies that he was not bound by
the personal promise, which his predecessor had given under hard
pressure without popular support. The German government naturally
protested against this interpretation, but it no longer had the capacity
to force Finland to continue the war. From then on, the Germans con-
centrated their efforts on securing the evacuation of German troops
and military equipment in Finland. Simultaneously, the preliminary
peace talks reached a conclusion. On 4 September 1944, a ceasefire
between Finland, the Soviet Union and the British Commonwealth
came into effect, and it was followed by formal negotiations in Moscow,
resulting in an armistice treaty on 19 September 1944.
Thereby, the three years of the Continuation War against the Soviet
Union had ended in a new and bitter defeat for the Finns. The conse-
quences of this loss were articulated in the 23 articles of the Armistice
Treaty, which essentially remained in force when the final peace agree-
ment was signed between Finland and the Allies at the European Peace
Conference in Paris in 1947. Apart from the return to the post-Winter
War borders of 1940 and the loss of the whole Pechenga region by the
48
Procopé, Fällande dom som friar, pp. 87–219.
84 henrik meinander
Fig. 1.1. A German fighter plane and a group of Stukas from Detachment Kuhlmey in
Southeastern Finland, July 1944. Luftwaffe air support was of considerable value for
the Finnish defenses during the summer battles. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces
Photographic Centre SA 155628.
Fig. 1.2. Less than three months later, September 1944: The Soviet escort guards of the
Allied Control Commission arriving at Malmi airport in Helsinki. The Commission
was led by General Andrei Zhdanov, who had earned his spurs as the Stalinist party
leader of Leningrad and as the sovietizer of Estonia in 1940–41. Photo: Finnish Defence
Forces Photographic Centre SA 164064.
86 henrik meinander
Arctic Ocean, Finland was obliged to pay war reparations worth

300 million US dollars and lease out the Porkkala Peninsula thirty kil-
ometers west of Helsinki as a Soviet military base for the next fifty
years. The demobilization of the Army had to be fulfilled within two
and a half months, and to top it all, the German troops in Northern
Finland were to be disarmed or expelled from the country, which led
to the Lapland War between the earlier brothers-in-arms in the winter
of 1944–45.
The Finnish reaction to the Armistice Treaty was a combination of
relief and despair. Finally, the lengthy war against the Soviet Union had
ended without an occupation of the country. Families were reunited
and people could gradually return to normal life. Among the Finnish
leftist socialists and the communists, who regained their political
rights, the mood was even victorious and joyful. Thanks to the Red
Army, the Finnish proletariat could now fulfill its historic mission and
become the leading class in society. But at the same time, numerous
Finns had lost nearly everything they loved and owned. Over 95,000
Finns lost their lives in World War II. Of these, almost all were fallen
soldiers, 93,000 men altogether. The loss of more than one-tenth of the
national territory had driven about 430,000 Finnish Karelians and
other Finns from their homes forever. In the spring of 1945, the farm-
ers among the evacuated population were secured new land in other
parts of Finland through legislative measures, but it was far from a full
compensation for their total damages—not to speak of the mental loss
of their home region.49
III. Cold War Preface
In late September 1944, the Allied Control Commission, predomi-

nantly represented by Soviet officials, arrived in Helsinki to ensure the
fulfillment of the Armistice Treaty articles and it maintained this func-
tion up until the Paris Peace Treaty was signed in 1947. In the begin-
ning, this awoke fears that Stalin’s hidden agenda was to gradually get
a stronger grip on the country, help the Finnish communists to power
and transform Finland into a Soviet buffer zone in the shape of a social-
ist people’s republic. The Finnish Army began secret preparations for a
guerilla war to come. Concurrently, the government was faced with a
49
number of initial difficulties in the implementation of the Armistice

Treaty, which also raised suspicions that the development was not in
its control and strengthened the rumors of a forthcoming Soviet
occupation.
However, by the end of 1944 the political and societal stability had
improved considerably in Finland. The active phase of the Lapland
War against the retreating German forces was practically over, and the
demobilization of the Finnish Army had been smoothly concluded
without causing any mass-scale unemployment as the authorities
had feared. Quite the opposite occurred; the labor market had suffered
from a constant shortage of labor force during the wartime and filled
these gaps now so eagerly that salaries had begun to rise already in late
1944. Simultaneously, tens of thousands of evacuated civilians from
Northern Finland could start to return to their homes. The Finnish
Karelian population did not, of course, belong to this category, but it
had already received political promises of land compensations in the
autumn of 1944, which gave them hopes of a better future.50
Another substantial reason for the stabilization was that the country
in November 1944 had gained a politically broader government under
the leadership of Juho Kusti Paasikivi, who—despite his career in the
Conservative Party—was a trusted man in Moscow due to his early
demands for a swift separate peace with the Allies. Paasikivi also
brought the Finnish communists into the government and in December
1944 was able to sign a detailed agreement with the Soviet leadership
about the content and timetable for the Finnish war reparations. By
then many other articles in the Armistice Treaty had also been fulfilled,
especially those which the Soviet Union had classified as urgent. These
were the abolition of fascist, ultranationalist and paramilitary organi-
zations (or more suitably, what the Soviets considered as such), the re-
legalization of the Finnish Communist Party and a large cleansing of
anti-Soviet literature and films from the public arena. Besides the truly
fascist or ultranationalist organizations, the most notable national
organizations abolished in 1944–45 were the Civil Guards, women’s
Lotta Svärd Organization and the Finnish soldiers’ and war veterans’
organization, all of which had had an important social function as well.
50
Suomen Pankki: Vuosikirja 1944 (Helsinki, 1945), pp. 3–4; Nars, “Suomen sodan-
aikainen talous,” pp. 95–133.
88 henrik meinander
In this way, Finland could return to peacetime conditions earlier

and with less damage than any other European country, which had
been actively involved in World War II. The most obvious reason for
this was that Finland was one of the very few countries in Europe,
which had avoided an occupation. The contrast was especially strong
with the Baltic States and Poland, which had been crushed by three
occupations and had by the beginning of 1945 come under the control
of Moscow. Compared with these countries, Finnish infrastructure
was in astonishingly good shape, except for the Lapland settlements,
which had been badly damaged by the Germans during the Lapland
War. The civilian population had suffered remarkably few fatalities in
1939–44, approximately 2,000 people. One has to keep in mind that
about 28 million civilians lost their lives in other parts of Europe dur-
ing the war.
In March 1945, Finland held parliamentary elections as the first
country in war-waging Europe since the outbreak of World War II. The
elections were a success for the communists and left-wing socialists,
who gained 23.5 percent of all the votes and got a strong position in the
new government. Bourgeois and social democratic Finns were, not
surprisingly, worried about this increasing popular support for the
radical left. Many still suspected that the ultimate goal for Stalin was to
transform Finland into a Moscow-controlled socialist state. However,
these fears were strongly exaggerated. Even if Stalin naturally was
pleased about the growing influence of the Finnish communists, he
gave them no promises of military support to gain decisive power in
Finland.51
One reason for this was that for its vast task of reconstruction, the
Soviet Union truly needed the Finnish war reparations, which for a
great part consisted of high-quality products of metal industry,
machinery and shipyards. The Soviet leadership understood that polit-
ical upheavals in Finland would cause obstructions for these deliveries.
Another reason was that Stalin was forced to adjust to the opinion of
his Western Allies as long as war continued and he had to take into
count that they could react strongly against an invasion of Finland.
Thirdly and most importantly, Stalin did not look at Finland as a sepa-
rate case. In the spring of 1945, the Red Army had reached the heart of
Germany and gained a strong grip on the whole Baltic area. In such a
51
Rentola, Kenen joukoissa seisot, pp. 459–538.
context, Finland was no longer a security threat to Leningrad, espe-

cially since Finland had willingly began to fulfill the articles in the
Armistice Treaty and the Soviet leadership could, if necessary, tighten
its hold on Finland from the Porkkala military base, which was at the
limit of heavy artillery range to Helsinki. Finland was in this sense
saved by its geographical position.
Yet it would be wrong to believe that the Finnish-Soviet relationship
was thereby altogether normalized. The Soviet-led Allied Control
Commission reacted strongly in May 1945, when it was revealed that
large amounts of weaponry from the Army depots had been cached
around Finland by a secret network and that this armament for a gue-
rilla war against possible Soviet invasion had been organized by high-
ranking Finnish officers. Large proceedings followed and resulted in
almost 1,500 persons receiving either jail or conditional sentences.52
Another question causing friction was the Thirteenth Article in the
Armistice Treaty, which obliged Finland to bring to justice its war
criminals. The Finnish communists demanded that this should also
include the leading wartime politicians, and the Allied Control
Commission in Helsinki increasingly supported their demand. In
August 1945, the Allied leaders agreed in Potsdam to bring to court all
responsible decision-makers of the Axis Powers. This forced the
Finnish government to pass a retroactive law, which brought former
president Ryti and seven other wartime politicians to the so-called War
Guilt Trials, which rather predictably gave all the accused jail sentences
in February 1946. However, the verdicts in Helsinki were decisively
milder than in Nuremberg, Bucharest and Tokyo. Not a single death
penalty was given, and in the spring of 1949 all of the defendants had
been conditionally released from prison, even former president Ryti,
who had received a ten-year jail sentence. Another noticeable detail in
the Finnish War Guilt Trials was that the military leadership was not
charged at all. Marshal Mannerheim, already 78-years-old and ailing,
thereby avoided the trial and in March 1946 was followed in the posi-
tion of president by Paasikivi, who would continue as head of state for
a decade.
The politically constituted War Guilt Tribunal gave its sentences on
the basis of seven charges. In the first two, the wartime politicians were
prosecuted for preparing and starting the war against the Soviet Union
52
Matti Lukkari, Asekätkentä (Helsinki, 1984).
90 henrik meinander
in June 1941, together with Germany. In the following four, they were
accused of avoiding or obstructing peace negotiations, and in the last,
they were charged for their acceptance of President Ryti’s letter to
Hitler in June 1944, which according to the Tribunal had prolonged the
war. As mentioned earlier, the defendants did not accept these charges
and claimed instead that they had been forced to take these actions or
decisions to save the sovereignty of their country. This had no impact
on the sentences, but would certainly have a formative impact on
Finnish public opinion about the war responsibility and about the just-
ness of the War Guilt Trials for decades to come.53
In February 1947, the Finnish government signed, together with
many other states, the European Peace Treaty in Paris. It did not differ
markedly from the Armistice Treaty signed in 1944, and came into
force after a six months delay due to the increasing friction between the
Soviet Union and Great Britain. The Cold War frontiers had now seri-
ously begun to take shape. In January 1948, President Paasikivi received
a letter from Stalin, in which Finland was offered a security pact of the
same type as the one Hungary and Romania had recently signed with
the Soviet government. Paasikivi decided to respond positively to the
request and succeeded during the deliberately prolonged negotiations
in including a number of specifications in this treaty, which were cru-
cial for Finland.
In April 1948, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual
Assistance was signed in Moscow. The Finnish state undertook to fight
off any attack aimed at Finland or at the Soviet Union through Finnish
territory “on the part of Germany or any other state allied with it.” But
Finland’s need of Soviet military support in such a task had to be con-
firmed by both sides, a clause which would prevent Moscow from
sending the Soviet forces into the country without mutual acceptance.
Furthermore the Treaty stated that Finland would strive “to remain
outside any conflicts of interests of the great powers.” The lengthy
negotiations had naturally awoken questions in Finland about the fac-
tual outcome of the Treaty, especially with the recent communist take-
over of Czechoslovakia in mind. When parliament voted on it, some
politicians expressed their fears that the Treaty would damage relations
with the Western Powers and Scandinavia. However, a large majority
trusted President Paasikivi’s judgment and voted for the Treaty.
53
Jukka Tarkka, Hirmuinen asia: Sotasyyllisyys ja historian taito (Helsinki, 2009),
passim.
Similarly worried voices had also been raised in the Western coun-
tries. But when it became apparent that the Treaty did not drag Finland
deeper into the Eastern Bloc, the criticism faded away and was replaced
by a growing understanding of the specific security demands Finland
had to cope with. The military clauses of the Treaty limited Finland’s
ability to conduct as strict a policy of neutrality as Sweden or
Switzerland, of course, but the experience of the recent wars had shown
that relations to the east could not be stabilized in any other way than
by convincing the Soviet Union that Finland would never again func-
tion as a bridgehead to Leningrad. Paasikivi argued from a perspective
of realpolitik that Moscow’s interest in Finland was first and foremost
one of defensive security. If that could be satisfied, a constructive and
stable neighborliness was entirely feasible.54
Paasikivi was proved correct, even though for historical reasons the
semi-official slogans about the countries’ mutual trust and bonds of
friendship would always sound hollow. The Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was renewed at regular intervals
during the Cold War (in 1955, 1970 and 1983), and gave such stability
to Finland’s domestic and foreign policy that it could almost be
described as a supplement to the constitution. The increasing trade
with the Soviet Union soon became important for the Finnish econ-
omy and in the autumn of 1955 the Soviet government announced its
withdrawal from the military base at the Porkkala Peninsula in
Southern Finland. The improved relations with the Soviet Union also
provided scope for maneuvers in domestic politics. The communists
could no longer maintain that they were the sole guarantors of good
relations with the east. When their electoral coalition was heavily
defeated in the parliamentary elections in the summer of 1948, a social
democrat minority government was formed, which quickly rooted out
the communist elements from the administration and built up official
contacts with Scandinavia and Western Europe.
54
Tuomo Polvinen, J.K. Paasikivi: Valtiomiehen elämäntyö, Vol. 4: 1944–1948
(Helsinki, 1999), pp. 418–515.
CHAPTER TWO
THE POLITICS OF AN ALLIANCE

FINLAND IN NAZI FOREIGN POLICY AND WAR STRATEGY
Michael Jonas
It sometimes serves the historian well to begin at the end, if only for the
sake of illustrating a point more forcefully (and all too obviously with
the historian’s luxury of hindsight): when Nazi Germany’s relation-
ships with its central allies on the Eastern Front, Finland and Romania,
collapsed in the late summer of 1944, the actual dismantling of the
bilateral affairs could hardly have been more different. While the
German minister to Helsinki, the conservative career diplomat Wipert
von Blücher, and his military counterpart at the Finnish High
Command, liaison general Waldemar Erfurth, were courteously
escorted out of the country, Germany’s chief diplomatic representative
in Bucharest, the former Freikorps leader and Nazi politician Manfred
von Killinger, committed suicide against the backdrop of an escalating
military confrontation between German and Romanian forces, which
rapidly descended into one of the most bitterly fought campaigns of
World War II’s final stages.
My subsequent remarks will argue that this apparent dissimilarity is
already foreshadowed by Berlin’s relations with Helsinki compared to
those with Bucharest in the preceding years, virtually right from the
outset of Hitler’s coalition-building efforts in 1940–41. By occasional,
though by no means systematic comparative reference to Romania,
I will take up and reconsider the case for Finnish exceptionalism dur-
ing World War II—a case which has recently come under rather heavy
and sustained fire in both Finnish and international historiography, so
much so that some tend to regard it as effectively buried.1 I will develop
my line of reasoning largely based on a close reading of German policy
1
The tendency has been apparent in recent Finnish scholarship on the issue of
Finland’s involvement in the brutalized war in the east; cf., as the most densely argued
example, Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisi-
yhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki, 2008); for a comprehensive overview of the debate see
94 michael jonas
on Finland and the position of Finland in Nazi war strategy during the
crucial period between 1940–41 and the dissolution of German-
Finnish relations in early September 1944. As a result of this, my meth-
odological approach rests principally upon the history of the bilateral
relations, of German policy on Finland and the analysis of the develop-
ment (or lack thereof) of Hitler’s war strategy. References to Finland’s
domestic conditions, its wartime society, politics, culture and economy,
will have to be kept to a relative minimum.
I. The Formation of an Alliance, 1940–41
Frozen Relations: The Winter War

The Finnish-Soviet Winter War of 1939–40 brought German-Finnish
relations close to breaking point. Hitler’s foreign policy during that
crucial period was entirely indebted to the premises of his pact with
Stalin, which Ribbentrop and Molotov had signed on the eve of what
became World War II. In the Pact’s now infamous secret additional
protocol, Eastern Europe, with its numerous small- to middle-sized
states, had been carved up into so-called spheres of interest—“in the
event of a territorial and political rearrangement,” of which the Soviet
Union was to include the Baltic States and Finland.2 As German-Soviet
relations intensified, with a number of commercial treaties adding sub-
stance to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent Treaty of
Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation of 28 September 1939,
Finland and indeed the whole of Eastern Europe temporarily disap-
peared from Berlin’s foreign political and short-term strategic radar.
During the Moscow negotiations in the autumn of 1939 and in the
months after the onset of the Soviet invasion on 30 November 1939,
Finland was effectively abandoned by Berlin and its uncompromising—
and implicitly pro-Soviet—neutrality course. To Finland’s largely
conservative and robustly anti-Bolshevist elites and the country’s
Antero Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment,” Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 23 (2009): 3, pp. 413–40.
2
Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik (ADAP), Series D, Vol. VII, 228 resp. 229,
“Nichtangriffsvertrag zwischen Deutschland und der UdSSR und Geheimes
Zusatzprotokoll,” 23 August 1939, pp. 205–7; Kalervo Hovi, “Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt
und Finnland,” in Erwin Oberländer, ed., Hitler-Stalin-Pakt 1939: Das Ende
Ostmitteleuropas? (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), pp. 61–74.
the politics of an alliance 95
population, Berlin’s “unkind” neglect during the crisis of 1939–40

seemed indeed most “unnatural”—as unnatural as Hitler’s “pact with
Satan in order to drive out the Devil” had appeared to traditional con-
servatives in German politics and the military as well as to a consider-
able segment of his own party.3 This was not least due to the fact that
Finland had been for centuries one of the most Germanophile coun-
tries of the area, reinforced by Germany’s role as central sponsor,
indeed “godparent” of Finnish independence in 1917–18. Despite
National Socialism contributing heavily to the small country’s aliena-
tion from its erstwhile protector, one single expectation seems to have
remained unshaken throughout the 1930s: that Finland could in a state
of existential emergency rely upon Germany as its traditional guard-
ian. The abandonment of the small state in the face of an unprovoked
and internationally condemned aggression was therefore the biggest
surprise for both the Finnish elite and the country’s population at large.
Dissent was rife even on the German side, among both hardcore
National Socialists like Göring and conservative diplomats within the
German Foreign Ministry, the Auswärtiges Amt (AA). One of the most
vocal opponents of Hitler’s and Ribbentrop’s self-imposed neutrality
policy was Berlin’s minister to Helsinki, the ultra-conservative career
diplomat Wipert von Blücher, who “continued throughout the entire
war to bombard” his superiors in the AA “with long memos pleading
Finland’s cause, begging to be allowed to do something to help her, and
pointing out the damage that was being done to Germany’s interests in
the region.”4 The alternative policy Blücher tirelessly advanced pointed
to the potentially disastrous consequences of the Third Reich’s official
policy, perceived through the lens of a Wilhelmine conservative.
Ingrained in the traditional framework of late imperial German for-
eign policy, his initiatives, schemes and proposals aimed at preventing
what Blücher and quite a number of his colleagues, as well as the wider
3
Ernst von Weizsäcker, Erinnerungen, ed. Richard von Weizsäcker (Munich, 1950),
p. 280 (cit. “unkind”); Max Jakobson, Finland Survived: An Account of the Finnish-
Soviet Winter War, 1939–1940, 2nd ed. (Helsinki, 1984), p. 208 (cit. “unnatural”); Risto
Peltovuori, Saksa ja Suomen talvisota (Helsinki, 1975), pp. 83 ff.; on the context, Gerd
R. Ueberschär, “ ‘Der Pakt mit dem Satan, um den Teufel auszutreiben’: Der deutsch-
sowjetische Nichtangriffsvertrag und Hitlers Kriegsabsicht gegen die UdSSR,” in
Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz,
2nd ed. (Munich, 1990), pp. 568–85, here 572 ff., with manifold examples for this pat-
tern of perception.
4
Anthony Read & David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-
Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (London, 1988), p. 408.
96 michael jonas
German public, perceived as an imminent finis Finlandiae. It seems

downright ironic that Hitler came to employ virtually the same motifs,
when he saw himself obliged to explain his less than commendable
passivity during the Winter War on the occasion of Mannerheim’s 75th
birthday on 4 June 1942.5 By then, German-Finnish relations had, once
again, undergone an almost seismic shift in the wake of the June 1941
attack on the Soviet Union—a process Blücher himself misconstrued
as Hitler’s supposed return to the traditional premises of German pol-
icy on Finland.6 How and in what stages did this shift in German for-
eign policy towards Finland come about?
Finland’s Entry into the German Orbit

The process culminating in what is still being mythicized as the
“Continuation War” in Finnish historiography and the country’s
increasingly contested politics of history can be divided into three
phases: a first period, roughly from the conclusion of the Winter War
in mid-March to the summer of 1940, in which Finnish foreign policy
made categorically unrequited efforts to improve its relations with
Berlin, while generally adopting a wait-and-see attitude as to the over-
all conflict; this period has been aptly described as an “ominous pause”
in bilateral relations, though certainly not in the larger run of events.7
A second phase, from the summer of 1940 well into the first half of
1941, saw Finland within a short space of time nearly totally absorbed
into the newly created German Großwirtschaftsraum (literally “Greater
Economic Area”). It concluded with a third period, chronologically
overlapping with the previous and also datable to the first half of 1941,
5
Transcript of Hitler’s address on Mannerheim’s 75th birthday in Ahti Jäntti &
Marion Holtkamp, eds., Schicksalsschwere Zeiten: Marschall Mannerheim und die
deutsch-finnischen Beziehungen 1939–1945 (Berlin, 1997), pp. 76–87; on Hitler’s visit
cf. Bernd Wegner, “Hitlers Besuch in Finnland: Das geheime Tonprotokoll seiner
Unterredung mit Mannerheim am 4. Juni 1942,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 41
(1993): 1, pp. 117–37.
6
Wipert von Blücher, Gesandter zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie: Erinnerungen
aus den Jahren 1935–1944 (Wiesbaden, 1951; Finnish and Swedish ed. 1950), p. 206;
for further references cf. Michael Jonas, NS-Diplomatie und Bündnispolitik 1935–1944:
Wipert von Blücher, das Dritte Reich und Finnland (Paderborn, forthcoming 2011);
based on idem, Wipert von Blücher und Finnland: Alternativpolitik und Diplomatie im
Dritten Reich, PhD thesis (University of Helsinki, 2009), to which the text subsequently
refers.
7
Anthony F. Upton, Finland in Crisis 1940–1941: A Study in Small-Power Politics
(London, 1964), p. 86.
in which military cooperation and coordination quickly translated into

concrete preparations for an offensive war against the Soviet Union.8
Some brief observations might suffice to illustrate the nature and
course of the German-Finnish rapprochement after the Winter War.9
To begin with, Finland’s rapidly and dramatically worsening geostrate-
gic situation would have to be considered. The country’s already highly
delicate place in the international order became untenable essentially
not due to the results of the Moscow Peace of March 1940, but because
of the German occupation of Western Scandinavia in early April and
the subsequent defeat and occupation of France and the Benelux coun-
tries at the hands of the Wehrmacht. Like Sweden, but in an infinitely
more volatile position, Finland found itself suddenly confronted with
two aggressive and expansionist powers at its immediate borders, of
which one, the Soviet Union, had just shortly before attempted to con-
quer the country and, in June 1940, absorbed the Baltic States—while
the other, Nazi Germany, had quashed first Poland, then Denmark and
Norway, and finally France and the Benelux countries in a matter of
weeks. With Britain seemingly laboring itself at the brim of defeat and
Sweden stifled by its own precarious situation, Finland was left with
virtually no room for maneuver. At least, the rather natural choices of
orientation that had governed its official policy during the interwar
period were either gone or had been profoundly discredited as a con-
sequence of the Winter War.
Were there, one is tempted to inquire, in the spring and summer of
1940 serious strategic alternatives to Helsinki’s systematic orientation
towards Berlin? Neutrality, albeit in a profoundly compromised form,
as Sweden’s case illustrated, was no viable option, as Soviet pressure on
the small country piled up considerably in the course of the year—so
much so that Hitler saw himself eventually forced to reject Soviet
schemes for a renewed invasion of Finland and firmly held his imagi-
nary “umbrella” over the country.10 But even if Finland would have,
8
For a similar model cf. Manfred Menger, Deutschland und Finnland im zweiten
Weltkrieg: Genesis und Scheitern einer Militärallianz (East Berlin, 1988), pp. 71 ff.
9
The pivotal study is still Mauno Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty: Tutkimus Saksan ja
Suomen sotilaallisesta yhteistyöstä 1940–1941 (Helsinki, 1987).
10
KA, Blücher Papers, “Finnisches Tagebuch,” 14 November 1940 (cit.); Blücher,
Gesandter, p. 205; Lev Bezymenskij, “Der Berlin-Besuch von V.M. Molotov im
November 1940 im Lichte neuer Dokumente aus sowjetischen Geheimarchiven
(Dokumentation),” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 57 (1998): 1, pp. 199–216, here
p. 122, discusses Stalin’s contemporary expectation that Hitler would continue to per-
mit him a free rein in his dealings with Finland.
98 michael jonas
counterfactually speaking, implemented a balanced, unbiased and

concessive diplomacy towards the Soviet Union and therefore been
spared yet another round of war, the country would have in all likeli-
hood proved too vital for Hitler’s plans for the invasion of the Soviet
Union to have escaped intensified attention on Berlin’s part after the
summer of 1940. As has been carefully documented in international
historiography since the 1960s, however, the government in Helsinki
by no means pursued a conciliatory course towards the Soviet Union;
on the contrary, since the conclusion of the Moscow Peace both the
Finnish government and the overwhelming majority of the population
considered the enforced peace with the Soviet Union nothing more
than an interim arrangement to be suspended at the first given
opportunity.
That first opportunity presented itself in the course of the summer,
some months after the Moscow Peace. By then, the Finnish govern-
ment had already lobbied, most robustly since May 1940, for Berlin’s
attention. The merging of symbolism and substance was especially rec-
ognizable on the personnel level, with Helsinki installing a number of
pro-German politicians to central diplomatic offices, like the
Germanophile conservative Rolf Witting as foreign minister and the
former prime minister Toivo M. Kivimäki as Finnish minister to
Berlin.11 Personal political constellations were clearly less essential for
the rapid recovery of relations, however, than the immediate needs of
the German war economy. From the beginning, Nazi Germany’s war
against the Western Allies existentially depended upon the natural
resources of Northern Europe, primarily on the steady supply of vast
quantities of iron ore from Sweden’s northern mining region around
Kiruna, but also nickel from Finland’s only Arctic Sea harbor in the
country’s northernmost region of Pechenga. A normalization of
Germany’s political relations with Finland after the Winter War was
therefore likely to be preceded by a normalization of the economic and
trade affairs between both countries.12 Bypassing Moscow flagrantly,
11
Erkki Maasalo, Päämärä ennen mainetta: Rolf Witting jatkosodan ulkoministerinä
1940–1943 (Tampere, 2007); Jonas, Blücher, pp. 156 ff.
12
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes in Berlin (PA/AA), R 29578, Blücher
to AA, 10 January 1940, 3 March 1940; PA/AA, Trade Deparment, “Handakten Wiehl
betreffs Finnland,” Vol. 5, reports Scherpenberg, 13 March and 2 April 1940; ADAP D,
IX, 16, “Aufzeichnung Becker, Sitzung betreffs Finnland,” 28 March 1940, pp. 25 ff.;
cf. Gerd R. Ueberschär, Hitler und Finnland 1939–1941: Die deutsch-finnischen
German and Finnish emissaries negotiated for months on two com-

prehensive trade agreements, finally concluded on 29 June and 23 July
1940, guaranteeing, most importantly, the supply of Finnish nickel and
paving the way for the almost total inclusion of Finland into Germany’s
widening economic orbit.13 Even explicit objections on the part of
Moscow did not hinder Berlin from slowly intruding into what the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had unequivocally defined as the Soviet
sphere of interest. When Moscow protested and claimed Pechenga’s
nickel concession and exploitation rights for itself, culminating in the
so-called Nickel Crisis of early 1941, Berlin and Helsinki acted in tan-
dem to stave off Soviet demands. Against the backdrop of an escalating
crisis Berlin saw itself eventually forced to directly counter Soviet
demands. It thereby communicated rather bluntly to both Moscow and
Helsinki in whose sphere of interest Finland was truly situated.14
At about the same time, in the spring of 1941, the Finnish leadership
effectively outsourced one of the state’s key responsibilities in order to
strengthen its relationships with Nazi Germany: modern military con-
scription. Responding to an earlier request by the German SS, an oper-
ation for the recruitment of volunteers, intended for the newly formed
SS-division Wiking, was approved and covertly implemented through
SS Head Office (SS-Hauptamt) and a local Finnish recruitment com-
mittee. Marshal Mannerheim and the Finnish government would have
certainly preferred the recruitment of Finnish volunteers to have cen-
tered on the Wehrmacht, thereby drawing upon the still influential tra-
dition of the Finnish Jäger movement of World War I, which sent
Finnish volunteers to Germany and later became the core of the Finnish
Army. Against the SS, however, even support from the AA and the
Wehrmacht could do little, so that Finland finally seized upon the offer
and mobilized its own battalion of approximately 1,200 troops, the
Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS. From the contemporary
Finnish point of view, the existence of a co-opted Finnish unit within
the German armed forces proved invaluable and was seen as a poten-
tial springboard for the intended intensification of military relations.
In the war against the Soviet Union the Finnish battalion saw battle at
Beziehungen während des Hitler-Stalin-Paktes (Wiesbaden, 1978), 166–73; Ilkka

Seppinen, Suomen ulkomaankaupan ehdot 1939–1944 (Helsinki, 1983).
13
Seppinen, Suomen ulkomaankaupan ehdot, pp. 54 ff., 110 ff.; Ueberschär, Hitler
und Finnland, pp. 173 ff., 265 ff.
14
Ueberschär, Hitler und Finnland, pp. 255 ff.
100 michael jonas
various points on the Eastern Front and was finally withdrawn and
disbanded in May 1943 by a Finnish government increasingly eager to
distance itself from Berlin.15
After Hitler’s decision of mid-1940 to attack the Soviet Union the
envisaged normalization of bilateral relations swiftly resulted in a
growing militarization of Helsinki’s dealings with Berlin. This was
apparently exactly what the Finnish government, desperate to escape
its international isolation, had hoped for. In the process, Helsinki not
only conceded to a wide range of German military, strategic and war
economic demands, but also showed itself prepared to sacrifice some
of the benchmarks of the country’s established democratic system.
While relations with Moscow were kept at a minimal—albeit often
tense—level, sympathy for Germany among both Finland’s political
elites and the populace at large began to grow rapidly, so much so that
minister Blücher saw himself repeatedly forced to ask Finnish leaders
to tone down their enthusiasm in the face of their country’s newfound
orientation on Germany.16 Against ill-judged, grossly irresponsible
comments from leading Nazis like Göring, the desired rapprochement
would have to proceed “slowly and step-by-step, but under no circum-
stances stormily and forcibly,” Blücher told foreign minister Witting.
Instead of an openly pro-German government, as envisaged by certain
circles in Helsinki, he—and certainly Berlin—preferred “a government
that would secretly cooperate with us, but would outwardly show
reserve,” so as not to unnecessarily provoke Soviet suspicion.17 Blücher’s
highly nuanced recommendation to Finnish politics encapsulates
compellingly the transitory character of the political situation, first and
foremost in Berlin. It clearly echoes the gradual turn away from the
clinical indifference that defined Germany’s attitude towards Finland
during the Winter War—this despite the fact that the actual premises
15
This recruitment committee of pro-German Finnish notables is commonly called
after its first chairman, the former head of the Finnish security police, Esko Riekki; on
the details cf., e.g., Hans Peter Krosby & George H. Stein, “Das finnische Freiwilligen-
Bataillon der Waffen-SS: Eine Studie zur SS-Diplomatie und zur ausländischen
Freiwilligen-Bewegung,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 14 (1966): 4, pp. 413–53;
Mauno Jokipii, Panttipataljoona: Suomalaisen SS-pataljoonan historia, 2nd ed.
(Helsinki, 1969).
16
PA/AA, R 104617, Blücher to AA, 8 June 1940; R 29579, Blücher to AA resp. state
secretary to Blücher, 5 June 1940 resp. 28 June 1940; R 104617, Blücher to AA, 25 June
1940; ADAP D, X, 109, Blücher to AA, 4 July 1940, p. 101; ibidem, 280, Blücher to
Weizsäcker, 2 August 1940, pp. 331 ff.; ibidem, 297, Weizsäcker to Blücher, 6 August
1940; Blücher, Gesandter, p. 195.
17
ADAP D, X, 109, Blücher to AA, 4 July 1940, p. 101.
of German foreign policy had so far remained unaltered. Blücher and

the German Foreign Ministry thereby anticipated Hitler’s decision-
making of late July 1940, with the often clear-sighted state secretary
Ernst von Weizsäcker noting already by the end of May 1940 that there
would “still be a reckoning ahead in the east.”18 Weizsäcker, Blücher
and the AA were apparently part of a chain of thought and initiative—
effectively “working towards the Führer”—in a protracted process of
decision-making at the top that, besides Hitler, involved predomi-
nantly the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) and the German
Army’s General Staff.19
Hitler’s decision for war against the Soviet Union, universally dated
to 31 July 1940, changed profoundly the premises of German foreign
policy and thereby Berlin’s relations to Helsinki. Within the space of a
few months the neglected backwater, previously offered up to Stalin,
emerged as a strategic key player within Hitler’s complex alliance net-
work for his attack on the Soviet Union. In his rapprochement with
Helsinki Hitler deliberately avoided official channels such as the AA
and instead resorted to informal soundings undertaken by an emissary
of Reich Marshal Göring, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Veltjens, like
Göring a highly decorated fighter pilot of World War I. Despite rapidly
losing his influence on the making of Nazi foreign policy, Göring was
still able to hold on to a degree of power in relations to Scandinavia.
His distinctly aversive, often farcically emotional stand on German
neutrality during the Winter War, as well as his prewar contacts in the
region, uniquely qualified him and his emissaries for covert mediatory
activities such as the Veltjens’ mission. Veltjens’ mission was intended
to secretly negotiate a transit agreement with the Finnish government,
permitting Germany to transport troops to occupied Norway via
Finland. The mission itself does not appear surprising, inasmuch as
Hitler routinely preferred unofficial missions, conducted by a host of
special envoys, to the traditional structures of foreign policy, not least
the German diplomats, whom he pathologically distrusted.20
18
Die Weizsäcker-Papiere 1933–1950, ed. Leonidas Hill (Berlin, 1974), 23 May
1940, pp. 204–5.
19
On Kershaw’s theoretical approach (“working towards the Führer”) cf. Ian
Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945 (Stuttgart, 2000), p. 189; Anthony McElligott & Tim Kirk,
eds., Working Towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw (Manchester,
2003).
20
Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im
Schatten der Endlösung (Berlin, 1987), pp. 71 ff.; Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Nationalso-
zialistische Außenpolitik 1933–1938 (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), pp. 20 ff.
102 michael jonas
The Finnish willingness to accept Hitler’s rather unorthodox mode

of inter-state diplomacy, however, would have to be seen as an indica-
tion of the government’s general preparedness to compromise the basic
institutions of the country’s parliamentary system in a situation of self-
perceived existential crisis. The rapidly developing cooperation with
National Socialist Germany initially entailed arms deliveries in
exchange for transit rights for clearly set out numbers of German
troops on their way to occupied Norway, but in the coming months
grew in both character and quantity to eventually culminate in the
concrete arrangements of the German-Finnish military coalition—a
process not easily communicated through domestic parliamentary
institutions still dominated by the diverse and rather autonomous
Social Democratic Party of Finland. Suffice it to say, secrecy was as well
greatly required in the face of heightened suspicion and renewed pres-
sure on Moscow’s part. The core of the new Finnish leadership after the
Winter War, prime minister Risto Ryti and foreign minister Rolf
Witting for the government, Marshal Mannerheim as commander-in-
chief and defense minister Rudolf Walden for the military, was aware
early on of the given political conditions at home and quietly advo-
cated the abolition of parliamentarianism in its supposedly excessive
interwar variant. Practical steps towards what the United States ambas-
sador to Helsinki, Arthur Schoenfeld, frustratedly termed “a constitu-
tional democratic dictatorship” were, inter alia, the blatant by-passing
of parliament in the government’s negotiations with Veltjens from
August 1940 until well into 1941, the quiet official endorsement and
coordination of privately run recruitment activities for the Waffen-SS
in Finland and the changes to the Finnish constitution, most impor-
tantly the ratification of an emergency law in April 1941 that permitted
the centralization of the Finnish economy and its procedurally simpli-
fied adaption to the requirements of war.21 With the abundance of con-
crete measures and systemic adjustments the Finnish government had
swiftly made the country compatible for the projected inclusion into
the German orbit, expecting protection from Soviet pressure and, once
coordinated military preparations had begun to take shape in early
1941, accepting willingly the German lead towards aggression.
21
Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1939–1945, 1941, Vol. 1,
pp. 24–5, Schoenfeld to the secretary of state, 30 April 1941. Ueberschär speaks sum-
marily of a significant restriction and erosion of the country’s democratic institutions;
cf. Ueberschär, Hitler und Finnland, p. 269, generally pp. 205 ff.
Alliance without Allies: The German-Finnish Invasion of the Soviet

Union
In addition to the economic absorption of Finland into the German
Großwirtschaftsraum, Helsinki gladly approved of Hitler’s deliberate
reduction of the bilateral relations to their military-political core.
Hitler himself was clearly eager to hold off concrete commitments to
any of his future alliance partners for as long as possible. This applied
all the more to his envisaged campaign in the east, designed as a war of
destruction and quasi-imperial conquest, in which he wanted to act
independently from the requirements of alliance politics.22 The Finnish
leadership, however, saw itself bound by the country’s rather complex
domestic political situation and its traditionally good relations with
neutrals, most importantly Sweden, or the Western Powers, above all
the United States. Beyond intensified military and war economic coop-
eration the relations between Berlin and Helsinki therefore remained
entirely undefined.
In order to clarify Hitler’s own strategic premises vis-à-vis Finland,
the comparative-historical reference to Romania appears useful. Both
countries were in two ways essential for German war planning, indeed
for the consolidation of the entire German war effort: from a war-
strategic point of view, as developed in the emerging Operation
Barbarossa, Romania and Finland were intended to function as classi-
cal examples of supporting flanks in military conflict, strengthening
the envisaged invasion of the Soviet Union and, eventually, occupying
and administering territory, probably incorporating substantial areas
beyond the delineations of their own revisionist territorial ambitions.
In concrete terms the German military leadership intended Finland’s
forces, alongside German troops, to push forward towards the strategi-
cally vital Murmansk Railway and assist in the capture of Leningrad.
As a reward Berlin was prepared to cede large chunks of Northwestern
Russia to a massively enlarged Finnish state that spread far beyond the
wildest dreams of the country’s own proponents of the idea of Greater
Finland, including both the recovered Finnish and the newly con-
quered Russian parts of Karelia.23 The repeated German insistence on
22
Mark Mazower has recently stressed the underlying imperial features of Hitler’s
war in the east; cf. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe
(London, 2008).
23
Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot: Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema
suomalaisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982); Ohto Manninen,
104 michael jonas
Finland having to declare more excessive and explicit war aims during
the initial stages of the war against the Soviet Union remained largely
without effect. Even at its height in the autumn of 1941, when the
Finnish Army had restored the prewar borders of the state, the domes-
tic Finnish debate about the country’s expansionist aims always seemed
slightly domesticated, stifled by the eagerness of the Finnish govern-
ment to sustain its relations with the United States (and until December
1941 even Great Britain) and reinforced by the swift recognition of the
Finnish leadership that the war against the Soviet Union could not be
won in the outright fashion postulated at its beginning.24
Romania’s case differs slightly from the Finnish one, despite it obvi-
ously featuring as the southern military strategic pendant to Finland.
While Hitler had particularly begun to value Finland’s military capaci-
ties after the Winter War, accompanied by a heightened regard for
Mannerheim as the embodiment of the anti-Bolshevist Finnish soldier,
his perception of the Romanian military had always been distinctly
skeptical.25 Although he and with him most of the Nazi leadership cul-
tivated a certain admiration for Romania’s military dictator, Marshal
Antonescu, German assessments usually dismissed the organizational
and fighting capacities of the Romanian military. As a military factor,
the Romanian armed forces appeared, despite their extraordinary size
and willingness to participate in offensive operations, negligible
throughout—a prejudice reinforced by their presumably weak combat
performance, supposed lack of discipline and outright cowardice, as
seen through the eyes of the Nazi leadership. Goebbels’ bitter com-
mentary on the deteriorating situation at the Eastern Front during the
winter crisis of 1942–43 illustrates this disdain aptly: Stalingrad, in this
distorted view, does not appear as Hitler’s main strategic miscalcula-
tion, but as a result of the “complete failure” of Germany’s eastern allies,
Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvallisuudesta Suomen Saksan-

politiikassa 1941 (Helsinki, 1980); Jonas, Blücher, pp. 228 ff.
24
Tuomo Polvinen, Suomi kansainvälisessa politiikassa 1941–1947, Vol. 1:
Barbarossasta Teheraniin (Porvoo, 1979), pp. 60 ff.; Manfred Menger, “Deutschland
und der finnische ‘Sonderkrieg’ gegen die Sowjetunion,” in Bernd Wegner, ed., Zwei
Wege nach Moskau: Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt zum “Unternehmen Barbarossa” (Munich,
1991), pp. 547–63, here pp. 555 ff.
25
As a result of the total mobilization of the Winter War, Finland emerged as “the
strongest military power of the north,” outstripping the former regional power Sweden;
cf. PA/AA, Gesandtschaft Kowno, “Finnland,” January 1940—August 1940, Blücher to
AA, 19 April 1940 (cit.); Upton, Finland in Crisis, pp. 82–3; Ueberschär, Hitler und
Finnland, p. 174.
whose elite divisions would have been, according to Goebbels, hope-

lessly outperformed even by the “bakery divisions” and literally the
“last impedimenta” of the German Wehrmacht.26 Retreating Romanian
troops, utterly exhausted from the costly battle for Stalingrad, were,
along with their Italian and Hungarian counterparts, regularly abused
by passing German forces—with packaged excrement or even hand
grenades thrown at them to demonstrate one’s disdain.27
Central for the inclusion of Romania into the German orbit from the
autumn of 1940 onwards was therefore evidently another factor: the
country’s vast oil reserves in and around Ploesti in Walachia, which
ranked—according to prewar figures—with an output of 7.2 million
barrels second in Europe and seventh in the world. It is thus unsurpris-
ing that Hitler’s first order to the newly installed German military in
Romania was to occupy the oil fields and secure them for German
exploitation.28 While in the Romanian case war economic considera-
tions dominated military planning, the case of Finland appeared much
more complex. A high German opinion of Finnish military capacities
and comparatively blunt economic calculations seem to have been kept
in a carefully calibrated balance throughout.
The specifics of the military coordination prior to Barbarossa are
easily summarized. The rapprochement and offensive preparations
progressed from Veltjens’ various missions and the transit of the first
German troops and military equipment in the autumn of 1940 to the
military talks between the different high commands of both armed
forces held in May and June 1941 and the eventual deployment of two
(later three) German army corps to Northern Finland on the eve of
26
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente (hereafter Goebbels
Diaries), Part II: Diktate 1941–1945, ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1993 ff.), Vol. 7, 23
January 1943, p. 163; for similar statements of Hitler, recorded by Goebbels, cf. ibidem,
23 January 1943, p. 162, 8 February 1943, p. 285.
27
For a host of similar examples cf. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg
(DRZW), Vol. 8, Die Ostfront 1943/44: Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten,
ed. Karl-Heinz Frieser (Munich, 2007), pp. 44–5 (Bernd Wegner).
28
Philippe Marguerat, Le IIIe Reich et le pétrole roumain, 1938–1940: Contribution
à l’étude de la penetration économique allemande dans les Balkans à la veille et au début
de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Leiden, 1977); Jürgen Förster, “Rumäniens Weg in die
deutsche Abhängigkeit: Zur Rolle der deutschen Militärmission 1940/41,” Militärge-
schichtliche Mitteilungen 25 (1979), pp. 44–77; idem, “Zur Bündnispolitik Rumäniens
vor und während des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” in Manfred Messerschmidt et al., eds.,
Militärgeschichte: Probleme—Thesen—Wege (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 294–310; Rebecca A.
Hayes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–1940 (London, 2000).
106 michael jonas
Barbarossa. These developments were almost entirely limited to the

military side and rarely went further than the responsible German mil-
itary institutions and the inner circle of Finnish decision-makers, the
so-called sisärengas around the newly elected head-of-state President
Ryti that had emerged in the course of the previous months.29 Despite
becoming part of this process only rather late, the German ambassador
in Helsinki, Wipert von Blücher, has left us with one of the most elo-
quent and imaginative descriptions of the coalition’s genesis. His influ-
ential retrospective reflections on this crucial period have, since the
publication of his memoirs in 1950–51, often been cited. Blücher’s
strongly suggestive and therefore enormously persuasive metaphor of
Finland as mere driftwood in the escalating international game of the
big powers, the plaything of unscrupulous hegemonial interests out-
side its control, addressed postwar Finnish sensibilities and became a
classic, albeit rather second-hand example of the exculpatory nature of
Finnish postwar historiography and history culture.30 The essence of
Blücher’s retrospect, however, is essentially no postwar product, but
can be found in his contemporary reporting, whose premise often was
to prepare the ground for the Finnish government’s indeed deviant
policies vis-à-vis Berlin.31
Blücher’s own highly complex and, suffice it to say, strongly apolo-
getic conception of the Continuation War captures the contemporary
sentiment and perception within the emerging German-Finnish coali-
tion rather aptly. Based on his national-conservative and distinctly
anti-Bolshevik background, he had viewed the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact critically and time and again advanced the Finnish cause in Berlin,
most forcefully during the Winter War. His reserve was partly due to
certain largely home-brewed race-theoretical assumptions, proposing
a lack of compatibility between German and Slavic interests and
national characteristics.32 In his reporting of the late 1930s Blücher
29
Ohto Manninen, “Die Beziehungen zwischen den finnischen und deutschen
Militärbehörden in der Ausarbeitungsphase des Barbarossaplanes,” Militärgeschichtliche
Mitteilungen 26 (1979), pp. 79–96; DRZW, Vol. 4, Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, ed.
Horst Boog et al. (Stuttgart, 1983), pp. 371 ff.; Upton, Finland in Crisis, pp. 135 ff.;
Jonas, Blücher, pp. 188–9, 208 ff.
30
For the Finnish historiographical debate, see the introductory chapter above and
Tiina Kinnunen’s and Markku Jokisipilä’s chapter later in this book.
31
Cf. Blücher, Gesandter, p. 230: “Im Machtspiel der Großmächte sind den eigenen
Entschließungen der kleinen Staaten engste Grenzen gezogen. In der Turbulenz der
großen Politik wurde Finnland dahingerissen, wie das Treibholz auf den reißenden finn-
ischen Flüssen.”
32
PA/AA, R 104617, Blücher to AA, 25 June 1940.
consistently identified the Soviet Union as the sole potential aggressor

against the peaceful small state Finland, a premise he—and the pre-
dominant Finnish perception—saw reinforced by the Soviet invasion
of 30 November 1939. In keeping with the foundations of German
Randstaatenpolitik during and after World War I, which he had himself
helped to design, he traditionally favored the systemic weakening of
Russia, effectively even the latter’s lasting expulsion from Central
Eastern Europe. Against this backdrop, it does not seem surprising that
the political preferences of conservative German diplomats like Blücher
exhibited a certain ideological and conceptual overlapping with the
radical geopolitical ideas of National Socialism.
This certainly did not apply only to Blücher or other German repre-
sentatives in Finland, but also rubbed off on Finnish political and mili-
tary decision-makers, not least in the immediate wake of Barbarossa.33
For the German minister, as for the Finnish leadership, the common
military offensive against the Soviet Union therefore combined various
interests and motives. Although easily identifiable as a premeditated
war of aggression, in the contemporary perception of decision-makers
in Helsinki the offensive had to be first and foremost understood as a
praevenire, if not necessarily as a defensive war, intended to pre-empt
an anticipated Soviet attack against the country. Blücher’s reporting of
the crucial period around mid-1941 illustrates this aspect forcefully. To
him Helsinki’s “strict interpretation” of the Finnish participation in
war as a defensive enterprise was, at least in the more rigid terms of
international law, flawed, but all the more necessary for the sake of the
country’s stability both domestically and as an ally. This would, accord-
ing to unnamed “experts of the Finnish mind” that Blücher enjoyed
quoting, require that “the enemy bears the odium of the aggressor” and
is seen to do so.34
In practice, of course, Finnish participation in the war followed
rather obvious strategic premises: first and foremost the underlying
objective of permanently altering the geostrategic balance of the north-
eastern Baltic Sea region at the expense of the traditional great power
33
Poignant and rather representative are the statements of former state president
Svinhufvud in his contemporary exchanges with Blücher; cf. KA, Blücher Papers,
“Finnisches Tagebuch,” 28 January 1941; Blücher, Gesandter, pp. 215–6; see as well the
catalogue of Finnish expansionist desires, as developed by Witting and Ryti, in PA/AA,
R 29580, Blücher to AA, e.g., 1 and 11 September 1941; Manninen, Suur-Suomen
ääriviivat, pp. 243 ff.; Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot, pp. 46 ff.
34
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 1 September (cit. “interpretation”) and 11 June
1941 (cit. “odium”), as well as 18, 22, 23 and 25 June 1941.
108 michael jonas
Russia. Furthermore, the ideological depiction of the war as a crusade

against Bolshevism, proclaimed by both Berlin and Helsinki, could at
no time wholly conceal the—albeit comparatively modest—expan-
sionist aims that even the Finnish side pursued: the creation of
Greater Finland through the inclusion of (Soviet) Eastern Karelia.35
The eclectic character of this contemporary bundle of motives and
interpretations explains why generating a more unified historiographi-
cal view of the so-called Continuation War has been traditionally com-
plicated: ultimately, Finnish participation in Hitler’s “race-ideological
war of destruction,” his Lebensraumkrieg, appears as a condensation of
all these patterns of perception and interpretation. Depending on one’s
perspective and emphasis, Finland’s war in 1941–44 could be viewed as
both a war of aggression and defense, an ideological, expansionist, as
well as geopolitically motivated military offensive all in one, with the
identification and evaluation of the war’s differing ingredients still a
matter of historiographical and not least political controversy.36 This
conundrum, albeit these days largely resolved at the level of profes-
sional history, becomes empathically palpable in the debates surround-
ing Helsinki’s perpetual claim to have conducted a parallel, effectively
separate war against the Soviet Union, divorced from both the German
campaign and the great-power conflict in general. The contemporary
genesis of this reading will be subsequently described in greater detail.
II. The Political Symptomatology of an Elusive Coalition
The Personal and Institutional Level of Bilateral Relations

How autonomous, indeed almost anachronistically eccentric Berlin’s
diplomatic and military affairs with Helsinki appear is again best illus-
trated by comparative historical reference to Romania and its relations
to Nazi Germany. The considerable difference in German attitudes and
policy-making towards its two central allies at the Eastern Front can be
traced down to the lowest level of bilateral interaction, the staff-related
35
ADAP D, XIII.1, 52, Ryti to Hitler, 1 July 1941, p. 51 (cit.).
36
Henrik Meinander, “Sharp Trends, Soft Turnings: Remarks on Finnish Historical
Research in the Twentieth Century,” in Frank Meyer & Jan Eivind Myhre, eds., Nordic
Historiography in the 20th Century: An Anthology (Oslo, 2000), pp. 185–207; Markku
Jokisipilä, “ ‘Kappas vaan, saksalaisia!’ Keskustelu Suomen jatkosodan 1941–1944
luonteesta,” in idem, ed., Sodan totuudet—Yksi suomalainen vastaa 5,7 ryssää (Helsinki,
2007), pp. 153–82.
decisions in Berlin’s relations to Helsinki and Bucharest respectively. It

is here that the comparative history of the German-Finnish-Romanian
triangle becomes almost tangible.
Germany’s relations with the Helsinki government were throughout
World War II managed by the already mentioned conservative diplo-
mat Wipert von Blücher, an old school aristocrat with a wealth of dip-
lomatic experience, an intimate knowledge of the country and its elites
as well as an extraordinarily competent—and largely non-Nazi—staff,
the envy of all foreign legations in Helsinki. In terms of character, the
Wilhelmine traditionalist Blücher seemed slightly displaced within
Hitler’s Third Reich—an outmoded, unworldly diplomat, one of the
useless “Santa Clauses of the Wilhelmstrasse,” as Hitler once remarked
with evident disdain.37 But with credentials like these, a German diplo-
mat fitted aptly into the climate of a country whose traditional
Germanophone and culturally often Germanophile orientation fre-
quently translated into politics. Among the Finnish elites in politics,
the economy and the military Blücher was thus extremely well con-
nected. His political friendships, often based on strong personal
bonds, extended to, inter alia, wartime president Risto Ryti, the liberal-
conservative former prime minister Toivo M. Kivimäki and Finland’s
Germanophile foreign minister Rolf Witting. The public signal Blücher
sent, more habitually than politically, was one predominantly against
the NSDAP and in favor of the traditional structures of society and of
German-Finnish relations.38
In that, he was assisted by his military counterpart, the German liai-
son general at the Finnish Army High Command, Waldemar Erfurth,
an old friend of Mannerheim from their common days at a Russian
cadet school and a non-Nazi as well as erudite part-time scholar.39
Erfurth is not the only example of a German official in Finland having,
figuratively speaking, gone native. His long tenure at the Finnish High
Command, reinforced by an uncritical admiration of Mannerheim,
brought him into a sustained conflict of loyalty, all the more against the
37
Döscher, Auswärtige Amt, p. 86 (cit. “Weihnachtsmänner in der Wilhelmstraße”).
38
Jonas, Blücher, pp. 257 ff.
39
It is to be regretted that there has not been a comprehensive biographical study of
Erfurth, who was central not only to the Finnish-German relations in World War II,
but also a published military strategist and one of the German Army’s official histori-
ans. His contribution to the historiography of Finland at war is Erfurth, Der finnische
Krieg 1941–1944 (Wiesbaden, 1950; several ed., Finnish and Swedish translations)
110 michael jonas
backdrop of the disintegrating bilateral relationships later in 1944.

Contrary to the much more realistic and at times even unusually hard-
line Blücher, Erfurth’s reporting of the final months of the Finnish-
German alliance appears erroneous to the degree of deliberate
distortion. While Blücher and other local German representatives con-
sistently pointed to the possibility and finally the inevitability of the
Finnish breakaway through the course of 1943–44, Erfurth apparently
refused to alert his superiors in the OKW to the developments and
thereby permitted Mannerheim and the Finnish military leadership
greater room for maneuver.40
Often, though, Erfurth’s and Blücher’s actions complemented each
other. Both tirelessly presented the Finnish point of view to Berlin,
thereby incorporating their own conservative agenda, which opposed
radical, often party-driven solutions in favor of—usually—balanced
judgments and political reason. By fiercely defending the prerogatives
of their own commissions in Finland, Erfurth, Blücher and the latter’s
legation furthermore kept the influence of both the SS and institutions
of the NSDAP at a relative minimum. The normal procedure of bilat-
eral relations was therefore rarely disrupted. This becomes especially
apparent in the dissolution of the bilateral relations in September 1944,
which, as will be outlined subsequently, could hardly have taken place
in a more amicable manner.
The Third Reich’s representation in Romania was, by any measure,
diametrically opposed to those premises. Mirroring the turbulent
domestic political situation of the country, Berlin was—more by acci-
dent than by systematic deployment—represented by an array of dif-
fering institutions and individuals, most of them less than satisfactorily
competent in their assignments and competing with one another for
influence on Nazi Germany’s policy towards Romania on the one hand
and on Bucharest’s internal affairs on the other.41 Directly prior to
Antonescu’s counter-coup against the Iron Guard in January 1941,
Berlin reshuffled its local personnel, replacing, among others, the
40
Cf. Erfurth’s war diary, KA, Erfurth Papers, for the period ca. 3 August 1944 to
2 September 1944; Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau, documenta-
tion of Colonel Horst Kitschmann (MSg 2/3317), “Als Militärattaché in Helsinki,”
December 1962, pp. 159 ff., who is astonishingly explicit on the issue; Menger,
Deutschland und Finnland, p. 214.
41
Förster, “Rumäniens Weg,” pp. 44 ff.; DRZW, Vol. 4, pp. 327–64 (Jürgen Förster);
Dennis Deletant, “German-Romanian Relations, 1941–1944,” in Jonathan Adelman,
ed., Hitler and His Allies in World War Two (London, 2008), pp. 166–85.
professional—though largely passive—diplomat Wilhelm Fabricius

with Manfred von Killinger, a former Freikorps leader, militarist writer
and old school Nazi politician. Killinger’s deployment to Bucharest has
to be seen as a consequence of Reich foreign minister Ribbentrop’s
strategy of reactivating old stormtrooper leaders like Killinger in order
to prevent the SS from infiltrating the AA all too heavily.42 Even the
most ardent opponents of the German foreign office, however, who
should in theory have been satisfied by Killinger’s appointment, were
flabbergasted by Ribbentrop’s choice: “One cannot simply place a
stormtrooper, who knows how to properly parade, onto a diplomatic
posting, because problems are not being solved only by cunning and
audaciousness,” Goebbels noted on hearing the news of Killinger’s
promotion.43
Killinger’s abysmal performance in Bucharest culminated in his
utter incapacity to anticipate Romania’s breakaway from the Axis in
August 1944, which left the Foreign Ministry disorientated and local
German institutions dangerously unprepared for the required orderly
withdrawal from Romania. Anxious not to be captured by advancing
Soviet or indeed Romanian troops, Killinger took his own life in the
German legation, but not before having, according to contemporary
reports, madly shot around the place and demanded that everyone
would have to “die for the Führer.”44 Even Himmler’s chief of foreign
intelligence at the Reich Main Security Office, the slick SS-Brigadeführer
Walter Schellenberg, concluded in retrospect that the man, Killinger,
“was certainly not quite normal.”45
In one policy area, though, Killinger—from a Nazi point of view—
almost excelled. His and his staff ’s role in radicalizing Antonescu’s
anti-Semitic policies, which from mid-1942 onwards led to the exter-
mination of the Jewish population of Romanian-occupied Transnistria,
was rooted in an initiative far exceeding his usual indifference towards
42
Döscher, Auswärtige Amt, pp. 205–6; on Killinger cf. Hermann Weiß,
Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), pp. 263–4;
Rebecca A. Haynes, “Germany and the Establishment of the Romanian National
Legionary State, September 1940,” Slavonic and East European Review 77 (1999): 4,
pp. 700–72, here p. 724.
43
Goebbels Diaries II, Vol. 8, 9 May 1943; Paul Seabury, Die Wilhelmstrasse: Die
Geschichte der deutschen Diplomatie 1930–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1956), p. 297.
44
“German Slays His Staff: Von Killinger Said to Have Run Amok in Rumanian
Location,” New York Times, 8 September 1944.
45
Reinhard R. Doerries, Hitler’s Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations
of Walter Schellenberg (London, 2003), p. 264.
112 michael jonas
Romanian politics and the attendance of the bilateral relations.46 His

activities reached their peak in his repeated lobbying of Antonescu to
extend Nazi extermination policies as well to the Jewish population of
Romania—an attempt that eventually failed against the backdrop of
Stalingrad and the Soviet resurgence in the east. Compared to Killinger’s
anti-Semitic policy agenda, the behavior of his counterpart in Helsinki,
Wipert von Blücher, differs significantly. Based on both principle and
his close reading of the Finnish political situation, Blücher repeatedly
discouraged possible, albeit not necessarily probable moves against the
rather limited number of Jews in Finland. Against that backdrop, even
Himmler was forced to postpone any thought of including Finland’s
Jewish population in the Final Solution.47
It is wholly feasible to extend this comparative examination of per-
sonnel and the practice of coalition warfare to other institutions, espe-
cially the relations between the Wehrmacht and the military leadership
of Finland and Romania respectively, but nowhere does the rift between
political reason, prudence and realism on the one hand, and fatal
incompetence, negligence and ideological zeal on the other, surface as
powerfully as in the comparison of Blücher and Killinger and their
respective diplomatic missions.
Conceptualizing Relations: Alliance, Co-Belligerence,

Brothers-in-Arms?
Finland’s inclusion in Operation Barbarossa, as sketched out above,
leaves virtually no doubt that the German-Finnish attack against the
Soviet Union was at the very least a military joint venture with the
shared purpose of conducting a war of aggression.48 Contemporary
protestations to the contrary, delivered by both Berlin and Helsinki,
46
See the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in
Romania (2004), pp. 64 ff., 161 ff., 168–9, 173–4, 214, 250; Armin Heinen, Rumänien,
der Holocaust und die Logik der Gewalt (Munich, 2007), pp. 83 ff.; Dennis Deletant,
Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania 1940–1944 (London,
2006), pp. 212 ff.
47
Michael Jonas, “ ‘Die deutsche Judenpolitik entfremdet uns innerlich dem finnis-
chen Volk’: Wipert von Blücher, die NS-Judenpolitik und Finnland im Zweiten
Weltkrieg,” Nordeuropaforum 7 (2004): 2, pp. 3–26; Mauno Jokipii, “Himmlerin
Suomen-matka v. 1942,” Historiallinen arkisto 58 (1962), pp. 417–41; Holmila, “Finland
and the Holocaust,” pp. 422–3.
48
Gerd R. Ueberschär aptly terms the German-Finnish relationship a militärische
Aktionsgemeinschaft; cf. DRZW, Vol. 4, p. 402 (cit.), generally pp. 388 ff.; Ueberschär,
Hitler und Finnland, pp. 286 ff.; Menger, Deutschland und Finnland, pp. 98 ff.; Jokipii,
have been shown to be either false or fabricated or usually both. If any-

thing, Stalin’s preparations for war against Nazi Germany or his plans
for a renewed invasion of Finland were so little developed and uncon-
crete that the German-Finnish invasion of late June 1941 does not
seem to bear the central characteristics of a preventive war as prohib-
ited anyway by the conventions of modern international law and the
classic doctrine of bellum iustum.49
In its genesis and foundations the German-Finnish joint venture
appears first and foremost as a military coalition. It does, however, lack
some substantial, indeed constitutive features of what is usually under-
stood by coalition warfare. The Finnish conception of its own role as a
belligerent and the country’s war aims related at best only partially to
Hitler’s ideologically motivated and aggressively expansionist war in
the east. The only clearly identifiable common denominator was, even
from the Finnish vantage point, the annihilation of the Soviet Union
and the lasting expulsion of Russia from Europe—that already men-
tioned crusade against Bolshevism, in which anti-Bolshevism, small-
state expansionism and a preventively reinterpreted, but in effect
offensively executed, sense of security merged in a most eclectic and
constantly varying fashion. Much more therefore separated the sup-
posed allies than united them: wildly divergent political systems and
forms of government, peculiarly disparate ideological premises and—
heavily influenced by the former—a priori different conceptions of for-
eign politics and the practice of war. These differences in politics,
ideological tradition and strategic disposition permitted Helsinki to
perpetually claim a special, essentially privileged status within the
German orbit. In subsequent years, the Finnish government used this
relative privilege in order to redefine its involvement in the war as an
autonomous and parallel, respectively separate enterprise and to assert
this position time and again in its own foreign relations, not least
towards the Western Allies.50
Jatkosodan synty, pp. 318 ff., 565 ff.; Mauno Jokipii, “Finland’s Entrance into the
Continuation War,” Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 53 (1982), pp. 85–103.
49
The Soviet aerial operations against Finland, however, right after the German
invasion of Soviet territory, but still before Finland’s definite entry into the war on
26 June 1941 would have to be qualified as a pre-emptive, anticipatory strike. On the
debate, see Bernd Wegner, “Präventivkrieg 1941? Zur Kontroverse um ein militärhis-
torisches Scheinproblem,” in Jürgen Elvert & Susanne Krauß, eds., Historische Debatten
und Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2003), pp. 206–19.
50
Richard L. DiNardo has therefore described the anti-Soviet military alliance as
dysfunctional; cf. idem, “The Dysfunctional Coalition: The Axis Powers and the
114 michael jonas
All that said, Finland’s war effort, indeed its existence as a state, was
intrinsically linked to Nazi Germany. “Without Germany’s strategic
support and its massive deliveries of arms and food provisions,”
Markku Jokisipilä has aptly stated the obvious, “it would have been
impossible for Finland to wage war.”51 In the face of the close practical
integration of the German and Finnish war efforts and Finland’s
increasing, in the end close to total war economic dependence on the
Third Reich, the contemporary postulate of the Finnish government to
have conducted an autonomous defensive war appears at any rate weak-
ened, if not substantially invalidated. Postwar and especially post-Cold
War interpretations of an almost identical kind, emphasizing the sepa-
rate war thesis and shared by both the Finnish public and the country’s
political elites, are to be seen as manifestations of the reorientation of
Finnish foreign policy and its impact on Finnish self-perception. Their
scholarly and historiographical value is evidently limited.52
The same has to be said, however, about recent attempts to view
Finland’s participation in the war solely as a satellite contribution to
the Nazi war of destruction and annihilation in the east and to thereby
force the country into a radical revision of its collectively internalized
historical self.53 Both positions—autonomous co-belligerent as well as
satellite ally—hardly do justice to the complexity of Finland’s political
behavior and actions throughout World War II. In them we instead
find distinctly contemporary views and—in their wake—politically
motivated historiographical interpretations that seem to have lost their
cogency decades ago: on the one hand the official interpretation of the
Finnish government and the country’s patriotically burdened early his-
toriography; on the other Moscow’s view that was gradually transferred
onto the Western Allies and profoundly shaped the Paris Peace Treaties
of 10 February 1947.54 Against this backdrop, my subsequent remarks
Eastern Front in WWII,” Journal of Military History 60 (1996): 4, pp. 711–30; idem,
Germany and the Axis Powers: From Coalition to Collapse (Lawrence, KS, 2005).
51
Markku Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia? Suomi, Hitlerin Saksan liittosopimus-
vaatimukset ja Ryti-Ribbentropin sopimus (Helsinki, 2004), p. 451.
52
Jokisipilä, “Kappas vaan, saksalaisia,” pp. 154 ff.
53
Symptomatic here the futile debate about Henrik Arnstad’s biography of Swedish
wartime foreign minister Christian Günther; for critical reviews cf. Henrik Meinander,
“Arnstads bok är inte seriös,” Svenska dagbladet, 3 December 2006; Bo Huldt, “Anfall
var Finlands enda val,” Svenska dagbladet, 6 December 2006; albeit problematic itself,
Stefan Forss, “Finland och fortsättningskriget,” Kungliga krigsvetenskapsakademiens
handlingar och tidskrift 210 (2006): 6, pp. 71–9.
54
Markku Jokisipilä has poignantly suggested that the debate about Arnstad’s
polemic would therefore have the all-too familiar smell of naphthalene; idem, “Arnstad
dissociate themselves deliberately from the often jejune controversy

about the nature of the German-Finnish relations in the early 1940s
and instead try to find other means of elucidating the period and con-
stellation in question, not least through the application of Alf Lüdtke’s
rather untranslatable concept of Eigen-Sinn, that highly developed
sense of self that prevailed Helsinki’s affairs with Berlin.55
The contemporary Finnish preference for a politically undefined
relationship with Nazi Germany should in any case not obscure the
fact that Finland became rapidly—and knowingly so—an integral and
indispensable part of a war coalition centered on Berlin. De facto the
coordination of German and Finnish preparations for war appears
often significantly more intense than in comparable cases of coalition
warfare in the early phase of World War II. As primary examples one
could refer to Germany’s relations with the Soviet Union prior to their
common attack on Poland and Berlin’s wary affairs with Italy in the
run-up to the offensive in the west; both were politically fixed through
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the pathetically called Pact of Steel
respectively, but did at no time possess a military dimension in terms
of concrete preparations for war, as the German-Finnish-Romanian
coalition triangle certainly did.56 To view the Soviet invasion of Eastern
Poland on 17 September 1939 or the belated and generally unwanted
Italian entry into the war against France as military operations divorced
from the original German-Polish and Franco-German conflicts respec-
tively would nonetheless seem grossly illogical.
As with the cited examples, Finland’s entry into the war, three days
after the beginning of the offensive against the Soviet Union, is simply
inconceivable without the German precedence. The lack of a contrac-
tually binding Finnish commitment, as it existed in the Romanian case
in the form of the country’s accession to the so-called Tripartite Pact,
primarily relates to Helsinki’s deliberately cultivated reluctance, but
ja Torstila huutavat toistensa ohi: Suomalais-ruotsalainen historiariita haisee naftalii-

nilta,” Turun Sanomat, 3 December 2006.
55
Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom
Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg, 1993); idem, “Geschichte und ‘Eigensinn’,”
in Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt, eds., Alltagskultur, Subjektivität und Geschichte: Zur
Theorie und Praxis von Alltagsgeschichte (Münster, 1994), pp. 139–53. Tatjana
Tönsmeyer has applied the concept productively to the analysis of the German-Slovak
relations of World War II; cf. idem, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939–1945:
Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn, 2003).
56
On Romania’s integration in German operational planning cf. Förster, “Rumäniens
Weg,” pp. 44 ff.; DRZW, Vol. 4, pp. 330 ff.
116 michael jonas
can likewise be ascribed to Hitler’s obvious unwillingness to upgrade

Finland to the status of an ally in the war against the Soviet Union; by
doing so, he avoided the risk of seeing his own racially-ideologically
motivated conception of a ruthlessly annihilationist and expansionist
war in the east unnecessarily watered down, first and foremost by pos-
sible intervention from well-meaning allies.57 The Finnish entry into
the war on the evening of 25 June 1941 has thus to be qualified as nei-
ther an exclusively reactive decision on the part of an otherwise peace-
desiring Finnish government nor the prelude to a separate war whose
relation to the great power conflict and the German offensive against
the Soviet Union would have been entirely coincidental.58
Contemporarily, however, the Finnish government made sure that it
was not swallowed by its overarching coalition partner. Despite having
entered a “new phase of politics,” as Finnish foreign minister Witting
communicated to Blücher, the residua of an older, in Witting’s and
Berlin’s view outmoded politics were being guarded and preserved
until the summer of 1944.59 An essential asset of this supposedly anach-
ronistic political orientation was the vital role that the Western Allies,
particularly the United States, occupied in Finnish foreign political
thinking and strategy. To want both extremes simultaneously—a for-
eign political realignment with Nazi Germany at its center while pre-
serving the remainder of the old affiliations—was to an acute observer
like Blücher less an expression of realpolitik, but rather a tangible indi-
cation of the workings of the “Finnish mind.” These workings, so
Blücher and Erfurth argued forcefully, would have to be respected and
accommodated, no more so than in German policy-making.60
57
DRZW, Vol. 4, pp. 401–2 (cit.); Gerd R. Ueberschär, “Guerre de coalition ou
guerre séparée: Conception et structures de la stratégie germano-finlandaise dans la
guerre contre l’URSS, 1941–1944,” Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 30 (1980),
pp. 27–68; idem, “Koalitionskriegführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Probleme der
deutsch-finnischen Waffenbrüderschaft im Kampf gegen die Sowjetunion,” in
Messerschmidt et al., Militärgeschichte, pp. 355–82.
58
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 18–25 June 1941; KA, Blücher Papers, protocols
of Blücher’s daily talks with Witting, 10–25 June 1941; Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolai-
sia, pp. 49 ff.; Markku Jokisipilä, “Die Sonderkriegsthese als Havarie oder Meisterstück
eines außenpolitischen Täuschungsmanövers? Finnland und Deutschlands
Bündnisvertragsforderungen 1943–1944,” in Edgar Hösch et al., eds., Deutschland und
Finnland im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1999), pp. 45–64; Menger, “Sonderkrieg,”
pp. 547 ff.; on the Finnish Army’s integration in German operational schemes cf., e.g.,
Manninen, “Barbarossaplan,” pp. 89 ff.; DRZW, Vol. 4, pp. 810 ff.; Jokipii, Jatkosodan
synty, pp. 344–5.
59
ADAP D, Vol. XIII.1, 262, Blücher to AA, 27 June 1941, p. 342.
60
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 11 June 1941.
The main contemporary concern for Finland, apart from the failing
Blitzkrieg in the east, swiftly became the conceptualization of its rela-
tionship with Nazi Germany. With his “Proclamation to the German
People” and the accompanying order of the day for 22 June 1941, Hitler
had created prerequisites the Finnish government was understandably
unwilling to share. In particular, his de facto correct, politically, how-
ever, grossly careless phrasing that German troops would be operating
“in league with Finnish divisions,” anticipating the formal Finnish
entry into the war by three full days, placed an initial strain on bilateral
diplomatic relations.61 Blücher’s own intervention, supporting the
Finnish Foreign Ministry’s attempts to contain the damage, revealingly
asked for the German press and broadcasting companies to be
instructed “not to treat Finland as an ally [Bundesgenosse] in the war
against Russia yet.”62 Hitler’s and the German Foreign Ministry’s eclec-
tic phrasings, as well as Mannerheim’s initially rather similar state-
ments, illustrate first and foremost the semantic limbo in which both
partners found themselves until well into the autumn of 1941.63 Only
then did Blücher, the German Foreign Ministry’s chief expert on
Scandinavia, Werner von Grundherr, and the Finnish government
succeed in developing a terminology outwardly acceptable to both
sides. This, of course, was largely due to a slight misunderstanding.
The Finnish government’s repeated suggestion to refer to one
another as literal “brothers-in-arms” cleverly utilized the direct trans-
latability of the Finnish concept aseveli—in German Waffenbruder—a
legally undefined term that bore in both languages deeply archaic and
thus emotional connotations, which, initially at least, must have
61
DRZW, Vol. 4, p. 400 (cit.); Ueberschär, Hitler und Finnland, p. 308; Manfred
Menger, Deutschland und Finnland, p. 109, has already pointed to the fact that Hitler’s
utterance was by no means intended to present Finland with a fait accompli, as retro-
spectively suggested by C.G.E. Mannerheim, Erinnerungen (Zürich, 1952), p. 440; Max
Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, Vol. II.2 (Würzburg, 1962–
63), p. 1731, records the version: “Im Verein mit finnischen Kameraden.” The Finnish
government subsequently revised the embarrassing passage from “in league…” to “side
by side with…”; cf. PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 23 June 1941; KA, Blücher Papers,
20–22 June 1941; ADAP D, Vol. XII.2, 675, Blücher to AA, 22 June 1941, p. 904.
62
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 23 June 1941 (cit.), as well as 22 and 25 June
1941; KA, Blücher Papers, 23–25 June 1941; ADAP D, Vol. XII.2, 675, p. 904; Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1941, Vol. 1, pp. 40–1.
63
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 30 June 1941; see as well Mannerheim’s so-called
Scabbard Order in July 1941, which celebrates in a far less restrained way “the freedom
of Karelia and a great Finland”; PA/AA, R 29580, Zechlin to AA, 13 July 1941; Menger,
“Sonderkrieg,” pp. 552–3; Ueberschär, Hitler und Finnland, p. 311.
118 michael jonas
seemed rather suitable to Berlin. On the German side it actually

appears likely that above the level of Blücher, Grundherr and Erfurth
hardly any of the central decision-makers ever really adhered to the
terminological conventions developed in the autumn of 1941. In the
course of the coming years, foreign minister Ribbentrop referred to
Finland exchangeably as a brother-in-arms, an ally and in one incident
accidentally even as a neutral.64 Hitler, suffice to say, continued to
offend Finnish sensibilities, seemingly not caring about Helsinki’s
semantic subtlety and cheerfully varying the different topoi of commit-
ment and alliance. Only Helsinki’s almost brazen attempt to translate
the concept Waffenbrüderschaft as “co-belligerence” in its own diplo-
matic relations with the United States briefly irritated Berlin. In its lit-
eral meaning co-belligerence covered the Finnish government’s view of
its involvement in the war obviously much more aptly than the emotive
German and Finnish conceptual alternatives respectively. Stripped of
its sentimental connotation, the Finnish-German relationship, as
defined by Helsinki, in the winter of 1941–42 was suddenly seen to
acquire a completely different, far less binding significance than ini-
tially assumed. That, not the generally undefined status of Finland’s
involvement in the war, panicked Berlin.65
Contrary to Berlin’s rather naïve and unreflected sensitivities,
Blücher clearly understood the Finnish need for an official pattern of
speech and therefore attempted to accommodate Helsinki’s grievances
to the highest possible degree. He indeed later even claimed to have
developed the entire terminological convention in tandem with his
close friend Witting—an assertion not fully corroborated by his own
diary notes. His importance in bringing about a diplomatic solution
that strongly favored the Finnish interest remains undoubted, though.66
It is Blücher and his perception of the concept that forcefully illustrate
how the actual misunderstanding emerged—or rather how clever
political maneuvering on the part of the Finnish government deceived
64
Collection of the German Foreign Ministry at the Finnish National Archives
(KA, AA), 105, Ribbentrop to Blücher, 13 February 1944; for further references
cf. Jonas, Blücher, pp. 223 ff.
65
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 18 February 1942, and under-secretary of state
to Blücher, 18 February 1942; on the English concept cf. R. Michael Berry, American
Foreign Policy and the Finnish Exception: Ideological Preferences and Wartime Realities
(Helsinki, 1987), pp. 100–1.
66
KA, Blücher Papers, Blücher’s “Fazit über die Notenfrage,” 24 June 1943; cf. Jonas,
Blücher, p. 222.
Berlin throughout the early 1940s. For him and the majority of German
decision-makers, with the probable exception of Mannerheim’s old
friend Erfurth, the fact that Finland was apparently not bound to its
German partner by a formally contracted alliance was secondary; it
was, as Blücher desperately tried to bring home, not a meaningless alli-
ance based on ink, but instead a commitment of brothers-in-arms
enforced by mutually shed blood.67 Significantly, he furthermore
assumed that his Finnish counterparts would undoubtedly perceive
their German ally in similar morally loaded terms. He told Berlin that
a “moral commitment” would have a much stronger effect on the Finns
than a juridical obligation in terms of international law.68 This was cer-
tainly true for large segments of the Finnish military, whose relations
to their German counterparts remained cordial throughout. It would
as well apply to notoriously Germanophile politicians like Witting
or the aged former Finnish state president Svinhufvud, another of
Blücher’s close friends, whose often defective judgment certainly
obscured his own perception. For the majority of Finnish governmen-
tal representatives, though, the only morality that affected their deci-
sions was their patriotic duty to assure the survival of Finland by all
means possible. It appears downright tragicomic that Blücher, whose
own professional credo was rooted in the premise that “politics should
never ignore the laws of raison d’état,” was in the end unable to empath-
ically comprehend the behavior and decision-making of his Finnish
one-time partners and partly even close friends, clearly governed by
the same traditions of raison d’état.69
The conceptual discourse had, of course, another offspring, much
more heatedly debated and therefore exhaustively addressed in Finnish
and international historiography: the Finnish preference to describe
the country’s involvement in the war as a separate enterprise brought
about by renewed Soviet aggression. When the conception of Finland’s
67
KA, AA, 103, Office State Secretary, Finnland, Vol. 6, January 1943–May 1943,
Blücher to AA, 17 February 1943 (cit.).
68
KA, AA, 103, Blücher to AA, 19 February 1943 (cit.); Blücher, Gesandter,
pp. 323–4; Michael Salewski, “Staatsräson und Waffenbrüderschaft: Probleme der
deutsch-finnischen Politik 1941–1944,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 27 (1979): 3,
pp. 370–91, here p. 386; Polvinen, Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 263–4; Jokisipilä,
Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 68–9.
69
Salewski, “Staatsräson,” p. 370 (cit.); almost identical Staatsarchiv Munich,
Denazification file Blücher, Blücher’s case for the defense, 22 May 1947; KA, Blücher
Papers, Blücher’s memoranda, inter alia, 29 and 31 October 1940 (twice), 24 June 1943,
7, 16, 17 and 30 July 1943; Blücher, Gesandter, p. 337.
120 michael jonas
supposedly separate war arrived first on the diplomatic stage in the

autumn of 1941, it certainly caused a degree of havoc in Berlin and
subsequently in German-Finnish relations. In the long-run, though,
Germany was prepared to accept the at best awkward Finnish self-
understanding, as long as its propagandist application remained
reduced to the country’s sustained relationships with both Washington
and the European neutrals, first and foremost Stockholm.
The concept itself appears to have been a by-product of Witting’s
own negotiations with the Swedish government at the eve of Barbarossa
and was now handily exported to denote Finland’s overall status within
the international conflict.70 For Blücher it seems to have been virtually
inconceivable in 1941 that, once coined and implemented, the entirely
theoretical and factually absurd figure of a separate war could ever
meaningfully translate into diplomatic reality. Under the influence of
Witting, he even calmed fears on the part of the AA to that effect, stat-
ing from September 1941 onwards that the present idea of a separate
war would by no means pave the way for the conclusion of a Finnish
separate peace and therefore exit from the war.71 Along those rather
restricted lines the Finnish reinvention as an effective neutral-at-war
seemed bearable, if not overtly convincing, and was increasingly
adopted by Finnish decision-makers and, albeit reluctantly, their
German and American counterparts respectively. The evolution of the
idea from propagandist chimera to genuinely internalized foreign
political identity can be seen as symptomatic for that persistent Finnish
Eigen-Sinn, which made the country’s complex position within the
German orbit a special case indeed—a case sui generis, as Blücher
vehemently argued.72
From Disenchantment to Dissociation: Berlin/Helsinki, 1943–44

The heightened Finnish expectations towards Germany and a swift
victory in the east cooled early on. After the Soviet Union failed to
70
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 3 July 1941; KA, Blücher Papers, 3 July 1941; on
the negotiations cf. DRZW, Vol. 4, pp. 410–1; Wilhelm M. Carlgren, Svensk utrikespoli-
tik 1939–1945 (Stockholm, 1973), pp. 299 ff.; Leif Björkman, Sverige inför Operation
Barbarossa: Svensk neutralitetspolitik 1940–1941 (Stockholm, 1971), pp. 337 ff.; Göran
B. Nilsson, “Midsommarkrisen 1941,” Historisk Tidskrift 91 (1971): 4, pp. 477–532.
71
PA/AA, R 29580, Blücher to AA, 2 and 3 September 1941; Polvinen, Barbarossasta
Teheraniin, pp. 65–6; Menger, “Sonderkrieg,” p. 557.
72
KA, Blücher Papers, Blücher’s “Palermo-Petsamo,” 31 October 1940, resp.
“Finnland-Deutschland,” 16 July 1943; cf. Menger, “Sonderkrieg,” pp. 555 ff.; Polvinen,
Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 60 ff.
collapse as projected and survived the winter of 1941–42 greatly

strained, though nonetheless basically intact, Helsinki’s military-polit-
ical leadership adjusted their projections accordingly. Mannerheim’s
early and “boundless pessimism,” surfacing from late 1941 onwards,
transpired even to the German side and led the way for a whole series
of increasingly gloomy predictions on the part of both the Finnish gov-
ernment and the country’s better informed public.73 Helsinki’s deepen-
ing skepticism and the risk that their essential ally in the northeast
could break ranks left Berlin decidedly anxious, without, however,
really being able to counter the given perception. A number of ill-
targeted propaganda initiatives appeared ludicrous and desperate, all
the more against the backdrop of the battle of Stalingrad. With such
material and the general lack of clear information on Berlin’s part, the
frustrated Blücher insisted in late 1942, “one cannot hold political con-
versations with leading Finns any more.”74 What Germany instead
needed in order to bring Finland back into the boat was, first and fore-
most, military success in the east. The lost twin battles of Stalingrad
and Leningrad, however, consolidated the increasingly dominant
Finnish impression that the earlier “axiom of a German victory” had to
be profoundly revised.75
Not even Hitler’s spontaneous visit to Finland, occasioned by
Mannerheim’s 75th birthday on 4 June 1942, was able to counter this
perception. In his congratulatory speech at the Finnish High Command
in Mikkeli Hitler pulled out all the stops in order to combat Finnish
pessimism. Mannerheim responded warmly, though without commit-
ting Finland further. Hitler’s publicity stunt certainly produced a brief
73
KA, Erfurth Papers, 8 January 1942, p. 313 (cit.), whose citation is based on a talk
with the chief of the Finnish General Staff, Erik Heinrichs; KA, AA, 102, Blücher to
AA, 22 October 1942; KA, Blücher Papers, 21 resp. 22 October 1942; cf. as well J. K.
Paasikivis dagböcker 1941–1944: Samtal i ond tid (Helsinki, 1991), 20 December 1942,
pp. 210–1; Väinö Tanner, Vägen till fred 1943–44 (Helsinki, 1952), pp. 9 ff.; Blücher,
Gesandter, pp. 302–3.
74
KA, AA, 102, Blücher to AA, 3 December 1942 (cit.); KA, Blücher Papers,
3 December 1942.
75
KA, AA, 102, Blücher to AA, 22 October 1942 (cit.); Paasikivis dagböcker 1941–
1944, 27 January 1943, p. 216; cf. in particular Blücher’s talk with Ryti: KA, Blücher
Papers, 14 January 1943; Risto Ryti, Risto Rytin päiväkirjat 1940–1944: “Käymme eril-
listä sotaamme,” eds. Ohto Manninen & Kauko Rumpunen (Helsinki, 2006), 14 January
1943, pp. 227–8; on Stalingrad in the Finnish perception cf. Bernd Wegner, “Jenseits
der Waffenbrüderschaft: Die deutsch-finnischen Beziehungen im Schatten von
Stalingrad,” in Jürgen Förster, ed., Stalingrad: Ereignis—Wirkung—Symbol, 2nd ed.
(Munich, 1993), pp. 293–309; Risto Peltovuori, Sankarikansa ja kavaltajat: Suomi kol-
mannen valtakunnan lehdistössä 1940–1944 (Helsinki, 2000), pp. 159 ff.
122 michael jonas
period of stabilization in the bilateral affairs, not least because of his

widely known aversion to leaving the Reich. Being honored by a birth-
day visit of such a surprising nature was certainly indicative of the
esteem in which Berlin held its Finnish ally and even left Mannerheim
not entirely unaffected. In the long run, however, it was results at the
Eastern Front that counted, not the gesture politics of an increasingly
moribund Führer.76
It is against this backdrop, at the turn of 1942–43, that Helsinki’s
own—and factually still rather fictitious—axiom of a Finnish separate
war swiftly gained its currency. German representatives in Finland, not
least the bustling Blücher, observed this process early on, at least since
the Finnish government began to flirt rather naïvely with peace feelers
that the Soviet Union had put out through its Stockholm mission.77
Foreign minister Ribbentrop’s immediate response was damning and
can be seen as a blueprint of Berlin’s future attitude towards Helsinki’s
gradual departure from the German camp. Generously extending the
title of Waffenbruder throughout the entire German war coalition,
Ribbentrop insisted in December 1942 that:
Germany and its brothers-in-arms are in the midst of a life-and-death
struggle against Bolshevism that can only result in the destruction of one
of the opposing parties. Thanks to the tremendous successes of our com-
mon fight and the valor of both the German and the Finnish troops there
is not the slightest doubt that our side will win this struggle.
Any response to possible peace feelers would be interpreted as weak-
ness and therefore affect the “total determination to succeed and
destroy” (“völlig geschlossener Sieges- und Vernichtungswille”) of the
Axis Powers and their brothers-in-arms.78 Ribbentrop’s hefty reaction
to Helsinki’s reorientation was as well due to the fact that his own ini-
tiatives for a separate peace with the Soviet Union had just days before
been fiercely vetoed by Hitler himself. Having, as so often, failed to
convince the Führer of his own schemes, Ribbentrop knew exactly
76
Wegner, “Hitlers Besuch,” pp. 117–37; Jonas, Blücher, pp. 251 ff.
77
KA, AA, 102, Zechlin resp. Blücher to AA, 3 resp. 9 November, 5–6 December
1942; KA, AA, notes state secretary, 11 November resp. 7 December 1942, note
Grundherr, 14 November 1942; KA, Blücher Papers, 24 November, 3–8 December
1942; Vojtech Mastny, “Stalin and the Prospects of a Separate Peace in World War II,”
American Historical Review 77 (1972): 5, pp. 1365–88, here pp. 1370–1; Polvinen,
Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 170 ff.
78
ADAP E, Vol. IV, pp. 463–4, Ribbentrop to Blücher, 6 December 1942; ibidem,
pp. 476–7, Blücher to AA, 8 resp. 11 December 1942.
what was required and acted accordingly.79 The German attitude,

embodied by the aggressive Ribbentrop and Blücher’s much more
nuanced approach, remained unchanged throughout.
The first major escalation in the bilateral relations in the spring of
1943 was therefore not necessarily the starting, but rather the first
point of culmination of a process foreseen since 1942. In German eyes,
the re-election of President Ryti in mid-February 1943, whom Goebbels
and Hitler perceived as Finland’s most “enragierten Russenhasser” and
a suitable future dictator, was overshadowed by two almost parallel
developments: firstly, the first signs of open discontent in Finnish poli-
tics about the country’s alignment, and secondly, the establishment of
a new coalition government, a cabinet of relatively “free rein” that saw
central pro-German elements like foreign minister Witting replaced by
establishment figures of no certain political orientation.80 Even the one
essential Germanophile in the new cabinet, prime minister Edwin
Linkomies, turned out to play a double game. This judgment certainly
applied to the new foreign minister, the liberal and politically rather
inexperienced in foreign affairs Henrik Ramsay, who—for the subse-
quent one and a half years—consistently assured the Germans of the
continued, albeit carefully relativized Finnish commitment, while con-
ducting an ambitious diplomatic search for options to exit the war
early and without German consent.81
Initially, though, Linkomies’ government was rather willing to act
openly. It went even as far as to notify Berlin formally of the Finnish
79
On the issue of peace soundings cf. Bernd Martin, Friedensinitiativen und
Machtpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939–1942 (Düsseldorf, 1974), pp. 101 ff.; idem,
“Das Dritte Reich und die ‘Friedens’-Frage im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Michalka,
Nationalsozialistische Außenpolitik, pp. 526–49; Polvinen, Barbarossasta Teheraniin,
pp. 176–7; Mastny, “Separate Peace,” pp. 1369 ff.; Hannsjoachim W. Koch, “The Spectre
of a Separate Peace in the East: Russo-German ‘Peace Feelers’ 1942–1944,” Journal of
Contemporary History 10 (1975): 3, pp. 531–49; Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (New York,
1992), pp. 385 ff.
80
Goebbels Diaries II, Vol. 7, p. 331, 13 February 1943 (cit. “Russenhasser”); as well
as Bernd Wegner, “Ein ‘Weg ins Chaos’? Deutschland und der finnische Kriegsaustritt
1944 im Spiegel der Goebbels-Tagebücher,” in Fritz Petrick & Dörte Putensen, eds., Pro
Finlandia 2001: Festschrift für Manfred Menger (Reinbek, 2001), pp. 329–51, here
p. 335; on the resolution of the Finnish Social Democratic Party, led by the moderate
Väinö Tanner, cf. Tanner, Vägen till fred, pp. 28–9; Väinö Voionmaa, Kuriiripostia
1941–1946, ed. Markku Reimaa (Helsinki, 1971), 16 February 1943, pp. 214 ff.; Erfurth,
Finnische Krieg, p. 198 (cit. “Kabinett der freien Hand”).
81
Cf. Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 78 ff., 125 ff., 173 ff.; Jonas, Blücher,
pp. 337 ff.; Erkki Maasalo, Sir Henrik saa tehtävän: Henrik Ramsayn ulkoasiainminis-
terikausi 1943–1944 (Espoo, 2004).
124 michael jonas
intention, agreed on a crucial meeting of Mannerheim with the gov-

ernment’s central players on 3 February 1943, to seek an exit from a
war considered lost or at least unwinnable.82 The Finnish government
had previously decided to respond to an American mediation offer,
designed at bringing about a negotiated settlement of the Finnish-
Soviet war. Simultaneously though, Helsinki was wary not to alienate
its German ally, as Berlin’s response remained about as unclear and
difficult to predict as a potential Soviet reaction to Finnish peace
soundings.83 Against the backdrop of this diplomatic conundrum, for-
eign minister Ramsay was personally sent to Berlin and confronted a
wholly unprepared Ribbentrop on 26 March 1943 with the Finnish
decision to effectively enter negotiations for a separate peace. The
Finnish government’s behavior was apparently based on two assump-
tions: firstly, a rather naïve overestimation of the Nazi leaders’ capacity
for empathy with small nations and their respective need to comply
with the basic premises of raison d’état; secondly, a highly developed
sense of honor that had shaped Mannerheim’s and the political behav-
ior of the Finnish government vis-à-vis Berlin throughout.84 Other
countries, as Ryti and the government observed wryly, scoured the
diplomatic market for an exit from the war much more unashamedly
and egotistically. They referred, of course, to Finland’s southern pen-
dant in German war strategy, Romania, which had begun to put out
peace feelers much earlier and more aggressively than Helsinki.85
Despite the Finnish government’s surprisingly transparent approach
Berlin did not seem impressed. Ribbentrop dismissed Ramsay’s rea-
soning outright, describing any potential Finnish peace move as trea-
son, and demanded in a subsequent diplomatic note that Finland
82
The meeting in Mannerheim’s High Command involved the entire war cabinet;
cf. Tanner, Vägen till fred, pp. 10 ff.; Risto Rytin päiväkirjat, 3 February 1943, p. 238;
Tuomo Polvinen, Suomi kansainvälisessä politiikassa 1941–1947, Vol. 2: Teheranista
Jaltaan (Porvoo, 1980), pp. 202–203; Wegner, “Waffenbrüderschaft,” p. 297; Jokisipilä,
Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 62–3.
83
This was furthermore reinforced by the large-scale presence of German troops in
Northern Finland; cf. Menger, Deutschland und Finnland, pp. 168 ff.; DRZW, Vol. 4,
pp. 398–9, 810 ff.; DRZW, Vol. 8, pp. 963 ff.
84
Cf. Jonas, Blücher, p. 341 ff.
85
ADAP E, Vol. VI, 87, Blücher to AA, 7 June 1943, pp. 150–1; Risto Rytin päiväkir-
jat, 7 June 1943, p. 273; on Romania’s peace feelers cf. Deletant, “German-Romanian
Relations,” pp. 166 ff.; Silviu Miloiu, “Romania’s Peace Feelers (March 1943—April
1944): Views from Helsinki,” Valahian Journal of Historical Studies 12 (2009),
pp. 97–110.
distanced itself in a written and binding declaration from the very

notion of a separate peace. In particular Ribbentrop’s final demand,
which effectively amounted to Finland abandoning its self-perception
as a co-belligerent, placed a continued strain upon the bilateral rela-
tions that took months of diplomatic maneuvering to overcome. The
rift between Helsinki and Berlin, however, was permanent; the hith-
erto deliberately undefined, but consistently cordial relations had
entered a state of mutual distrust and deception, already foreshadow-
ing their agony and final collapse in September 1944.86 More astute
German observers like Blücher in Helsinki and Ribbentrop’s state sec-
retary Weizsäcker had already long observed that Hitler’s and
Ribbentrop’s hardline and criminally uncompromising approach to
the war and its possible conclusion alienated Germany’s few remain-
ing allies profoundly. While these countries forcefully advocated a
diplomatic solution to the conflict, all Berlin had to offer was the
increasingly redundant and unsatisfactory mantra: “Destruction of
Bolshevism!”87
Severing Relations: The End of the German-Finnish Coalition, Summer

1944
After Ramsay’s failed trip to Berlin diplomatic battle lines had been
clearly drawn. For the subsequent one and a half years Finland success-
fully attempted to escape committing itself legally to the Nazi war
effort. In the early summer of 1944, however, it was finally forced to
admit the blatantly obvious: that it fought its campaign against the
Soviet Union not as a separate war, but in tandem with its bigger ally,
Nazi Germany. The intermittent months were diplomatically unusually
turbulent, but rarely brought the bilateral relations to actual breaking
point. This was largely due to the Finnish leadership’s extraordinarily
skilful strategic maneuvering, which followed the premise to keep the
severest tensions reduced to the diplomatic level of bilateral affairs,
while the all-important military relations between both countries were
cultivated as if hardly anything had changed. Mannerheim and the
Helsinki government thus targeted the weaker link within the Nazi
86
Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 92 ff.; Jonas, Blücher, pp. 347 ff.; Polvinen,
Barbarossasta Teheraniin, pp. 267 ff.; Wegner, “Waffenbrüderschaft,” pp. 301–2.
87
Weizsäcker-Papiere 1933–1950, 21 March 1943, p. 334, as well as 27 March 1943,
pp. 334–5.
126 michael jonas
Fig. 2.1. President Risto Ryti, Field Marshal Keitel, Adolf Hitler and Marshal
Mannerheim during Hitler’s surprise visit to Finland on Mannerheim’s 75th birthday,
4 June 1942. Left to Ryti is General Eduard Dietl, commander of the German troops in
Northern Finland. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 89728.
Fig. 2.2. “Thanks for the not shown brotherhood-in-arms!” A German placard wel-
coming the Finnish troops to burned-down Muonio during the Lapland War, October
1944. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 166081.
128 michael jonas
power structure of World War II, Ribbentrop and his Foreign Ministry,
who had suffered an enormous loss of influence on Hitler’s increas-
ingly eclectic decision-making. By contrast, military relations, virtually
from top to bottom, remained intact and atmospherically rather cor-
dial, with the OKW repeatedly attempting to soften economic sanc-
tions on Finland, on which Ribbentrop and his immediate circle
insisted.88 This turned the established allocation of roles within the
German power structure effectively on its head. In other cases—such
as occupied Denmark or Norway—the different branches of the
German military, the SS or party institutions appeared considerably
more prone to advocating extreme measures than the AA, whose situ-
ational assessments still owed a lot to diplomatic prudence.89
Finland thus escaped the fate of other German allies in the war
against the Soviet Union, many of whom were significantly less rele-
vant to the Nazi war effort. To the inner circle of Finnish decision-
makers, the need for existential caution in breaking away from the
German side was brought home most immediately in the case of
Hungary, whose ill-concealed peace negotiations with the Allies were
punished by the wholesale German occupation of the country in mid-
March 1944.90 From then onwards it must have been clear to everyone
involved that Finland could well meet a similar fate, not least because
the north of the country had been effectively handed over to the
German military. Sizeable contingents of German troops remained in
Northern Finland virtually until the end of the war, so that the risk of
occupation, no matter how negligible in hindsight, was certainly real
and influenced the strategic thinking and political management of
Finland’s wartime leadership heavily.
While diplomatic disagreements over the nature of Finland’s rela-
tionship with Nazi Germany persisted, the actual position of the gov-
ernment in Helsinki remained unaltered. Throughout 1943 and early
88
Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 230 ff.
89
Jonas, Blücher, pp. 269 ff.; on the broader theoretical context cf. Gerhard
Hirschfeld, “Formen nationalsozialistischer Besatzungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg,”
in Joachim Tauber, ed., “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und
Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2006), pp. 40–55.
90
György Ránki, Unternehmen Margarethe: Die deutsche Besetzung Ungarns (Wien,
1984); Mario D. Fenyo, Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary: German-Hungarian Relations,
1941–1944 (New Haven, CT, 1972), Ch. 9; István Mócsy, “Hungary’s Failed Strategic
Surrender: Secret Wartime Negotiations with Britain,” in Nándor Dreisziger, ed.,
Hungary in the Age of Total War (1938–1948) (New York, 1998), pp. 85–106.
1944, Ribbentrop attempted repeatedly to pressure Finland into con-

cluding a somewhat formalized alliance; Helsinki, however, resisted—
politely but firmly—time and again by pointing to the constitutional
implications of any official arrangement and its respective impact upon
Finnish domestic politics. Any initiative of a formal alliance would
have to be handed over to parliament and face the opposition of the
social democrats and liberals, thus making the flimsy parliamentary
basis of the Finnish-German alliance a public matter. Adhering to a
strictly interpreted code of legality appeared the only viable course of
action, if wanting to continue balancing the country’s highly intricate
international situation in the way the government had since the end of
the Winter War. This had been practiced earlier by a number of neu-
trals such as the Netherlands, who had escaped World War I unscathed
largely because of insisting on the international legality of its position.
To Berlin’s perpetual frustration, Finland adopted a similar strategy.
In the final years of the war the country’s parliamentary system, which,
as late as 1940, central politicians like Witting and Ryti would have
preferred to abandon, became an effective rhetorical shield in order to
keep German demands for an official commitment at bay. Even
Ribbentrop’s watered down proposals, heavily influenced by Blücher
and soberly thinking professional diplomats within the AA, were
rejected as potentially unconstitutional and systemically destabilizing.
In discussions with their German counterparts the Finnish decision-
makers did not tire of predicting the collapse of the national coalition
government, in case Helsinki’s de facto cooperation with Berlin would
be formalized along the lines of Ribbentrop’s demands. With the gov-
ernment under pressure from liberal and social democratic forces and
therefore struggling to keep its wait-and-see attitude, the Finnish fears
were evidently real. Local German representatives, particularly Blücher
and his mission as well as Erfurth at the Finnish High Command in
Mikkeli, seconded the Finnish government’s perception where they
could. The only feasible means of disciplining Finland in its virtually
public search for an exit from the war were therefore economic. By cut-
ting essential deliveries of food and war materials, Berlin hoped to
bind Finland categorically to its cause, but instead only contributed to
the alienation of the country’s domestic political scene from its patently
unfraternal brother-in-arms. Besides that, Ribbentrop’s policy of
restricting or halting deliveries taken in the spring of 1943 and a year
later were never unanimous; both the OKW and the Trade Department
130 michael jonas
of the AA distinctly opposed such measures and eventually succeeded

in having Ribbentrop’s initial decisions overturned by Hitler.91
In June 1944, however, when the rapid course of World War II had
finally turned against Finland, the Nazi leadership acted swiftly. For
the previous two and a half years the Finnish Army had not seen actual
fighting and successfully avoided any further strategic entanglement
with the collapsing German war effort. Now, in a matter of days, an
enormous Soviet offensive against the Finnish frontline, designed to
literally blow Finland out of the war, brought the country’s defenses to
the brim of collapse. In that situation, Helsinki turned to Berlin for
help—a request Ribbentrop in turn seized upon to renew his demand
for a formalized alliance between both countries. Arriving personally
in Helsinki in late June 1944, Ribbentrop entered into negotiations
with the Finnish government about the modalities of such an agree-
ment. It was obvious from the start that the projected commitment
could not take the form of an official contractual alliance, but would
have to adopt a somewhat less defined shape. After days (and nights) of
intense bargaining, against the close to surreally calm backdrop of
midsummer Helsinki, Ribbentrop eventually received what he had
come for: the explicit assurance that Finland would not seek a separate
peace without German approval, though this assurance was not sanc-
tioned by the government, let alone parliament, but in the form of a
private letter by President Ryti to Hitler.92 Although the general mili-
tary situation eased in the course of the summer, not least due to
German military aid, it was clear that the arrangement struck around
midsummer was not meant to last. The only substantial consequence
of the so-called Ryti-Ribbentrop Agreement was the decision of the
United States to abort its already feeble diplomatic relations with
Finland.93 In terms of foreign perception, Helsinki now found itself
firmly in the German camp, the very camp it had attempted to exit cau-
tiously since early 1943.
With the Finnish-Soviet frontline stabilized once more in early July,
accompanied by further Soviet advances elsewhere on the Eastern
91
Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia, pp. 203 ff.; Jonas, Blücher, pp. 376 ff.
92
KA, Blücher Papers, Blücher’s note for Ribbentrop resp. separate note, 26 June
1944; Blücher to Grundherr, 28 June 1944, furthermore “Communiqué der
Reichsregierung und der Finnischen Regierung,” 27 June 1944, Hitler to Ryti, 4 July
1944, Blücher’s notes and documentation of Linkomies’ speech, 3 resp. 4 July 1944; KA,
Erfurth Papers, 23–30 June 1944.
93
Berry, American Foreign Policy, pp. 409 ff.
Front, Finland’s room for maneuver grew significantly. A German mil-

itary takeover of Finland, Hungarian-style, seemed unlikely if unac-
companied by pro-German domestic forces, chiefly within the Finnish
military. These elements were pacified by the manner in which the
Finnish government eventually split from Berlin’s side. Through what
amounted to a grossly unconstitutional plot President Ryti was replaced
by Mannerheim, who temporarily assumed quasi-dictatorial powers
by way of an emergency decree passed by parliament.
Berlin watched Ryti’s removal and the “enthronement” of Man-
nerheim with enormous unease.94 To Goebbels, quite a realistic
observer of the situation, it was clear that Finland would give up
shortly, as capitulations would always be arranged by supposedly
treacherous and weak generals or marshals.95 Within days it became
clear that the new head of state did not see himself or his new public
office bound to the obligations stipulated in the Ryti-Ribbentrop
Agreement. Ryti’s promise to Hitler in June was not to be interpreted as
universally valid, but as a private commitment. With a sense of fore-
boding the German minister tirelessly attempted to reign in the Finnish
government, biting on granite each time he confronted the issue of the
Agreement’s binding legality. Unlike Ryti, with whom Blücher had
developed an excellent working relationship, Mannerheim removed
himself almost completely. Only Mannerheim’s longstanding friend,
the soft-spoken and highly intellectual Erfurth, whose situational
assessments nevertheless “rarely hit the mark,” was able to see the
Marshal regularly, while Blücher, Germany’s chief representative in
Helsinki, was forced to deal with the elderly new foreign minister, Carl
Enckell.96
While Berlin and the German-Finnish relationships were clouded in
nebulous uncertainty, the government, led by the veteran conservative
politician Antti Hackzell, was busy moving the collapsing bilateral
affairs away from Ribbentrop and the AA and again onto the military
track. This had the invaluable benefit of meeting a relatively sympa-
thetic and furthermore diplomatically less informed opposite, best
94
Blücher, Gesandter, pp. 388–9 (cit.); KA, Erfurth Papers, 2 August 1944;
Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, Vol. 4.1, ed. Percy E. Schramm
(Augsburg, 2005), p. 889; Erfurth, Finnische Krieg, pp. 249–50; Menger, Deutschland
und Finnland, pp. 214–5.
95
Goebbels Diaries II, Vol. 13, pp. 196, 204, 212–3 (on Hitler’s perception), 218–9,
2–4 August 1944.
96
Menger, Deutschland und Finnland, p. 214 (cit.).
132 michael jonas
illustrated in Mannerheim’s astute choice to confide his interpretation

of the Ryti-Ribbentrop Agreement to the head of the OKW, General
Field Marshal Keitel, during the latter’s visit to Finland on 17 August
1944. Only half aware of the importance of what was being said, Keitel
was notified that Mannerheim did not see himself as bound to the
commitment given by his predecessor in a time of existential crisis for
the country. With Ryti’s resignation and Mannerheim’s nomination as
president the Finnish government would have therefore regained its
full freedom of action. Mannerheim’s statement, which Keitel was told
to pass on to Hitler, confirmed what Blücher and the majority of
German representatives in Finland had anticipated for some weeks.
The conversation between Mannerheim and Keitel was therefore une-
quivocally recognized as the beginning of the end of the bilateral
relationships.97
From now onwards, already drawn up contingency plans became
concrete, their implementation possibly imminent. While the German
diplomatic and military missions had to be evacuated, a much greater
problem emerged in Northern Finland, from where German troops
would have to be swiftly withdrawn in case Finland finally decided to
exit the war and effectively align itself with the Soviet Union. For
months already Berlin had contemplated the possibility of staging a
pro-German coup d’état in Finland, from Hitler’s and Goebbels’ first
considerations in 1943 to the counterinsurgency Ribbentrop and the
SS conceived in the wake of the termination of relations in the autumn
of 1944.98 Despite Hitler’s willingness not to let Finland escape without
punishment there was little he could do militarily in the later stages of
the conflict. A wholesale occupation of the country had become unre-
alistic since German troops had been significantly withdrawn in the
northern Baltic region in early 1944. Moreover, the decisive advance of
97
On Keitel’s visit cf. KA, Erfurth Papers, 17–19 August 1944; KA, Mannerheim
Papers, VAY 5615, note Heinrichs, 18 August 1944; ADAP E, Vol. VIII, 163, Blücher to
AA, 18 August 1944; Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos, Vol. 4.1, p. 890; Mannerheim,
Erinnerungen, pp. 524–5; Erfurth, Finnische Krieg, pp. 255–6; Henrik Meinander,
“Mannerheim och fredsprocessen 1944,” in Tom Gullberg & Kaj Sandberg, eds.,
Medströms—motströms: Individ och struktur i historien (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 362–78,
here p. 367.
98
Goebbels Diaries II, Vol. 7, p. 331 resp. 348, 13 resp. 15 February 1943; ibidem,
Vol. 9, p. 577, 23 September 1943; ibidem, Vol. 11, p. 396, 4 March 1944; Wegner,
“Goebbels-Tagebücher,” p. 335; see as well the radically changed attitude of Himmler,
who is reputed to have spoken of Finland as a Lausestaat only a year after his personal
visit; Polvinen, Barbarossasta Teheraniin, p. 255 (cit.).
Soviet troops within reach of the former Finnish-Soviet border in June

made a takeover of the country’s south by the Red Army much more
likely than a successful push of the German 20th Mountain Army,
stationed in Northern Finland, towards Helsinki. A domestically
engineered coup, however, remained on the agenda, with Ribbentrop,
the AA and the SS scheming to mobilize pro-German forces within the
Finnish military and the largely frustrated right-wing circles of the
country’s political scene.99 Blücher’s (and Erfurth’s) response to those
attempts was distinctly negative: there simply was no right-wing
pro-German movement, instead only paralyzed splinter groups for
whom it was impossible “to overthrow the man [Mannerheim] whom
it single-handedly created as the country’s national hero.”100 Berlin
should not, Blücher advised in one of his final postings from Helsinki,
blind itself to the fact “that Finland is now working on the complete
liquidation of its relations with Germany, while intending to do that in
generally decent terms.”101
The actual break-up of the bilateral relations proceeded calmly,
especially if compared to the havoc experienced by virtually all other
former allies in the final stages of the war. After some days of awkward
agony the Finnish foreign minister Enckell finally notified Blücher on
2 September 1944 of the government’s decision to abort its diplomatic
relations with Berlin. The German missions in Helsinki and Mikkeli
were discontinued in strict accordance with the stipulations of interna-
tional law and on rather friendly personal terms. Blücher, Erfurth and
their personnel left Finland via Turku and neutral Stockholm, having
been in the preceding days virtually bombarded with Finnish profes-
sions of sympathy and gratitude.102 Their distinctly Germanophile
99
Main instigators were the usual suspects, the SD and the SS Head Office, but also
Blücher’s press attaché Metzger kept close relations with local Finnish fascists like Arvi
Kalsta, Erkki Räikkönen or Gunnar Lindqvist; KA, AA, Gesandtschaft Helsinki,
“Geheimer Schriftwechsel,” Blücher to AA, 18 April 1942, including a report of
Metzger, 15 April 1942; Henrik Ekberg, Führerns trogna följeslagare: Den finländska
nazismen 1932–1944 (Helsinki, 1991), pp. 150–1, 211 ff., 216 ff.
100
KA, AA, 99, Blücher to AA, 26 August 1944.
101
PA/AA, Gesandtschaft Helsinki, “Berichte,” 1944, Blücher to AA, 7 September
1944, p. 61; as a response to ADAP E, Vol. VIII, p. 425, Ribbentrop to Blücher,
5 September 1944; KA, Erfurth Papers, 8–9 September 1944; Polvinen, Teheranista
Jaltaan, pp. 128–9; Manfred Menger, “Das militärpolitische Verhältnis zwischen
Deutschland und Finnland im Herbst 1944,” Militärgeschichte 18 (1979): 3,
pp. 297–309.
102
Staatsarchiv Munich, Spruchkammerakte Blücher, provides many examples; for
further sources cf. Jonas, Blücher, pp. 485 ff.; on Erfurth and the military-political
134 michael jonas
character notwithstanding, collectively these utterances make plain

why the German-Finnish relations and Finland’s position within the
German orbit averted the total dissolution that signified the collapse of
the National Socialist order in the final stages of the war—Hitler’s
highly choreographed staging of his downfall.103
To a comparatively large extent, the legally elusive relationship
between Helsinki and Berlin seems to have been built on what Blücher
repeatedly termed “mutual respect.” Remarkably, even the most radical
elements within the Nazi dictatorship appear to have shared that senti-
ment at one point or the other. On Finland’s part, the cooperation with
Berlin was rooted in the country’s traditional cultural orientation
towards the protestant north of Germany and during the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth century—most empathically—on the per-
ceived and actual links to the modern German nation-state. The
country’s elites, most notably German-speaking conservatives in
Finnish politics and the military, were a priori susceptible to repeating
their German counterpart’s misapprehension of 1933–34: for them the
Third Reich represented, albeit only selectively, the continuity of mod-
ern German history, not the supposedly abrupt and qualitative caesura
in which Hitler and his dictatorship are seen with the benefit of histori-
cal hindsight.104 Against the perceived existential threat of the Soviet
Union the alliance with Nazi Germany could therefore be easily read in
two, largely entangled ways: firstly as a viable, indeed indispensable
strategic orientation, dictated by national duty and the laws of geopoli-
tics—and, secondly, as an expression of a quasi-natural emotive—
though by no means ideological—affinity. Hitler, and indeed German
policy towards Finland as a whole, built on both.
Concluding Remarks: Finland and Romania in the German Orbit

The peculiarity of German policy towards Finland surfaces most mark-
edly when viewing the country’s status in Hitler’s orbit in the given
dimension see the emotional recollections of Hansgeorg Biedermann, “Kommentar

zum Hauptreferat von Ohto Manninen in der Sektion: Die deutsch-finnische
‘Waffenbrüderschaft’—Realität oder Mythos?” in Jäntti & Holtkamp, Mannerheim,
pp. 52–9.
103
Bernd Wegner, “Hitler, der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Choreographie des
Untergangs,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000): 3, pp. 493–518; DRZW, Vol. 8,
pp. 1192–209 (idem).
104
Cf. recently Hermann Beck, The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and
Nazis in 1933—The Machtergreifung in a New Light (New York, 2008).
comparative context with Romania. In terms of military strategy, both

countries’ objectives and their respective participation in Operation
Barbarossa were from the outset limited, especially in comparison to
the central role of the Wehrmacht in the prosecution of the war in the
east. Both Helsinki and Bucharest nonetheless assumed clearly deline-
ated military functions, as developed gradually in 1940–41. They
entered the supposed crusade against Bolshevism of their own free
will, partly enthusiastically, but always as fairly sovereign, formally
autonomous states within Hitler’s war coalition. By 1943, however,
Antonescu’s Romania had lost all but minimal military and not least
political significance for Berlin, let alone its last remaining room for
foreign political maneuver.105 While Berlin increasingly downgraded
former Axis partners like Italy and Hungary to the status of territorial
buffers against the backdrop of Allied advances in the south and the
east, Romania was steadily being reduced to its role as one of the cen-
tral facets of Nazi Germany’s war economy, its main supplier of raw
materials, primarily oil. The deformation of the Axis coalition thus
gradually slid into occupation, well before the breakaway decisions of
Italy, Hungary and eventually Romania in 1943–44 led to the establish-
ment of nominal German occupation regimes. In Berlin’s prevalent
perception, the once projected postwar Greater Romania had degener-
ated into little more than the satellite regimes built—years earlier—out
of the bankruptcy assets of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Antonescu’s
equals were now no longer Hitler or the Nazi leadership and not even
Mannerheim, but Slovakia’s Jozef Tiso and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic.106 In
his sweeping depictions of Hitler’s shifting opinions, propaganda min-
ister Goebbels captured this change in attitude aptly in late January
1943:
Our allies have always arrogated to themselves a leading role in Europe,
which they intend to assume along with us. During the battles in the east,
though, they have lost their military honor to such an extent that, after
the war, there won’t be any doubt whatsoever left who will have to lead
Europe and who won’t. We will be in Europe what Prussia used to be in
the North German Confederation.107
105
Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 230 ff.; Jean Ancel, “Stalingrad und
Rumänien,” in Förster, Stalingrad, pp. 189–214.
106
On the process cf. DRZW, Vol. 8, pp. 49 ff.
107
Goebbels Diaries II, Vol. 7, p. 167, 23 January 1943.
136 michael jonas
As Nazi Germany’s northern ally, Finland certainly did not escape this
development entirely unscathed. But throughout the campaign in the
east, the country retained a degree of autonomy and political initiative
that Hitler’s other allies had a priori never possessed or at least progres-
sively lost, particularly in the wake of the winter crisis of 1942–43. This
was due to two, largely interlinked phenomena: firstly, despite heavy
losses in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, the Finnish Army
remained comparatively intact and defensively capable. From the spo-
radic operational activities of 1942 until mid-1944, the country’s armed
forces did not see substantial battle. They never experienced the sort of
blood-letting that the Romanians suffered in the face of Stalingrad,
which, besides wiping out about half of the country’s forces—approxi-
mately 160,000 troops—virtually eliminated Romania’s operational
capacities.108 In the German perception, the largely untested Finnish
Army was therefore able to sustain its reputation as the supposedly
most formidable fighting force alongside the Wehrmacht, and an infi-
nitely trustworthy equal. As a consequence, internal military relations
between the German and Finnish armed forces remained in general
exceptionally cordial—a feature that covered the whole chain of com-
mand, from the level of the ordinary soldier’s experience to the Finnish
High Command’s relations with its German counterpart. The military
dimension of bilateral relations therefore never really formed a prob-
lem in Berlin’s perception. Notwithstanding repeated attempts to
include Finnish forces in offensive operations, Hitler and the German
High Command effectively accepted Mannerheim’s hesitant attitude
and the largely passive role Finland assumed after 1942.109
It was in the field of politics and diplomacy that Berlin’s interests and
Helsinki’s distinct desire to preserve its autonomy clashed, but even
here the policy adopted by Nazi Germany was one of relative compro-
mise, accommodation and cooperation. Though not always concilia-
tory in tone, Berlin accepted the basic Finnish interpretation of its
involvement in the war against the Soviet Union from 1941 until the
108
Ancel, “Stalingrad und Rumänien,” pp. 189 ff.; on Romania’s armed forces cf.
Cristian Craciunoiu, Mark W.A. Axworthy & Cornel Scafes, Third Axis Fourth Ally:
Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941–1945 (London, 1995).
109
Bernd Wegner, “Die Leningradfrage als Kernstück der deutsch-finnischen
Beziehungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Edgar Hösch & Hermann Beyer-Thoma, eds.,
Finnland-Studien 2 (Wiesbaden, 1993), pp. 136–51; Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia,
pp. 60 ff., 136 ff., 180 ff.; Menger, Deutschland und Finnland, pp. 151 ff.
early summer of 1944. Even the Finnish government’s prolonged efforts

to exit the war, central to Finnish foreign policy since the spring of
1943, were tolerated, albeit grudgingly, as long as Finnish prospects for
leaving the war remained abstract and generally dim. Proponents of
Nazi Germany’s largely accommodating policy towards Finland per-
ceived the bilateral modus vivendi even as a model case, to be exported
throughout the German orbit and suited to indeed revolutionize
Berlin’s relations with its smaller collaborators and the occupied coun-
tries of Western and Northern Europe.110 Only in June 1944 did the
comparatively stable marriage of German and Finnish interests col-
lapse in the face of the Soviet advance westwards. Confronted with
what was seen as an imminent military collapse, the Finnish govern-
ment finally caved in to German pressure. But even after Helsinki had
nominally tied its fate to Nazi Germany, the Finnish leadership contin-
ued to stand its ground in the diplomatic and political arena. At the
next opportune moment, in early September 1944, the gentlemen’s
agreement that had been signed by the Finnish President Ryti and
Hitler’s foreign minister Ribbentrop was nullified and Finland, ruefully
but firmly, exited the war.
Finland kept its relatively privileged status due to a number of fac-
tors, of which its rather isolated geopolitical situation at the northeast-
ern edges of the continent is certainly among the most prominent.
Furthermore, although the country possessed vital raw materials, these
were not of such immediate importance for the prosecution of Nazi
Germany’s war as Romania’s natural resources. The German war econ-
omy could have lived, at least temporarily, without Pechenga’s nickel; it
would certainly not have survived for long (and in the end did not) if
deprived of access to the oil fields of Ploesti. In addition to their respec-
tive geopolitical and economic preconditions, the place of Finland and
Romania in German war planning and diplomacy differs markedly.
Romania’s situation as a volatile state in an even more volatile region
was reflected deeply in Nazi Germany’s perception of and policies
towards the country, anticipating the character of the total breakdown
of relations in August 1944 years before the actual event. Finland’s
unusual stability as a state, combined with the country’s compara-
tively solid military performance, created a diametrically opposed
110
Jonas, Blücher, pp. 269 ff.; see as well as my “Alternativpolitik und Diplomatie
Das Auswärtige Amt und Nordeuropa im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” Historische Zeitschrift
(forthcoming).
138 michael jonas
perception on Berlin’s part. In retrospect, it seems almost bizarre that

the country whose institutions and elites were, generally speaking,
most unlike the Third Reich fared better than the one whose ideologi-
cal and systemic compatibility was rarely in doubt.
This phenomenon permeated, as I have attempted to show, all levels
of bilateral relations, from the abstract strategic positioning of Finland
and Romania in German war planning down to the personnel base of
Berlin’s affairs with Bucharest and Helsinki. Personnel and institutional
politics therefore reinforced given perceptions, modi operandi and the
status of the respective power within the Axis umbrella—just as the
respective operational frameworks, the established modes of commu-
nication and coalition warfare informed Berlin’s personnel and institu-
tional politics. To put it simply: while the Finnish government cannot
be plausibly imagined to have accepted the accreditation of a hardcore
Nazi politician like Killinger in Helsinki, Blücher could certainly not
have professionally survived anywhere outside the Finnish capital,
with the probable exception of neutral centers like Stockholm. On the
whole, it is downright puzzling that the most functional and arguably
effective association within the Axis coalition of 1941 to 1944 appears
to have been the disparate relationship between Helsinki and Berlin.
Theirs was a relationship largely based on the traditional exercise of
bilateral affairs that did, beyond the destruction of the Soviet Union,
apparently not require common war objectives, ideological homogene-
ity and coordinated coalition warfare, whose absence Richard DiNardo
has recently blamed for the collapse of the Axis war effort in the east.111
Despite an apparent host of commonalities, comparatively examined,
it is Finland’s relative exceptionalism in Nazi foreign policy and war
strategy that is most striking.
111
DiNardo, “Dysfunctional Coalition,” pp. 711 ff.; idem, Germany and the Axis
Powers.
CHAPTER THREE
THE FINNISH ARMY AT WAR

OPERATIONS AND SOLDIERS, 1939–45
Pasi Tuunainen
In April 1948, Generalissimus Josef Stalin drank a toast to the Finnish

Army. He is reported to have remarked: “A country that has a poor
army, nobody respects, but a country with a good army, everybody
salutes!”1 Stalin’s comment was not just a compliment. He knew what
he was talking about, because he had been in charge of the Soviet
Union’s war efforts in World War II. The Soviet Union, having over-
whelming power and endless resources, could have occupied Finland
had it wanted to do so. But, in the end, it did not employ the required
amount of both its forces and time to fulfill this surprisingly trouble-
some military task. This had a lot to do with the will of Stalin and the
remote geographical location and geopolitical position of Finland; this
strategic direction was simply not a priority, but more like “a northern
sideshow” for the Soviet Union. The Soviet decision to relinquish its
plans to occupy Finland, however, was, to a major degree, influenced
by the military performance of the Finnish Army. Despite the territo-
rial losses and defeat in the Winter War and the Continuation War, the
Finnish Army was not annihilated and it did not capitulate, neither in
March 1940 nor in September 1944.
In the research concerning military effectiveness and innovative-
ness, victory is not the sole criterion for success. Effective militaries are
those that are able to convert their resources into maximum fighting
power. Combat effectiveness means the quality of performance in the
battlefield. Other criteria are effective command, good initiative and
logistics. These are linked with the level of democracy, as the best
motivation comes from a soldier’s personal interests, which deter-
mine what kind of motivation and control is required to ensure combat
effectiveness. In short, this effectiveness is determined by technical
1
Quoted in U.E. Moisala & Pertti Alanen, Kun hyökkääjän tie suljettiin (Helsinki,
1988), p. 159.
140 pasi tuunainen
elements of the military system (military justice, tactics, administra-

tion, organization and command) combined with the psychological
aspects of the motivational system (morale, primary group cohesion
and motivation).2
In this chapter the reader is first introduced to the complexities of
events on the fronts of the Winter War, the Continuation War and the
Lapland War. The two first sections of the chapter are dedicated to the
chronology of main military events for Finland in 1939–45. The chap-
ter seeks to discuss the Finnish military art with a clear focus on the
operational level of land warfare. The conclusion that the Finnish Army
performed reasonably well in World War II requires an explanation.
In the third section of the chapter, combat effectiveness and motivation
are, therefore, analyzed by utilizing military sociological and social
psychology viewpoints.
I. The Winter War, 1939–40
Prewar Preparations and Resources

The Soviet Union had made operational plans related to Finland dur-
ing the 1920s, and since 1930 its objective had been to take over the
whole of Finland. The Leningrad Military District was strengthened in
1938, and soon the preparations for an invasion of Finland got under
way. In June 1939, Stalin gave orders to check war plans for an offen-
sive. He approved the plans before the signing of the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. The Red Army concentrations of the
attacking troops were initiated in September 1939, and the final attack
order was issued on 15 November 1939. The objective was to annihilate
the Finnish Army and swiftly occupy the country.3
2
Allen R. Millett, Williamson Murray & Kenneth H. Watman, “The Effectiveness of
Military Organizations,” in Military Effectiveness: The First World War (London, 1988),
p. 2; Dan Reiter & Allan C. Stam, “Democracy and Battlefield Military Effectiveness,”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (1998): 3, pp. 259–77; John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of
the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94
(Westport, CT, 1996), pp. 21–3.
3
Ohto Manninen, Miten Suomi valloitetaan: Puna-armeijan operaatiosuunnitelmat
1939–1944 (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 29–32, 36–40. A shorter version of Manninen’s study
is available in English, Ohto Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North Western Theatre
of Operations in 1939–1944 (Helsinki, 2004); Sampo Ahto, “Talvisota,” in Sotien vuodet
1939–1945 (Pori, 2009), p. 31.
the finnish army at war 141
The Finns were by no means unprepared for the ensuing Winter

War. First of all, they were capable of fast mobilization of their Army.
This was important, because the Soviet Union, with a huge standing
army, could invade its neighbors quickly. In early October 1939, the
whole Finnish reserve was summoned to “special maneuvers,” which
were a full mobilization in disguise. The Red Army had been hastily
mobilized almost a month earlier, but its concentrations for the offen-
sive were delayed until November, thus leaving the Finns time to final-
ize their deployment and reach their full wartime readiness by the end
of October. The delay also gave the personnel in the Finnish units
almost two months to get to know each other, to train, to familiarize
themselves with the future battlegrounds, to replenish and to fortify.
In the summer of 1939, fortifications had been built by civilian volun-
teers on the Karelian Isthmus, where the main defensive position was
later to be called the Mannerheim Line.4
The Soviet Union had been viewed by Finnish military planners as
the only potential enemy, and the plans had been developed to counter
that threat. Finnish officers had been studying and analyzing the Red
Army capabilities and patterns of operation. The officers also traveled
in the border areas and conducted reconnaissance on how to deploy
the troops in the event of war. The key Red Army manuals were trans-
lated and studied. Finnish military planners had a reasonably good
picture of the way the Red Army was going to operate. The perceptions
of the coming war were, by and large, correct and accurate.5
On the eve of World War II, there were some 170 million inhabitants
in the Soviet Union and 3.7 million in Finland. The Red Army enjoyed
vast material superiority, whereas the Finnish prewar governments
had to a large degree neglected the defense appropriations. Due to its
material shortcomings, the Finnish Army was unable even to issue
uniforms to all of its soldiers. The Army consisted of nine infantry divi-
sions and a few separate battalions, altogether some 250,000 men.
During the Winter War, three ill-equipped reinforcement divisions
were formed raising the number to about 340,000 combatants. The Red
Army entered the war with 22 divisions, and at the end of the war the
4
Ahto, “Talvisota,” p. 33; Ohto Manninen, “Suomen kohtalonvuosien ratkaisut,”
in Sotien vuodet, p. 13.
5
Vesa Tynkkynen, “Sotakorkeakoulu ja suomalainen sotataito 1920- ja 1930-
luvuilla,” in Heikki Tilander et al., eds., Sotakorkeakoulu suomalaisen sotataidon kehit-
täjänä (Helsinki, 2009), pp. 56–61.
142 pasi tuunainen
number had risen to 59 divisions, numbering one million men. For the
Soviets the war was logically to be fought by the Leningrad Military
District stressing its euphemized nature as “a border conflict.” In the
early stages of the war, some troops came from Kalinin and Moscow
Military Districts and later from six more military districts.
The weaponry of the Red Army was abundant and modern, whereas
the Finns, who mainly relied on rifle armament, had insufficient quan-
tities of weapons, some of them obsolete. The 9 mm Suomi sub-machine
gun proved useful in the forests, but they were few in numbers. The
situation somewhat improved over time, when captured war booty was
turned against its Soviet ex-owners. The Soviet divisions had organic
artillery of 72 modern pieces, but each Finnish division had just
36 obsolete guns. One division was practically without artillery.
Whereas the Soviet artillery did not have any munition shortages, the
Finnish artillery had ammunition to last only several days, thus with
no possibility for saturation or counterbattery fire. The Red Army
could use some 2,000 tanks. The Finns did not have a single operable
tank and just over 100 recently purchased anti-tank guns. The Red Air
Force began the offensive with about 1,000 planes, and at the end of
the war it had some 4,000 planes. In comparison, the Finnish Air Force
had some 110 planes of various types, but only 75 of them were suitable
for combat.6
Terrain, Tactics and Training

The military geography of the narrow Karelian Isthmus differed from
the long front north of Lake Ladoga reaching all the way to the Arctic
Ocean. This had an impact on the art of war. The Isthmus had many
roads and it was more or less passable and partly open terrain. The
movement and deployment of large formations was possible even out-
side the roads. The Finnish posture was, therefore, defensive. The idea
was to hold the so-called Mannerheim Line, running halfway through
the Isthmus, at all costs. The style of the warfare was attrition. The
defense planning assumed that the Soviet Union would have also other
enemies to deal with—however it did not, and Finland was practically
left isolated.
6
Ahto, “Talvisota,” pp. 32–3; K.J. Mikola, “Finland’s Wars During World War II
(1939–1945),” in Finland’s War Years 1939–45 (Mikkeli, 1973), p. xi.
North of Lake Ladoga the terrain was quite different. It was rough,
mostly trackless and impassable forested terrain with large differences
in topography. In addition, there were marshland, rivers, lakes and
boulder soil. The few roads ran parallel and separate from each other.
Connecting roads usually began only 50 kilometers after the border.
This prevented the flexible use of large formations and heavy equip-
ment, but in winter conditions the frozen ground and ice-covered lakes
enabled some movement also outside the roads. Heavy snow enabled
the use of highly maneuverable ski troops. The terrain and space
favored mobile warfare with light troops, but hindered the movement
of motorized units. The Finnish Army could sustain a long war in the
wilderness, because it had, unlike the Red Army, heated tents. Even
though the Finns conducted experiments and developed equipment in
order to be able to use the frost, ice, snow, dark period, forests and
winter obstacles to their advantage, these same elements also hindered
their own activities. The deep snow reduced the fragmentation of
shells, increased the number of duds and had an impact on the accu-
racy of fire. Although these conditions were more difficult for the
Soviets to familiarize themselves with, the soldiers of the Finnish Army
were also not accustomed to all the adverse effects of the wintery
battlefield.7
The Finnish defense plans were based on both offensive and defen-
sive principles. However, in the 1930s the offensive was the basis of the
Finnish tactical thinking. This activeness was deep-rooted in training.
Closer to the Winter War more emphasis was put on defense. The
major difference to most European countries was the positive atti-
tude of the Finns towards forest fighting. Here the Finns, for most of
whom the forests were a familiar element, had natural initiative and
guile.8 The general trends of military art, which the Finns had been
studying and rehearsing, had been adopted from the battlefields of
World War I, particularly from the German tactics in 1917–18. The
Finnish flavor was that the lessons were adapted to the conditions of
Finnish nature. In the Finnish Army, there were some 100,000 soldiers
with a Civil Guards Defense Corps background. This was important in
7
Vilho Tervasmäki, “The Impact of Technical Development on Winter Operations
in Finland’s Wars 1939–1945,” Commission Internationale d’Histoire Militaire, Acta No.
2 (Washington DC, 1975), pp. 119–21.
8
Tynkkynen, “Sotakorkeakoulu,” pp. 63–4; H.M. Tillotson, Finland at Peace & War
1918–1993 (Norwich, 1993), p. 147.
144 pasi tuunainen
several ways. The training they had voluntarily acquired in their Civil
Guard units supplemented the training they had received as conscripts
and in the Army refresher exercises.
The art of war of the Red Army was rigid and hidebound. The bat-
tlefield posture of the Red Army was based on the en masse use of
troops and great firepower. There were huge differences in the training
of the Red Army units. One-fourth of the peacetime army consisted of
territorial troops, who had received merely two to three months of
training, whereas in the cadre troops, the infantry training had lasted
for two to three years. Political indoctrination had aimed at producing
a good level of class awareness, but many soldiers had only fired three
live rounds and not thrown a single hand grenade. The troops had been
trained to fight in hilly and open terrain, not in forests. Many Red
Army soldiers, especially from Ukraine and Southern Russia, had
severe acclimatization problems in harsh winter conditions and dark-
ness. The Soviet troops did not have a chance to familiarize themselves
either with orienteering or skiing. While the Finns were trained as
individual fighters, the Soviet soldiers had been taught to act as parts of
bigger units. They could cooperate with tanks and were especially good
at entrenching. Despite its strength in numbers, the Soviet artillery had
difficulties in concentrating its fire, and its standard of combined arms
training was poor. The leaders were trained to act in a stereotyped
manner. The divisions sent to fight the Finns were in terms of equip-
ment, training and motivation among the best in the Soviet Union.
In general, the Red Army soldiers were often pertinacious, but some-
times apathetic.9
The Soviet Invasion, 30 November 1939–13 March 1940

The Red Army invaded Finland in the morning of 30 November 1939
all along the 1,600-kilometer border. The Soviet Air Force bombed
14 Finnish cities and localities. The basic task of the Red Army was to
break the Finnish defenses, destroy the army and cut the country
in two halves by advancing to the city of Oulu. All this was to be done
in just three weeks. The advance from north of Lake Ladoga was to
proceed southwesterly to the rear of the main body of the Finnish
9
Antti Juutilainen, “Puna-armeijan maavoimien kalusto, varustus ja koulutus,”
in Antti Juutilainen & Jari Leskinen, eds., Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (Porvoo, 1999),
pp. 351–5; Ahto, “Talvisota,” p. 33; cf. Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) in
Moscow, F. 33987, op. 3 d 1391, L. 92–122, chief of the Red Army artillery
N.N. Voronov’s report on the lessons of the Finnish War, 1 April 1940.
Army on the Karelian Isthmus, thus encircling them. The fact that the
majority of the Soviet troops attacked on the Karelian Isthmus did not
come as a surprise for the Finns, who had expected this. Therefore, the
bulk of Finnish troops, two army corps, had also been concentrated
there (plus one more newly-established corps later in the war). Ladoga
Karelia—i.e. the area north and northeast of Lake Ladoga—was also to
be defended properly with one Finnish army corps in charge. Further
north, the front was defended only by separate battalions and a few
regimental combat teams. The Finnish military intelligence had been
able to gather a realistic picture of the deployment of Soviet troops on
the Karelian Isthmus and northeast of Lake Ladoga, but it had failed to
notice the movement and road constructions in the Suomussalmi sec-
tor.10 It thus came as a surprise that the Red Army attacked along virtu-
ally every road from Lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean with substantial
forces—divisions of ten battalions against single Finnish battalions.
It was deemed crucial for the Finnish defensive that the Karelian
Isthmus held. At the outset of the hostilities, the Finnish screening
forces, 13,000 strong, created a cover behind which the rest of the
Finnish Army took up its positions. The screening forces, outnum-
bered ten to one, engaged the enemy and began an active fighting with-
drawal from the border. They slowed down the Red Army advance,
and the scorched earth tactics caused additional difficulties for the Red
Army operating in sub-zero temperatures. This warfare pattern was
repeated in locations all over the border. On the Isthmus, having
reached the Mannerheim Line in seven to twelve days, the Red Army
attempted to penetrate it directly from the movement. Its attacks were
preceded by drumfire. The waves of attacking Soviet soldiers were
gunned down by the Finns, who destroyed a great number of tanks
with makeshift weapons. Before Christmas, all the attacks had been
repelled on the Karelian Isthmus. On the central Isthmus, a large
Finnish counterattack by three divisions was launched on 23 December
1939. Its objective was to disrupt the enemy and to encircle its van-
guard. The attack got off to a good start, but it caused heavy Finnish
casualties and eventually failed. It is often called the “Fool’s Collision”
for its futility, but it also gave important tactical lessons to the Finns.
After Christmas, a stationary war period of one and a half months
started on the Karelian Isthmus.
10
Raimo Heiskanen, Saadun tiedon mukaan… Päämajan johtama tiedustelu
1939–1945 (Helsinki, 1989), p. 82.
146 pasi tuunainen
Map 3.1. The Winter War, 30 November 1939–13 March 1940.

In Ladoga Karelia the size of the area and the small number of
Finnish troops meant that the defensive mission could not be accom-
plished by dispersing the troops all over. Instead, Finnish commanders
decided to concentrate their forces and to launch counterattacks.
The Soviet troops managed to threaten Tolvajärvi north of Loimola,
after which a denser road network would have permitted an advance
deeper inland. The countermeasures would have been very difficult
had the Soviet troops captured either Tolvajärvi or Loimola crossroads.
The Finnish counterattack at Tolvajärvi on 12 December 1939 led to a
defeat of one Red Army division and to the stabilization of the sector.
This was the first definite Finnish success in the war, and it boosted
Finnish morale. Immediately afterwards counterattacks were launched
in adjacent Ilomantsi, but they failed to gain the same success.
In Lieksa, the invading Soviet troops were flanked and driven back
behind the border by the end of December.11
At the Kollaa River front east of Loimola, a Finnish division man-
aged to hold the line against heavy Soviet pressure. The halting of the
Soviet offensive at this sector enabled the commencement of counter-
attacks further south according to the plans, which had been contem-
plated already during peacetime, when the General Staff College
courses had traveled in the area. The counterattacks failed in December,
because of the size of the enemy. But the general flank attack of 6
January 1940 led to the slicing of the Red Army units between Loimola
and Lake Ladoga into several pockets, which the Finns had started to
call mottis. The Finnish battle detachments reached the shores of Lake
Ladoga without caring for their flanks and bypassing the Soviet strong-
holds. The tactic bears resemblance to the German offensives on the
Western Front in 1918.12
By using encirclement, the Finns had stopped and surrounded
the heavy Soviet columns that were bound to the few roads of the
Ladoga Karelia. The deep, narrow advance had made the Soviet lines of
communication long and vulnerable. Furthermore, the Red Army com-
manders neglected to safeguard their flanks. The Finns had deliberately
11
Ohto Manninen, “Taistelujen ensimmäinen vaihe,” in Olli Vehviläinen &
O.A. Ržeševski, eds., Yksin suurvaltaa vastassa: Talvisodan poliittinen historia (Helsinki,
1997), pp. 158–9.
12
Tynkkynen, “Sotakorkeakoulu,” pp. 60–1; Ahto, “Talvisota,” p. 39; Pasi Tuunainen,
“Esipuhe,” in Antti Juutilainen, Mottien maa: IV Armeijakunnan sotatoimet talviso-
dassa, 2nd rev. ed. (Helsinki, 2009), p. vii.
148 pasi tuunainen
planned to encircle only one large motti at Kitilä by Lake Ladoga with
one Soviet division in it. The rest of the mottis were “accidents,” since
the Finns did not have enough troops or heavy fire support to finish
them off, and the Soviets put up a stubborn resistance. The strongest of
mottis had 71 Soviet tanks dug in the ground as permanent gun
emplacements. The Finns were not pleased to have so many encircled
pockets, because they made the frontlines longer and tied down many
troops, which were desperately needed elsewhere. The Finns could not
focus only on the mottis, because they also had to fight off the Soviet
reinforcements coming to the rescue. However, only three of more
than a dozen mottis in Ladoga Karelia survived until the cessation of
hostilities in March 1940. Finally, the siege of the great motti at Kitilä
was broken during the last days of the war, giving the momentum back
to the Red Army.13
Further north in Kuhmo, the advancing Soviet division was stopped
by numerically inferior Finnish troops. In the Suomussalmi sector,
two Soviet divisions had been ordered to advance to Oulu and thus
threatened to cut Finland in two halves. The ensuing battles are known
as the Suomussalmi-Raate double battle, in which two Soviet divisions
were cut off and defeated in the wilderness in temperatures as low as
-40 degrees Celsius. After their stabilizing victory in Suomussalmi, the
bulk of the Finnish troops were sent to Kuhmo, where their counterof-
fensive in late January 1940 managed to surround their adversaries.
The Finns tried to repeat the Suomussalmi formula, but it did not work
against the well-fortified enemy. The situation in Kuhmo remained
inconclusive.
After having been stopped and encircled the Soviet soldiers quickly
fortified and consolidated their positions. Thus, the motti warfare in
the Ladoga Karelia and in Kuhmo was similar to stationary warfare,
and the annihilation was achieved through attrition. It was almost
impossible to take heavily fortified mottis by storm. They had to be
made smaller little by little in order to make the supply drops by
aircraft more difficult. The most commonly used offensive method
against the mottis were World War I stormtroop infiltration tactics.
This proved to be a cost-effective application, which helped in the
majority of cases to minimize the casualties on the Finnish side. Some-
times the defenders were lured out and then decimated by the ski
13
Juutilainen, Mottien maa, pp. 167–86.
troops and freezing weather. The besieged rarely surrendered, because

they had been frightened of Finnish brutality by Soviet war propa-
ganda. In comparison to the Karelian Isthmus, where the Finnish mili-
tary organizations remained largely unmodified, in Ladoga Karelia,
Suomussalmi and Kuhmo the fighting was, to a large extent, conducted
by various ad hoc regimental combat teams and battalion tasks forces
with relatively independent missions. The light Finnish troops enjoyed
a high degree of tactical mobility, but as they relied on horses in logis-
tics they had relatively low operational mobility.14
In Lapland, the Red Army had first advanced great distances practi-
cally unopposed in the wilderness. They were threatening Kemijärvi,
which was the furthest railhead of the Finnish railway network.
Nevertheless, the extremely difficult terrain and weather conditions
plus the skillfully improvised Finnish defenses managed to halt the
Soviet advance and push back the attackers. In Pechenga region, a tiny
Finnish detachment was able to stabilize the front near the Arctic
Ocean.
Having failed in its objectives all along the front, the Red Army
started preparations for a general offensive on the Karelian Isthmus.
This took the whole of January 1940. The commander of the Soviet
troops against Finland, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, was replaced by
General Semyon Timoshenko, who re-evaluated earlier mistakes and
took measures to improve the performance of the Red Army. The sof-
tening of the Finnish positions at the Mannerheim Line with artillery
fire and aerial bombardments continued together with local trench
fighting. All this weakened the defenders’ position, as there was no
chance of any rest for the Finnish frontline units. The concentration of
forces was highly unfavorable for the Finnish Army: 23 Soviet divi-
sions were concentrated on the Karelian Isthmus with an option to
increase the number to 30. The Mannerheim Line was to be penetrated
in Summa sector, with nine Soviet divisions deployed. Here, at the
point of gravity, the concentration of Soviet firepower was immense:
72 artillery pieces and 40 tanks for every kilometer.15
After ten days of heavy barrage and local attacks, the general Soviet
offensive on the Karelian Isthmus commenced on 11 February 1940.
14
Tuunainen, “Esipuhe,” pp. vi–xiii; Y.A. Järvinen, Suomalainen ja venäläinen tak-
tiikka talvisodassa (Porvoo, 1948), pp. 188–252.
15
Carl Van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40 (Bath, 1997), Chapters 3
and 4.
150 pasi tuunainen
The defenders of the Mannerheim Line, which was lacking depth, were
greatly outnumbered and without reserves. The Red Army penetration
ruptured the Finnish lines in Summa. Even though an actual break-
through was not achieved, the situation was deteriorating, and the
Finnish forces in the western parts of the Mannerheim Line were
at risk of being isolated. The order to abandon the positions on the
western Karelian Isthmus was given by Marshal Mannerheim on
15 February. In the absence of active pursuit on the part of the Red
Army, the Finnish troops managed to conduct an orderly retreat, and
they had time to man the weaker “Middle Position,” which ran through
the Isthmus behind the Mannerheim Line. The Finns received rein-
forcements from the training centers, but they were inexperienced and
ill-equipped. The situation worsened as one Soviet army corps engaged
in an outflanking maneuver on a strategic scale over the frozen Bay of
Vyborg, threatening the western corner of the Finnish defenses and the
Helsinki-Vyborg highway. The Finnish forces were pulled back to the
“Rear Position” running east of Vyborg, a line which practically existed
only on paper. The situation around the Bay of Vyborg became critical,
but for the moment the unprepared lines held. To ease the pressure,
sailors were made infantrymen, troops were formed on an ad hoc basis
and reinforcements were brought in from Lapland, where a Swedish
volunteer brigade had taken charge. The center of the medieval city of
Vyborg, the second largest Finnish city at the time, was still in the
hands of the defenders when hostilities ended on 13 March 1940.16
The Finnish Army on the Karelian Isthmus and the Bay of Vyborg
was on the verge of collapse in March 1940. The troops were fatigued,
and they had drastic ammunition shortages. However, the spring was
coming soon. The melting of the frost-damaged roads (rosputitsa)
would have complicated the operations of the Red Army, and the Soviet
army corps, which had crossed the ice-covered Bay of Vyborg, would
have been in danger of becoming isolated. In the end, Stalin’s willing-
ness to agree to a negotiated settlement was due to the threat of inter-
vention by the Franco-British expeditionary force, which had already
been promised to the Finns and which would have turned the war into
an international conflict. An open war against the Western Powers in
the spring of 1940 did not suit Soviet strategic planning.
16
Lasse Laaksonen, Todellisuus ja harhat: Kannaksen taistelut ja suomalaisten jouk-
kojen tila talvisodan lopussa 1940 (Helsinki, 1999), passim.
In the absence of fighting elsewhere in Europe, Finland had

received a lot of sympathy and material support from other nations.
Sweden was officially neutral, but it allowed 8,000 volunteers to travel
to Finland. The other nationalities volunteering for the Finnish
cause included, for example, Danes, Norwegians, American Finns,
Hungarians and a company of British volunteers. Many volunteers
were still in their training centers when the hostilities ended; they
numbered altogether 12,000 men.17
In the aftermath of the Winter War, Stalin argued that the objective
of the Red Army had only been to form bridgeheads, which could sub-
sequently be used to thrust deeper into Finnish territory. This, of
course, was not historically true, as we know when reading the original
Soviet plans for invasion. Although preserving its independence, the
Moscow Peace terms of 1940 were harsh to Finland. Besides the annex-
ation of the Karelian Isthmus, Ladoga Karelia, Salla region and the
islands in the Gulf of Finland, the Soviets also gained control of a naval
base at Hanko Peninsula, west of Helsinki. Yet the Soviet Union had
clearly lost much of its military prestige in the eyes of foreign observ-
ers. To explain the mediocre performance of the Red Army, the strength
of the Mannerheim Line and the number of Finnish casualties were
exaggerated in Soviet propaganda. The Line was often compared to the
Maginot and Siegfried Lines, even though, in reality, it was nothing of
the kind. Most importantly for the future development of World War
II, the weak performance of the Red Army did not go unnoticed in
Berlin. If the Red Army, despite its vast material resources, could not
occupy a minor country like Finland, how could it ever oppose the
might of the German Wehrmacht?18
The Interim Peace, 1940–41

After March 1940, the Finnish Army made extensive preparations
against a renewed Soviet aggression. Fortifications were constructed at
the new border. Between 1940 and 1941, an almost complete defensive
17
Svenska frivilliga i Finland 1939–44 (Stockholm, 1989); Justin Brooke, The
Volunteers: The Full Story of the British Volunteers in Finland (Upton-upon-Severn,
1990).
18
E.N. Kulkov & O.A. Rzheshevsky, eds., Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War 1939–
40, ed. in English Harold Shukman, transl. Tatyana Sokokina (London, 2002), passim;
Manninen, “Suomen kohtalonvuosien ratkaisut,” pp. 14, 18.
152 pasi tuunainen
position was built between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Saimaa.
North of the Saimaa lake district, only roads from the east were
fortified. The fortification works ended in the summer of 1941 as
they were considered secondary in the changed military situation, but
they were hastily continued in 1944 in the face of the new Soviet
offensive. This chain of fortifications was named the Salpa (“Lock”)
Position.
In 1940–41, measures were taken to strengthen and reorganize the
Finnish Army. The size of the peacetime standing army was increased
by extending conscription from one to two years. The garrisons were
set up along the eastern border. The number of divisions was raised
from nine in 1939 to sixteen in 1941. The lessons of the Winter War
were taken into account in rewriting the field manuals. The biggest
changes occurred in the material preparedness of the Finnish Army.
Better weapons were acquired abroad, and massive orders were made
to the Finnish weapons industry. Even though the Germans, following
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, did not support Finland during the
Winter War in any way, the Finnish re-arming during the Interim
Peace was largely done with help from Germany, where the prepara-
tions for Operation Barbarossa were now under way. The emphasis in
military purchases was put on heavy weapons.19
In September 1940, Finland allowed the transit of German troops
through its territory. The Finnish-German military cooperation inten-
sified at the beginning of 1941. Volunteers were secretly recruited to a
Finnish Waffen-SS battalion, which was later used on the Eastern
Front. The battalion was viewed as a pledge for further German
support. In the summer of 1940, German Army Command (AOK)
Norwegen had received orders to prepare to take the Finnish Pechenga
region, crucial for the German war economy for its nickel mines, if the
Soviet Union were to invade Finland. During May and June 1941,
Finnish and German military officials talked about the practicalities of
military cooperation in the ever more evident case of the German
invasion of the Soviet Union. In the northern half of Finland, the oper-
ational responsibility had been assumed by the Germans, and one
Finnish army corps was detached to the disposal of AOK Norwegen,
19
Ari Raunio, “Jatkosota, hyökkäysvaihe,” in Sotien vuodet, p. 48; Vesa Tynkkynen,
“Hyödynnettiinkö sotakokemuksia?” in Juutilainen & Leskinen, Talvisodan pikkujät-
tiläinen, pp. 912–7.
now headquartered in Rovaniemi. At the outbreak of Operation

Barbarossa, Luftwaffe units used Finnish airfields for refueling from
22 June 1941 onward and for offensive operations after 25 June, when
the Soviet Air Force had bombed Finnish targets, thus giving the Finns
a formal casus belli.20
During the Interim Peace, the Soviet military had made plans in the
event of war against Finland. The basic idea was again the complete
takeover of Finland. Soviet troops were intended to reach Helsinki in
30 days and the Gulf of Bothnia in 45. The Gulf of Finland was to be
secured to protect Leningrad, and Soviet reinforcements were to be
brought in from recently annexed Estonia to the Hanko naval base. The
Red Army had begun the Winter War with 22 divisions, but now the
number of required divisions was calculated at 49.21
The mobilization of the Finnish Army was carried out in mid-June
1941 before the onslaught of Operation Barbarossa. Altogether 25.5
age cohorts were called up with very few exceptions. The war was
expected to be a short one, and the labor force for the home front was
to be provided by women and men over 45. The full strength of the
Finnish Army in the summer of 1941 was 475,000 men, and together
with other services and functions directly linked to the war effort the
Finnish mobilization equaled about 16 percent of the country’s popu-
lation. The railroad concentrations were completed by the eighth day
of the mobilization. The bulk of the forces were deployed near the bor-
der between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Saimaa. The troops had a
couple of weeks to replenish themselves. In the southern part of the
country, the Finnish Army’s basic plan of action was static defense in
fortified positions, and in northern areas the possible Soviet attack
would have been repelled by active and mobile actions from separate
strongholds.
II. The Continuation War and the Lapland War, 1941–45
From the Finnish-German Offensive to the Long Stationary War

In June 1941, the Red Army had its hands full against the Germans,
who had begun Operation Barbarossa on 22 June. Thus, the Soviets did
20
Mauno Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty (Helsinki, 1987), pp. 632–8.
21
Manninen, Miten Suomi valloitetaan, pp. 123–34.
154 pasi tuunainen
not possess the required troops to occupy Finland according to their

original plans. The Leningrad Military District had just 22 divisions
at its disposal, and it had to deploy them to face the Germans. This
meant that the operational plans had to be modified, and the invasion
of Finland had to be abandoned. In some places along the Finnish-
Soviet border the Red Army was numerically inferior to the Finns. The
relative weakness of the Soviet troops against Finland enabled the
Finns to change their own strategic defense posture.22
The deployment of the Finnish Army was defensive, and it had
to be changed according to the new offensive strategy. It had been
agreed with the Germans that the Finnish Army would initially join
Operation Barbarossa by advancing north and northeast of Lake
Ladoga with a minimum of six divisions. For this purpose, a 100,000
men strong Karelian Army was formed of two Finnish army corps plus
a separate group of light troops under General Erik Heinrichs, who
had distinguished himself as the commander of the Finnish forces on
the Karelian Isthmus in 1940. The Karelian Army was to meet the
German Army Group North at River Svir. At first, the Finnish plans
were limited in scope, as Finnish intelligence overestimated the
strength of the Red Army in Ladoga Karelia. Only after 25 June 1941,
and with intelligence reports on the Soviet defensive posture, did
Marshal Mannerheim decide to use substantial forces with faraway
objectives. As the first offensive phase, the Finnish attack on Ladoga
Karelia began on 10 July and it was continued up to the old 1939
border. Here the offensive was halted to tidy up the flanks and to
arrange supply lines.
Meanwhile in August, the focus was shifted to the Karelian Isthmus.
The Finns retook the city of Vyborg and the rest of the Karelian Isthmus
by pursuing the withdrawing Red Army units, but the advance was
stopped soon after the old border at the gates of Leningrad. On the
Karelian Isthmus, the Finns used seven of their total 16 divisions, and
the operations lasted for a month. In September, the Karelian Army
continued its advance to River Svir and to Petrozavodsk, the capital
of Soviet Eastern Karelia at Lake Onega, which was captured on
1 October 1941. The Finnish leadership refused to advance further
towards Leningrad to close the siege, and instead continued north
towards the Maaselkä Isthmus, which was captured in early December.
22
Manninen, “Suomen kohtalonvuosien ratkaisut,” p. 20.
Map 3.2. Finnish-German Offensive, July–December 1941.

156 pasi tuunainen
The offensive of the Karelian Army in Eastern Karelia was supported

by troops transported from the Karelian Isthmus, and it was partici-
pated in by nine divisions altogether, one of them German, and three
brigades. The complete Finnish offensive from the 1940 border to
Eastern Karelia lasted for five months.23
Further north, the independent Finnish 14th Division advanced
220 kilometers along one road in the vast wilderness and reached
Rukajärvi in mid-September 1941. In the offensive phase of 1941, the
Finnish Army recaptured all the territories lost in 1940 and advanced
much further to occupy Soviet Eastern Karelia. This was done at the
cost of approximately the same number of fatalities the Finns had sus-
tained in the Winter War.
In Northern Finland, the German AOK Norwegen, later to be
renamed 20th Mountain Army, started its offensive in Midsummer
1941, but made only minor progress. In November 1941, a joint
Finnish-German operation was commenced east of Kiestinki. The
offensive was mounted against Marshal Mannerheim’s wishes, who
thus as the commander-in-chief gave a secret order to the Finnish
troops under German command to stop their advance, because
Finnish-American relations were about to break down. There were
Finnish plans to cut the Murmansk Railway, along which large amounts
of the Allied Lend-Lease Aid to the Soviet Union were transported, but
they were abandoned for political reasons. The German troops had
performed poorly in the northern boreal forests and tundra. Yet in July
1941, the Salla region ceded in March 1940 was recaptured by the
German and Finnish forces. Further north, the German attack towards
Murmansk in a rough roadless terrain stopped short of reaching any
success.24
Joint operations were also discussed between the Finnish and
German military officials at different levels later on. The Germans tried
to have an influence on Finnish military planning. The Finns, who had
their own agendas, politely noted the requests of the Germans, but
made independent decisions that served their own interests best.
Officially, the operations were debated between Marshal Mannerheim
and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the German High
Command, but in many instances Mannerheim turned to President
23
Raunio, “Jatkosota, hyökkäysvaihe,” p. 63. For an alternative account of the
Finnish role in the siege of Leningrad, see Nikolai Baryshnikov, Finland and the Siege
of Leningrad 1941–1944 (St. Petersburg, 2005).
24
Raunio, “Jatkosota, hyökkäysvaihe,” p. 52.
Ryti to hear his opinions on the political ramifications of military plan-

ning. The Finns were, however, making plans to attack much further
should the Germans make more progress elsewhere on the Eastern
Front and in Lapland. The planning stopped only in the autumn of
1942, when the Finns had realized that German victory in the east was
less and less probable.25
In its 1941 offensive, the Finnish Army used breakthrough and pur-
suit tactics, conducted amphibious operations and extensively utilized
encirclement tactics and long flanking movements. The Finns some-
times made use of deep arrowhead advances along the roads. Near
Vyborg, where the idea was encirclement, a large motti was formed.
In Ladoga Karelia, the Soviet defenders held tightly onto their fortified
positions, offered stiff resistance, causing heavy Finnish casualties, and
used the hilly terrain to their benefit, as they were not capable of mobile
operations. Their defensive positions were normally narrow and con-
fined to the vicinity of roads. If the positions could not be properly
suppressed by artillery, the Finns had no alternative than to try to go
around the defenses. The longest of such enveloping maneuvers were
40 to 80 kilometers long and thus far beyond the artillery’s range of
support. These sudden flanking operations normally forced the Soviet
units to abandon their heavy equipment and to flee or fight their way
through.26
After the occupation of Petrozavodsk on 1 October 1941, the weather
conditions started to affect the Finnish Army’s thrust towards the
northeast, which had continued for about 200 to 350 kilometers. The
deep thrust into Soviet territory was carried out to reach an easily
defendable waterway line from River Svir to Lake Onega and from
thereon north to the Maaselkä Isthmus. The occupation of Eastern
Karelia, which created a buffer zone in front of the old 1939 border, was
also considered a pre-emptive action to secure the Finnish heartland
from further Soviet invasion.27 The advance across the 1939 border had
an impact on the Finnish combat motivation. As a consequence of
crossing the border, there were cases of neglecting one’s duties, and
25
Mikko Karjalainen, Ajatuksista operaatioiksi: Suomen armeijan hyökkäysope-
raatioiden suunnittelu jatkosodassa (Helsinki, 2009), p. 307; Kalle Korpi, Tavoitteena
Muurmanni: Saksan Norjan-Armeija ja Pohjois-Suomen rintamasuunta joulukuusta
1940 joulukuuhun 1941 (Rovaniemi, 1996), pp. 346–54.
26
Y.A. Järvinen, Jatkosodan taistelut: Jatkosodan taktiikkaa ja tapahtumia (Porvoo,
1950), passim.
27
Antti Juutilainen, “Suomalainen hyökkäystaktiikka jatkosodassa,” in Jatkosodan
taistelut (Helsinki, 2002), pp. 23–33; Manninen, Miten Suomi valloitetaan, pp. 163–4.
158 pasi tuunainen
objections to continuing the advance after the old border took place on
a massive scale in various units on the Karelian Isthmus and in Eastern
Karelia. The reasons varied. Many of the soldiers were simply exhausted,
and they were very afraid of fighting against the fortified Leningrad,
which they knew to be a hard task. The troops had not been told about
Finland’s precise war aims in 1941, and as the city of Petrozavodsk had
been widely understood as the final destination for the offensive, the
further advance caused bitter reactions, which had to be addressed by
the commanding officers.28
Most units of the Finnish Army changed to stationary warfare in the
autumn of 1941. Some fighting occurred at the Hanko front, but the
Soviet troops evacuated their isolated naval base by early December
1941. All along the front, the defensive positions were planned accord-
ing to the waterlines. The autumn of 1941 also marked the beginning
of Finnish troop reorganizations. As there was a great need for labor
force on the home front and the large army of the summer of 1941 was
designed for a short offensive, about 180,000 older reservists were
mustered out by the late spring of 1942, partly replaced by new con-
scripts. Some of the divisions were converted into brigades. In practice,
the remaining 14 infantry divisions were under strength, and later in
February 1944, the divisional organization was officially reduced to
seven battalions in two regiments from the earlier nine battalions in
three regiments. This restructuring has been considered a failure, as it
diminished the reserves and operational flexibility of the divisional
commanders.29
During the stationary war period from the autumn of 1941 to the
spring of 1944, the fighting became sporadic. The fortification activi-
ties were continued, and armed reconnaissance missions were carried
out. Occasionally, some fierce fighting took place, especially in early
1942, when the Soviet troops began thrusts on the Maaselkä Isthmus,
River Svir and Kiestinki as a part of their winter and spring offensives
all along the Eastern Front. These attacks were repulsed by the Finns.
As the last major offensive operation of the Finnish Army in the
Continuation War, the Hogland Island on the Gulf of Finland was
taken in March 1942. On the Karelian Isthmus, River Svir and Maaselkä
Isthmus, the frontline was continuous and rather densely manned,
28
Harri Heinilä, Vanhan rajan ylitys jatkosodan hyökkäysvaiheessa 1941, unpub-
lished MA thesis (University of Helsinki, 1997), passim.
29
Ari Raunio & Juri Kilin, Jatkosodan torjuntataisteluja 1942–44 (Helsinki, 2008),
pp. 11–2, 84.
but in the Rukajärvi sector the front was 200 kilometers wide, and
there were just eight kilometers of fixed positions. All the rest of the
sector was protected by pickets and patrols. This led to an active use of
Soviet guerilla ambushes and Finnish long-range patrolling.30
In the standstill of 1942–44, there was plenty of time to address the
welfare and boredom of the troops, and recreational activities begun.
Libraries were opened, various groups of entertainers visited the front
and all kinds of sports activities were organized. The men also had a
chance to go on home leave. Farming activities were initiated near the
front, and fishing and hunting were allowed. In many aspects, the
period of passive stationary warfare after the offensive in 1941 until
the summer of 1944 was almost like a phoney war, with only few casu-
alties and relative peace on the home front. This was in stark contrast
to the brutal fighting elsewhere on the Eastern Front, the outcome of
which would bring Finland back into the Soviet focus in the summer
of 1944.
The Soviet Summer Offensive in 1944

In February 1944, the Soviet Long Range Air Forces launched a bomb-
ing campaign against Finnish cities, mainly Helsinki. The bombings
were aimed at influencing the morale of the Finns, and the most
massive raid against Helsinki included nearly 900 Soviet planes. In
the end, the damage was on a limited scale, but the sudden air cam-
paign ended the lull in war, which had lasted from the spring of 1942
onwards. The German siege of Leningrad had been lifted in the winter
of 1943–44, and the position of Finland had again become vulnerable.
In April 1944, Stalin decided that Finland had to be occupied before
expelling the Germans from Belorussia. To that aim, the Red Army
was to launch a general assault on the Karelian Isthmus and in Eastern
Karelia. In the first phase, the troops of the Soviet Leningrad Front
were destined to take Vyborg and then continue to the River Kymi,
which had been the Swedish-Russian border in 1743. After reaching
these initial objectives, the attacking troops were ordered to be ready to
continue their thrust on to Helsinki and other major cities in the
Finnish heartland. After the offensive had started on the Karelian
Isthmus, the troops of the Soviet Karelian Front were to attack over the
River Svir, to reconquer Eastern Karelia and to advance to the Saimaa
30
Jukka Partanen, Juha Pohjonen & Pasi Tuunainen, E.J. Raappana: Rajan ja sodan
kenraali (Helsinki, 2007), passim.
160 pasi tuunainen
lake district. Just as in the Winter War, Stalin calculated that the Red
Army would soon defeat the Finnish Army. The Karelian Front, for
example, had supplies only for 45 days. With Belorussia as the Soviet
priority for the summer of 1944, Stalin had allocated approximately ten
percent of total Soviet manpower against the Finns. At the end of the
Winter War, the Red Army had had one million men against Finland,
but in June 1944 only little over 600,000 men, although with much
improved firepower. Stalin was not willing to commit more forces
against the Finns, as time was of the essence and the race to Berlin was
about to begin.31
In the spring of 1944, the Finnish High Command had wanted to
reassure the Army of its fighting power, which was allegedly many
times greater than in the Winter War. The development of the Red
Army since those days was not really taken into account. According to
these reassurances, the Finnish troops had been deployed in depth and
the commander-in-chief, Marshal Mannerheim, had considerable
reserves at his disposal.32 The reality turned out to be quite different,
and the Finns were shocked by the strength and determination of the
Soviet thrust.
In conjunction with the Normandy landings, the Soviet Union initi-
ated its Fourth Strategic Offensive of World War II to push Finland
out of the war. On 9 June 1944 on the Karelian Isthmus, the decimat-
ing Soviet artillery barrages of an unforeseen scale almost completely
leveled the Finnish trenches and positions in a sandy terrain. The ini-
tial attacks were launched to spot the Finnish positions and to tie up
their reserves. The breakthrough followed on 10 June. At the main
point of assault in Valkeasaari, immediately north of Leningrad, the
preparatory fire either killed many of the defenders or left them
stunned. Control of the troops became difficult, as the Finnish officer
casualties were high. Ill-fated counter-attacks were attempted, but they
were doomed to fail. In some Finnish battalions, virtually all the offic-
ers were killed or wounded in the opening hours of the Soviet offen-
sive. The Finnish troops, many of which had grown used to the quiet
stationary war, scattered in Valkeasaari and started to abandon their
31
Martti Helminen & Aslak Lukander, Helsingin suurpommitukset helmikuussa
1944 (Helsinki, 2004), passim; Manninen, Miten Suomi valloitetaan, p. 244; Manninen,
“Suomen kohtalonvuosien ratkaisut,” p. 25.
32
KA/SArk, Spk 20882, Appendix to the War Diary of the Finnish High Command,
Presentation by Lieutenant Colonel U.S. Haahti at the annual meeting of the Finnish
Reserve Officer League, 23 April 1944.
positions. The speed of the Soviet advance was relatively fast, and it was
much better coordinated than earlier. Next, the Soviet troops managed
to breach the so-called “VT” Line, which ran behind the initial front-
line. The spirited counterattack by the Finnish Army’s sole Armored
Division in mid-June failed to stabilize the front. The “VT” Line broke
mainly because of the lack of troops and the surprise effect resulting
from the speed of the Red Army’s advance. This marked the beginning
of the Finnish fighting withdrawal. To the horror of both the Finnish
military and civilians, on 20 June 1944 the troops of the Leningrad
Front, having advanced at the speed of approximately ten kilometers a
day, reached and took the city of Vyborg from its stunned defenders in
timely accordance with the original Soviet plan. It had taken the Red
Army less than two weeks to make the same progress, and even more,
on the Karelian Isthmus, which had required three months in the
Winter War.
At the onslaught of this major Soviet offensive, thousands of Finnish
frontline soldiers were on farming leave. The Finnish Army called
back the cohorts of older men, which had been demobilized during the
Map 3.3. Fourth Strategic Offensive of the Red Army, Summer 1944.
162 pasi tuunainen
stationary war, and the size of the Army rose to about 530,000 men by
August 1944. However, at the beginning of its offensive, the Red Army
had five times more guns and mortars and some seven times more
tanks and aircraft than the Finns.33
Both Finnish and German military intelligence had erroneously
estimated that the new troops gathered in and around Leningrad were
meant for the Narva front in Estonia. Yet aerial photographs clearly
indicated that offensive preparations were being made. Furthermore,
the Finnish frontline soldiers had heard the alarming noise of traffic
from the Soviet side for weeks before the assault. The Soviet success in
surprising the Finnish High Command was partly a product of skillful
Soviet military deception, maskirovka. Nevertheless, this is only half of
the explanation; the top officers of the Finnish Army can be criticized
for neglecting many warnings and for being over-optimistic regarding
the Finnish preparedness. In the spring of 1944, the Finnish ground
forces were composed of one armored division, 14 infantry divisions
and six brigades. Of these, only the Armored Division, five infantry
divisions and two brigades were on the Karelian Isthmus, and the
remaining troops were deployed in Eastern Karelia and further north.
It can be seen in retrospect that this deployment made the defenses on
the Isthmus quite vulnerable.34
Even though the situation was again critical, the Finnish leadership
did not want to negotiate surrender as it would have been uncondi-
tional in nature. Mannerheim knew that the situation at the front had
to be stabilized before an agreeable political settlement could be
achieved, otherwise the country would be occupied. Even though the
Finnish soldiers did not know precisely the harshness of the Soviet
peace terms, they feared for the worst. This made it easier to commit to
fighting alongside the Germans. It was in the interest of the Germans
that the Finns would intensify their war effort and fight on. The mili-
tary ramifications of President Risto Ryti’s 26 June 1944 letter to Adolf
Hitler, in which he assured the Germans that Finland would continue
the fight, were important. Some Wehrmacht units, but more impor-
tantly large quantities of artillery shells and modern anti-tank weapons
33
Pentti Airio, “Jatkosota, asemasota ja kesän 1944 ratkaisutaistelut,” in Sotien
vuodet, pp. 69–71.
34
Jyri Paulaharju, Tykistötiedustelu iskee (Hämeenlinna, 2004), pp. 144–6;
David Glantz, Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War (London, 1989),
pp. 358–60.
(Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks) were emergently sent to Finland.

In 1943–44, the Finnish Air Force had 159 Messerschmitt 109s of vari-
ous subtypes, and those were the only planes to match the new types
of Soviet aircraft. Already in mid-June 1944, the Germans had sent
an elite Luftwaffe ground support unit to Finland, which had some
70 fighters and dive-bombers. Germany was willing to support the
Finns, but it was easier for them to dispatch equipment than troops,
because their own reserves were desperately needed elsewhere. They
did, however, ship one infantry division to the Bay of Vyborg area and
one assault gun brigade to the Karelian Isthmus, and were further pre-
pared to send one army corps headquarters. In the event of Finnish
surrender, the Germans made plans to occupy some strategically
important places, like islands on the Gulf of Finland, and hoped to
continue the war along with some Finnish troops.35
Under constant pressure, the Finnish Army had withdrawn to the
third and last line of defense on the Karelian Isthmus. The overall
Finnish command on the Isthmus had been given to General K.L.
Oesch. After the capture of Vyborg, the Leningrad Front was about to
continue first to the southern shore of Lake Saimaa and then to River
Kymi in the west. As a consequence, the battle of Tali-Ihantala imme-
diately northeast of Vyborg commenced on 25 June 1944. Yet the situ-
ation of the Finnish troops had now improved, as heavy reinforcements
from other sectors had reached the Isthmus. The Finns won this deci-
sive battle in a narrow terrain by a concerted action of various arms.
Tali-Ihantala was a major battle both in size and scope, and it is the
largest battle in the military history of the Nordic countries. During a
period of two weeks from 25 June onwards, altogether around 50,000
Finnish soldiers fought to halt and partly encircle approximately
150,000 Soviet troops, which for their part tried to develop the breach
in Finnish lines to a breakthrough. The Finnish artillery support was
crucial and consisted of 14 artillery battalions. This enabled the con-
centrated fire of close to 250 guns on a single target. The radio recon-
naissance units intercepted Soviet messages about the moment of
attack. The Finns started heavy counterbattery fire on targets in the
Soviet assembly areas a couple of minutes before the attack was about
to begin, and, as a result, the attack was often repulsed before it even
35
Manninen, “Suomen kohtalonvuosien ratkaisut,” pp. 26–7; Airio, “Jatkosota,
asemasota,” pp. 71–6.
164 pasi tuunainen
got started. There was also strong support from the air, especially from
the above-mentioned Luftwaffe unit. The lines held and Finnish coun-
terattacks proved worthwhile. The Finnish casualties in the battle of
Tali-Ihantala were 8,500 men with over 2,000 dead and missing, and
the Red Army lost 25,000 men with over 5,000 dead.36
The offensive of the Leningrad Front slowed down and stopped in
mid-July 1944. Before this, in early July, the battles on the Karelian
Isthmus had dispersed in three different directions. The Red Army
suffered heavy casualties in all three attacks at the Bay of Vyborg, in
Tali-Ihantala and in Vuosalmi in the central Isthmus. The units of
the Leningrad Front had lost one-third of their original strength. The
offensive power of the Front began to be worn down already by the
beginning of July. This happened first at the Bay of Vyborg area, where
the Red Army had begun an amphibious operation quite similar to that
in the Winter War. The fierce battles were fought in the archipelago.
The Red Air Force had air supremacy everywhere, since the Finnish
Air Force mainly attempted to support the ground forces. Despite the
initial success of the offensive and the swift capture of Vyborg, the
Leningrad Front had failed to continue the advance and to take its next
objectives by Lake Saimaa in time. As the Soviet offensive in Belorussia
had begun, no reinforcements were sent to Finland. After the battle of
Tali-Ihantala, the Red Army put pressure to enlarge their narrow
bridgehead on the north bank of River Vuoksi at Vuosalmi, but these
attempts, too, ended by mid-July.
Before these final decisive battles on the Karelian Isthmus, the
Soviets had also launched their second phase of the offensive in Eastern
Karelia. The Soviet Karelian Front, which was in charge of the long
front from the River Svir to Murmansk, began its assault on 21 June
1944 with the initial objective of crossing the River Svir, recapturing
Petrozavodsk and advancing to and over the 1939 border. Here, the
Finnish retreat was hastened by the Red Army’s surprise amphibious
landing behind the Finnish lines at Tuulos on 23 June. The Finns were,
at the same time, reducing their forces in Eastern Karelia to relieve the
pressure on the Karelian Isthmus. After three weeks of retreat back to
the Finnish Ladoga Karelia, the Finnish troops managed to repel the
Soviet attacks in the battle of Nietjärvi by 17 July, but the Karelian Front
36
Pasi Kesseli, “Tali–Ihantala 1944,” in Ohto Manninen, ed., Suomalaisten taistelut
(Helsinki, 2007), pp. 442–52.
was allowed to press on for a while. By mid-July, the Finnish Army had
been able, with heavy losses to both sides, to wear down the Soviet
forces and to stabilize the situation in both main directions: in western
Karelian Isthmus and in the so-called “U” Position north of Lake
Ladoga, at the very place where fighting had ended in the Winter War.
Nevertheless, the battles continued until early August. After the Soviet
attacks on virtually every axis of advance came to a halt, the Soviet
High Command (Stavka) did not deploy any more troops against the
Finns, but, instead, started to pull out troops from the Karelian Isthmus
in mid-July and from the Ladoga Karelia in early August, which
emphasized the secondary importance of Finland in the overall Soviet
strategy. The Soviets had not achieved the occupation of Finland, nor
did they begin strong additional thrusts after mid-July 1944, thus leav-
ing the Finnish front aside for the time being.37
While the situation was calming down in the southern sectors,
the operations lasted longer in the northern areas. The Finnish troops
withdrawing from the Maaselkä Isthmus were pursued by the Red
Army. In late July 1944, two Soviet divisions attacked Ilomantsi and
crossed, for the first time, the Moscow Peace border of 1940. In the
ten-day long Cannae-type encirclement and annihilation battles fought
in early August, the Finnish Raappana Group defeated its opponents
and pushed the Soviet remnants back by 30 kilometers. This last big
battle of the Continuation War ended in a definite Finnish motti
victory—the only one in the summer of 1944. General Raappana also
led the battles at Rukajärvi, where the Red Army in early August tried
to encircle the Finnish 14th Division. The division held its positions,
which it had reached in 1941, until September 1944.38 Also, a new
period of stationary war began here, lasting till the armistice on
4 September 1944. The Red Army showed its might by barraging
Finnish positions after the official hour of ceasefire and ceased action
only on the following day.
Clearly, the Soviet performance in 1944 had been superior to its ear-
lier operations against Finland. The Red Army had developed a new
kind of tactic. Artillery was used to suppress the defenders and to
37
Interview with Professor Juri Kilin, 30 October 2007; Airio, “Jatkosota, asema-
sota,” pp. 70, 76, 80–1.
38
Pasi Tuunainen, “The Battle of Encirclement at Ilomantsi in July–August 1944:
An Example of the Application of the Idea of Cannae in the Finnish Art of War,”
Journal of Slavic Military Studies 19 (2006): 1, pp. 107–22.
166 pasi tuunainen
achieve a sudden mass impact to breach the defenses of the oppo-

nent. In the wake of the breakthrough, the infantry was to take control
of the terrain, and aimed at encircling and annihilating their enemy.
The success was exploited by close cooperation between artillery, tanks
and air forces. In order to deter such deep operations, the defender
should have possessed depth in defense and sufficient reserves.39 The
Soviet troops, having learned from their opponent, were practicing
the same envelopment tactics which the Finns had successfully uti-
lized in 1939–40 and 1941. But the Red Army forces remained too pas-
sive for a decisive success, and did not manage to encircle and destroy
the Finns. It is worth mentioning that although the Finns constantly
feared getting encircled, the only occasion, when one large Finnish-
German formation was temporarily surrounded, was in Kiestinki in
1941.
In early June 1944, the deployment of the Finnish Army had been of
even thickness (or thinness) everywhere. With the enhanced fighting
spirit, and material and air support from the Germans, the establishing
of a clear point of gravity enabled the Army to wage the interception
battles in late June and in July. The halting of the advancing Red Army
was possible after its troops had been worn down enough. The stabili-
zation of the front from early July onwards was largely due to the con-
centration of Finnish artillery and anti-tank detachments along the
few possible attack corridors. The Soviet offensive against Finland in
1944 was the only Soviet strategic offensive after 1942, which failed to
reach its main objectives.40
Yet the success of the Finnish Army in the summer of 1944 must be
considered only partial. The development of tactics and operational art
had been virtually neglected during the stationary war in 1942–44. The
value of the German experiences from the Eastern Front, which the
Finns knew through their close military contacts, was properly under-
stood by the Finns only at the end of the summer battles. Probably
most importantly, the question of strong and deep anti-tank defenses
had been neglected.41 The morale and the will to fight of numerous
39
David M. Glantz, Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle
(London, 1991).
40
Antti Juutilainen, “Valkeasaaresta Ilomantsiin,” Sotahistoriallinen Aikakauskirja
13 (1994), pp. 64–5; Järvinen, Jatkosodan taistelut, pp. 342–50.
41
Ari Raunio, “Yleisesikuntaupseerit Suomen sodissa 1939–1945,” in Tilander
et al., Sotakorkeakoulu, pp. 109–15; Vesa Tynkkynen, Hyökkäyksestä puolustukseen:
Taktiikan kehittymisen ensimmäiset vuosikymmenet Suomessa (Helsinki, 1996), p. 385.
Finnish soldiers had collapsed in June 1944. This phenomenon became

indeed critical during the difficult period of withdrawal, especially on
the Karelian Isthmus. On the most chaotic days in June 1944, a total
number of Finnish soldiers equaling one infantry division had left
their positions and units without permission. In late June 1944, the
Finnish parliament amended the Martial Law by approving the use of
capital punishment for repetitive desertion. In addition to harder pun-
ishments, order in the disintegrated Finnish units was restored using
softer methods. The men were addressed in a tone affecting to their
lowered morale. The instigators of panic and demoralization were sent
to fatigue parties and penal detachments, the units were reinforced and
replenished.42 All this seems to have worked, in the end—after the cha-
otic retreat from Vyborg on 20 June 1944, desertions had reached their
peak and the lines started to hold.
Well-organized and functioning logistics is one source of mili-
tary effectiveness. The strategic mobility of the Finnish Army relied
on the Finnish State Railways. Many waterways were also utilized.
The swift working of the railway system was extremely crucial in the
summer of 1944, when the defense on the Karelian Isthmus relied on
speedy reinforcements from Eastern Karelia and other sectors of the
front. During the white summer nights, the vital transportations of
four Finnish divisions and two brigades to the Isthmus were poten-
tially very vulnerable to air raids. The Soviet Air Force did attempt to
disable the Finnish lines of transportation and communication. The
Soviet pilots generally did not target bridges or train engines, but
often succeeded in bombing various stations. The bombings, how-
ever, rarely caused other than short delays to the railroad traffic. This
was made possible by the quick deployment of Finnish railroad engi-
neer formations. The Red Air Force put main emphasis on the close
air support of ground troops and did not try actively enough to pre-
vent the Finns from bringing the reinforcements in. However, the
apparent neglect of the Red Air Force to harass Finnish logistics
was not always deliberate. Finland had few cities and towns, i.e. easily
spotted targets for bombers, and the forests gave good cover for deploy-
ments and transportations. June 1944 was also a rainy month, and
42
Jukka Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin? 1941–44: Sotilaskarkuruus Suomen armeijassa jat-
kosodan aikana (Helsinki, 1995), pp. 47–9; Moisala & Alanen, Kun hyökkääjän tie
suljettiin, p. 163; Aulis Leinonen, “Joukon taistelukyvyn palauttaminen sodissamme
1939–45,” Huoltopäällikkö (1981), pp. 145–61.
168 pasi tuunainen
some major air raids against the railroad crossroads had to be aborted
due to the weather.43
The focus of this chapter has almost exclusively been on land war-
fare. Important air and naval operations did take place both in the
Winter War and in the Continuation War, but they were never as cen-
tral as in many other theaters of World War II in Europe. Here are,
nevertheless, some short, introductory comments on air and naval
warfare in 1939–44. The efficiency and skills of the pilots are illustrated
in the kill ratios of air combat. Several Finnish fighter aces had over
40 air victories, while one even had 94. In the Winter War, the Finnish
Air Force’s main fighter type was Fokker D.XXI, which had achieved a
kill ratio of 16:1 against the Soviet combat aircraft. During the Contin-
uation War, the Finnish Air Force lost, for instance, 34 Messerschmitt
109s, but the pilots of this same type downed 592 Soviet planes (ca.
17:1). The Brewster Buffalo fighter was considered a failure in the
United States, but the Finns shot down a total of 432 Soviet aircraft,
losing 23 Brewsters (ca. 19:1). Between 1939–44, the Finns were,
according to their own statistics, able to shoot down about 3,000 Soviet
planes. The Finnish Air Force accounted for over half of the downed
planes, and the anti-aircraft units scored the rest. In the Continuation
War, the Finns lost about 500 aircraft, around one-third of them in air
combat. The number includes over 100 destroyed training planes. In
July 1941, the Air Force had just 235 planes, but in spite of the losses
the number in September 1944 was a total of 384.44
In the Winter War, the early winter and thick ice-cover paralyzed
naval operations from the start. The Finnish coastal artillery sup-
ported the ground warfare. In the Continuation War, the Finnish Navy
cooperated with the German Kriegsmarine on the Gulf of Finland.
By laying sea mines and submarine nets, they effectively held the
Soviet Navy at bay in Kronstadt and Leningrad until September 1944.
The small Finnish submarine fleet was able to protect vital mer-
chant vessel traffic from the Finnish harbors to Sweden and Germany.
43
Markku Iskanius, Suomen kuljetusjärjestelmän kehitys toisen maailman-
sodan aikana (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 357–63; Carl-Fredrik Geust, “Neuvostoliiton
kaukotoimintailmavoimat kesän 1944 suurhyökkäyksessä Karjalan kannaksella,”
Sotahistoriallinen Aikakauskirja 23 (2003), pp. 143–58.
44
Interview with air force historian Carl-Fredrik Geust, 27 May 2010; Jatkosodan
historia, Vol. 6 (Porvoo, 1999), pp. 178, 186.
Some Finnish, Soviet and German naval operations also took place on
Lake Ladoga—and even a small Italian detachment of torpedo boats
operated there for some time in 1942.45
The Lapland War, 1944–45

One of the Soviet conditions for an armistice with Finland in September
1944 was that the Finnish Army would quickly and determinedly drive
off the German 20th Mountain Army (earlier AOK Norwegen) in
Northern Finland, numbering altogether 220,000 German soldiers.
After the long “brotherhood-in-arms,” Finland and Germany reluc-
tantly turned their weapons against each other. In the beginning, nei-
ther of the belligerents assumed an active role. In the late summer of
1944, the German military command in Northern Finland was well
aware of the changing situation, and in early September they had
already started an orderly withdrawal from their now vulnerable posi-
tions towards Northern Norway. But such an operation along the
scarce roads required considerable time. The 20th Mountain Army was
virtually in full strength, since the situation in Lapland had been rela-
tively peaceful for the past couple of years, and it had supplies to last
for one year. According to the armistice agreement, the Finnish Army
facing the Germans, numbering only 70,000 men, was to extradite the
20th Mountain Army from Lapland to Norway in less than a month.
This was impossible to carry out, and the Germans wanted to evacuate
as much as possible of their equipment.46
The Lapland War started in mid-September 1944. At first, the for-
mer brothers-in-arms avoided open combat and even informed each
other of their plans in order to coordinate the maneuvers. The Finns
still considered the Soviet Union as their main adversary, and they
occupied the areas from where the Germans had withdrawn so that the
Red Army would not be able to pursue the Germans into Finnish ter-
ritory. The Soviet representatives of the Allied Control Commission,
which had been installed to observe that the Finns fulfilled the terms of
the armistice, demanded swifter action. Otherwise, the Red Army
45
Suomen laivasto 1918–68, Vol. 1 (Helsinki, 1968), passim; Markku Melkko,
Suomen sukellusveneet (Helsinki, 2008), passim.
46
Sampo Ahto, Aseveljet vastakkain: Lapin sota 1944–45 (Helsinki, 1980), Chapters
II–III.
170 pasi tuunainen
Map 3.4. The Lapland War, September 1944 – April 1945.
would join the war inside the new Finnish borders. Thus, instead of
just pushing the Germans northwards, on 1 October 1944 the Finns
carried out a landing at Tornio behind the right flank of the Germans.
This caught the Germans by surprise and threatened to cut the
withdrawal routes of the German units still south and east of Rovaniemi.
The battle over the control of the Tornio area was a violent engagement
with hundreds of casualties on both sides. Now, the Lapland War had
truly started as an armed conflict.
Having captured the burned-down Rovaniemi in mid-October, the
Finnish forces continued along the road by the Swedish border and
along the route from Rovaniemi to Ivalo. The advance was further
complicated by the two strong defensive positions, which the Germans
had constructed in Ivalo and in Kilpisjärvi, the far northwestern cor-
ner of Finland. The Red Army had started its own offensive against
the 20th Mountain Army west of Murmansk in early October. This
powerful thrust towards Kirkenes was actually more alarming for
the Germans than the weaker Finnish pursuit towards the north.
In late 1944, the Finns announced their plans to increase the number
of troops in Lapland, but the Soviets did not authorize this. Instead,
they insisted on the rapid demobilization of the Finnish Army. Thus
in December, the Finns had only the young conscripts against the
battle-hardened veterans of the 20th Mountain Army, which neverthe-
less had no interest in hanging on to the Finnish territory on the north-
ern periphery.47
The engagements of the Lapland War followed a similar pattern.
A motorized German rearguard, with superior firepower and an
almost endless supply of munitions, was waiting behind one of the
many rivers. The Finns tried to go around the German delaying posi-
tions, but it took a day or two to reconnoitre and flank the positions
during the dark, cold season. This was enough for the Germans to buy
time. They normally slipped away and were waiting behind the next
river. German detachments were encircled on some occasions, but
they were able to break out. The Germans held their positions on
the fells of Kilpisjärvi until the Narvik sector in Norway was fortified.
The last Germans left the Finnish territory of their own will on 27 April
1945. While withdrawing, the Germans employed scorched earth
tactic and burned buildings, whole towns, destroyed roads and mined
vast areas. This destruction of Lapland caused deep bitterness among
many Finns.48
47
Sampo Ahto, “Lapin sota,” in Sotien vuodet, pp. 97–100.
48
Ahto, “Lapin sota,” pp. 99–101.
172 pasi tuunainen
Table 3.1 Military Casualties in Finland’s Three Wars, 1939–45.

Winter War, November 1939 – March 1940:
Finnish soldiers1 Soviet soldiers2

Killed or missing in 27,000 ~ 130,000
action
Wounded 44,000 ~ 270,000
Continuation War, June 1941 – September 1944:
Finnish soldiers1 Soviet soldiers2

Killed or missing in 66,000 ~ 250,000
action
Wounded 150,000 ~ 385,000 + 190,000
Lapland War, September 1944 – April 1945:
Finnish soldiers3 German soldiers3

Killed or missing in 1,000 1,000
action
Wounded 3,000 2,000
Finnish civilian casualties in the Winter War and the Continuation

War, caused by the Soviet air and partisan raids, were around
2,100 fatalities. When considering some other small groups of
casualties, not included in the table, to total of 96,000 Finns lost their
lives in World War II.1 As the estimates of Soviet casualties in both wars
vary greatly, the figures above are only approximate.
1
Pekka Kurenmaa & Riitta Lentilä, “Sodan tappiot,” in Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen,
eds. Jari Leskinen & Antti Juutilainen (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 1150–5; cf. Ohto
Manninen, “Jatkosodan tappiot,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 1: Rintamalla, eds.
Lauri Haataja et al. (Porvoo, 2002), pp. 276–8. The “killed” also include those who
died of war-related causes soon after the wars.
2
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, ed. G.F. Krivosheev
(London, 1997), p. 79. The Soviet figures for the Continuation War include the fallen
and the prisoners-of-war against the Finns and also against the German troops
deployed in Finland, 1941–45. The Soviet statistics also separate ca. 190,000 “sick”
soldiers as a category of their own.
3
Sampo Ahto, Aseveljet vastakkain: Lapin sota 1944–1945 (Helsinki, 1980),
pp. 296–7.
The Casualties of 1939–45

The average strength of the Finnish Army during the Continuation
War was about 450,000 men, and the total number of Finnish men
mobilized in the Army during 1939–45 has been estimated to be as
high as 700,000 men. The three wars took a heavy toll on the belliger-
ents’ lives. The Finnish losses added up to about 2.6 percent of the
total population, but, rather exceptionally for World War II, the fatali-
ties were almost exclusively military casualties. Finnish civilian casual-
ties were low because the battle areas had been, for the great part,
completely evacuated of the civilian population. Moreover, the ter-
ror bombings by the Soviet Air Forces were limited in scope. The
relatively short but intensive Winter War was costly for the Finnish
Army, but the Finns sustained more casualties during the five-months-
long offensive phase in 1941. The third peak in casualties occurred
during the summer battles of 1944.
The possible range of Soviet casualty figures remains huge and
imprecise. According to the initial Finnish estimates the Red Army
sustained some 200,000 dead in the Winter War alone, but the figure
has not been confirmed. Recent Russian estimates have set the figure
somewhere between 130,000 and 150,000 fatalities. It is just as difficult
to determine the total number of Soviet casualties against Finland in
1941–44, because the archival documents are inaccurate and unrelia-
ble. Due to missing information one cannot, for example, always be
sure whether certain Soviet casualties were caused by the Finns or the
Germans. All in all, the scale of the Red Army’s fatalities in the
Continuation War seems to be somewhere around 200,000 dead. In
1941–45, the German losses against the Red Army in the north were
some 84,000 soldiers, of whom 30 percent were killed or missing. Only
around 4,000 Finnish soldiers were caught by the Soviets as prisoners-
of-war during the war years. The figure is very low compared to Axis
countries fighting on the Eastern Front. The obvious reason for this is
that the Finnish Army never capitulated and its units were never totally
annihilated.49
49
Interview with Professor Juri Kilin, 15 March 2010; Talvisodan historia, Vol. 4
(Porvoo, 1979), p. 408; Jatkosodan historia, Vol. 6, pp. 488–92.
174 pasi tuunainen
III. Characteristics of the Finnish Army and Its Soldiers
Command and Control of the Finnish Troops

High quality officer training, quite naturally, usually correlates with an
effective battlefield performance. There appears to have been a high
degree of military professionalism in the Finnish Army and, especially
in the early 1920s, many officers had received their general staff train-
ing in foreign countries. From 1924 onwards, officer training also
improved in Finland, as the General Staff College was founded. Many
commanders had a strong commitment to self-education, and they
viewed their officer duties as true work and profession and not only as
a sign of social status and hierarchy.50 The Finns had adopted German
practices in training the officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs)
and soldiers. Accordingly, an ordinary private, who was trained as an
individual fighter, should have been able to perform the task of one or
two levels above him in hierarchy, i.e. to substitute for a squad leader or
deputy leader. The soldiers had been trained to make independent
decisions and to take responsibility for their actions. In the motti war-
fare, one battalion commander normally assumed the command of all
the units surrounding a motti, and the appointment was made based
on qualifications, not seniority in hierarchy. This was similar to the
German practice of forming ad hoc battle detachments (Kampfgruppe)
in both world wars.51
Even though the Finnish command and control practices origi-
nated from the Prussian school, they included a lot of improvisation,
especially in the Winter War. On the other hand, the wartime Finnish
High Command (Päämaja), which was established in Mikkeli under
Marshal Mannerheim, appears to have been a rigid organization.
The Operations Department of the High Command coordinated the
operations, and in all three wars of 1939–45, the High Command
was led by Mannerheim and Quartermaster-General Aksel Airo. It is
often said that Mannerheim led the war and Airo the operations.
Especially in 1941, the High Command did not always give leeway to
50
Tilander et al., Sotakorkeakoulu, passim.
51
Pasi Tuunainen, “Syöksyjoukot ja talvisodan mottitaktiikan synty: Suomalaiset
saksalaisperäisen hyökkäystaktisen ja -taisteluteknisen innovaation omaksujina ja so-
veltajina 1917–1940,” unpublished manuscript (May 2008), pp. 219–20.
its subordinates and, instead, could interfere in the missions of indi-

vidual regiments.52
The basic principles of the Finnish art of war were the element of
surprise, flexibility and a daring use of reserves to create a point of
gravity. Finnish territory was large, which made the latter a necessity;
a small army could not be strong everywhere. This, in turn, meant that
in order to achieve a local superiority one had to take risks elsewhere.
Because the number of Finnish troops was limited, the enemy had to
be defeated locally on a tactical and operational level—there were no
resources for decisive strategic operations against the numerically
superior enemy. To obtain local victories tactics had to be flexible, and
it also called for the ability to concentrate forces in a rapid manner. The
reserves were needed not only to exploit the initial successes, but also
because the forested terrain enabled surprising maneuvers by both
sides. The operational and tactical activities were to be free of precon-
ceived formulas. For example, in order to achieve surprise and thus
seize the initiative, heavy diversionary action was often taken, and the
obvious preparatory fire was not always used to support the attacks.
The field manuals were seen as a basis for application, not as rules.
Finnish commanders were taught to be adaptive, capable of independ-
ent and imaginative thinking. Many commanders often improvised—
or were compelled to do so in the face of a formidable enemy. Some of
the commanders used their intuition when making decisions. To be
successful, this required a good knowledge of the terrain and of the
capabilities of their units and individual subordinates.53
Thus, the current task at hand determined the required tactics
and organization. Even though such “mission-type orders,” also called
the system of directive command (in German Auftragstaktik), were
not normal at the highest level of command, the system was largely
present at the level of lower echelons and in the prewar Civil Guards
organization, which had strong German influences. The Finnish Army
operated largely on a company and battalion basis. On this level, the
system of mission-type orders allowed freedom of action and enabled
52
Raimo Heiskanen, Talvisodan operaatioiden johtaminen ja edellytysten
luominen sodankäynnille Päämajan operatiivisen osaston näkökulmasta (Helsinki,
1996); Karjalainen, Ajatuksista operaatioiksi, p. 307; Petteri Jouko, “Tehtävätaktiikka
suomalaisessa sotataidossa – myytti vai todellisuus?” Tiede ja ase 67 (2009), p. 200.
53
Tynkkynen, Hyökkäyksestä puolustukseen, pp. 90–1; Partanen, Pohjonen &
Tuunainen, E.J. Raappana, pp. 353–4.
176 pasi tuunainen
the commanders to exhibit initiative. The system was based on mutual

trust, which was easier to achieve within a small army, in which practi-
cally all the commanding officers knew each other. The mission-type
order model was reflected on the constant use of assault formations,
regimental combat teams and battalion task forces in all three wars.54
The Finnish emphasis on personal initiative was in huge contrast to
the Red Army in the Winter War. With Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s in
mind, the Soviet commanders were afraid to think independently, let
alone exhibit initiative. Their training had emphasized stereotypic solu-
tions, and they were lacking training in combined arms. The Finnish
commanders were not always up to their duties either. Many senior
officers lacked peacetime experience in leading larger formations in
mobile operations. There were also, as in the Red Army, problems asso-
ciated with joint arms thinking, because the majority of the troops
belonged to the light infantry.55 The qualifications of the Finnish bat-
talion commanders were not fully sufficient in 1941–45, but those with
good education often succeeded. The company commanders were cen-
tral, and sometimes had to make a battalion commander’s decisions.
They could even influence the events of the whole front sectors.56
Due to the nature of combat during the Winter War in Ladoga
Karelia, the command posts had to be moved frequently in order to
avoid the lines of communication stretching out too far. In the Winter
War and still later, the lack of radio equipment meant that Finnish
communications were mainly based on field telephones and orderlies.
In places like Tolvajärvi and Suomussalmi in 1939–40, the victorious
battles were, at times, rather primitively led only by listening to the
sounds of battle. In the Continuation War, some of the commanders
regarded it as important to lead from the very front, and therefore,
during the offensive phase of 1941, they changed their command posts
almost on a daily basis.57 Attempts were made to improve command
and control of large formations. At the end of the Winter War, some
54
Jouko, “Tehtävätaktiikka,” pp. 197–205.
55
Anssi Vuorenmaa, “Finland’s Defence Forces: The Years of Construction
1918–1939,” Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 62 (1985), p. 51; Ahto, “Talvisota,”
p. 33.
56
Pertti Kilkki, “Talvisodan pataljoonan- ja patteriston komentajat,” Tiede ja ase 30
(1972), p. 188; P. Ripatti, “Suomen sodan 1941–1945 pataljoonan- ja patteriston
komentajat,” Tiede ja ase 35 (1977), pp. 176–8; O. Sipponen & M. Suhonen, Talvisodan
komppanian- ja patterinpäälliköt (Porvoo, 1963), pp. 167, 172.
57
K.J. Mikola, Sodan- ja rauhanaikainen viestitoiminta Suomessa (Helsinki, 1980),
pp. 147–9, 151, 233–4.
command structures and communications had been very inadequately

organized and were ad hoc in nature. Both in the final stages of the
Winter War and in the summer of 1944, the view of the situation in
higher headquarters was often distorted and outdated. In the summer
of 1944, attempts were made to achieve a more effective command; for
example, the Command Center of the Troops on the Karelian Isthmus
was established with the task of leading and coordinating all the activi-
ties on the Isthmus.58
Finally, bad chemistry between Finnish commanders sometimes
caused problems. There was competition and disagreement between
the leading generals, plus several cases of the commanding officers
being relieved of their commands due to incompetence or personal
antagonisms. In the worst case, the relationship problems between
commanders could cost unnecessary casualties.59
The Combat Motivation of the Finnish Soldiers

Cultural factors are important when trying to understand combat
motivation, and one should examine how soldiers share common
values and norms. The commitment to a common cause was rela-
tively easy to achieve in a country with only two languages and two
religions—and the vast majority of the population being Finnish-
speaking Lutherans from the countryside. The Finnish culture was
quite homogeneous. The Finnish Army consisted mainly of reservists,
and it was thus not isolated from its wider societal context. Strong link-
ages existed between the civil society and the military. In fact, the Army
was to a large extent a democratic “people’s army,” where all the regions,
social classes, political groups and professions were represented. The
meaning and impact of national conscription was great. It seems that
conscription helped to forge a close relationship between the state and
its (male) citizens. Despite the fact that the Army was based on the
White troops and traditions of 1918, in the 1930s it was more and more
often also considered a necessary institution and counterbalance to the
Civil Guards by the social democrats.60
58
Laaksonen, Todellisuus ja harhat, pp. 388–9; Lasse Laaksonen, Eripuraa ja
arvovaltaa: Mannerheimin ja kenraalien henkilösuhteet ja johtaminen (Helsinki, 2004),
pp. 275–81.
59
Laaksonen, Eripuraa ja arvovaltaa, passim.
60
Juha Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito: Kansalaissotilas- ja ammattisotilasarmei-
jan rakentuminen 1920- ja 1930-luvulla “talvisodan ihmeeksi” (Helsinki, 2008),
pp. 358–62 and passim.
178 pasi tuunainen
The role of religion varied, but it partially explains the Finnish com-
bat motivation. In an agrarian country like Finland, the Christian reli-
gion was a major cultural factor. Field chaplains gave Holy Communion
before battles. They were very visible in the canteens, bases and trench
dugouts. The dead Finnish soldiers were, if possible, brought back
home from the front. In this respect, Finland was a rare exception
among the belligerents of World War II; some 85 percent of those killed
in action were buried in the military cemeteries at their home parishes.
The fallen were publically honored and commemorated, and the search
for missing bodies has continued until recent times.61
The majority of Finnish conscripts had been socialized to citizen-
ship by the public school system. This process continued in their mili-
tary service, which also had a mission to complete the civic education
of young male conscripts. Finnish anti-Soviet nationalistic propaganda
had been part of the teaching and prominent in literature, which had
created strong enemy images. Therefore, it is no wonder that the Finns
largely closed their ranks in the face of the Soviet threat in 1939. The
term “Spirit of the Winter War” was part of the national ideology, and
it had developed during the war to epitomize the determination to
defend national and personal freedom with perseverance against the
Stalinist Soviet Union. In 1941, many Finns had strong belief in
Germany’s success, and they saw the momentum to correct the “wrong-
doings” of the Winter War and the Moscow Peace Treaty in 1940.62
Efficient soldiers are not necessarily ideologically committed sol-
diers. Patriotism and a belief in a common cause are important as
motivating factors, but they are rarely conscious motivators on the
battlefield.63 In the Winter War, it can be said that the Finns believed
in the just cause of their national defense, but later the situation was
more complicated, as in 1941 Finland had become an occupier of
61
Lauri Palva, Sankarivainajien tie kotiin (Riihimäki, 1998), passim; Erkki
Kansanaho, Papit sodassa (Porvoo, 1991).
62
Kimmo Rentola, Kenen joukossa seisot? Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota 1937–
1945 (Porvoo, 1994), pp. 178–80; Sampo Ahto, Talvisodan henki: Mielialoja Suomessa
talvella 1939–1940 (Porvoo, 1990), passim; Lauri Haataja, Kun kansa kokosi itsensä
(Helsinki, 1989), pp. 287–8.
63
See e.g. Stephen D. Wesbrook, “The Potential for Military Disintegration,” in
Sam C. Sarkesian, ed., Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Volunteer Military
(Beverly Hills, CA, 1980), p. 253; Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behavior of
Soldiers in Battle (Boston, 1982), p. 170; Darryl Henderson, Cohesion: The Human
Element in Combat (Washington DC, 1985), p. xix.
Fig. 3.1. Finnish ski troops of the Winter War. Heavy snow and forested terrain
favored the Finnish ski and guerrilla tactics against the road-bound Red Army. Photo:
Finnish Defence Force Photographic Centre SA 11306.
180 pasi tuunainen
Fig. 3.2. Waiting for the barrage to end and the assault to begin: Finnish defenders on
the Karelian Isthmus during the Soviet summer offensive, mid-June 1944. Photo:
Finnish Defence Force Photographic Centre SA 155025.
Soviet territory and was fighting together with Germany. It was impor-
tant that the leading Finnish social democrats gave their strong sup-
port for the war effort: the leftist and working-class soldiers fought
side by side with others. The labor unions encouraged their members
to fight for the national cause. Before the Winter War, Stalin had erro-
neously anticipated that the Finnish working class would not fight
and that it would welcome the Red Army as a liberator. But the major-
ity of Finnish socialists deemed the Soviet actions, such as the air
raids against Finnish towns and civilians, violently unjust. Many of
them, too, felt that independence and democracy—“the Finnish way
of life”—was at stake.64
This is not to say that the Finnish people were completely unani-
mous. There were some conscientious objectors, mostly on religious
grounds. Some people were imprisoned for political reasons as they
were considered dangerous to national security. In the Winter War,
active communist resistance against the Finnish war effort was disor-
ganized, but in 1941, a small group of communist underground fight-
ers committed sabotage. Most of them were caught by the end of the
year. The pattern of resistance differs from the rest of Europe, where
resistance normally intensified towards the end of the war. In addition,
its public support was minor and it was geographically limited to small
areas.65
Social Cohesion in the Finnish Military

In the Winter War, as Juha Mälkki has characterized, the Finnish Army
had two different military communities and traditions accomplishing
the same task: the professional-soldier army (the “gentlemen” of the
officer cadre) and the citizen-soldier army (the “lads”). There were ten-
sions between the two, but a certain compromise emerged during the
war. The prolonged “special maneuvers” training period before the
Winter War in the autumn of 1939 offered a kind of intensive resociali-
zation process, which is normally needed to create a cohesive unit. The
interaction between the “gentlemen” and the “lads” worked well
enough despite the feuds. This phenomenon appears uniquely Finnish,
64
Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito, p. 358.
65
Jukka Rislakki, Maan alla: Vakoilua, vastarintaa ja urkintaa Suomessa 1941–1944
(Helsinki, 1986), passim; Rentola, Kenen joukoissa seisot, p. 344.
182 pasi tuunainen
and it should be viewed against the background of the bitter Civil War
in 1918. It is not merely a myth that the different Finnish social classes
overcame their disputes in the trenches of the Winter War.66 Crucially,
the Army of 1939–45 was no longer considered to be the exclusive
White Army of 1918.
Finnish sociologist Knut Pipping served as a NCO in the
Continuation War, and he was thus able to observe the internal dynam-
ics of one Finnish infantry company; its social structures and soldier’s
informal norm system in various situations during 1941–44. Pipping
found out how the informal social structure influenced the behavior
and activities of men and their attitudes concerning everyday life at the
front and behind it. In his study, first published in 1947 and ahead of its
time in academic terms, he concluded that the infantry company quite
accurately reflected and balanced the social patterns of its parent civil
society, representing its various groups, norms and values.67 Pipping’s
findings seem to be quite representative of the Finnish Army at large.
Like the majority of Finnish troops, his company was originally com-
posed on a territorial basis of both young conscripts and older reserv-
ists. In terms of age groups, the youngsters were elevated to the status
of combat veterans when the new young conscripts came in. They were
successfully merged into the structure of the unit. The replacement
system did not, unlike in the U.S. Army, diminish cohesion and there-
fore affect its fighting power.68
Pipping concluded that the system of soldiers’ informal norms
enhanced the high level of peer solidarity, thus preventing disintegra-
tion. The soldiers developed commitment and a certain kind of com-
pliance but, at the same time, they aimed at getting the maximum
possible freedom in their duties. The men adhered to their own norms
and morale “to alleviate the harshness of their service.” These informal
norms, which constituted an unofficial structure of the company, were
produced and sanctioned by the men themselves, and they were thus
largely approved. The company was able to provide for the soldier’s
basic needs. High primary group cohesion could have worked the
66
Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito, pp. 360–1 and passim.
67
Instead of primary group (cohesion), Pipping chose to use the term informal
group. Olli Harinen, “Introduction,” in Knut Pipping, Infantry Company as a Society,
1947, ed. and transl. Petri Kekäle (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 15–9, 42.
68
Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 72–80; cf. Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power:
German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945 (Westport, CT, 1982), pp. 74–9.
other way round: it could have helped to build resistance to organiza-

tional goals and to support noncompliance. But here it seems to have
worked differently: the men complied in their own way with perform-
ing the assigned tasks and thus fulfilling the organizational goals. This
resulted in combat effectiveness. Many of the members in Pipping’s
company were unmarried lumberjacks. Thus, Pipping was interested
in whether their attitudes derived from the peacetime lumber camps.
The citizen-soldiers coming from the lumber camps, farms and facto-
ries were accustomed to foremen and teamwork—useful qualities also
on the battlefield. In the end, here the military hierarchies and prac-
tices were quite similar to civilian life.69
According to Pipping, six social groupings could be found within a
basic Finnish military unit between 1941–45. The Finnish soldiers
identified with their company rather than with their battalion. They
were divided into formal military groups (such as squads and pla-
toons), rank groups, age groups, local groups (e.g. the men manning
the same stronghold), home district groups and, finally, so-called
“mess kit” groups. The latter were informal groups of two to four men
sharing their cooking and other practical tasks.70 Soldiers felt some
affinity with soldiers from the same sector, but others were considered
strangers and outsiders. Esprit de corps was fostered by competition
between different arms. Colors, special insignia or painted helmets
were used hereby for distinction. The two Finnish dismounted cavalry
regiments, for instance, competed and took pride in their traditions
dating back to the Thirty Years’ War.71
Every soldier was simultaneously part of all these more or less cohe-
sive groups, and each soldier had specific social roles in them. The
sense of solidarity and loyalty toward each of these groups was always
there, but often only latently. Certain circumstances awoke the soldiers’
feelings of loyalty towards some of these groups, thus affecting their
behavior. The main membership group was the squad, and, when well
developed, this membership enhanced the well-being of individual
69
Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 64, 83–4; Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito,
pp. 259–67; cf. Wesbrook, “Potential for Military Disintegration,” p. 257; Kellett,
Combat Motivation, p. 112.
70
Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 127–62.
71
Juha E. Tetri, “Jatkosodan joukkojen tunnuksista ja asevelimerkeistä,” in
Jatkosodan tiellä (Jyväskylä, 2004), pp. 125–32; Pertti Kilkki & Heikki Pohjanpää,
Suomen ratsuväen historia, Vol. II: Ratsuväki Suomen sodissa 1939–1944 (Helsinki,
1991), p. 455; Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 206–8.
184 pasi tuunainen
soldiers. This was not only because their soldierly identity was defined
by the unit in which they served, but also because their well-being,
security and life depended on how well they got along with the other
members of the squad. The membership of a platoon also mattered and
had an impact on behavior, because the platoons, too, had many com-
mon everyday functions.72 The informal control mechanisms regulated
the activities inside the unit. Squads, platoons and companies con-
trolled their members’ behavior through informal norms and sanc-
tions. The functions of the squad members were “partly common and
partly special.” The men shared the common duties, and the intragroup
control prevented anyone from escaping his assigned tasks. The intra-
group control was not as strong in the case of men’s special, “private”
functions. If the members of another squad did not properly perform
their common functions in a matter important to the whole platoon,
then the intergroup control came into force. Special functions of the
others were ignored at the platoon level, but the fulfillment of a com-
pany’s common functions was supervised.73
Pipping also studied the men’s compliance with formal and informal
norms. In relation to courage, he noted soldiers’ seeming indiffer-
ence towards danger after they had continuously been under lethal
threat. The men could, for example, bathe in saunas very close to the
frontline. Pipping does not, however, interpret this as thoughtless
carelessness. The soldiers normally had good experience of the limits
of risk-taking. They were able to voluntarily take necessary precau-
tions, if the situation was truly dangerous. Pipping’s concept of “the
economic principle” in the behavior of combat soldiers implies the sol-
diers’ will to arrange life at the front as comfortably and safely as pos-
sible. The fulfillment of this principle and the balance between
maximum comfort and safety was decided separately by each group in
different situations, and it depended on the mood and attitude of its
members. The norm was that everyone was expected to do his share,
and thus some degree of courage was expected from everyone. Those
who fell behind, performed cowardly acts, or otherwise failed, were
subject to ridicule. But the reaction was not too strong. The weak and
shocked ones were, in fact, still looked after and not excluded from the
group. Absence without leave and desertions were usually not heavily
criticized.74
72
Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 153, 252–3.
73
Ibidem, pp. 137–43.
74
The men, quite naturally, did not like anyone to do anything that
would put others in danger. They did not expect self-sacrifice from
anyone and reacted nonchalantly to those who risked their lives to dis-
tinguish themselves or to get excitement by voluntarily joining a patrol,
if it did not have any effect on the safety of the others. On the other
hand, if the risk-taking improved the collective safety, it was approved
and admired. The anti-tank men, for example, who showed more than
the normal amount of courage, were highly appreciated, because they
risked themselves to help the others.75
Pipping argues persuasively that the seeming laissez-faire attitude of
the Finnish Army, which at first seems like severe disobedience and
insubordination, actually well suited the Finnish mentality and mili-
tary tradition, and it was one of the most important factors promoting
cohesion and willingness to fight on. The relative lack of discipline was,
on the part of the officers, about tolerating the “civilian” side of the
citizen-soldiers and skillfully utilizing the Finnish social and cultural
qualities—the tendency to avoid rigid, formal hierarchies and to
emphasize a certain kind of “democracy” in social relations—in the
conduct of military operations. The rank-and-file, on the other hand,
felt that when they were allowed to quite some extent to follow their
own informal rules and norms, they were consequently in personal
charge of their conduct and military tasks. The Finnish frontline sol-
diers deviated from the formal military discipline, but this did not, in
the end, result in the diminishing of their combat performance. So, it
would be wrong to say that the Finnish Army was undisciplined, but
instead the discipline was largely self-imposed and informal in nature.76
The achievement of the best possible cohesion and combat effec-
tiveness depends on the leadership. It is also important that the
soldiers can identify with their leaders. The wartime Finnish Army
relied on reserve officers, who were, in the hierarchy, in between the
above-mentioned “gentlemen” and “lads.” They were, together with the
younger active-duty officer corps, assigned as company commanders
and platoon leaders—a kind of “linchpin” between the official and
unofficial military organizations. On a tactical level, military success
depended on them. By their social background, the Finnish reserve
75
Ibidem, pp. 28, 75, 165.
76
Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 194–8; Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito, pp. 358,
361 and passim; Sipponen & Suhonen, Talvisodan komppanian- ja patterinpäälliköt,
p. 150.
186 pasi tuunainen
officers were mainly secondary school graduates and represented the

middle and upper middle classes. Due to the uneven distribution of
“educated” persons, the officers rarely came from the same areas as
their men. The reserve officers were themselves products of the citizen-
soldier army, which helped them to understand the working of infor-
mal organizations and to create well-functioning leadership styles.
Most of these “linchpins” had a strong sense of duty and were moti-
vated for their tasks. The reserve officers were often creative thinkers,
who solved problems by using common sense instead of military rules
and discipline. Their authority was partly based on their ability for
practical judgment. Those officers, who could combine the norms of
official and unofficial military organizations, could usually generate
enough discipline and fighting power to fulfill their tasks. The apparent
success in training and deploying the reserve officers can be seen as
one of the main strengths of the Finnish Army in World War II.77
In 1941, the Finnish officers had the formal rank and authority.
Later, as the men got to know them, their authority was based on their
personal qualities, especially bravery. If the officers showed courage, or
even uncommon valor, they were usually highly respected and trusted
by their subordinates. The Finnish reserve officers led by example and
thus suffered proportionally the highest casualties in war. The deaths of
courageous officers were honestly grieved by their men. On the other
hand, should the opportunity arise, the men viewed it as justified to
shoot their own officer, if he did not personally lead his men into battle,
share the dangers or gave risky orders to gain personal merit. Those
unpopular officers, who had had many of their men killed, were often
relieved of their commands. The well-liked company commanders,
many of whom were reservists, were not exactly officer types as such,
but often like “shop stewards” in factories and earthy father figures.
Lowest possible casualties in fulfilling the tasks, and the feeling that the
commanders cared for their men and their sacrifices, was most impor-
tant for soldiers’ performance and motivation. There were numerous
examples of Finnish commanders, who tried to save the lives of their
men by favoring outflanking maneuvers instead of frontal attacks.78
77
Sipponen & Suhonen, Talvisodan komppanian- ja patterinpäälliköt, pp. 165–79;
Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito, pp. 347–8, 361–2 and passim; Pipping, Infantry
Company, p. 128–31; cf. Guenter Lewy, “The American Experience in Vietnam,” in
Sarkesian, Combat Effectiveness, p. 104; Henderson, Cohesion, pp. 108, 111.
78
Harinen, “Introduction,” p. 19; Pipping, Infantry Company, pp. 127–31, 166;
Partanen, Pohjonen & Tuunainen, E.J. Raappana, pp. 350–1; Sipponen & Suhonen,
Talvisodan komppanian- ja patterinpäälliköt, p. 146.
The human resources of a small army were too valuable to be wasted in

flamboyant assaults.
***
During the war years, the Finnish Army could generate the necessary
fighting power and win numerous engagements, even major battles,
against the formidable Red Army. Furthermore, the Finnish Army,
under very heavy pressure in March 1940 and in the summer of 1944,
did not disintegrate. On the contrary, it was, in both cases, able to stand
its ground and to stop the advances of the Red Army. In the latter case,
this happened with substantial assistance from Germany. The generally
well-led Finnish Army took heavy losses, but it frustrated the Soviet
attacks in both wars as a part of the strategy, which enabled a better
position for the political negotiations to exit the war. The Soviet Union
could have conquered Finland by reserving more time and deploying
more of its vast resources against Finland, had it wanted to do so. But
the Finnish Army managed to turn this into such a costly scenario that
it made more sense for the Soviets to find a political settlement.
Several reasons account for the relative combat effectiveness and
motivation of the Finnish Army, but the most important one is the
human element. Four key factors can be named in this regard. First of
all, the Finnish soldiers were properly trained and the employment of
flexible tactics was well-suited for the fighting in difficult terrain and
conditions. Secondly, the military had managed to foster a highly
motivated and skillful reserve officer corps, capable of taking initiative
and down-to-earth leadership. This contributed to the third factor: the
relative tolerance of the Finnish Army towards the informal, seemingly
undisciplined military organization and norms in the soldiers’ primary
groups. A system was provided which was able to promote and main-
tain cohesion in the Army within the context of Finnish mentality and
social structure. And finally, despite the cracks of late 1941 and June
1944, the Finnish soldiers had, by and large, internalized the reasons
for the inevitability of the war and the core meaning of their struggle.
Thus, in the critical moments, the informal military system worked for
the cohesion and combat effectiveness and not against them.
In addition to the performance of the Finnish Army, various outside
factors determined the outcome of the wars. In March 1940, there was
the threat of a Franco-British intervention, which dissuaded Stalin
from annihilating Finland at any cost, and in 1944, the beginning of
the race to Berlin significantly contributed to the survival of Finland.
Instead of capitulation and unconditional surrender, Finland was able
188 pasi tuunainen
to remain an independent, sovereign nation and to avoid being occu-

pied by the Soviet Union. The wars were also the ultimate test of the
survivability of Finnish society and its democratic political system.
Even though Finland was forced to cede large territories to the Soviet
Union, these territories were lost at the negotiation table and not on
the battlefield. In September 1944, the Finnish Army still stood bruised
but undefeated in areas beyond the borders of current Finland. This
implies that Stalin’s toast to his former adversary in 1948 was not just a
compliment.
PART TWO
SOCIAL FRAMEWORKS, CULTURAL MEANINGS
CHAPTER FOUR
WARS ON THE HOME FRONT

MOBILIZATION, ECONOMY AND EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES
Marianne Junila
Finland became involved in three wars during the years 1939–45.

Differing in duration and intensity, they were consequently experi-
enced in distinctive ways both at the front and on the Finnish home
front, the latter of which is the focus of this chapter. The Winter War
(1939–40) was over in three and a half months, the Continuation
War (1941–44) lasted for more than 38 months and the Lapland War
(1944–45) for seven months, although the major hostilities were over
in two months. Unlike the two first wars, the Lapland War did not pose
a serious threat to the civilian population, because it was fought in
Northern Finland, which was practically empty after the population
had been evacuated in September 1944.
Although the threat of war was recognized and taken seriously in
Finland from the early autumn of 1939, the outbreak of the Winter
War on 30 November 1939 came as a shock not only to ordinary peo-
ple, but also to the Finnish government. The recent fate of Poland and
the Baltic States caused deep concern among the Finns. When the invi-
tation for Finnish-Soviet talks came from Moscow at the beginning of
October, preparations for a war were hastily initiated. Army reservists
were called up, and there was a voluntary evacuation of the towns.
When the talks broke down on 9 November, most people erroneously
thought that the threat of war was reduced. Those who had left their
homes in towns returned, and people from the Finnish-Soviet border-
land also moved back to their homes. Schools were reopened, and
work in factories and offices continued. In this situation the sudden
attack of the Soviet forces accompanied by air raids on Finnish towns
caused a few days’ chaos among civilians and created a fear of the Red
Army rapidly overrunning the country. If possible, women with chil-
dren escaped from the cities and towns to their relatives and friends in
the countryside. Although public opinion soon grew more optimistic
and hopeful, the war was, nevertheless, experienced as a heavy and
192 marianne junila
lonely fight against an overwhelming enemy. In addition the winter of

1939–40 happened to be a very cold one, as if to underline the national
emergency of the situation.1
The harsh terms of the Moscow Peace Treaty, signed on 13 March
1940, with the material, territorial and industrial losses caused a bitter
disappointment, especially among the people on the home front who
did not have a realistic view of Finland’s potential to continue fighting.
The peace was widely regarded as unjustified and appalling, and there-
fore it could not be a final but an interim solution. The period between
the Winter War and the Continuation War, already called “Interim
Peace” at the time, was actually not peace at all but a year-long wait for
the next war. The laws and special orders for the war were not annulled,
and the army was not wholly demobilized. The country stood prepared
for a new war.
The Continuation War began in totally different circumstances com-
pared with the previous war. At the threshold of the Winter War, it was
not generally believed that a war would break out, whereas in the sum-
mer of 1941 the majority of Finns almost welcomed a war against the
Soviet Union. As a result of the rapprochement between Finland and
Germany, the number of German soldiers in Finland increased signifi-
cantly from May 1941, and day-by-day their presence became more
and more visible to the civilian population, especially in Northern
Finland. One could think that in a neutral and non-belligerent coun-
try like Finland the presence of tens of thousands of foreign soldiers
would cause great concern or protests. Such a reaction, however, did
not occur. The country and its people were mentally and militarily pre-
pared for the war, and now they also had a mighty ally. People thought
that this time it would not be a desperate struggle for survival, but a
victorious fight for a better future—whatever that might mean exactly.
It was said that before the summer of 1941 was over the men would be
back home for haymaking.2
1
Martti Julkunen, “Tuhon partaalla—ensimmäiset reaktiot talvisodan syttymi-
seen,” Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 1: Sodasta sotaan, ed. Silvo Hietanen et al. (Helsinki,
1989); Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and
Russia (New York, 2002).
2
Kotirintama 1941–1944, eds. Martti Favorin & Jouko Heinonen (Helsinki, 1972),
pp. 19–23; Hannu Soikkanen, “Die Mobilisierung der Kräftereserven Finnlands
während des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” in Hannes Saarinen, ed., Reports of the Research
Project Finland in the Second World War (Helsinki, 1977), p. 229; Anssi Vuorenmaa,
“Aseistautuva kansakunta 1940–41,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 1, pp. 254–63;
wars on the home front 193
From a perspective of a total war, all sectors of Finnish society and

all groups of people were subjected to militarization. The war placed
heavy demands on all sections of society and on all groups of people.
All resources, human and economic, were allocated to the war effort.
The contemporaries in war-waging Finland, however, did not have a
shared experience of the war, even if the nation fought practically
united, especially during the Winter War. On the home front everyday
life varied according to people’s gender, age and social status, but it also
depended on in which part of Finland the people lived and whether
they were townspeople or lived in the countryside. Those women and
children who had lost their husbands and fathers were, of course, in a
more vulnerable situation than those whose loved ones survived the
war. Ordinary people did not, actually, experience starvation during
the war years, but in cities and towns the shortage of food was more
severe than in the countryside, and it created tensions between the dif-
ferent groups of Finns. The air raids caused damage and killed civilians
in the population centers, whereas in the rural areas, especially in
Western Finland, air raids practically did not occur at all.
Among the civilian groups most affected by the war were the Finnish
Karelian evacuees, who first lost their homes in 1939–40, then got
them back in ruins in the autumn of 1941, and, in the end, lost them
for good in the summer and autumn of 1944. Another regional group
with difficult and traumatic experiences was the population of north-
ernmost Finland, which was evacuated to Northern Sweden and
Western Finland in advance of the ensuing Lapland War in September
1944. During the war the retreating German troops laid waste their
home soil, usually leaving only the church buildings to stand. When
the evacuees returned to their remote homesteads, they had to start
rebuilding their lives from nothing and with a serious danger of
German land mines.
In a total war, which both world wars exemplify, the cohesion
between the two fronts was of crucial importance. The home fronts
were mobilized to maintain the war effort in material, social and emo-
tional terms. Without stability on the home front, the tasks imposed on
women, children and non-combatant men could not have been carried
out. This stability and the cohesion between the home front and the
Marianne Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä: Suomalaisen siviiliväestön ja saksalaisen

sotaväen rinnakkainelo Pohjois-Suomessa 1941–44 (Helsinki, 2000), pp. 50–1.
194 marianne junila
frontlines was, however, constantly burdened and thus had to be main-

tained by various means. In this respect, the interventions of the state
became important. In this chapter, the following questions are dis-
cussed in order to offer the reader a framework of the Finnish home
front during the years 1939–45: By which means was the required
motivation created and the public mind controlled? How did the
Finnish economy function during the wars? How was the population
mobilized for the war effort? Further, this chapter investigates the eve-
ryday life and experiences of different groups of Finns on the home
front in order to answer the question how people coped with the bur-
dens of war and how the stability of the home front could be main-
tained in a situation of great mobility and a tumult of the customary
ways of prewar life.
I. Total Mobilization: Morale, Economy and Human Resources
Keeping Up the Spirit and Controlling the Public Mind

During the two decades following Finland’s declaration of independ-
ence in December 1917, the country’s economy underwent a period of
fast growth at an average annual rate of four percent through the 1920s
and 1930s. As a result, living standards rose and poverty among the
large rural population and urban workers decreased significantly, espe-
cially after the depression at the beginning of the 1930s. In addition,
important social reforms were planned and introduced with the aim of
settling political tensions. Wealth was unequally distributed, but the
underprivileged also got some of the common share, although regional
differences in this respect were still very substantial. This improvement
of living conditions was crucial for a nation, which had been divided
by the harsh Civil War in 1918. In 1939 the social democratic minister
of social affairs, K.A. Fagerholm, stated that the most important factor
uniting the Finns was the favorable development of the country in
political, social and economic terms, which bridged the gap between
the privileged and the underprivileged. The favorable development in
the economic sector in the late 1930s made it possible to also pay some
attention to the needs of the Finnish Army when the threat of war in
Europe increased.
The real strength of the Finnish nation was, however, not based
on military but human resources. During the years 1939–45, the will
to fight, the military skills of the troops and the national unity
experienced were the most forceful weapons to fight back against the
enemy, whether the Red Army or the German troops. As far as the
Winter War was concerned, the national consensus was very strong.
The fighting spirit, national unanimity and solidarity among the Finns,
uniting the front and the home front, were soon defined as “the Spirit
of the Winter War.” In the autumn of 1939 the demands and the unpro-
voked aggression of the Soviet Union united practically all social strata
under national emblems. The national unity was strengthened by the
joint statement given by the Civil Guards Defense Corps and the Social
Democratic Party, former ideological adversaries, in which the mem-
bers of the latter were recommended and welcomed to join the Guards.
A similar rapprochement took place between the social democratic
women’s organization and the Lotta Svärd, which was a women’s vol-
untary national defense organization affiliated to the Civil Guards.
These were unforeseen gestures of reconciliation against the backdrop
of the bitter Civil War and the consequent political and ideological
divisions in Finnish society. A united national front was also supported
by the labor unions. The Finnish press strongly contributed to strength-
ening the fighting spirit of the whole nation. The Soviet Union was
described in all papers as the archenemy, which once again had attacked
the peaceful Finns for no reason, wanting to destroy the whole Finnish
way of life.3
The mistrust of the middle and upper classes and the independent
peasantry against the Soviet Union was deeply rooted and entailed not
only anti-socialist but also Russophobic currents. But the working class
also demonstrated their patriotism with social democratic and com-
munist commitment. The Soviet aggression helped to blur the edges of
class antagonism. During the Winter War the solidarity was strength-
ened, on the one hand, by the air raids on Finnish towns, whereby the
homes of the working class were not spared, and, on the other hand, by
the amateurish Soviet war propaganda, which insisted that the Red
Army would triumphantly liberate the Finnish workers and peasants
from their domestic oppressors. The style and content of such appeals
seemed rather ridiculous and uninformed about Finnish society and
3
1989), pp. 9–10; Timo Vihavainen, “Suomen sota-ajan talous ja yhteiskunta,” in Olli
Vehviläinen & O.A. Ržeševksi, eds., Yksin suurvaltaa vastassa: Talvisodan poliittinen
historia (Helsinki, 1997), pp. 200–3; Sinikka Wunsch, Punainen uhka: Neuvostoliiton
kuva johtavassa suomalaisessa sanomalehdistössä (Rovaniemi, 2004), p. 360.
196 marianne junila
culture, and they ended up serving the Finnish rather than the Soviet
purposes. For instance, Miina Sillanpää, a long-time social democratic
member of parliament and the first female minister in Finland, respon-
sible for social affairs in 1926–27, amazed at the Soviet promises to
introduce an eight-hour working day and schooling for all children:
“But we have the reforms already.”4
The fighting spirit of the Finnish Army and the support of the home
front remained unswerving until the end of the Winter War. This
endurance of the national morale can be explained by the strong una-
nimity that was caused by the aggression of the Soviet Union, and it
was upheld by the will to defend the independence of one’s country.
In addition, the war was short so that signs of weariness did not
crop up. Among other factors contributing to the collective and indi-
vidual endurance and motivation, Christian religion played an impor-
tant social and cultural role. Finland was a Lutheran country with as
high as 96 percent of the population belonging to the Finnish
Evangelical Lutheran Church. In addition, the church was closely
intertwined with the state. People in the 1930s still had a close personal
connection both to religion and the church as an institution, but the
outbreak of the Winter War intensified religious sentiments even more.
The war was characterized by strong religious experiences and meta-
phors at many levels of society. At a discursive level, the fighting was
interpreted in religious terms as a battle of good versus evil, David ver-
sus Goliath. In everyday life, religion gave comfort and was displayed
in several ways. The army chaplains marked a definite rise in the num-
ber of men participating in different religious ceremonies at the front.
In many units, an emergence of “front religiousness” was a definite part
of “the Spirit of the Winter War,” which gave emotional support to con-
tinue the fight against all odds. Different phenomena of religious
revival were reported as well among the people on the home front.
The Lutheran clergy can be seen as a part of the wartime propa-
ganda machinery. At the front and on the home front they encouraged
people to endure and to believe in the victory of Christian values
against the Soviet Union, which from the clergy’s anti-communist
worldview represented the Antichrist. But the clergy also offered peo-
ple comfort in their grief. Often it fell to the parish priest to bring the
4
Mervi Kaarninen & Tiina Kinnunen, “Naisvaikuttajien sota,” in Sodassa koettua,
Vol. 4: Yhdessä eteenpäin, eds. Martti Turtola et al. (Helsinki, 2009), p. 12.
sad news of a soldier’s death to his family. The parishes took the respon-
sibility for organizing the funerals for the fallen. In World War II
Finland was the only nation where the fallen soldiers, as a rule, were
brought back to be buried at home. Out of over 90,000 fallen soldiers
only around 9,500 were buried on the battlefield.5
As discussed more in depth in Ville Kivimäki’s and Tuomas Tepora’s
chapter in this volume, from the viewpoint of social cohesion at a local
and national level, the cult of the fallen soldiers was of crucial impor-
tance. During the Winter War public opinion demanded that the fallen
must be brought home and buried in their local churchyard. The sol-
diers’ graves were situated together in a section separated from the civil
graves. The long lines of uniform graves demonstrated the unity and
the (alleged) democratic spirit of the nation: the officers and the rank-
and-file were all buried side-by-side with no hierarchy between them.
Military funerals gathered the local community to share the suffering
of the families in mourning. According to Ilona Kemppainen, who has
studied wartime death in greatest detail, the soldiers’ funerals on the
Finnish home front seem to distinguish Finland from other belligerent
nations of World War II. Critically, she also notes that it is possible to
ask whether the funerals on the home front contributed to “militarize”
the whole nation. Kemppainen states that religion is one answer to the
question as to how the Finns could tolerate the wartime casualties and
why, even after the war, relatively little criticism was conveyed. Through
the heroic death of a soldier the women connected to him, especially
his mother, were also included in the national community. Mothers
who were willing to sacrifice their sons were given a special role in
national myth making.6
The idea that Finnish soldiers were crusaders against the atheistic
Soviet Union carried over to the Continuation War. Religious symbol-
ism was particularly strongly present in the public discourse at the
beginning of the new war in 1941. On the other hand it was sarcasti-
cally said that instead of trusting God, the Finns now trusted the
5
Hannu Soikkanen, “Kirkko ja uskonto sota-ajan yhteiskunnassa,” in Kansakunta
sodassa, Vol. 2: Vyö kireällä, eds. Silvo Hietanen et al. (Helsinki, 1990), pp. 214–8;
Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 113.
6
sodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 234–43, 264; see also Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas
Tepora, “War of Hearts: Love and Collective Attachment as Integrating Factors in
Finland during World War II,” Journal of Social History 43 (2009): 2, pp. 289–90.
198 marianne junila
German Army.7 In many people’s lives religion still played a crucial

role, but on the whole the prolonged Continuation War lacked the
same kind of religiousness that characterized the Winter War. It became
apparent that during the long years of war most people became tired of
religious talk affiliated with war propaganda.8
The Continuation War differed from the Winter War not only in
religious terms, but also in other aspects. The Winter War was fought
without any major cracks in the national consensus, but the war fol-
lowing it in 1941–44 was experienced somewhat differently. Apart
from the enthusiasm at the beginning, when people understood that
the wrongs of the Winter War would be corrected, there was no simi-
larly elevated spirit or atmosphere, unity and solidarity prevailing in
the population. In comparison with the Winter War, which was clearly
conceived in terms of defense, there was no such boundlessly shared
vision of the Continuation War. For many people, especially for the
Finnish Karelian evacuees, the new war was the longed-for opportu-
nity to regain the losses dictated by the Moscow Peace Treaty in 1940,
but there were also demurring voices. Some people opposed the war
for ideological and political reasons. For the political left it was difficult
to accept the thought of an invasion of the Soviet Union together with
Hitler’s army. For some people the whole idea of a new war was disa-
greeable for more private reasons. Women with children, for instance,
did not want their husbands to leave again. Against the experiences of
the Winter War, the countrywomen already knew how hard it was to
take care of the children, the elderly, the cattle and the farm work alone.
Among the urban women, the memory of the shock and chaos caused
by the air raids of the previous war was still fresh in their minds.9
Nevertheless, there were also people who not only wanted to undo
the injustice caused by the Winter War, but who were eagerly com-
mitted to conquer new eastern territories in order to build Greater
Finland, which allegedly would be safer than Finland with its previous
borders. And in addition, it was argued, Eastern Karelia belonged to
Finland for geographical and historical reasons. But there was no con-
sensus among the population in regard to where the new borders
should be drawn. Many voices opposed the occupation of Soviet
7
Marianne Junila, “Esimerkillinen sota—talvisota jatkosodan näkökulmasta,” in
Kari Alenius & Olavi K. Fält, eds., Talvisota kokemuksena (Rovaniemi, 2011).
8
Kemppainen, Isänmaan uhrit, pp. 249–51.
9
Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä, pp. 43–59.
Eastern Karelia and thought that the troops should not cross the
Finnish-Soviet borderline of 1939. The depiction by author Väinö
Linna in his influential The Unknown Soldier (1954) reflects these
concerns:
On the afternoon of the fifth day they began to notice that the road had
begun to deteriorate. Before long it had become a mere forest track, and
soon afterwards they arrived at a strip of land which had been cleared of
all trees.
- Hey, it’s the old frontier!
The news swept down the line, cheering the men visibly. Hietanen, from
his place in the column, called out:
- We’re in Russia, lads!
But Lahtinen, limping alone sullenly, glowered at the others:
- So we are. And we’ve got no right to be here. We’re no better than a
bunch of bandits.10
The various attitudes towards the Continuation War reflected differ-
ences among the Finns also in geographical and language terms. People
in Eastern Finland had a more positive attitude towards the waging of
war, even if together with the German Army, than the population in
general. They kept up their hopes for a new safe border, and the
Karelian evacuees, naturally, hoped to go back to their homes. In the
countryside trust in the government prevailed until the end of the war,
whereas in urban milieus attitudes became more fluctuating in the
course of the war. Among the Swedish-speaking population, mostly
living in the largest cities and along the coastline of Southern and
Western Finland, the attitude towards the new war was a little more
reserved than among the Finnish-speaking majority, for instance
in regard to the occupation of Eastern Karelia, and in the course of
1941–44, the Swedish-speaking Finns became more opposed to the
war than their Finnish-speaking fellow citizens.
As pointed out, national unity during the Continuation War was not
as strong as during the Winter War. People widely agreed that the
Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940 with the loss of Finnish Karelia was
unfair and had to be corrected, but beyond that there was no precise
collective vision of the exact aims of the war. However, there was
enough confidence among the people in the political and military lead-
ership. There were neither public protests nor any remarkable resist-
ance movement. This confidence resulted partly from the broad
10
Väinö Linna, The Unknown Soldier, English ed. (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 81–2.
200 marianne junila
government base, which excluded only the extreme left—deemed ille-

gal anyway—and from 1943 onwards also the extreme right, which did
not have broad public support. Hence most Finns had the feeling that
they were—at least to some extent—politically represented in govern-
mental decision-making. Among the leaders there were especially
two key figures to uphold cohesion. The Army’s commander-in-chief,
Marshal Mannerheim, enjoyed wide popularity, which was not dimin-
ished by any military setbacks. Also the leader of the social democrats,
minister Väinö Tanner, was very influential in integrating the working
class into the war effort and in presenting and defending political and
military decisions to the social democratic electorate.11 The loyalty of
the people towards their leaders was put to the test in September 1941,
when the Army reached the borderline of 1939. For many soldiers as
well as civilians this was a crucial moment, because crossing this bor-
der obviously changed the nature of the war from a defensive to an
offensive one. However, the critics mostly swallowed their resistance
and the war continued. The government did not lose its ability to run
the country.12
Nevertheless, one important fact must be noted so that the Finnish
wartime consensus would not seem too total and spontaneous.
Although the Winter War saw very little political opposition, the situ-
ation changed during the Interim Peace and the beginning of the
Continuation War. There were, indeed, communist attempts to resist
the new war and even to raise armed resistance against it. But the actual
results of these intentions were weak: as the Finnish communists had
already been illegalized and forcefully controlled in the 1920s and
1930s, Finnish security officials had thorough person registers and
knowledge of the underground activities. Consequently, immediately
at the outbreak of the new hostilities in the summer of 1941, several
hundred key communist functionaries and supporters were taken into
custody, where they were kept through the whole Continuation War.
Even if some minor incidents of communist resistance appeared
during the war, this swift action, followed by further arrests later on,
practically paralyzed the communist underground networks and
operations from the start.13
11
Vehviläinen, Finland, pp. 114–5.
12
Soikkanen, “Die Mobilisierung,” pp. 246–7, 258–9.
13
Kimmo Rentola, Kenen joukoissa seisot? Suomalainen kommunismi ja sota
1937–1945 (Porvoo, 1994).
Besides such precautions, any dissenting voices were also silenced

by the media and postal censorship. As mentioned above, people
mostly had enough confidence in their leaders, and the integration of
different population groups into the national war effort had succeeded
to an extent that concrete interventions were not needed in large num-
bers. On the other hand, differing opinions were also allowed to some
degree. One prerequisite for the relatively flexible working of censor-
ship was that the underground extreme left had no means of openly
publishing and distributing their opinions. As a result, the authorities
could count on the self-censorship of the Finnish press. The confidence
among the population cannot be explained by defining the Finns as
naïve or unaware of the censorship or molding of opinions. On the
contrary, many seemed to think that “the longer the war, the larger the
lies,” but this was considered as one of the war’s drawbacks. Besides
Finnish radio, people listened avidly to the Finnish-language broad-
casts by the BBC.14
Censorship was accompanied by a meticulous observation of peo-
ple’s attitudes at the front and on the home front. The general mood on
the home front was a crucial factor in the war, because it had a decisive
influence on the sentiments of the soldiers at the front.15 The State
Information Department (Valtion tiedoituslaitos) controlled newspa-
pers and other media and observed people’s opinions and attitudes
during both wars. The Department collected information about the
attitudes and opinions of people in different places and in different
social milieus with help from over a thousand male and female inform-
ants. The survey based on this information was supposed to reveal peo-
ple’s true feelings and opinions, otherwise obscured by the (self-)
censorship during the war.
During the Winter War censorship concerned as a rule only mili-
tary, not political issues. After the war censoring continued, now turn-
ing into political censorship. The Finnish foreign policy, authorities
and government became issues, which were not allowed to be criti-
cized in public. During the Continuation War, the German military
authorities wanted to control the Finnish mass media, especially writ-
ings on German soldiers and their behavior and any anti-German
14
Ibidem, pp. 254–6; Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 115.
15
Mikko Heikura, Rintamajoukkojen mieliala: Tutkimus Suomen armeijan rintama-
joukkojen mielialasta Suomen ja Neuvostoliiton välisen sodan aikana vuosina 1941–
1944 (University of Helsinki, 1967), pp. 103–5.
202 marianne junila
opinions in general.16 However, the Finnish authorities kept the control

of the media in their own hands, but listened carefully to their ally’s
opinions.
As pointed out above, during the Winter War the authorities did
not really need to worry about war-weariness or any noteworthy
opposition. In the subsequent years of 1941–44 the general mood fluc-
tuated, and the social cohesion lost strength, but never collapsed.
The war-weariness cut across the Finnish society momentarily in the
late autumn of 1941, when it became obvious that the war would
not be over in a few months. But the halting of the Soviet winter offen-
sive on the Eastern Front and the relative peace on the Finnish front
sectors helped to overcome this initial disenchantment: in 1942 the
great majority of Finns still believed in a German—and Finnish—
victory in the east. The turn in German military success in Stalingrad
affected the mood in Finland clearly at the beginning of 1943. Both
the Finnish leadership and ordinary citizens saw that the war would
not end in the near future—and it became more and more appar-
ent that it would not end in a German victory. The first signs of deep
pessimism appeared during 1943. War-weariness was further nour-
ished by everyday burdens imposed on civilians and by their fears
for the fate of their loved ones at the front. The civilians’ endurance
and that of the soldiers’ was put to the test both physically and mentally
by the subsequent news from the Eastern Front in the autumn and
winter of 1943–44. Finally in the summer of 1944 the earlier war of
offensive and occupation turned into a defensive struggle against the
Soviet attack. At this critical moment the social unity of the nation
strengthened once again as there was a growing concern about the
country’s independence and future fate. Everyday concerns were
momentarily pushed aside. The broad support for the governing coali-
tion was crucial in maintaining public trust in political decision-
making, and this, again, was of great importance not only for the war
effort, but also for the difficult disengagement from the war in the
autumn of 1944.17
16
Jörgen Weibull, “Sensuuri ja yleisen mielipiteen muodostuminen,” in Pohjola 2.
Maailmansodan aikana (Helsinki, 1987), pp. 179–81.
17
Eino Jutikkala, “Mielialojen kirjo jatkosodan aikana,” in Eero Kuparinen, ed.,
Studia historica in honorem Vilho Niitemaa (Turku, 1987), pp. 127–8, 145–6;
Financing the War

In the late 1930s, the Finnish government had foreseen the danger of
financial and economic crisis should a large-scale military conflict
break out in Europe, although Finland itself was not expected to get
involved. Thus, when the war in Europe started in September 1939, the
Finnish state was not totally unprepared. However, the main problem
during the short and intensive Winter War was not how to finance the
war, but how to secure maintenance and supply in a situation when
most foreign trade connections were broken. The war of 1939–40 was
consequently fought with the wherewithal summoned before the war.18
The Finnish economy survived well the hardship brought by the
Winter War.19 The Continuation War then created problems in how to
cover both the cost of war as well as domestic expenses and how to
regulate the production, transportation and allocation of materials for
military and civil purposes. In the years 1941–45, about 17 percent of
the country’s around 8,000 industrial plants produced for the Army.
State-owned war material factories, situated in and near the biggest
cities of Helsinki, Tampere and Turku and in Central Finland, carried
the main responsibility of military production.20
The needs of the Finnish Army had the highest priority. As a sparsely
populated, large country with long distances, smooth logistics were
fundamental for Finnish warfare. Trains and trucks were, as a rule,
needed for military purposes, but also other private cars and gasoline
had been taken over so efficiently that transportation on the home
front became problematic. In addition to the lack of vehicles and fuel,
the shortage of tires made living complicated. Therefore even bicycles
had to be registered, and a special license was needed for buying tires
for them.21
The first financial plans concerning the Continuation War were
based on the expectation of a short war. Inevitably, acts to balance the
state budget were soon needed. In the prewar 1930s, national defense
18
Ilkka Seppinen, “Talvisodan talous,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2:
Kotirintamalla, eds. Lauri Haataja et al. (Espoo, 2002), pp. 30–3.
19
Vihavainen, “Suomen sota-ajan talous,” p. 203.
20
Kalle Pajunen, Juha-Antti Lamberg & Aki-Mauri Huhtinen, “Sota-ajan teol-
lisuusjohtajat,” in Sodassa koettua, Vol. 3: Arkea sodan varjossa, eds. Martti Turtola
et al. (Helsinki, 2008), p. 186.
21
Erkki Pihkala, “Sotaan mobilisoitu talous,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2,
pp. 273–6; Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 112.
204 marianne junila
had had a share of about 20 percent of the budget; by 1944, its share
had risen to a huge 74 percent.22 The state’s income only covered one-
third of the expenses caused by the war. The deficit was made up with
state loans from the Bank of Finland, thus in practice by creating
new money, and with foreign debts. The government executed heavy
increases in income and property tax out of fear of inflation. Taxes and
forced loans from citizens were major instruments to balance the
budget and to finance the war. Several new objects of taxation were
introduced; a turnover tax was imposed and the tax administration
was strengthened by replacing advanced taxes with subsequent levies.
In 1943, it became compulsory for households with a certain level of
income to buy a war bond. In general the Finns did not oppose the
state’s tightening of financial regulation. The forced loans and heavy
taxes were accepted as a part of the collective national endeavor of war,
in which all social groups participated—also the propertied classes and
wealthy families. In fact, taxation had a leveling effect on economic and
social differences between people in different income brackets.23
Despite the effective control of agricultural and industrial produc-
tion, the Finnish government in 1941–44 would have failed to feed
its people and to implement a working wartime economy without con-
siderable aid from Germany, because the war in Europe had com-
pletely cut off Finland’s sea connections to all other main trading
partners. Only Sweden remained reachable without passing through
the German sphere of influence. Coal and oil were imported from
Germany or from the areas in its orbit. Without the German imports of
grain and fertilizers the Finns would have suffered from famine. In
exchange, Finnish timber, paper, cellulose and minerals were exported
to Germany. Nevertheless, Finland’s trade balance with Germany
showed a continuous heavy deficit, but for political and military rea-
sons Germany permitted its clearing debt to grow. This economic
dependence allowed Germany to keep Finland in line, when the Finns
started to consider a separate peace in 1943–44. Finally the breaking of
relations with Germany became possible only with substantial Swedish
economic assistance in 1944–45.24
22
Henrik Meinander, Suomi 1944: Sota, yhteiskunta, tunnemaisema (Helsinki,
2009), p. 110.
23
Erkki Pihkala, “Valtiontalouden uudet puitteet,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat,
Vol. 2, pp. 134–7; Vehviläinen, Finland, pp. 112–3; Pihkala, “Sotaan mobilisoitu talous,”
pp. 252–62.
24
Pihkala, “Sotaan mobilisoitu talous,” pp. 252–62.
Regulating the Economy

In Europe, all countries had to readjust the level of consumption in
consumer goods like fuel, textiles and food. Wages, prices and rents
were controlled, too. The most sensitive issue concerned sustenance,
because, following the experiences of World War I, it was feared that
food being in short supply would cause social unrest. In the belligerent
countries the consumption on the home front was to be controlled in
order to ensure the supply of the armies.
Consumption was thus regulated through rationing. The regulations
prescribed specific quantities of goods to each consumer, based not on
one’s financial capacity but on criteria such as type of work, medical
circumstances (like pregnancy or illnesses) and age. With a booklet of
coupons, a consumer stated his or her rations for one month, but the
coupons did not substitute currency. When buying goods, a consumer
gave the shopkeeper a coupon as well as money. Hence it was not obvi-
ous that everyone could afford to use the rations in full. People either
could not afford to pay for all rations or they had to go empty-handed,
because the shopkeeper had run out of goods in question. A lot of extra
work was needed for keeping a wary eye on everyone’s coupons and to
keep a record of a family’s rations, too.25
In Finland, the system of rationing was introduced in the autumn
of 1939 when the Ministry of Supply in charge of control was estab-
lished. The farmers had to convey a certain share of their production
for public consumption. The distribution of food supplies was carried
out by the authorities of the Ministry of Supply in cooperation with
Supply Committees established by local councils. Given the circum-
stances, the system functioned quite well. However, as the war dragged
on, people’s distrust of the supply organization grew, and it became a
target for all the frustration caused by the general dearth. The farmers
were unsatisfied with the strict controls imposed on them concerning
the delivery and price of their products. The consumers, again, claimed
to suffer from farmers’ self-seeking, which allegedly led to black mar-
ket trade. These claims also had party political repercussions in that
they caused tension between the two main parties of the government,
25
Iselin Theien, “Food Rationing during World War Two: A Special Case of
Sustainable Consumption?” Anthropology of Food S5 (2009), http://aof.revues.org/
index6383.html.
206 marianne junila
the Agrarian League representing the farmers and the social democrats
representing the wage earners.26
During the Winter War, only sugar and coffee were subjected to
rationing, but during the Interim Peace most food supplies were placed
under rationing: grain products, milk, butter, meat and eggs. Some
foodstuff disappeared completely, and Finns had to learn to use substi-
tutes for coffee and sugar, for instance. The consumption of potatoes,
carrots and rutabagas, as a rule, was not controlled.
The “hunger winter” of 1941–42 caused serious problems in suste-
nance. The loss of fertile Finnish Karelia in 1940 had had a serious
negative impact on agricultural production and food supply in two
important ways. Firstly, the area under cultivation had decreased
significantly, and secondly, the displaced farmers from Karelia had
become consumers instead of being producers. Although the area was
recaptured in July and August 1941, it was too late to help the situation
of the coming winter. In addition, in the autumn of 1941 the harvest
suffered from the lack of skilled labor. Women, children and the elderly
could not fill the gap left by the men in armed service, who could not,
despite their aspirations, come back for harvesting. As a result, some of
the crop was lost. The situation was worsened by the exceptionally
early and cold winter of 1941–42. The Baltic Sea froze up, which made
the import of grain from Germany impossible.27 The war seemed to
become a hard trial for the Finns to endure.
In many Central European countries occupied by Germany the daily
rations of ordinary civilians were hardly enough for them to survive. In
Finland, no serious problems in food supply were experienced in the
Winter War, but during the Continuation War acute shortages occurred
and Finland became dependent on German deliveries. If calculated
together, the imported grain and fertilizers from Germany helped to
cover two-thirds of the total Finnish grain consumption. Bread was not
plentiful in Germany either, but Finland’s ability to continue fighting
was considered more important for Hitler’s strategy, and he gave a spe-
cial order to comply with the Finnish requests for grain supplies. The
Finns were in 1941–44, without any doubt, saved from hunger due to
the imports from Germany and from the countries in its orbit.28
26
27
Kotirintama, pp. 65–77; Soikkanen, “Die Mobilisierung,” pp. 247–50; Vehviläinen,
Finland, pp. 110–1.
28
Meinander, Suomi 1944, p. 111; Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 112.
Despite the German help, the rations in Finland were among the
smallest in Europe. People could not live with the rationed amount of
food without the risk of malnutrition. The Finns escaped this by eating
potatoes—and by shopping on the black market. Despite heavy penal-
ties, the black market system developed as a necessary part of the
home front economy. A survey made in November 1941 by the Social
Research Office of Finland proved that the consumption of grain prod-
ucts was a third higher than the actual rations, meaning that the black
market provided for this one-third. Practically all the Finns, producers
and consumers, high civil servants as well as peasants and workers,
were involved in this activity more or less regularly. The “black” food-
stuffs, which were not delivered for public consumption, were usually
sold for an exorbitant price to friends and their acquaintances or to the
local shopkeeper to sell on. In 1943, in an inventory made on 30,000
Finnish farms, over five million kilos of hidden grain was found. Next
year the same number amounted to six million kilos.29 Purchasing on
the black market was a widespread national custom, and it became one
of the most vivid memories of the wartime. Rationing continued
despite the end of hostilities in 1944–45 so that until 1949 the sale of
grain products and milk was rationed. Only in 1954 could all the regu-
lations be abolished.30
Mobilizing Human Resources

In 1939, Finland had 3.7 million inhabitants. By its population, Finland
was among the smallest European nations participating in World
War II. Therefore, the ability to mobilize human resources and work-
force effectively was far more important for Finland than it was for
nations with larger populations. The home front became responsible
for running the production in agriculture and industry for both mili-
tary and civilian purposes. Because the industrial sector had to be
adjusted to wartime needs, it underwent considerable changes. About
29
Hannu Takala, “Ransonering och brottslighet i Finland,” in Hannu Takala &
Henrik Tham, eds., Krig og moral: Kriminalitet og kontroll i Norden under andre ver-
denskrig (Oslo, 1987), pp. 69–73; Silvo Hietanen, “Perunan ja rukiin maa—ravinto ja
asuminen sotavuosien Suomessa,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2, pp. 301–11;
Vehviläinen, Finland, pp. 110–1; Pihkala, “Sotaan mobilisoitu talous,” p. 252; Anneli
Pranttila, Rintamamiesten muonitus sotavuosina 1939–1945 (Helsinki, 2006),
pp. 173–5.
30
Hietanen, “Perunan ja rukiin maa,” pp. 312–3.
208 marianne junila
170,000 people worked in the munitions industry running at full

capacity, over half of them women.31
First of all, the needs of the Army had to be covered. Around
16 percent of the total Finnish population served in or worked directly
for the Army. In the Winter War around 350,000 men were mobi-
lized when the men aged 40–44 years were also called up.32 During the
Continuation War, the highest strength of the Finnish Army was well
over 500,000 men. Women also served in the armed forces, although
unarmed. The number of women working in the vicinity of the front-
lines at a time ranged between 20,000 and 26,000 persons. This group
comprised, among others, the Red Cross nurses, but most of the
women were members of the Lotta Svärd voluntary organization,
which operated both at the front and on the home front. In relation to
the Army, the lottas carried out tasks involving communications, air
surveillance, supplies, nursing and administrative work. In addition,
they cared for the civilians, especially for the evacuees and the families
of the fallen or invalid soldiers.33
A special Work Responsibility Act (työvelvollisuuslaki) was enacted
to ensure the availability and sufficiency of the workforce. All Finnish
citizens, male and female, between 15 and 64 years of age were obliged
to work in the war industry, agriculture and forestry or in other fields
crucial for national defense. Only women with children under six years
of age were not subjected to the obligation. However, the law did not
solve the labor shortage. The lack of skilled labor and the lack of labor
in industry were the main problems, which partly resulted from the
deployment and consequent needs of the German Army in Finland.
Domestic employers had to compete with the Germans for employees.
This was the case especially in Northern Finland, where the main
forces and the headquarters of the German 20th Mountain Army were
situated. The Germans offered high wages; a skilled worker could well
earn twice, sometimes even four times more working for the German
military than for the Finnish employers. Women preferred a well-paid
31
Pajunen, Lamberg & Huhtinen, “Sota-ajan teollisuusjohtajat,” p. 187.
32
Raimo Sevon, “Kertausharjoitettu kenttäarmeija,” in Jari Leskinen & Antti
Juutilainen, eds., Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (Porvoo, 1999), pp. 75–80.
33
Aura Korppi-Tommola, “Lottien sota,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2, pp. 46–53;
Antti Juutilainen & Matti Koskimaa, “Maavoimien joukkojen perustaminen,” in Jari
Leskinen & Antti Juutilainen, eds., Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (Helsinki, 2005),
pp. 83–5.
office, sewing or cleaning job for the Germans to the often heavy and
dirty outdoor work they were posted to by the Finnish authorities.
An agreement was made between the Finnish and German authori-
ties to solve the problem of the use of labor. The Finnish aim was first
to reduce and second to limit the amount of Finnish labor in German
use. This turned out to be a difficult task, because it was impossible to
even count the number of the Finns working for the Germans. The
estimated figure was more than 10,000 people, which was a consider-
able amount of workforce in sparsely populated Northern Finland.
It was also considered important to forbid Finnish women younger
than 21 from working at the German sites, camps and bases. This regu-
lation was not followed, and the agreement as a whole was not adhered
to by the Germans. Nor were the Finnish civilians eager to give up their
high earnings.34
To keep the wheels turning, labor was also needed for felling and
chopping wood. In wartime Finland timber was the main source of
energy in trains, in cars running on carbon monoxide and in heating,
and therefore the need for timber was great. Besides the Work
Responsibility Act, all people capable of working were obliged to par-
ticipate in the so-called “wood-chopping bee,” in Finnish mottitalkoot.
“Motti” was a unit of measure for one cubic meter of wood and it was
used to set the quotas for men and women separately. The quotas had
to be raised during the war to meet the energy needs. In 1943, every
man aged 18–54 years had to cut 10–30 cubic meters of wood and
every woman 5–15. Chopping wood was marketed as a health promot-
ing outdoor recreation, but it soon became a laborious obligation.
Neglecting it was punishable.35
In Finnish society there was a long tradition of female labor in agri-
culture, and women of most social statuses were used to hard manual
work.36 During the war years this capacity was put into even more
effective use. In addition to paid labor, women had to take charge of
voluntary tasks, particularly in welfare. In 1939, the Women’s Voluntary
34
Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä, pp. 310–5; Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 113.
35
Marianne Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?” in Janne Kankainen, Panu-
Pekka Rauhala & Jouko Vahtola, eds., Oulu ja oululaiset sodissa 1918, 1939–1945
(Oulu, 2002), pp. 278–82, 318–22.
36
E.g. Pirjo Markkola, “Women in Rural Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” in
Merja Manninen & Päivi Setälä, eds., The Lady With the Bow: The Story of Finnish
Women (Helsinki, 1990).
210 marianne junila
Work Union (Naisten Työvalmiusliitto) was founded to act as an

umbrella organization for the 31 different women’s organizations,
among them the women’s associations of the political left and right.
The Work Union together with various women’s organizations had an
important role in helping the authorities to secure the workforce, for
instance, for urgent tasks such as seasonal work on the farms and sud-
den evacuations. The organizations assisted in social work and pro-
vided aid to families who had suffered most from the war. They
arranged guidance and education in housekeeping, helping house-
wives to cope with their limited supplies.37
The youth and children were also mobilized to work for the national
defense. Their contribution was organized through the Bee of the
Young (Nuorten Talkoot), which was an umbrella organization for
dozens of youth associations equivalent to the Women’s Voluntary
Work Union. Children and youth aged 12–17 years, but even younger,
could join the Bee, but for those over 15 years it was more like a civic
duty. Led by their schoolteachers, the youngest ones grew vegetables
on their vegetable patches, worked in the fields, collected waste paper
and scrap metal, or picked berries and cones. The older ones worked,
for instance, in sawmills, in forestry and on farms, or helped in house-
keeping and childcare. High school boys were trained for anti-aircraft
duties on the home front.38
The voluntary work of the children and youth was also funneled
through the Soldier Boys and the Lotta Girls Organizations, which
with more than 120,000 members were among the most important
youth organizations in wartime Finland. These gender-specific youth
organizations were part of the nationalist landscape of the Civil Guards
and the Lotta Svärd, which, again, had an integral part in the national
defense. They had similar pedagogic ideals to the Scout Association,
but they had a stronger nationalist emphasis. The Soldier Boys’ activi-
ties were also clearly militaristic by nature. The Soldier Boys and Lotta
37
Erja Saraste, “Talonpitoa rintaman varjossa—työvoima ja työmarkkinat vuosina
1941–1944,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2, pp. 292–4.
38
Aura Korppi-Tommola, Työtytöt—naisten vapaaehtoinen työpalvelu 1941–1945
(Helsinki, 1997); Lasse Laaksonen, “Koulunkäyntiä ja opiskelua sodan varjossa,” in
Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 206–9; Antti Laine, “Koulut ja yliopistot sota-ajan
yhteiskunnassa,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2, pp. 170–4; Aura Korppi-Tommola,
“Lapset sodan jaloissa,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 200–3; Jenni Kirves &
Sari Näre, “Nuorten Talkoot: Isänmaallinen työvelvollisuus,” in Sodassa koettua, Vol. 2:
Uhrattu nuoruus, eds. Sari Näre et al. (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 68–76.
Fig. 4.1. Women in the fields, July 1941. Finland in the 1940s was an agrarian
country, and the mobilization of almost half a million men created a dire shortage of
labor force and food supplies. Photo: Finnish Defence Force Photographic Centre SA
22628.
212 marianne junila
Fig. 4.2. Young anti-aircraft auxiliaries, autumn 1944. Boys of 15 years and older from
the Civil Guards’ youth organization were encouraged to volunteer for such duties at
the start of the heavy Soviet bombing raids in February 1944. The swastika on helmet
is the old symbol of the Finnish Air Forces and not a Nazi emblem. Photo: Finnish
Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 167324.
Girls differed from the other youth organizations active in the field of
voluntary work through their close connections to the Finnish Army.
At the age of seventeen, boys and girls could—and were encouraged
to—join the respective adult organizations in the Civil Guards and
the Lotta Svärd.39
II. Experiences of War
Coping with Everyday Life

In Finland, as in other war-waging countries, the front and the home
front were divided along gender lines, even if this division was also
overlapping: there were women working in the frontline zone and male
reservists working on the home front. Hence, although men were not
totally absent from the home front, women and children were in great
abundance, and in the postwar narratives the presence of these “home
front men” has faded away. In Finland, one in every three people was
a child under 15 years old and one in every ten people a child under
five years old. During the long years of the Continuation War, the prac-
tical difficulties caused by the war, including shortages and rationing,
combined with mental insecurities and various responsibilities at
home and in production, made women’s life on the home front exhaust-
ing. When they afterwards reminisced about the war, the feeling of
exhaustion was among their strongest memories. This paragraph
mostly relates to the experiences of the Continuation War, because due
to the Winter War’s short duration wartime practices did not fully form
in its course.
The roles and duties of women expanded remarkably. Women
with families had an especially heavy burden to bear both mentally
and physically. Naturally, the burden was even heavier if the husband
fell in war—around 30,000 Finnish women had to face this loss.
Women were responsible not only for feeding and clothing the chil-
dren and taking care of the grandparents, but their contribution was
also needed in production as well as in voluntary work. Women in gen-
eral were supposed to keep up the spirit and morale of their husbands,
fiancées, sons and brothers by writing letters and sending packages to
39
Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi, “Girls and Boys in the Finnish Voluntary Defence
Movement,” Ennen ja Nyt (2006): 3–4, www.ennenjanyt.net/2006_3/nevala.html,
accessed 18 February 2010; Korppi-Tommola, Työtytöt, pp. 35–8.
214 marianne junila
the front. Sonja Hagelstam discusses this activity in detail in her

later chapter.40
As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, rural and urban pop-
ulations did not have a shared war experience. Urban families found it
very hard to make their daily living and to organize their life, mostly
due to rationing. Plagued with shortages, they had to find food and
clothing and get timber for heating. In addition, they had to have
someone babysitting when the adults were busy with their duties. As a
rule, it was not the lack of money but the lack of goods and time that
made life burdensome. It could take hours in line to get the daily por-
tion of milk, bread and other foodstuffs. And even then, after all the
queuing, the customer could be left without her groceries.
Among all the burdened women, the ones taking care of small farms
carried the greatest load - and in wartime Finland most people lived in
the countryside. Before the war, more than half of the population
gained their living from farming and forestry. The majority of Finnish
country people ran small farms with a relatively meager living. The
deepest concern among this population was not about the food, but
about how to keep up with all the work usually done by the men and
horses, both of whom now served in the Army. Agriculture was
unmechanized and thus labor-intensive. The absence of men of work-
ing age forced the elderly, women and children to take care of all the
farm work. Relief was offered, for instance, by the labor of Soviet pris-
oners-of-war and by Finnish volunteers.
The mobilization of men left families without their main providers
and reduced the livelihood of the families drastically. From February
1940 onwards those men who were in military service were paid a daily
benefit and married men also got a special war salary. The amount of
the salary depended on the military rank and the number of family
members. A small handout was also paid to war widows. The war sala-
ries especially improved the livelihood in families with many children
or with low incomes. Actually, by paying the war salaries, the state
assured regular earnings for the most underprivileged members of
society. Due to rationing, taxation, wage control and war salaries the
wartime had a socially leveling effect; differences in income decreased
40
Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 113; Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?”
pp. 269–72.
and economic equality increased.41 The prewar years had already seen
the first cautious steps towards a Finnish social state, but the war-
time further contributed to its burgeoning. In the late 1940s children’s
benefits, family allowances, the child and maternal clinics became a
permanent part of the social and health care system built especially
for families.42
On the home front, the war brought new responsibilities and
hampered daily routines, but despite the stress, soon after the first year
of the Continuation War, life on the home front normalized so that
people could live on in a “wartime normal” way. This ability to create
wartime normality was of crucial importance for the stability of the
home front.43 Among other things, teaching and studying at the uni-
versities could be continued and the authorities were creative in find-
ing ways for remote studies for male students at the front.44 Finland
was blacked out, certain areas were banned for travel, and everyone
over 15 years old had to carry identification. However, people soon got
used to regulations and restrictions, to rationing and shortages. Even if
the war on the Finnish home front could certainly be experienced as
grim and traumatic, compared to many other war-waging countries
in Europe the people did not live in constant fear for their personal
safety, because, as a rule, the front was far away. Instead of their own
lives, the people on the home front were worried about their menfolk
at the front. The threat of violence against Finnish civilians was mostly
occasional, and the number of civilians killed due to military hostili-
ties in 1939–45 was low, about 2,100 people. Approximately 1,900 of
these people were killed in the Soviet air raids, which most often tar-
geted the cities in Southern Finland. Around 200 civilians living in the
borderlands were killed by the Soviet partisan detachments. Some
isolated, small villages in Northeastern Finland were attacked several
41
Vehviläinen, Finland, pp. 113–4; Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?”
pp. 265–6.
42
Hannu Soikkanen, “Sisäpolitiikkaa sodan ehdoilla,” in Kansakunta sodassa,
Vol. 2, pp. 131–2. See the chapter by Helene Laurent in this volume.
43
Cf. Margarete Dörr, “Mittragen—Mitverantworten? Eine Fallstudie zum
Hausfrauenalltag im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Karen Hagemann & Stefanie Schüler-
Springorum, eds., Heimat–Front: Militär und Geschlecterverhältnisse im Zeitalter der
Weltkriege (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), p. 282.
44
Mervi Kaarninen, “Yliopisto sodassa—Opiskelua ja tutkimusta rintamalla ja
kotirintamalla,” in Marjatta Hietala, ed., Tutkijat ja sota: Suomalaisten tutkijoiden
kontakteja ja kohtaloja toisen maailmansodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006).
216 marianne junila
times. Here the frontline running in the vast wilderness was only
loosely manned, and the unarmed civilians, mostly women, children
and elderly, were defenseless against the partisans. On several occa-
sions, all the villagers were executed in such raids.45
Despite the many strains imposed on children in wartime, for
instance shortage of food and the experience of being forced to leave
one’s home, most Finnish children and youngsters lived quite safely in
wartime normality, if compared to many other European countries.
They seldom witnessed the worst horrors of war and most of them
avoided witnessing direct violence. For younger children the most
striking change caused by the war was probably the prolonged absence
of their father. Should the worst case come true, a father’s death was of
course a dramatic loss and left a lasting imprint on the lives of the chil-
dren. Around 55,000 Finnish children were orphaned. Their position
was vulnerable and the threat of poverty severe, especially because it
was the poor regions of Northern and Eastern Finland that suffered
the greatest proportional losses in terms of fallen soldiers.46
For children and youth the years of war could also be a relatively
positive period in life. It could, for instance, be experienced as a great
adventure. In the life of schoolchildren, extra leisure time, due to the
regular closing of schools or reductions in lectures, was not necessarily
conceived as a drawback—on the contrary. The schools were kept
closed for the whole Winter War and during 1941–45 school attend-
ance was interrupted several times. The troops were quartered in
school buildings, the buildings were turned into hospitals or closed
due to the lack of teachers or the fear of bombings. If teaching could be
continued, it, however, underwent changes. The war molded curricu-
lums in that learning goals were redefined and the teaching became
more practical. National defense was integrated into schools both at a
theoretical and practical level. Among other things, schoolchildrens’
national commitment was strengthened by sending them to voluntary
work.
Those Finnish children who belonged to a group called “war
children” were affected by the war in a very specific way. During the
45
Julkunen, Tuhon partaalla, pp. 126–7; Silvo Hietanen, “Rikollisuus ja alkoholi
sota-ajan yhteiskunnassa,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 3: Kuilun yli, eds. Silvo Hietanen
et al. (Helsinki, 1992), pp. 168–70; see also Veikko Erkkilä, Vaiettu sota: Neuvostoliiton
partisaanien iskut suomalaisiin kyliin (Helsinki, 1999); Tyyne Martikainen,
Partisaanisodan siviiliuhrit (Espoo, 2002).
46
war years around 80,000 Finnish children were transferred to other

Nordic countries, mostly to Sweden. In the insecure circumstan-
ces caused by World War II child evacuations were not specific
to Finland, but for a small nation their scale and impact was extreme.
In Finnish language the expression “war child” (sotalapsi) has a
very exact meaning, referring to the children who were sent to other
Nordic countries during the war, whereas for instance in Norwegian
the word “war child” (krigsbarn) refers to a child with a German
father.47
The idea to help those children who had suffered most by sending
them to non-belligerent countries came up at an early stage. Sweden,
having earlier in 1919–21 received evacuated children from Germany
and Austria, now offered help to Finland. In December 1939 the idea
was implemented and altogether 10,000 children, mothers and elderly
were evacuated, mostly to Sweden, but also to Denmark and Norway.
They returned in 1940. In 1941, the operation started again, but this
time on a much larger scale. The original plan was to transfer only
those children who came from evacuated families or whose father
was disabled or had fallen. However, during the next winter the num-
ber of children’s transportations increased rapidly due to the shortage
in food supply.48
Parents allowed their children to be evacuated for reasons such
as having lost their homes in Karelia, illness of the child or difficult
social conditions. As a rule, these children were aged between three
and eight years and they had a lower-class background. They came
from industrial towns or poor frontier regions. In Sweden the children
ended up in socially and culturally totally different surroundings. In
many cases the children, mostly without knowledge of Swedish, expe-
rienced a cultural shock, which was repeated when most of them later
returned to Finland. By then many of them had lost their native lan-
guage and the youngest did not recognize their parents anymore.
About 15,000 of the war children never returned to Finland, but stayed
abroad with their new families.
47
Heikki Salminen, Lappu kaulassa yli Pohjanlahden: Suomalaisten sotalasten histo-
ria (Turku, 2007), pp. 121–3, 200; Aura Korppi-Tommola, “War and Children in
Finland during the Second World War,” Paedagogica Historica 44 (2008): 4, pp. 445–55;
Norsk krigslexikon 1940–45 (Oslo, 1995), p. 229.
48
Silvo Hietanen, “Kahden kodin lapsuus: Suomalainen sotalapsi,” in Kansakunta
sodassa, Vol. 3, pp. 142–9.
218 marianne junila
Seeking Entertainment
Naturally life on the home front was not only comprised of hardships,
hard work, shortages, longing and grieving. As a counterbalance, civil-
ians, like soldiers at the front, needed and looked for joy and entertain-
ment. From the state’s point of view, not all activities were considered
suitable, and had thus to be subjected to control. The consequent
restrictions and the other forms of control to clamp down on misbe-
havior were signs of real social problems but also of moral panic. These
two aspects can, of course, be seen as interrelated. The perceived mis-
behavior of young people caused a great concern in Finland especially
in urban environments.49 The adults were busy with their duties, and
sometimes the children seemed to be left by themselves without paren-
tal guidance and necessary control. Minors were not allowed to enter
restaurants, but still, against the contemporary norms, young girls
stayed out very late hanging around in the pubs and restaurants, meet-
ing men and having drinks with them—girls from “ordinary families,”
girls who had earlier “hardly dared to visit a coffee shop,” as the con-
cerned authorities and public saw it. A solution to the issue was a cur-
few for young people in bigger towns.50
People created their own forms of enjoying themselves but they
were also offered entertainment by the state. The main intent of the
state was to tighten morale and uphold the fighting spirit on both
fronts. This made some leisure activities tolerable, some desirable and
some forbidden. Among the forbidden ones was for instance dancing,
which was not allowed at all during the war. Dancing was seen as a
sacrilege, disgracing the sacrifice given by the fallen soldiers. Those
who were caught for illegal dancing were fined, but secret dancing was,
naturally, still common.
In addition to dancing, the use of alcohol was also condemned. The
sale and serving of alcohol on the home front was strictly rationed.
The strict restrictions, however, did not restrain people, male or female,
from drinking. Alcohol offered relief, especially for the soldiers, and
49
Kerttu Tarjamo, “Kansakunnan tulevaisuutta pelastamassa: Viranomaisten kes-
kustelu rikollisuudesta 1940- ja 1950-luvun Suomessa,” in Petri Karonen & Kerttu
Tarjamo, eds., Kun sota on ohi: Sodista selviytymisen ongelmia ja niiden ratkaisumalleja
1900-luvulla (Helsinki, 2006).
50
Marianne Junila, “A Crying Shame? Having a Child with German Father in
Finland in the 1940s,” Romanian Journal of Population Studies 2 (2009): 2, pp. 7–8;
Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?” pp. 295–6.
they were among the most eager visitors to restaurants on their

furloughs. Throughout the war years, restaurants and cafés with
licenses were full to overflowing with pleasure-seeking clients. This
was widely disapproved in newspapers and especially in the propa-
ganda by temperance organizations. Actually, alcohol consumption in
Finland was on a lower level than in other parts of Europe, but still the
extensive use of strong spirits caused a lot of disturbance and concern
for authorities and temperance activists. The moral concern reveals
how morally loaded the use of alcohol was in the Finnish Lutheran
culture. It was seen not only as inappropriate but downright unpatri-
otic to have fun on the home front when the men at the front were
fighting and dying for the common cause.51
Romantic reading, humorous movies, entertainment evenings and
schlager music fell into the category of acceptable escape from daily
stress and routines. The wartime was actually a golden era for the
Finnish film and music industry. The entertainment evenings (called
“brothers-in-arms evenings”) also had charitable purposes by raising
funds for disabled soldiers, war widows and orphans.52 In addition,
sport and outdoor activities were considered as excellent recreation,
especially for young people. People eagerly attended all kinds of sport
events. One of the biggest events was a walking competition between
Finland and Sweden organized in May 1941. The idea was that every-
one older than 10, as many as possible of course, would march 10 or
15 kilometers in a given time. Finland won the competition when
approximately 1.5 million Finns, about 40 percent of the population,
participated in the competition.53
Writing letters was the only way to sustain continuous contact
between the home front and the front, and it had a huge importance in
keeping up the spirit on both fronts. The number of letters sent during
the years 1941–44, all in all 716 million,54 indicates their significance.
The letters were free of charge when they were labeled as “field post.”
People were encouraged to write to their loved ones, but, on the other
hand, the correspondence could also pose threats in moral terms.
51
Risto Jaakkola, “Rikollisuus,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 197–8;
Hietanen, “Rikollisuus ja alkoholi,” pp. 179–81.
52
Maarit Niiniluoto, “Viihdytystoiminta valoi uskoa huomiseen,” in Itsenäisyyden
puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 213–23.
53
Olli Vehviläinen, “Saksan rinnalle,” in Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 1, pp. 286–7.
54
E.O. Tirronen, “Huollon toiminta,” in Suomen sota 1941–1945, Vol. 10 (Helsinki,
1961), p. 416.
220 marianne junila
Letters were not exchanged only between family members, relatives

and friends. Women used to send letters or parcels to unknown sol-
diers with the purpose of raising their spirits, and partly because it
brought romantic excitement into their lives. Young people especially,
first the soldiers but later young women, too, were seeking new pen
friends by advertising in the newspapers. Finally, a soldier might have
dozens of female pen friends all over Finland to visit on his furlough.
In 1943 the number of letters that could be sent free of charge was
restricted.55
Female Encounters with German Soldiers

One special feature brought along by the Finnish-German alli-
ance quickly developed into a considerable moral problem. In the
nationalist discourse, the female body is invested with strong sym-
bolic meanings. Biologically, women are reproducers of the nation,
but through their moral strength, which they are supposed to demon-
strate, they also embody the purity of their nation. On the other hand,
due to women’s waywardness, the female body is a source of anxie-
ties, and particularly in times of war their behavior is subjected to
special control. Relations with foreign, and especially enemy, soldiers
are banned as unpatriotic. In wartime Finland, relations with Soviet
prisoners-of-war were strictly forbidden and punishable, but the issue
of intimate relations between the German soldiers and Finnish women
was more troublesome to define. In the countries occupied by Germany,
people were enraged by these relations and as a punishment for
their “unpatriotic behavior” numerous women had their hair cut off
during and after the war. In Finland the situation was different, because
the Germans had a status of “brothers-in-arms,” as the alliance was
euphemistically called. Accordingly, female socializing with German
men could not be regarded as inappropriate in the same way as,
for instance, in Norway, France or the Ukraine. Finland fought together
with Germany militarily, had strong business relations and cooperated
in the fields of culture and science.56 Nevertheless, the public atti-
tude towards the girls and women going out with the Germans was
55
Erkki Pihkala, “Kenttäposti, postisensuuri ja Itä-Karjalan posti,” in Itsenäisyyden
puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 156–9; Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?” pp. 298–300.
56
On Finnish-German relations in science and humanities, see Marjatta Hietala,
“Tutkijat ja Saksan suunta,” in Hietala, Tutkijat ja sota.
similar to that in the occupied countries. They were treated with

moral indignation and called insulting names, branding them as
“loose.” The women were seen as indecent and promiscuous.57
Consequently, one can conclude that almost the only form of Finnish
wartime collaboration with the Germans that was rejected was the
horizontal one.
In the rhetoric of war, but also in the Finnish soldiers’ conception,
waging war was justified by the safety of the women and children
they were defending. The discussion in the Finnish newspapers
together with the Soviet propaganda about the Finnish women “keep-
ing company” with the Germans worried and occupied the minds of
the Finnish soldiers to a great extent. This resulted occasionally in
fights between the Finnish and German men.58 According to a widely
shared opinion in a local newspaper, it was not only impudent to have
fun with foreign soldiers when the Finnish men were at the front
defending their women and children, but from a biological point of
view harmful, because the intimate relations posed a threat also to the
“pure Finnish race and blood.”59 Quite paradoxically, the relationships
between Finnish women and German men were disapproved on simi-
lar grounds, which were used in Nazi propaganda to reject relation-
ships between German soldiers and local women, defined as racially
inferior, in the occupied countries.
It is not easy to generalize why Finnish women socialized with
Germans or vice versa, because the intentions varied from case to case.
There were relationships, which showed a tendency to some kind of
commitment, as a sign of which the men were introduced to the
Finnish parents or the couple got engaged. There were couples that
corresponded regularly but met more irregularly, and finally, there
were couples that had just met for a night.60 From the Finnish women’s
point of view, German soldiers were attractive for several reasons, not
least because of the possibilities of having fun and the allure of adven-
ture linked to them. At the Germans’ parties one could dance, although
dancing was prohibited outside the German domains; there was wine
57
Anette Warring, “Intimate and Sexual Relations,” in Robert Gildea, Olivier
Wieviorka & Anette Warring, eds., Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in
Occupied Europe (Oxford, 2006), pp. 88–95.
58
Heikura, Rintamajoukkojen mieliala, pp. 131–5.
59
60
Junila, “A Crying Shame?”; Junila, “Kuinka siellä kotona pärjätään?” pp. 295–6.
222 marianne junila
and champagne to drink, whereas in Finnish society alcoholic drinks

were strictly rationed. There were lots of courteous escorts. Nevertheless,
according to the public discussion for instance in the newspapers, it
was quite obvious why German soldiers sought and kept company with
Finnish women. It was all about sexual relations, and women were
naïve in believing tender words and promises about a future life
together. Apparently in the public discourse, the Germans’ girlfriends
were not only indecent but also stupid.61
The number of children born out of relations between Finnish
women and German soldiers can only be roughly estimated, because
no specific records were kept on children with German fathers. It was
practically impossible for a German soldier to get official permission
to marry his Finnish girlfriend, and therefore their children were as a
rule born out of wedlock. In 1941–45, about 28,000 illegitimate chil-
dren were born in Finland. Considering the possibilities for encoun-
ters between the Finnish women and German soldiers the number of
their children is at the most no more than around two to three
thousand.62
From a mother’s point of view, being an unwed mother was compli-
cated enough, and as the mother of a German soldier’s illegitimate
child, she was at risk of being labeled twice, first as promiscuous and
second as politically doubtful. In postwar Finland the women with
their German-fathered illegitimate children were concrete manifesta-
tions of the Finnish-German cooperation, which official Finland chose
not to remember. The reasons for this oblivion were of course political
but also psychological. Even if the reputation and name of the women
mothering children of German soldiers was tainted, their children
never fell into collective contempt in public or became targets for fierce
criticism in the same way as happened, for instance, in Norway. Postwar
Finnish society wanted to forget the sorrows and horrors of the war
and enter the new era of rebuilding. The new orientation in politics and
foreign relations promised the nation as well as its individual citizens a
fresh start toward a brighter future. But on the other hand, the will to
expunge the Finnish-German cooperation from the nation’s collective
61
Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä, pp. 160–2, 263; Ebba Drolshagen, Nicht unge-
schoren davonkommen: Die Geliebten der Wehrmachtssoldaten im bestezten Europa
(Munich, 2000), p. 115.
62
memory made the children of German soldiers a taboo subject for

years to come.63
People on the Move

As elsewhere in Europe, in Finland, too, the war manifested itself in
increasing mobility. Despite the burgeoning tourism and work-related
changes of residence, until 1939 the Finnish people had been closely
bound up to their localities. The war set the nation in motion, filled
buses and trains and created encounters between groups of people
from different parts of the country, previously unknown to each other.
The soldiers of the Finnish Army were crisscrossing the country with
their units or on their furloughs. The laborers of the building and for-
tification works were moved around. There were also women, espe-
cially lottas, on their way to or returning from their assignments.
People mostly traveled in order to fill their duties, but there were also
travelers buying and selling food and supplies of all kinds. At the begin-
ning of the Winter War, townspeople fled from the air raids, and, espe-
cially during the Continuation War, tens of thousands of children were
on their way to Sweden by train or by boat.
In World War II Europe, some 60 million civilians were forced to
move during and after the war. In Finland, the evacuations of civilians
to safer areas were carried out before or during the hostilities or after-
wards, when the borders were redrawn and Finland had to cede large
areas to the Soviet Union. The evacuations could not have been carried
out without large numbers of volunteer workers. During and after the
Winter War the population of Finnish Karelia—more than 400,000
people—was evacuated westwards in a short period of time. The reset-
tlement program of the Karelian population was interrupted in June
1941, when the Continuation War broke out. Finnish Karelia was soon
recaptured and by April 1944 almost 300,000 of the evacuees had
returned to their old homesteads. However, this turned out to be a
short-lived stay. Under the threat of the Soviet offensive in the summer
of 1944 and finally after the new borderline was established in
September 1944, the Finnish Karelians were evacuated again into the
interior of Finland. In the armistice treaty of 1944, the Karelian Isthmus
63
Marianne Junila, “Isä: Saksalainen sotilas,” in Tiina Kinnunen & Ville Kivimäki,
eds., Ihminen sodassa: Suomalaisten kokemuksia talvi- ja jatkosodasta (Helsinki, 2006),
pp. 258–9.
224 marianne junila
and the Ladoga Karelia were ceded to the Soviet Union. In conse-
quence, a total of about 410,000 people had to be resettled in Finland
for good—only 19 persons decided to stay in the area that was now
part of the Soviet Union.64
Due to the consequent hostilities between Finland and Germany in
September 1944, approximately 100,000 people were evacuated from
the Lapland and Oulu Provinces in Northern Finland. Sweden received
50,000–60,000 Finns and the rest were evacuated southwards inside
Finland. Except for the inhabitants of Pechenga and partly of Salla and
Kuusamo regions, which were ceded to the Soviet Union, these evacu-
ees returned home in the course of the spring and summer of 1945 to
find their localities totally burned and damaged. In tandem with the
evacuation of Northern Finland, about 8,000 inhabitants from the
Porkkala Peninsula, located 20 kilometers west of the city of Helsinki,
were evacuated in ten days. This area, with its great strategic value, was
leased out for the Soviet Union as a naval base for the next fifty years.
However, Porkkala was returned to Finland in 1956, and the inhabit-
ants could return.65
Even those civilians, who were not themselves moving during
the war years, met new people, both native Finns and foreigners. The
burdened evacuees from Finnish Karelia were encountered with curi-
osity and spontaneous helpfulness, but also with rejection and cul-
tural prejudice. During the Continuation War thousands of Soviet
prisoners-of-war lived and worked on Finnish farms. Also Finnic
evacuees from the Ingria region in the Soviet Union could be settled
in one’s neighborhood in 1943–44. The German presence was espe-
cially strong in Northern Finland. Their troop detachments began to
arrive several weeks before Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941.
The German Army in Lapland, renamed in 1942 as the 20th Mountain
Army, had a strength of about 220,000 men. If compared to the size
of Finnish population centers, at that time only the city of Helsinki
had more inhabitants: about 290,000 people in 1939. For example the
64
Ilkka Seppinen, “Jälleenrakennus ja siirtoväen asuttaminen,” in Leskinen &
Juutilainen, Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen, pp. 884–8; Martti Häikiö, “Pitkospuita rau-
haan,” in Leskinen & Juutilainen, Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen, pp. 1094–5.
65
Malcolm J. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 1939–52: A Study in Forced Population
Movement (London, 1957), pp. 40–1; Silvo Hietanen, “Siirtoväen ja rintamamiesten
asuttaminen,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2, pp. 304–9.
Fig. 4.3. Masses in motion. Civilians waiting for the train to leave Helsinki after the
outbreak of the Winter War, December 1939. Photo: WSOY Photo Archives.
226 marianne junila
Fig. 4.4. The last transportation of Ingrian Finns taking ship from German-occupied
Estonia to Finland, June 1944. Having suffered much during the Stalin regime and the
war years, the majority were returned to the Soviet Union in 1944–45. Photo: Finnish
Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 153498.
town of Rovaniemi, the center of Lapland with the German headquar-

ters and major supply depots, had only some 8,000 inhabitants.
German soldiers were transported through Finnish harbors in
Southern and Western Finland to their units in Northern and Eastern
Finland. It was impossible not to encounter them in the transit or bil-
leting areas, and the nearer the troops were stationed to one’s own
home, the more difficult it was to avoid contact with them. Those local
people who volunteered to work for the Germans, or were ordered to
do so, were inevitably in constant contact with them. The majority of
Finns were ready to accept the presence of the Germans, if only for the
sake of the national interest. The political left and the working class
were suspicious and even hostile towards Nazi Germany, but no dem-
onstrations were held against the arrival of its armed forces, nor were
there any attempts at sabotage. People’s attitudes were mostly dictated
by practical considerations, such as their own and their families’ safety
and welfare. In addition, strong loyalty to the Finnish authorities
demanded that people should not seek confrontations with these
“brothers-in-arms” nor incite others to do so. On the other hand, the
German officers regarded it as highly important that any conflicts with
the local population should be prevented, and it was firmly instilled in
the German soldiers that they were not an army of occupation, but
“guests” in a friendly co-belligerent country.
As pointed out above, many Finnish women were eager to get
acquainted with German soldiers and not only for intimate reasons. In
several cases, Finnish civilians and German soldiers met each other in
friendly terms, and the experiences of living and working side-by-side
were positive. Ideally, a German soldier could well turn out to be an
obliging neighbor or a generous friend. He sometimes became a family
friend to the locals and brought a parcel of food with him when he
came for a visit, or aided the people of the house in other ways. The
German troops offered help in agricultural work and by doing repairs,
or they could lend out their horses to local farms. Help of this kind was
very valuable in the countryside, where, in many cases, both the farmer
himself and the horses were away on their war duty. People living in
remote areas even consulted German professionals such as army doc-
tors and veterinarians, when the Finnish services were only available
perhaps hundreds of kilometers away. These positive encounters
between German soldiers and Finnish civilians in Northern Finland
are strong in reminiscences and set the Finnish experience greatly
228 marianne junila
Map 4.1. Evacuations and Resettlements of the Civilian Population in Finland and
Soviet Karelia, 1939–45.
Table 4.1 Evacuations and Resettlements of the Civilian Population in

Finland and Soviet Karelia, 1939–45
Finnish citizens:
1 = Finnish Karelian evacuees, 1939–40 and 1944:1 ~407,000
of whom returned to recaptured areas, 1941–44:2 ~ 280,000
2 = Pechenga, Salla and Kuusamo evacuees, 1939–40 and
1944:1 11,000
1
3 = Hanko evacuees, March 1940 (returned in 1941–42): 5,000
4 = Children sent to Sweden and Denmark,
1939–44:3 ~80,000
8 = Evacuees of the Lapland War, 1944–45:4 104,000
10 = Porkkala evacuees, September 1944 (returned in
1956):1 8,000
Soviet citizens:
5 = Evacuees from the Finnish-occupied Soviet Karelia,
1941:5 ~200,000
6 = Soviet population under Finnish occupation,
1941–44:5 85,000
of whom were interned in transit/concentration
camps, at max.:5 24,000
7 = Finnic Ingrians resettled in Finland, March 1943 –
June 1944:6 63,000
of whom were returned back to the Soviet Union,
1944–45:6 55,000
9 = Soviet citizens resettled in annexed Finnish Karelia,7
after the Winter War, 1940–41: ~170,000
after the Continuation War, 1944–45: ~100,000
1
Tarja Raninen-Siiskonen, Vieraana omalla maalla: Tutkimus karjalaisen siirtoväen
muistelukerronnasta (Helsinki, 1999), pp. 13–5.
2
Silvo Hietanen, “Evakkovuosi 1944 – jälleen matkassa,” in Kansakunta sodassa,
Vol. 3: Kuilun yli (Helsinki, 1992), p. 130.
3
Heikki Salminen, Lappu kaulassa yli Pohjanlahden: Suomalaisten sotalasten historia
(Turku, 2007), p. 6.
4
Martti Ursin, Pohjois-Suomen tuhot ja jälleenrakennus saksalaissodan 1944–1945 jäl-
keen (Rovaniemi, 1980), p. 31.
5
laisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 96–102, 119.
6
Pekka Nevalainen, Inkeriläinen siirtoväki Suomessa 1940-luvulla (Helsinki, 1990),
pp. 59, 296–7.
7
Antti Laine, “Neuvostovallan alkuvaiheet 1950-luvun ensivuosiin asti,” in Viipurin
läänin historia, Vol. VI: Karjala itärajan varjossa (Lappeenranta, 2010), pp. 398,
405–6.
230 marianne junila
apart from the countries where the Germans were only met as violent
occupiers and exploiters.66
The fate of one more distinctive group of people in wartime Finland
requires attention. The Ingrians, who had lived in the eastern Baltic Sea
region around Saint Petersburg / Leningrad since the seventeenth cen-
tury, were of Finnish origin. In the Soviet Union, they were still recog-
nized as a specific ethnic group who had kept their Finnic language
and their Lutheran religion, but in the 1930s they were subjected to
Stalin’s terror and deportations. In the autumn of 1941, when the
German Army occupied the region, the Germans suggested that the
Ingrian Finns, who still lived in the area, could be transported to
Finland. The Finnish authorities, however, turned the offer down. Next
year in 1942 the Finns had second thoughts, as the shortage in labor
became critical. In 1943, the transfers through Estonia began on the
basis of voluntary applications. By the autumn of 1944, around 63,000
people had arrived in Finland. Most of them ended up working on
farms in Southern Finland.67
When the hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union ended in
September 1944, the Soviet citizens, who had been taken to Finland
during the war, were expected to be returned. According to the
Finnish interpretation this return was voluntary for the Ingrians, who
had themselves decided to move to Finland in 1943–44, but there was
uncertainty concerning the issue. Finally most of the Ingrians, about
55,000 people, moved back to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the
Soviet authorities did not allow them to settle in their former home
regions and scattered the Ingrians to other parts of the Soviet Union.
Over 7,000 Ingrian refugees remained in Finland. About half of them
moved later to Sweden, because they did not feel safe in postwar
Finland and feared forced deportations to the east. As for so many
other ethnic groups of Central and Eastern Europe, World War II
meant a great diaspora and human tragedy for this small people.68
***
66
67
Antti Laine & Silvo Hietanen, “Inkeriläisten vaellus—Suomen seisake,” in
Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2, pp. 90–7; Otto Kurs, “Ingria: The Broken Landbridge
between Estonia and Finland,” GeoJournal 33 (1994): 1, pp. 111–2.
68
Pekka Nevalainen, “Inkeriläisten visiitti Suomeen,” in Itsenäisyyden puolustajat,
Vol. 2, pp. 270–3.
In international comparison, the Finnish home front was in several

aspects similar to other home fronts in war-waging Europe. People had
to learn to live with restrictions; food and other supplies were scarce.
Societies became mobile, on both voluntary and non-voluntary terms.
In addition, the state administration made interventions to a degree
never experienced before. In the Western countries, the development
of the modern welfare state owes much to the new values and policies
that arose during the war. In Finland, like elsewhere, people also man-
aged to escape state regulations and other forms of public control.
Women’s sexual behavior was one of the things that was under con-
stant surveillance. Relations with foreign soldiers and children born
out of wedlock were a common European phenomenon.
In wartime Finland, the mobilization of economic and human
resources succeeded well. The cohesion between the two fronts was
never severely disrupted and the stability of the home front, even if
burdened, never fell apart. The home front could create a wartime nor-
mality, which was needed to maintain stability. This chapter has shown
that there was not a shared experience of war, but instead there were
several ways, intersected by gender, age, language, social and occupa-
tional status, political orientation and regional background, to give
meaning to war. The exceptional unanimity of the Winter War did not
characterize the Continuation War, but people still thought that the
struggle for the nation, for its independence, democracy and for a free
Nordic social order was essential and justified. Thus, the tensions and
cracks in the consensus could be usually overcome. In addition, a
deep-rooted fear of Russia / the Soviet Union connected large groups
of Finns. The role of religion in giving meaning to the losses was most
important, especially during the Winter War. More transnational
research is needed to know if the strong role of religion in Finnish soci-
ety followed a more general pattern, or if it was a singular Finnish
phenomenon.
In international comparison, Finland survived World War II very
intact. In economic terms, the war was not as catastrophic as it was for
many other European countries. The recovery was so rapid that the
year 1945 already saw the beginning of a strong boom. According to
the analysis of Ilkka Nummela, who has studied the financial burden of
the war imposed on Finland in the period of 1938–52, the 1938 gross
domestic product, in terms of real value, was achieved already in 1946.
Inevitably, people conceived and felt the effects of the war individually,
but if the physical war damages are estimated statistically, they were
232 marianne junila
but one-fiftieth of the national wealth of the country. In international

comparison, this figure was very small indeed.69
The record of international comparisons notwithstanding, the chal-
lenges in postwar Finland were huge. Large numbers of Finns were
mentally traumatized by the war, but this was a problem that was not
addressed at that time. The practical problems of reconstruction were
prioritized. The question about the livelihood of the war veterans,
invalids, widows and orphans after the war was supposed to be solved
by giving them land, which they could cultivate and where they could
build new homes. Consequently, the Land Acquisition Act was passed
in 1945. Also all the evacuees received some compensation for their
losses. The land for settlers was acquired from the state, municipalities,
companies and private owners. Thanks to the resettlement program
about 700,000 people, including the family members, started a new
postwar life on a small farm.
Despite the challenges—or because of them—there was a strong will
to look forward and to rebuild the country. Finland made an excep-
tion among those European countries, which were defeated in World
War II. Despite the territorial, economic and human losses the nation
remained sovereign, and it was able to start the reconstruction of soci-
ety from earlier on and with less friction than most countries of war-
ravaged Europe.70
69
Ilkka Nummela, Inter arma silent revisores rationum: Toisen maailmansodan
aiheuttama taloudellinen rasitus Suomessa vuosina 1939–1952 (Jyväskylä, 1993),
pp. 292–302.
70
Kerttu Tarjamo & Petri Karonen, “Kun sota on ohi,” in Karonen & Tarjamo,
Kun sota on ohi, pp. 387–93.
CHAPTER FIVE
MEANINGLESS DEATH OR REGENERATING SACRIFICE?

VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL COHESION IN WARTIME FINLAND
Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas Tepora
An exceptional practice of the Finnish military during World War II

was, whenever possible, to bring home all the fallen soldiers. They were
consequently buried in the so-called “Hero’s Cemeteries” in the church-
yards of their own localities. The practice had its roots in the Civil War
of 1918, when the fallen combatants of the “White” side were usually
brought back to their home parishes in a similar fashion. In 1939–45,
this evacuation and burial of the fallen developed into a culturally and
emotionally focal ritual, which built a strong bridge between the front
and the home front and which placed the sacrificial death of a soldier
at the heart of each locality, both materially and symbolically.1 A cru-
cial challenge for the wartime society was to be able to give these vio-
lent deaths an acceptable and, even more, a regenerative meaning. The
social cohesion of the national community was largely determined by
this question, and it occupied a central place in individual minds and
in the collective imagination alike. In the following chapter, we will
discuss the meanings and controversies of wartime violence in Finland.
We hope that such a study of death and sacrifice will also open a wider
perspective to the Finnish cultural history of World War II.
The importance of violent sacrifices, national martyrs and the cult of
fallen soldiers for the nation-states has been thoroughly observed and
analyzed.2 Yet each culture and nation has its own historical experi-
ences, connotations and emphasis in using the idea of a sacrificial
1
sodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 65–77, 166–71. – There are over 600 “Hero’s
Cemeteries” in Finland, at least one in every town and parish.
2
For influential examples, see e.g. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, 1991); Reinhart
Koselleck & Michael Jeismann, eds., Der politische Totenkult: Kriegerdenkmäler in der
Moderne (Munich, 1994); George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of
the World Wars (Oxford, 1990); Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford, 2003).
234 ville kivimäki & tuomas tepora
death, and these differences may be revealing for understanding the

historical specifications of each case. In general, the nationalist cult of
death can be conceptualized as “regenerative violence,” which vitalizes
the nation, combines patriotism to religious cosmology and forms a
binding legacy for future generations.
Thus, the (sacrificial) violence is at the root of nationalist thinking,
constructing a prerequisite for the feelings of unity and oneness among
the members of the national collective. With the concept of social
cohesion we point to the weft of social relations of a given modern
community, made possible by both symbolic representations and con-
crete practices of solidarity, reciprocity and identity. Consensus, or at
least an acceptable compromise, of the meaning of common sacrifices
and of the legitimacy of violence exercised in the name of the commu-
nity is essential for this cohesion to survive. Using the famous notion
by Max Weber, the state seeks to authorize itself a monopoly on vio-
lence; a legitimate, exclusive right to use violence on behalf of its mem-
bers to control and to protect. Indeed, it must succeed in this task in
order to be a sovereign community. Regarding the totalitarian or auto-
cratic regimes, Weber’s idea can be taken even further: the authority of
the monopoly on violence is not only a premise for social stability—the
potential to exercise ultimate, deadly force has actually been the final
evidence of the state’s or monarch’s supremacy, demonstrated in acts of
violence towards the subjects.3 Thus, the violence may become the very
legitimatization of itself.
But in a democratic society such as Finland in 1939–45, the monop-
oly on violence requires a more nuanced balancing participated in by
other citizen-actors than a single autocrat or a small hegemonic elite.4
If the legitimacy of power comes from the people, at least symbolically,
then the state’s violence, too, must have the acceptance of the people.
This includes the violence in the form of requiring sacrifices on the
nation’s behalf and, more problematically, the coercive violence of
the state to control its own citizens.5 Should the justified nature and the
3
Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht, rev. ed. (Tübingen, 1992), pp. 52–7.
4
For the complexity of controlling violence and for the historical differences
between various state formations, see Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis & Barry
R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting
Recorded Human History (Cambridge, 2009).
5
Cf. Carolyn Marvin & David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem
Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge, 1999) drawing from René Girard, Violence
and the Sacred, transl. by Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, MD, 1977).
meaningless death or regenerating sacrifice? 235
shared meaning of such violence become challenged, the authority of

the state and the community’s social cohesion are consequently threat-
ened.6 From the basis of this short theoretical introduction, it is our
task in the following to discuss the phenomena of wartime violence in
empirical detail.
I. The Prolonged “War of Independence,” 1918–41
Polarizing Violence: The Trauma of 1918 in Pre-World War II Finland

When one looks at the Finnish war experience in World War II, it is
impossible not to confront the memory of the Civil War of 1918. Many
of the reactions and decisions in 1939–45 become understandable
against this background: the Finnish interwar society was both a prod-
uct of and an answer to the divisions of 1918. Thus, in order to under-
stand the circumstances from which the Finns related and oriented
themselves to the social and cultural phenomena of World War II, it is
essential to start with the experience of the Civil War.
Following the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared inde-
pendence from the former Czarist Empire on 6 December 1917.
However, the hot-tempered political and social situation soon esca-
lated into a socialist revolution and a civil war in late January 1918. The
war between the “White” troops of the bourgeois government and the
insurgent “Reds” lasted for three and a half months. The initial goal of
the Finnish revolution was to establish an independent socialist state,
not to incorporate Finland into the newly formed Soviet Russia,
whereas the Whites aimed at suppressing the revolution and disarming
the Russian troops still in Finland. Violent purges and lawless execu-
tions belonged to the means of warfare on both sides. The real catastro-
phe, however, unfolded after the Whites had won the war in May 1918.
Thousands of defeated Reds were imprisoned in camps, in which hun-
ger and the pandemic Spanish flu raged on.7 The total death toll of the
6
Cf. Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 3–9.
7
For a general depiction of political and military aspects of the Civil War, see
Anthony F. Upton, The Finnish Revolution 1917–1918 (Minneapolis, MN, 1980); on
the terror in the Civil War, see Marko Tikka, Kenttäoikeudet: Välittömät rankaisu-
toimet Suomen sisällissodassa 1918 (Helsinki, 2004); on the psychology of the prewar
enemy images and the wartime violence, see Juha Siltala, Sisällissodan psyko-
historia (Helsinki,2009). For an excellent overview on the legacy of the Civil War, see
war was about 36,000 out of the population of 3.2 million people.
Around 27,000 of the deceased were Reds.8
Regarding the subject matter of our chapter, the cultural history of
violence, the situation in Finnish society prior to the Civil War devel-
oped quickly towards a power vacuum. The state authority and the
control of violence dissolved along with the revolutionary develop-
ments in Russia. The Weberian question about the monopoly on vio-
lence seems to be decisive in understanding the fratricidal and
introspective violence of the Civil War. The war indicated the loss of
boundaries between those who traditionally controlled violence and
those who were controlled. The locus of power became contested and
blurred.9 As so often in civil wars, the scale of rapidly escalating, uncon-
trolled violence was horrific—especially when one considers the rela-
tively short duration of the conflict and the small size of the Finnish
population.
The White victors forcibly re-established their power in the wake of
the Civil War. Despite the fact that the country had already declared
independence in December 1917, the war became known as the War of
Independence (vapaussota, literally the Freedom War). The official
view of the conflict saw it as a fight against the Bolshevik Russians and
their domestic allies, the Finnish Reds. This way of interpreting the war
undermined the internal nature of the conflict and the bloody violence
within Finnish society. It became essential for the idea of a sovereign
nation to be able to see the cause of blood spilling in an external enemy
in the east. The War of Independence with its sacrifices was, in a man-
ner of speaking, “needed” in order to become a real nation. Nevertheless,
the victors’ interpretation of the war was not just a political maneuver.
A major part of the White population denied the essentially internal
nature of the conflict in good faith. The reality of internal violence
could not be accepted.
Risto Alapuro, “Coping with the Civil War of 1918 in Twenty-first Century Finland,” in
Kenneth Christie & Robert Cribb, eds., Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition
in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy (London, 2002),
pp. 170–81.
8
Finnish National Archives, War Victims in Finland: The Registry of the
Names of the War Dead Between 1914–1922, http://vesta.narc.fi/cgi-bin/db2www/
sotasurmaetusivu/main?lang=en, accessed 1 March 2010.
9
Risto Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland (Berkeley, CA, 1988), pp. 191–6;
Pertti Haapala, Kun yhteiskunta hajosi: Suomi 1914–1920 (Helsinki, 1995),
pp. 218–43.
Viewed against the background of terror in 1918, it seems astonish-

ing that during the 1920s and 1930s the society experienced only a few
high-profile political killings, although violent crime involving the
adversaries of the Civil War was common till the early 1920s.10 The
nature of the interwar Finnish society cannot be discussed here at
length. Suffice it to say, though, that the parliamentary system was pre-
served largely due to the fact that the Civil War divided the left into
communists and social democrats. The former were pushed and perse-
cuted to the margins of society and the latter reinvented themselves
as a political party committed to the parliamentary system. Moreover,
the political system protected itself against the strong extreme right-
wing tendencies in the early 1930s. Yet it is depictive of the Finnish
interwar democracy that the Civil Guards Defense Corps, based on the
White troops of 1918, had a position as a semi-political militia besides
the Finnish Army. It acted as the last guarantor of the political and
social order, should a socialist revolutionary threat emerge again. For
the left, it symbolized their own defeat in 1918 and the consequent
White hegemony. In this way, the monopoly on violence in interwar
Finland was balanced to the right. Having the untested potential to
mobilize the Civil Guards, the Finnish right wing possessed a greater
threat to the regime than the strictly controlled and illegal extreme
left.11
If actual political blood-spilling was rare, other forms of violence
with a highly symbolic charge continued. In the so-called Lapua
Movement in 1930–31, one of the major means of right-wing political
terror involved an outsourcing of the perceived internal threat from
within society. The Lapua extremists forcibly kidnapped and hauled
communists and liberals out of the nation across the Soviet border,
to their “true home country,” as it was explained. In this way, a genu-
inely internal political conflict was again transformed into a conflict
between the “patriotic citizens” and the “foreign elements.”12 More
popularly, the war and violence of 1918 continued in the collective
memories. The locus of the societal conflict and its consequences
10
Marko Tikka, Valkoisen hämärän maa? Suojeluskuntalaiset, virkavalta ja kansa
1918–1921 (Helsinki, 2006).
11
Alapuro, “Coping with the Civil War,” pp. 173–5; Martti Ahti, “Suojeluskuntalain
kolmas pykälä,” in Risto Alapuro, ed., Raja railona: Näkökulmia suojeluskuntiin
(Porvoo, 1998).
12
Juha Siltala, Lapuan liike ja kyyditykset 1930 (Helsinki, 1985).
resettled into collective symbols, burial sites and rituals.13 The Civil
War was relived annually in commemorative festivities locally and
nationally. The local “liberation festivals” by the White citizenry, as
well as the socialist workers’ First of May celebrations, particularly
aroused strong emotions and symbolic violence. Both parties, but
especially the hegemonic middle class with right-wing inclinations,
directly attacked each other’s symbols: flags, burial sites, buildings and
memorials. These emblems and sites carried a memory of each party’s
own sacrifices and the other’s violence in 1918.14
The crucial question remained: How could a nation with divided
experiences, memories and rituals make any regenerative use of the
sacrifices of the Civil War? The Whites treated their fallen as national
heroes, whereas the Reds faced a difficult situation. Their fallen and
otherwise deceased combatants were silently commemorated as the
heroes of the working class, but the commemoration lacked a proper
regenerative meaning to the sacrifices. Defeated nations and groups
usually face this dilemma.15 How to transform lost causes into fruitful
meanings? How to transform (useless) violence into (useful) sacrifice?
Did thousands of people die for nothing?
Well into the 1930s, the expressions of aggression remained intro-
spective and threatened the social cohesion of the young independent
state. This phenomenon created the need for an external threat, or the
constitutive Other, to use a term of nationalism studies. Soviet Russia,
inevitably, represented a realistic threat, but in addition to that the
eastern power became a very charged and useful counter-image.
Although the fallen White heroes of the War of Independence were
vigorously celebrated, the all-permeable memory of the divisive vio-
lence gave it a bitter sense. Almost half of the population could not
adhere to their sacrifices. These splits had to be overcome somehow—
this thought became a predominant trend in ideas in interwar Finland.
13
Cf. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European
Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995).
14
Tuomas Tepora, “Redirecting Violence: The Finnish Flag as a Sacrificial Symbol,
1917–1945,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 7 (2007): 3, pp. 159–60; Ulla-Maija
Peltonen, “Civil War Victims and Mourning in Finland in 1918,” in Christie & Cribb,
Historical Injustice.
15
Cf. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning,
and Recovery, transl. Jefferson Chase (London, 2003); Frank Biess, “Men of Recon-
struction, the Reconstruction of Men: Returning POWs in East and West Germany,
1945–1955,” in Karen Hagemann & Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Home/Front:
The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2002).
The rationale was simple: If a small nation remained divided, it could

not survive in the militarist atmosphere of Central and Eastern Europe
of the 1930s.
General Mannerheim, the commander of the White troops during
the Civil War, was a symbolically important and both celebrated and
scorned figure in interwar society. In a speech given at the 15th anni-
versary of the White victory in 1933, he announced a politically concil-
iatory and binding message:
[O]ur time is tumultuous and full of threats, which is why we should be
prepared—and everyone should participate in building our nation into a
powerful and great one. Let us therefore willingly extend a brotherly
hand to all who want to work and are prepared to fulfill their duty to
their country. All we ask is patriotic spirit and willingness to carry out
the duties of rank-and-file soldiers when the nation needs to be
defended—and we have no reason to inquire where they were 15 years
ago [in 1918].16
The moderate workers and small farmers served as a battleground in
this fight for the souls of the people, especially in the 1930s. If the splits
of 1918 were ever going to be reconciled, it was thought, these people
had to be properly integrated into the nation. The major problem in
this approach, however, proved to be the memory of violence.
Regardless of maintaining a parliamentary system, which must be con-
sidered as a politically most crucial element in creating favorable cir-
cumstances for the perceived unity during World War II, and some
rhetorical give-and-takes, it was difficult to transform violent experi-
ences and memories into regenerating sacrifices. A national group, in
order to be a cohesive collective, must in one way or another have a
consensus about its past sacrifices. It would be too probable to assume
that the Winter War and the concrete external enemy of 1939–40 solely
and instantly unified the nation: this phenomenon had to have its roots
deeper in the pre-World War II history.
Some major steps in the reinterpretation of the Red sacrifices of
1918 were taken before the Winter War and these may prove to be cru-
cial in understanding the Finnish war experience of 1939–40. Political
circumstances in the late 1930s were favorable for the reinterpretation
of the violent memories of the Civil War. The social democrats formed
16
Kari Selén, ed., Mannerheim: Puheet 1918–1947 (Helsinki, 2008), p. 140. All the
block quotations are translated from Finnish by Hannu Tervaharju.
a so-called “Red Earth” coalition government with the centrist Agrarian

League in 1937. This empowerment did not, however, lead to a class-
conscious, revolutionary emphasis in reassuring the value of the
Red sacrifices. Instead, the socialists wanted to integrate their fallen
comrades into the nation proper. The mental atmosphere of the post-
recession 1930s had created high expectations of social reforms and
this, in turn, created an emotional need for many members of the lower
strata of society to identify with the nation in a novel way. For much of
the working class and small farmers, the Finland of 1939 had come to
give a promise of a better future, which was leaving behind the divisive
legacy of 1918.17 At the same time, the gloomy news of the Stalinist rule
across the border made it all the more implausible to see the Soviet
Union as “the workers’ paradise.”
To indicate the reinterpretation described above we would like to
point at a pair of revealing commemorative speeches in the spring of
1939, half a year before the Winter War broke out. Hyvinkää in
Southern Finland had experienced some heavy reprisal violence after
the parish had been conquered by the Whites at the end of the Civil
War. Twenty-one years later, the remains of the 200 executed Reds
were exhumed from their mass graves and reburied in the churchyard.
The local social democratic workers’ association organized a com-
memoration. As may have been expected, this action aroused some
bad blood among the proponents of the White interpretation of the
year 1918. No matter what, the message of the speech given besides the
new graves was surprising. The orator announced that these heroes
were not just surrogate victims of the working class and its goals, but
also the surrogate victims of the society’s forthcoming reconciliation.
This, according to the speaker, gave the memory of Red victims a new
raison d’être: their violent death could be given a fruitful meaning.18 In
other words, their death could be seen as meaningful to the whole
nation. In neighboring Riihimäki, a social democratic MP declared at
a similar reburial commemoration that the Reds’ intentions were good
just like their opponents’ and both should be treated as equal. The
Reds’ sacrifices were necessary “birth pains of the nation” just as with
17
On the Finnish “national integration” in the 1930s, see Timo Soikkanen,
Kansallinen eheytyminen – Myytti vai todellisuus? Ulko- ja sisäpolitiikan linjat ja vuoro-
vaikutus Suomessa vuosina 1933–1939 (Porvoo, 1984), pp. 524–31.
18
Suomen Sosialidemokraatti, “V. 1918 surmansa saaneita työläisiä siirretty
yhteishautaan Hyvinkäällä,” 22 May 1939.
the Whites: “If our comrades resting in this common grave could come
back to life and could speak, they would urge us survivors on both
sides to reconcile our differences.”19
However, who was to be held responsible for the heavy casualties the
nation had experienced after its formal independence, if no recognized
group within the nation wanted to take the blame for them (or avoided
blaming each other)? The social democrats had traditionally chosen
the class struggle by parliamentary means. Towards the end of the
1930s, it can be said, the social democrats began to see the class strug-
gle as a part of the development of the nation-state, not challenging it.
This implies that many of them identified with—or felt a need to iden-
tify with—the state institutions, not just the possible ethnic concept of
Finnishness. Thus, the social democrats chose the nation over the class
struggle and tried to represent the fallen Reds as necessary national
sacrifices in the dawn of the independent nation.
This seems to be crucial. “The birth of the nation”—the declaration
of independence on 6 December 1917—had been followed by a fratri-
cidal war, which poisoned the atmosphere of the following decades. In
no way could the nation ground its birth myth in a fratricide (despite
its mythical aspects per se). When Finland went to war with the Soviet
Union on the last day of November 1939, the violence of the Civil War
was given a whole new meaning.
Purifying Violence of 1939–40: “The Miracle of the Winter War”

Finland was inevitably defeated in the “Russo-Finnish War” of 1939–
40, as the Winter War was usually called in the Western press during
the conflict. In Finland, the name Winter War (talvisota) became
established during the Interim Peace of 1940–41. Despite the defeat
and all the human loss, the Winter War can be considered as a symboli-
cally “perfect” war. Its composition made it a just war par excellence:
A small nation defended itself against the aggressive demands of a
super power, the politics of which were considered as the epitome of
the communist universalism, the tradition of Russian imperialism and
the novel trend of totalitarianism. The war represented an uneven con-
figuration, morally favorable for Finland. Moreover, the war lasted
19
Väinö Kivisalo, Niiden muistoksi, joita ei enää ole: Puhe kansalaissodan johdosta
kaatuneiden muistoksi Riihimäen hautausmaalla huhtikuun 16 p:nä 1939 (Hämeenlinna,
1939).
only three and a half months. Due to its shortness, many of the brutal-
izing features inherent to war’s liminal circumstances did not have
time to emerge. The Finnish home front did not have time to experience
the spoils of the black market, “moral decadence” and disaffection with
political leaders, to name a few traditional features of war weariness.
The outbreak of the Winter War after the long and nerve-racking
negotiations in Moscow in the autumn of 1939 was both a shock and a
peculiar kind of relief from the tense atmosphere. Along with the ini-
tial pessimism and occasional panic in the first days of December, the
expressions of unity and fatalism stepped in immediately at the begin-
ning of the war. The phenomenon bears resemblance to the festive
elevation at the outbreak of World War I all over Europe,20 but the
Finnish 1939-variant of the “Spirit of August 1914” was more charac-
terized by the sentiments of national determination and religious
devotion than by the demonstrations of masculine virility and collec-
tive flow in the parades of 1914.
The eruption of the war was experienced as similar to a natural dis-
aster—as something the Finnish people had not brought upon itself,
but that it was forced to face through no fault of its own. The Soviet
invasion was so blatant and aggressive that any moral considerations of
the war’s justness could be easily pushed aside. Notwithstanding the
similarly real expressions of desperation, fear and grief, a strong emer-
gence of spontaneous community, cooperation and self-organization
can be easily found in the social behavior and discourses in Finland
during the Winter War.21 It is symptomatic that in many reminiscences
the beginning of war is often compared to a rising storm on the hori-
zon, against which people seek shelter and comfort from each other.
A woman who was ten years old in the summer of 1939 reminisced
about the children’s games in the vicinity of the Soviet border:
Before the beginning of the war, we children came up with a new game
to predict the future. We noticed that in that summer the clouds drifting
across the sky were different; ominous, scary-looking, like mountains
with snowy caps. If they came from the direction of the border, there was
going to be war; the Russkies would attack Finland.22
20
See e.g. Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I
(Cambridge, 1979), pp. 39–72.
21
For similar phenomena in the wake of natural and man-made catastrophes, see
Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in
Disaster (New York, 2009).
22
SKS KRA, Sota-aika Collection 2001, p. 637.
The morale of the troops at the front remained relatively high. A few
major incidents reflecting dissatisfaction with the military can be
traced to the inexperience and fatigue of the conscripts and reserv-
ists.23 Desertion was rare, mostly due to the war’s shortness and its
clearly justified nature. About 1,000 military evasions were reported
out of the armed forces of 350,000 men. Political desertion was nearly
non-existent, which indicates that the majority of the left experienced
the war as a justified defensive campaign. It should be kept in mind,
though, that the major players of the communist movement were
imprisoned during the conflict. The difference between the desertion
rates of the Winter War and the Continuation War is huge, although
the differing nature of the conflicts makes the comparison difficult.
During 1941–44, over 32,000 deserters of various degrees out of the
armed forces of ca. 650,000 men were reported—ideological reasons
were influential in many desertions.24
In other words, the Winter War possessed an aura of justness and a
certain kind of sacredness in itself. The usual way of interpreting the
conflict by mainstream media in wartime Finland saw it as an antith-
esis to the Civil War. The attack of the Soviet Union was even explicitly
considered a blessing. The war unified the nation—in reality and in
fantasy. On Independence Day in 1939, a week after the war began, a
conservative Helsinki-based newspaper Uusi Suomi heralded the erup-
tion of the war as an unparalleled “coming-of-age ceremony.” A young-
ster had matured and grown up to take the responsibilities of an adult,
the newspaper manifested.25 In accordance with the European trend in
ideas, the nation was treated as a living organism. It had now been able
to organize all of its subjects to work for the nation, to enhance its vital-
ity. A year later, on Independence Day in 1940, an organ of the Social
Democratic Party tried to coin the atmosphere of social unanimity the
war had created. “It feels strange that we needed a war in order to reach
such a simple solution,” the newspaper declared.26
What was the solution the social democratic newspaper thus
endorsed? When one looks at the rhetoric and symbolism of the Winter
23
1989), pp. 132–3, 140–2.
24
Jukka Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin? 1941–1944: Sotilaskarkuruus Suomen armeijassa
jatkosodan aikana (Helsinki, 1995), pp. 32, 37, 40–1, 501. – These numbers include all
the cases that led to court proceedings. Altogether the number of various military eva-
sions is almost 40,000 in 1941–44.
25
Uusi Suomi, “Suomen täysi-ikäiseksi tuleminen,” 6 December 1939.
26
Suomen Sosialidemokraatti, “Juttelimme eilen,” 6 December 1940.
War, it is difficult to avoid the overwhelming stress of the notion of

unifying sacrifice. The former internal enemies of 1918 spilled their
blood together; the sons of former adversaries were buried side by side
in military cemeteries in local churchyards; “the brotherhood of the
dirty snow camouflage” revitalized the soul of the nation; the smallest
of deeds for the benefit of the war effort was as important as the big-
gest.27 These were the slogans of the Winter War, to name a few. In
almost any other situation this sort of phraseology would ring hollow
and propagandist, but in the case of the Winter War these slogans truly
echoed the collective sentiments of a remarkable proportion of the
people. They flourished in newspapers of all political alliances, but they
were also constantly and spontaneously expressed in public and private
instances. Hereby, the nation and “us” became momentarily equated.
The notion of the “Spirit of the Winter War,” a term which was first
coined during the Interim Peace, tells a great deal about the fears and
expectations of Finnish elites on the eve of World War II. The “Spirit”
and the “Miracle” of the Winter War do not so much refer to a success-
ful defense against the Soviet Union, but to the fact that the nation
unified under an external threat. This may be treated as logical, but the
divisions of the Civil War caused much political anxiety among the
proponents of White Finland, who held many of the key positions in
the political elites. How would the workers and the agrarian poor react
in the scenario of a Soviet attack? One should keep in mind that the
underground communism had enjoyed a steady support within the
working class, thus accentuating the fear of a “fifth column.”
As it turned out, these fears about the loyalty of the Finnish working
class reflected the worldview of the proponents of White Finland rather
than reality. It has already been discussed how the unification of the
nation had its roots in the centrist and social democratic policies of
the 1930s and in the changed perception of the significance of the sac-
rifices of 1918. The Winter War can, in this regard, be treated almost as
a symbolic gift to the nation. It was a “miracle” foremost in a mytho-
logical way, but not that much in reality, as the Finnish prewar society
had already started to build up mutually binding ties and cohesion.
These ties, nevertheless, were magnified and illuminated during the
27
Tuomas Tepora, “ ‘Elävät vainajat’: Kaatuneet kansakuntaa velvoittavana uhrina,”
in Sari Näre & Jenni Kirves, eds., Ruma sota: Talvi- ja jatkosodan vaiettu historia
(Helsinki, 2008).
short war. The conflict served as a new birth myth of the nation, infused
with spirituality and marvel. The war in itself did not eradicate political
discord. Instead, its effect made political partisanship more tolerated
within society. In the 1920s and 1930s, “divisive party politics” and
trade union activism had been synonymous with an “unpatriotic atti-
tude” for much of the Finnish middle class and especially the right
wing. After the Winter War, many people experienced that the per-
ceived unity of the nation was not threatened by politics any longer.
The special “Spirit of the Winter War” should not thus be treated as a
politically instrumental phenomenon, but rather an emotional one.
As we have noticed, the contemporaries perceived the mythological
aspects of the war very well. For a moment, the collective bonds of
attachment experienced across the social and political boundaries sim-
ulated an elevated idea of a perfect nation. Attention was paid to sym-
bolic coincidences. The new war began about 21 years after 1918 as the
nation’s “coming-of-age” ritual and, as many soon noticed, it lasted
about the same time as the Civil War, thus acting as its antithesis. At
first, the Winter War was often referred to as the Second War of
Independence. This is revealing: the myth of the White experience of
the Civil War saw the internal conflict of 1918 as a fight against the
eastern archenemy. The composition of the Winter War was perfect in
this regard. It could essentially reflect the Independence War the nation
needed in order to become a real nation. It was a fight against an exter-
nal enemy, Soviet Russia, from which independence had been gained.
The polarizing fratricide and the dividing memory of 1918 were
undone by a unifying sacrifice.
The Finnish state inaugurated the Memorial Day for the Fallen after
the Winter War. Interestingly, the Reds of 1918 were also commemo-
rated for the first time under official state symbols. The Red victims of
1918 were entitled as the “fallen for their conviction.”28 Rhetorically
this redefinition sometimes applied to both sides of the Civil War, but
in practice it was the Reds who were thus incorporated into the nation
by consigning their death with collective meaning. It is illuminating
that the death of the Reds was thus transformed into a form of sacrifice,
which at least potentially enriched the whole nation and its unity.
28
Ulla-Maija Peltonen, Muistin paikat: Vuoden 1918 sisällissodan muistamisesta ja
unohtamisesta (Helsinki, 2003), pp. 226–7; Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas Tepora, “War of
Hearts: Love and Collective Attachment as Integrating Factors in Finland During
World War II,” Journal of Social History 43 (2009): 2, p. 294.
During the 1930s, the workers’ symbols, mainly the red flags, had
been banned. After the Winter War, these emblems were gradually
allowed to be publicly displayed again. This gesture, obviously, did not
include communist symbols—their time came after World War II.
Nevertheless, these symbolic changes had profound implications. After
1939–40, formerly hostile national and working-class banners and
emblems were not experienced as mutually exclusive any more. This
phenomenon substantiates the conclusion that the Winter War indeed
made room for ordinary politics despite the all-permeating insistence
on political unity.
When one looks at the years of 1939–40, public ceremonies and
media are filled with romantic notions of sacrifice. The memory of
divisive violence seems to have vanished altogether. It does not repre-
sent anything exceptional that a state at war endorses its sacrifices, but
in the Finnish case the sacrifice did not only represent a means to
achieve unity and maintain its independence. The notion of ultimate
sacrifice approached an end in itself. Binding sacrifices proved that the
nation was viable, worthy of its existence. Blood sacrifice was needed
in order not just to survive, but also to prove itself capable of living as
a national collective. The memory of the sacrifice in the winter of
1939–40 projected to the future, as a speech given on the Memorial
Day for the Fallen in 1942 demonstrates:
The dead live! Across all Finnish towns and villages, across the wide
fields, lakes and forests, shines a sacred light from the graves of the war-
riors, speaking to us its wordless language about the greatness of human
heroism, complete selflessness and limitless faith in the future. Finland
cannot die. In Her collective mother’s heart She preserves the living
memory of Her sons and daughters who, like their innumerable fore-
bears, died for their fatherland.29
These notions resembled those utilized by the National Socialists in the
Third Reich. The difference lies in the fact that wartime Finland
remained a parliamentary democracy and these highly charged meta-
phors were often created by the public more or less spontaneously. The
rhetoric and propaganda in Finland in 1939–40 also lacked a sense of
aggressiveness inherent to the Nazi propaganda. The Finnish blood
sacrifice phraseology remained defensive in nature, the exception
29
Arvi Kivimaa, “Elävät vainajat,” in Sankarivainajien muistopäivänä 17.5.1942
(Helsinki, 1942), p. 4.
being the crusader propaganda during the first phase of the

Continuation War. The rhetoric of 1939–40 demonstrated willingness
to sacrifice, not willingness to annihilate.
The source of violence had been externalized. Violence and its mem-
ory were now controlled in the “centuries-old archenemy” in the east.
Sacrifice became so vigorously celebrated because it relocated the vio-
lence from one’s own group onto the enemy. Bolshevik Russians had
been the scapegoats of the Civil War, but now they had demonstrated
their imperialist and violent nature in reality. The blatant violence of
the enemy purified the fouled nest of the Finnish nation; or, alterna-
tively, the nation’s own sacrifices atoned for the sins of fratricide
in 1918. Dying for one’s nation was much more important than killing
for it.30
Many of the war-related negative aspects emerged as foci of popular
attention only after the war during the Interim Peace from March 1940
to June 1941. The wartime in itself became rapidly viewed nostalgi-
cally. The loss of Finnish Karelia and other areas were vigorously
mourned. During the war, the reality of uneven strength between the
warring parties had been blurred in the public consciousness due to
the Finns’ successful defense and the public’s inexperience of wartime
propaganda. There were even rumors of the collapse of the Soviet
Union in the near future, should the Finns fight on, before the reality
of the Soviet military power forced the Finnish Army to a ceasefire. In
the end, many in the society experienced the peace terms of 1940 as a
great humiliation. Shame is a powerful social emotion, which can
assume collective forms and thus generate conflicts.31 The armistice led
to a major reorganization of the Finnish population. Over 400,000
Karelian evacuees resettled around Finland, abandoning their homes
to Soviet occupiers. The losses created an atmosphere of bitterness and
a kind of helplessness, which in turn helped to create a thirst for
revanche and contributed to the Finnish government’s quest for a
strong ally.
As we approach the changed political and emotional situation
during the Continuation War, one crucial question concerning the
place of violence in Finnish society arises. The Winter War illuminated
30
Cf. Marvin & Ingle, Blood Sacrifice; Richard A. Koenigsberg, Nations Have the
Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War (New York, 2009).
31
Thomas J. Scheff, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War (Boulder, CO,
1994).
a concrete change in the understanding of societal bonds. The distinc-

tion between the former adversaries of 1918 was greatly dissolved; the
extreme left was paralyzed during the war and the extreme right was
pushed to the margins as well. On a collective level, this changed per-
ception of the Finnish nation concerned the use of violence to control
the society: the license to kill and the authority to demand sacrifices
from the citizens. The White government had emerged as a victor of
the battle between the adversaries of the Civil War. This should, follow-
ing Weber, be understood so that the bourgeois state and its institu-
tions had won itself the monopoly on violence. During the Winter War,
the nation demonstrated this monopoly in practice by funneling vio-
lence to an external enemy, by successfully controlling any (even if
minor) internal resistance and by requiring willing sacrifice from its
members. In other words, people across social boundaries accepted the
right of the state to sacrifice citizens on its behalf when necessary. This
leads us to ponder on the basic problem of nation-state violence and
warfare in forthcoming sections. The prolonged conflict of 1941–44
again challenged the monopoly on violence and brought to the fore the
Janus face of regenerating sacrifice and meaningless death. How to tack
in the wave of pure violence on one hand and altruistic sacrifice on the
other? Who killed, who was sacrificed and who sacrificed oneself? In
the chaotic circumstances of war, especially in the summer of 1944, the
answers to these questions were often bound to various situational and
personal factors. The collective, binding ethos of the Winter War, born
in the special liminal circumstances of the winter of 1939–40, was a
powerful idea in upholding the fighting morale of the people, but it was
also vulnerable to the corrosive ramifications of a long violent conflict
in 1941–45.
Violence to End All Violence: The Aggression of 1941

The outbreak of the Continuation War in June 1941 was not an unex-
pected event for most Finns. Besides the political and military prepara-
tions for a renewed conflict with the Soviet Union, there was a popular
sense of revanche to take back the territories lost in the Winter War,
whenever the opportunity would emerge. It is telling that already at the
time, the period after the Moscow Peace Treaty from March 1940 to
June 1941 could be referred to as an interim peace (välirauha),32 and
32
Heikki Ylikangas, “Välirauha 1940 – minkä sodan odotuksessa?” Historiallinen
Aikakauskirja 101 (2003): 4, pp. 569–76.
the legal state of war was kept in force. The arrival of the first friendly
German troops on Finnish soil in the autumn of 1940 did not, of
course, go unnoticed by the public. At the same time, the memory of
the Soviet aggression in November 1939 and the harassing Soviet for-
eign policy towards Finland in 1940–41 created an atmosphere of
imminent threat, which made the probability of a new war, sooner or
later, seem very high.33 It is safe to say that a large segment, if not the
majority of the Finnish population considered, firstly, the outbreak of
the Continuation War in June 1941 an unavoidable necessity and, sec-
ondly, the aim of recapturing the lost territories a just cause.
Nevertheless, the “brotherhood-in-arms” with Nazi Germany pre-
sented a prospect of a future, which went way beyond the moderate
aim of restoring the pre-Winter War borders. After its campaigns in
Poland, Scandinavia, Benelux, France and the Balkans, the German
Army of 1941 had gained a mythic aura of superiority, and the Finnish
experience of the Red Army’s battle performance in the Winter War
did not make it easy to bet on the Soviet success against the Germans.
After the misery of the Moscow Peace Treaty and the traumatic experi-
ence of being left alone at the mercy of Stalin, this new situation seemed
to turn the tide completely. The old dream of Finnish nationalism was
revived: the creation of Greater Finland (Suur-Suomi), the boundaries
of which would include, at a minimum, the Soviet Eastern Karelia, but
possibly also the Ingria region around Leningrad and other large areas
of Northwest Russia.34 It is difficult to estimate the true support for
such aims among the Finns of 1941. Even though the popular enthusi-
asm for Greater Finland should not be overestimated, it was certainly
an influential ideology among much of the Finnish establishment:
academia, Lutheran clergy, officer corps, teachers and civil servants.
At the height of the German advance to the east in the summer and
autumn of 1941, and still in 1942, the Finnish conservative press was
keen to imagine the soon anticipated collapse of the whole Soviet
Union, or Russia for that matter, as a state.35 It seems that in the
33
yhteistyöstä 1940–41 (Helsinki, 1987), passim.
34
On these contemplations and various new border options at the table in 1941, see
Ohto Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvallisuudesta
Suomen Saksan-politiikassa 1941 (Helsinki, 1980); on the idea and ideology of Greater
Finland in prewar times, see Toivo Nygård, Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten aut-
taminen: Aatteellinen heimotyö itsenäisessä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1978).
35
Heikki Luostarinen, Perivihollinen: Suomen oikeistolehdistön Neuvostoliittoa
koskeva viholliskuva sodassa 1941–44; tausta ja sisältö (Tampere, 1986), pp. 207–17.
atmosphere of successful offensives, and with the background of the

blatant Soviet aggression in 1939–40, even many among the Finnish
social democrats and the working class were willing to accept the
new expansive aims, at least as far as they were justified by national
security.36
The famous example of the aggressive ethos of 1941 is the so-called
“Scabbard Order” by Marshal Mannerheim in July 1941. In this Order
of the Day No. 3 on the eve of the Finnish offensive, Mannerheim
recalled his oath in 1918 “not to put his sword back to the scabbard
before Finland and Eastern Karelia would be free.”37 But already in his
first order of the day in June 1941, Mannerheim had set the tone for the
coming war:
I call upon you to join me in a sacred war against the enemy of our
nation. The heroic dead will rise again from under their flower-decorated
mounds and join us as we resolutely depart on a crusade against our
enemy alongside the mighty military force of Germany in order to secure
Finland’s future.
Brothers-in-arms! Follow me for this last time—now that the people of
Karelia rise again and Finland’s new tomorrow is dawning.38
The spirit of Mannerheim’s wordings was reproduced in orders of the
day issued by Finnish army corps, divisional and regimental com-
manders in 1941.39 Many of the orders used the rhetoric of “final
confrontation,” “holy war” and even “crusade” against the age-old
enemy. The Finnish aggression was justified by the “hideous violence”
of the Russians/Soviets in 1939–40—and again in the bombing raids of
June 1941—but also in the long tradition of Finnish history from
ancient times, thus reinforcing an image of “the eternal archenemy” in
the east. Now, it seemed, had come the day to finish off the Russian
threat once and for all, and, as a continuation of the Winter War, the
internal violence of 1918 would be undone by uniting against the
external enemy. One important theme in defining the collective mean-
ing of forthcoming sacrifices was again to depict the new generation
36
Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat, pp. 222–7.
37
For the “Scabbard Order,” see also the chapters by Henrik Meinander and Outi
Fingerroos in this book.
38
KA/SArk, Supreme Commander’s (Mannerheim) Order of the Day No. 1, June
1941.
39
Orders of the day from June 1941 to November 1944 from nine Finnish infantry
regiments were systematically studied for this chapter, the numbers of the regiments
being 1, 7, 8, 12, 33, 44, 48, 49 and 61; the regimental orders also included excerpts
from the orders of the day issued by the higher level commanders.
of Finns as washing away the sins of their fathers, i.e. the fratricide of
1918 and the political divisions of the 1920s and 1930s, by spilling their
own blood for the common cause.
After the lonely victimhood of the Winter War and with the warning
example of the recently sovietized Baltic States in mind, the key Finnish
ethos in the summer of 1941 was to take an active role in shaping one’s
own history. The required sacrifices were seen as a regenerative gift for
the future. Besides the liberation of the whole of Karelia from Soviet
oppression, the new victorious war would establish a lasting, eternal
peace for the coming generations—it was the final scene of the Finnish
struggle for freedom and a war to end all wars. One example from
Infantry Regiment 8 in July 1941, just when the regiment was about to
enter Soviet Eastern Karelia:
Soon we will cross the old border [of 1939] to step onto Karelian soil as
liberators of the suffering Karelian people, and at the same time we will
guarantee freedom and peace to future generations of Finland’s people.
Let us be proud because God has given this historic, sacred task to our
generation. Let us be worthy of that task in every way. Let us fight and
sacrifice ourselves, let us destroy our ancient enemy forever. I have faith
in you! You will do it! 40
Infantry Regiment 8 was the same regiment where author Väinö Linna
fought his war. Linna’s novel The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas,
1954) has become the canonic interpretation of the common Finnish
soldiers’ war experience in 1941–44, and one of its main themes is the
front soldiers’ fundamental innocence and purity from the fanciful
Greater Finland idealism of the officer corps.41 Although perhaps accu-
rate as a generalization, Linna’s opinion is contrasted by the large quan-
tity of elevated verses on Greater Finland in the poems collected from
ordinary Finnish soldiers in 1941–43.42 These poems written for the
Army’s official publication should not, of course, be used to make too
wide conclusions; nevertheless, they demonstrate that the idea of cre-
ating a “Great Future” and new borders for the Finnish people could be
40
KA/SArk, Order of the Day No. 4 of Infantry Regiment 8, Colonel P.A. Autti,
24 July 1941.
41
Jyrki Nummi, Jalon kansan parhaat voimat: Kansalliset kuvat ja Väinö Linnan
romaanit Tuntematon sotilas ja Täällä Pohjantähden alla (Porvoo, 1993), pp. 50–65,
75–93.
42
KA/SArk, T 10602/24–25, Information Department of the High Command
(Ttus.1/PM), poems collected for the anthology Täältä jostakin. There are hundreds of
poems in the collection, only a small number of them published in 1943.
highly inspiring also for the rank-and-file of the Army. Another impor-
tant theme in the poems was the binding sacrifice of the Winter War,
which obliged further sacrifices. In the following verse, written on the
second anniversary of the end of the Winter War in March 1942, a
dying soldier of 1939–40 is pledging his comrades to take revenge in
blood:
– This, my brothers, seek vengeance on the Russkies.
Blood guilt requires blood.
Long live this tormented, most beloved land!
A time will come when she is whole.43
It was not only the sacrifices of the Winter War, which challenged
Finns to carry on the struggle. The Finnish offensive had started in July
1941. The lost territories of the Winter War were soon recaptured and,
in December 1941, the Finnish Army stood at the gates of Leningrad
on the Karelian Isthmus and at River Svir, Petrozavodsk and north of
Lake Onega in Eastern Karelia. Greater Finland was no more a mere
fantasy, but it had become a political and military reality. The human
cost of this had been very high: with over 8,800 fatal casualties, August
1941 was the second bloodiest month of all World War II in Finland,
and altogether the offensive of 1941 was deadlier than the Winter War
or the summer battles in 1944.44
As Ilona Kemppainen has analyzed in her dissertation on the
cultural history of wartime death in Finland, the obituaries for the
fallen in 1941 were mostly written in the same elevated, patriotic lan-
guage as the obituaries of the Winter War. Soldiers’ violent death could
still be made meaningful by embedding it to the national narrative
of collective struggle and sacrifice. Yet the summer and autumn of
1941 was also the climax of sacrificial death. The rhetorical power of
“the freedom war” or “holy crusade” in its relation to soldiers’ suffering
and the climbing death toll was extinguishable, especially after the win-
ter of 1941–42, as the anticipated final victory seemed to escape out of
reach to an uncertain future. In the obituaries, a more laconic style
emerged.45 More seriously for the Army, in the late autumn of 1941, the
43
KA/SArk, T 10602/24, Second Lieutenant H.O. Lehtoranta, “Verivelka” (“Debt in
Blood”).
44
The deadliest month was February 1940 and the third deadliest June 1944 with ca.
9,300 and 8,600 fatal casualties, respectively; Finnish National Archives, Suomen
sodissa 1939–45 menehtyneiden tiedosto [Database on Finnish War Deaths in 1939–
45], http://kronos.narc.fi/menehtyneet/, the calculation made in 4 November 2009.
45
Kemppainen, Isänmaan uhrit, pp. 117–22.
fighting morale of the infantry regiments was also showing ominous

signs of resentment and exhaustion. Some protest had already appeared
at the crossing of the 1939 border, but the signs grew more alarming as
the advance to Eastern Karelia was continued after the occupation of
Petrozavodsk in early October. Some mass-scale objections took place,
and even if the Army was able to limit the open resistance and to con-
clude the offensive operations by the beginning of December 1941, a
high-water mark in the aggressive spirit of the troops had clearly been
reached.46 As the leading Finnish military psychiatrist Sven E. Donner
later recognized, the growing number of psychiatric casualties in the
autumn of 1941 also resulted from the soldiers’ experience of mean-
ingless advance further to the east.47
Our two sections on the Winter War and on the aggression of 1941
have mainly concentrated on the collective level of consigning martial
violence with cultural meaning and on the influence of these collective
sentiments on the individual people. In the following sections, the
focus shifts towards private experiences of violence during the
Continuation War and how these experiences acted back to the collec-
tive. This shift is not only an analytical change of perspective, but it
reflects the way many Finnish soldiers and civilians experienced the
war. When consulting various reminiscence collections, memoirs and
popular histories, a general impression is that the Winter War espe-
cially was experienced as a collective phenomenon, in which personal
experiences, intentions and emotions easily dissolved into the Great
Story of the nation and in which collective meanings and symbols
transcended one’s individual perspective.48 This changed during the
protracted Continuation War. Although the national level of identifica-
tion and consigning collective meanings never became irrelevant, of
course, its ability to merge a single metanarrative out of the multitude
of private experiences diminished. The violence of war, which in 1939–
40 had reinforced social cohesion over former internal boundaries,
started to create new divisions and tensions in society and to corrode
the collective experience of war.
46
Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, pp. 139–50.
47
KA, Sven E. Donner’s Collection, File 3, appendix to a conference paper
“Erfarenheter av den krigspsykiatriska organisationen inom Finlands försvarsmakt
under kriget 1941–44,” August 1953.
48
The same can be said when comparing war novels published after the Winter War
and after the Continuation War.
II. Challenged Meanings of Violence, 1942–45
Direct Confrontation with Violence

Despite the setbacks in the winter of 1941–42, the aggressive rhetoric
did not disappear completely. In some orders of the day the tone got
even sharper, reviving the horrors of “the Bolshevist plague” and “being
enslaved by the lower Asian race,” as the prospect of final victory was
again substituted by the deadly threat of national annihilation.49 As
Heikki Luostarinen has shown, by the autumn of 1943 the enemy
image of Russians in Finnish conservative and right-wing newspapers
could surpass the German foreign war propaganda in nastiness—the
feelings of disappointment and fear gave the enemy depictions a bitter
edge.50 Yet the faith in final victory was also alive, at least before the
news of Stalingrad. In September 1942, the acting commander of
Infantry Regiment 7 facing the besieged Leningrad could still issue the
following order:
Let us also in the coming year be prepared to drive the Russkies from our
barricades, night and day, but let us also prepare ourselves for victory:
crushing the fortifications in front of us and completely destroying the
enemy surrounded in Ingria [i.e. in besieged Leningrad].51
Nevertheless, as a general trend the orders of the day of 1942–43 had a
different tone from the uncompromising rhetoric of 1941. The collec-
tive meanings consigned to soldiers’ continued fighting and sacrifice
started to retreat back to the private sphere of motivations. Instead of
creating Greater Finland, Finnish soldiers were depicted as protecting
their homes and families, and instead of destroying Bolshevism, the
Army was defending the “Finnish values” and “way of life.” The aggres-
sion towards the enemy was replaced by the positive emotions of love,
trust and comradeship for one’s own kinsfolk.52 The nature of Finland’s
war, which in 1941 had been covered with the phrases of “eternal
peace” and “the great future,” was now denominated as the duty of
49
See eg. KA/SArk, Order of the Day No. 43a of Infantry Regiment 12, Colonel
Albert Puroma, 23 December 1942; Supreme Commander’s (Mannerheim) Order of
the Day No. 86, 28 January 1943.
50
Luostarinen, Perivihollinen, pp. 357–9.
51
KA/SArk, Order of the Day No. 34/42 of Infantry Regiment 7, Lieutenant Colonel
Adolf Ehrnrooth, 4 September 1942.
52
See Kivimäki & Tepora, “War of Hearts.”
safeguarding “the home stove” and “the women and children.” The
orders of the day issued at Christmas became important manifesta-
tions of the Finnish nation described as one large family nestled in
itself; the pious celebration of the Holy Night and the Christmas Peace
were seen as uniting the front and the home and revealing something
essential in “the soul of the Finnish people.”
It is remarkable how neatly the concrete violence is absent in the
orders of the day and other official documents of war. Reading these
papers creates a view of a gigantic struggle, in which the true actors are
such huge entities as armies, regiments, nations, isms and the people as
a singular collective.53 The flesh and blood of war is missing, or they,
too, are used as referring to the collective nation: “the blood of our
people.” But especially for the front soldiers the violence of war was a
real, brutal, bodily and often traumatic experience, which, in the long
run, had an effect on popular mentalities.
At the front, the most relevant element of war’s violence was that
directed against oneself and one’s fellow soldiers. Just as on the collec-
tive level the Soviet aggression in 1939–40 had helped to establish feel-
ings of unity and determination, the violence experienced at the micro
level of a small unit of soldiers tended to strengthen mutual bonds of
comradeship. As Knut Pipping has shown in his classic sociological
study on Finnish soldiers’ primary group, soldiers took disinterested
personal risks in trying to save the wounded and the bodies of their
dead comrades from the hands of the enemy. Such altruistic courage
was highly esteemed, whereas the aggressive courage shown against
the enemy was considered rather irrelevant.54 Ideally, a small unit of
soldiers was experienced as a family of brothers, which was elevated by
the martyrdom of sacrifice. Losses and suffering constituted a brother-
hood-in-arms among those, who had been “baptized in fire.” This was
a deeply felt attachment relationship, which some war veterans later
recognized as the most satisfying emotional bond of their lives.55 It
made the war a matter with personal meaning and helped to overcome
the experiences of fear and isolation in the dugouts.
53
Cf. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
(Oxford, 1985), pp. 69–72.
54
Knut Pipping, Infantry Company as a Society, 1947, ed. and transl. Petri Kekäle
(Helsinki, 2008), pp. 163–5, 204; Pipping’s study was based on his own experiences at
the front.
55
Kivimäki & Tepora, “War of Hearts,” p. 286.
Yet the brotherhood-in-arms cannot simply be reduced to a con-

crete relationship between the members of small units. “The horizontal
community of citizens,” and especially the brotherly comradeship
between men, was also an ideological concept of modern nationalist
states, according to which young boys had been educated in schools,
youth organizations and later in the conscript army. The ideal of broth-
erhood can be described as a default setting for manly attachment rela-
tions as much in Finland as in other modern nation-states.56 Thus, in
risking their lives to save a wounded comrade, soldiers were not only
concerned with the physical survival of a fellow soldier. They were
actualizing the ideal of comradeship and preserving “something
greater” than one’s own life, or the life of one’s comrade. In chaotic and
hopeless circumstances, “the front” was upheld by this abstract, yet
intensely felt attachment to the ideal of brotherhood-in-arms,57 which
was crystallized by loss and violence. As Thomas Kühne has pointed
out in his study of martial Kameradschaft in Germany, comradeship
was both a safe haven in the midst of overwhelming horrors and at the
same time the very motor for the continuing suffering and violence.58
Despite the analogy in the overall trend in nationalist thinking, there
were cultural differences in respect to the nature of comradeship. In
Germany, for instance, the totalitarianism in martial comradeship,
which finally endorsed the whole (manly) Volksgemeinschaft, reached
such aggressive dimensions during the war in the east that the violence
towards the outsiders and “weaklings” became a purpose in itself.59
A distinctive feature of the Finnish Army was that during the 1930s it
had been slowly developing towards a model of a people’s army of a
democratic state, which brought it closer to the centrist and social
democratic citizen ideals. To a certain extent, soldiers could take this
56
See e.g. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 7, 141–5; George L. Mosse,
Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe
(New York, 1985), pp. 80–8; on the Finnish case, see Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi, “Girls
and Boys in the Finnish Voluntary Defence Movement,” Ennen & nyt 3–4/2006,
www.ennenjanyt.net/2006_3/nevala.html, accessed 15 April 2010; Anders Ahlbäck &
Ville Kivimäki, “Masculinities at War: Finland 1918–1950,” Norma – Nordic Journal for
Masculinity Studies 3 (2008): 2, pp. 114–31.
57
E.g. in the final stages of the Winter War in February and March 1940, cf. Lasse
Laaksonen, Todellisuus ja harhat: Kannaksen taistelut ja suomalaisten joukkojen tila
talvisodan lopussa 1940 (Helsinki, 1999), pp. 330–7, 343.
58
Thomas Kühne, Kameradschaft: Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges
und das 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 147–9, 157–71, 198.
59
Ibidem, pp. 140–53, 184–8.
propagation seriously and emphasize their double role both as soldiers

and free citizens.60 It would be naïve to depict the wartime Army as a
democratic institution based on citizens’ free will, but as Mirkka
Danielsbacka has demonstrated in her study on soldiers’ unofficial
practices in testing the limits of the Army’s norms and coercion, there
was considerable space to “negotiate” inside the military. Some soldiers
explicitly appealed to their rights as citizens of a democratic state when
protesting against unreasonable or excessive orders.61 More strongly
and openly than in the totalitarian armies of World War II, Finnish
soldiers were active in evaluating the necessity of their sacrifices and
sometimes setting limits to the extent of violence. The death penalty,
for instance, was passed only rarely on serious disciplinary crimes
before the summer of 1944; it was considered too harmful for the
image of the Army and for the morale of the troops.62 Speaking purely
from the military perspective, this “civilianism” was both the strength
and the weakness of the Army: it somewhat limited officers’ freedom of
action and led to a rather loose military discipline, but it also empha-
sized soldiers’ personal motivation and initiative over formal orders
and coercion.
What about the active violence of the Finnish soldiers themselves?
As in any other army, there were those soldiers in the Finnish Army
who became the masters of the martial profession and who could even
find fulfillment and satisfaction in the acts of war.63 But the share of
such super-soldiers in a conscript army should not be overestimated. It
is worth mentioning that even at the frontlines the direct experience of
face-to-face killing was not an everyday phenomenon, especially dur-
ing the period of stationary warfare. Furthermore, the most lethal
infantry weapons (machine guns and submachine guns) were quite
60
Jarl Kronlund et al., Suomen puolustuslaitos 1918–1939: Puolustusvoimien rauhan
ajan historia (Porvoo, 1988), pp. 367–8, 409–13, 533; Juha Mälkki, Herrat, jätkät ja
sotataito: Kansalaissotilas- ja ammattisotilasarmeijan rakentuminen 1920- ja 1930-
luvulla “talvisodan ihmeeksi” (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 341–8.
61
Mirkka Danielsbacka, “Sotilaskurin rajoilla: Miehistön vastarinnan muodot ja
merkitykset jatkosodan alkuvaiheessa,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 106 (2008): 3,
pp. 269–84.
62
Before the summer of 1944, there were only two death penalties carried out for
disciplinary crimes on Finnish soldiers; Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, p. 189. As will be dis-
cussed later, the situation changed in the chaotic circumstances of June–August 1944,
when the death penalty became possible also for desertion and “cowardice.”
63
Cf. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in
Twentieth-Century Warfare (London, 2000).
scarce and they were used by a small number of soldiers, who conse-
quently carried the toughest burden of the “killing-job.”64 In the light of
the Soviet casualty figures, the size of the Finnish Army and the nature
of modern warfare dominated by heavy indirect fire, it seems likely
that a vast number of Finnish soldiers, probably the majority, never
directly killed a single Soviet soldier during the whole Continuation
War.65 And even for those who did, the experience of killing in war
does not seem to have been an explicit moral problem, as long as the
act followed the conventional logic of battle. The Soviet soldier was
“the enemy,” and thus not exactly a fellow human being in the normal
peacetime meaning. Finnish soldiers used collective names of their
adversary to distance themselves from the concrete act of killing; the
Soviet soldier was “a Russki” (ryssä), “Ivan” (iivana, vanja), “the pointed
cap” (piippalakki) and so on. The snipers could simply talk of “the
prey.”66 The following postwar reminiscence of a front soldier is
illustrative:
A certain phenomenon is characteristic for writers and filmmakers who
have not themselves been at the front. Sooner or later a fictional soldier
will take his head in his hands, like Rodin’s “The Thinker,” and ask him-
self:—Have I turned into a killer? Perhaps I have purposefully forgotten
this issue, or perhaps in reality it simply did not arise. Either way, I can-
not remember this concern causing any kind of a problem at any point.
In our understanding, only ending the life of a helpless individual like a
prisoner or a wounded soldier meant killing. I never witnessed such an
incident.67
Yet it was unavoidable that the violence of war spilled over its conven-
tional boundaries of a symmetric enemy-versus-enemy conflict. Some
of this violence was bound to the general, maybe even universal
64
Cf. S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, 1947
(Norman, OK, 2000), pp. 50–63.
65
Precise calculations are quite impossible to make: the total amount of Finnish
soldiers in 1941–44 was over 600,000; the approximate death toll for the Red Army
facing the Finns was about 250,000 – in modern warfare, the largest share of casualties
has been caused by the artillery. Then, regarding the experience of killing, one should
also consider the wounded, as the soldier using his rifle could not know whether he
had killed or wounded his target.
66
Ville Kivimäki, “Sotilaan työ, siviilin taakka: ‘Vihollisen tuhoamisen’ dynamii-
kasta, kokemuksesta ja muistosta,” in Tiina Kinnunen & Ville Kivimäki, eds., Ihminen
sodassa: Suomalaisten kokemuksia talvi- ja jatkosodasta (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 195–8;
cf. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and
Society (New York, 1996), pp. 156–70.
67
SKS KRA, Korsuperinne Collection (Korsu) 1973, Vol. IV, E.K., p. 6.
dynamics of war. Violence nourished more violence: had the Soviets

treated wounded Finnish soldiers badly, revenge was taken at the next
opportunity. This led to atrocities on both sides.68 Shooting the prisoners-
of-war occurred, some of it in the heated atmosphere of the immediate
aftermath of battle, but sometimes carried out more consciously from
plain cruelty or indifference.69 The Red Army had a considerable num-
ber of women enlisted in various duties, serving also at the frontlines
and in the partisan units.70 Mostly this caused puzzlement and curios-
ity among the Finnish soldiers who happened to encounter a living or
dead Soviet woman soldier, but there were also cases of sexual violence
and mutilation of female corpses.71 It is difficult to say what was the
extent of these kind of brutalities—for obvious reasons, they have not
been discussed openly after the war. In a large reminiscence collection
of Finnish soldiers’ wartime experiences, collected in 1973, quite a lot
of war veterans recalled different occasions of “bad things that hap-
pened,” which had clearly caused them uneasiness and moral contem-
plations. This was the dark, dirty zone of war; it was also the source of
traumatic memories.72 For those who had witnessed the brutal and
macabre face of war, the violence behind the elevated phrases of patri-
otic heroism and sacrifice was revealed.
The above-mentioned acts of violence were hardly a result of any
official encouragement by the Finnish military, vice-versa. At best, the
brutalities were made easier by the anti-Soviet war propaganda and by
the long tradition of Finnish Russophobia. For the most part, they
belong to the dynamics of violence inherent to any war. Nevertheless,
there was yet a sphere of violence, which was indeed born out of a con-
scious Finnish policy, namely the fate of the civilian population in the
occupied Eastern Karelia. The Finnish civilian casualties caused by the
68
Ville Kivimäki, “Rintamaväkivalta ja makaaberi ruumis – Nuorten miesten matka
puhtaudesta traumaan,” in Näre & Kirves, Ruma sota, pp. 144–5.
69
Antti Kujala, Vankisurmat: Neuvostosotavankien laittomat ampumiset jatkoso-
dassa (Helsinki, 2008).
70
Reina Pennington, “Offensive Women: Women in Combat in the Red Army,” in
Paul Addison & Angus Calder, eds., Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of the War in
the West, 1939 –1945 (London, 1997).
71
Ville Kivimäki, “Ryvetetty enkeli: Suomalaissotilaiden neuvostoliittolaisiin nais-
sotilaisiin kohdistama seksuaalinen väkivalta ja sodan sukupuolittunut mielen-
maisema,” Naistutkimus – Kvinnoforskning 20 (2007): 3, pp. 19–33.
72
SKS KRA, Korsu 1973; for the trauma of active violence in general, see e.g. Larry
Dewey, War and Redemption: Treatment and Recovery in Combat-related Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder (Hants, 2004), pp. 73–95; Grossman, On Killing, pp. 87–93.
Soviet bombing raids had boosted the determination of Finnish sol-

diers to fight on. In reverse, soldiers’ observation of the harsh treat-
ment of the non-Finnic civilians, especially in 1941–42, could be a
morally damaging experience. This was a crucial difference to the
Winter War, which had purely been a defensive war against an aggres-
sive invader. Such a moral advantage was lost during the Finnish occu-
pation of Eastern Karelia. Although the idea of Greater Finland was
inspiring for many, as we have seen earlier, its true ramifications and
racist practices could be demoralizing. The following reminiscence is
from a Finnish soldier, who saw Russian children held captive in a
Petrozavodsk concentration camp and tried to throw them some bread
and sugar. Children started to fight for the food:
I can see no more, my eyes fill with tears, and I cry. Must children suffer
because of our hardness? Something breaks inside me. I remember my
own little sons. They are now in Sweden in the care of good, wealthy and
civilized people. These children of Äänislinna [Petrozavodsk], instead,
have a concentration camp, barbed wire, armed guards. [Wartime minis-
ter] Tanner writes: “when war is being waged, it must be waged with full
force.” But are these concentration camps necessary, and must new ones
be built?73
Banality of War and Escapism

The violence at the front raised a barrier between the “true front sol-
diers”74 and those at the rear echelon, in staffs and on the home front.75
It is telling that the soldiers under fire often called their colleagues
behind the front “male lottas”—lottas being the members of women’s
Lotta Svärd Organization—thus emphasizing their own and the front’s
masculinity and the effeminacy of the others behind the lines. There is
nothing unique in this phenomenon; such antagonism is probably
unavoidable in any army and nation at war, as the risks and hardships
are always distributed more or less unevenly. It is just as well that it
would be wrong to idealize the national unity of the Winter War too far
in comparison to the years 1941–44: there were problems and conflicts
in upholding the experience of oneness and common sacrifices also in
73
SKS KRA, Korsu 1973, Vol. IV, R.L., p. 63.
74
Coined with the name jermu, which is close to the French term poilus in its con-
notations and similar also to the English Tommy, American G.I. Joe and German
Landser.
75
Pipping, Infantry Company, p. 209.
1939–40, even some serious ones.76 But during the Continuation War,
the prolonged experience of deadly violence at the front and the return
to a relatively normal everyday life on the home front widened the gap
to such an extent that it had an alienating and demoralizing effect on
the front soldiers’ experience. At the same time, a new political polari-
zation started to take shape under the surface. As no polling took place
during the whole war, there are no records of wartime political changes.
But in the elections of March 1945, the coalition of re-legitimized com-
munists and leftist socialists gained a landslide victory of 23.5 percent
of the votes, surpassed only by the 25.1 percent share for the social
democrats.
The static and mostly quiet trench warfare lasted until June 1944.77
In addition to the growing experiential gap between the front and the
home front, soldiers’ activities in the immediate vicinity of the front-
line became reminiscent of a peculiar kind of peacetime: building and
decorating recreational facilities, sports competitions, farming and
gardening, going to the movies, organizing choirs and theatre plays,
publishing regimental newspapers and so on. For the infantry in the
trenches, the violence of war was ever-present in the form of patrolling,
nightly skirmishes and sporadic artillery fire, but it seems to have lost
much of its collective meaning as a national struggle and to have turned
into banal routines with only local, practical, temporary significance.
Had the Winter War and still the beginning of the Continuation War
been widely experienced as a collective feat of strength with imminent
national cruciality, the sharpest edge of such ethos had been taken
off by the spring of 1944.78 Instead of sustained determination and
76
One of the most sensitive issues was the occasionally rude or even malevolent
treatment of the Finnish Karelian civilian evacuees by the Finnish officials or by the
local population at their evacuation sites, the news of which very naturally caused
anger among the Karelian soldiers at the front; Ahto, Talvisodan henki, pp. 203–9.
77
After the repulsion of the Soviet spring offensive in 1942, the monthly average
of fatal Finnish casualties from June 1942 to May 1944 was “only” 557.5 per
month; Suomen sodissa 1939–1945 menehtyneiden tiedosto, http://kronos.narc.fi/
menehtyneet/, the calculation made in 4 November 2009. The average size of the
Finnish Army for the same period was about 426,000 soldiers; Jatkosodan historia,
Vol. 4 (Porvoo, 1993), p. 141 (table).
78
On the corrosive effect of the static period of war in 1942–44, see the eyewitness
accounts of e.g. Colonel Wolf H. Halsti, Ratkaisu 1944: Suomen sota 1939–1945, Vol. 3
(Helsinki, 1957), pp. 80–8; Captain Erkki Mielonen, Pelko ja pakokauhu: Henkinen
paine sodassa (Helsinki, 1968), pp. 26–40; on the general atmosphere in Finland in the
spring of 1944, see Henrik Meinander, Suomi 1944: Sota, yhteiskunta, tunnemaisema
(Helsinki, 2009).
preparedness, escapism stepped in. Just one example to point the con-
trast: Shortly before the Soviet summer offensive of 1944 was about to
break out, the Finnish Army’s Education and Entertainment Office had
issued instructions on organizing “easy pastimes” for the trenches. The
long list of recommended activities included, for example, various card
and board games, quizzes, tricks, walking on stilts and tug-of-war.
Even a “magician’s box” and a manual for the “dugout magician” (kor-
sutaikuri) had been especially designed for frontline use.79 Needless to
say, the return from such carelessness to the extreme violence of war in
June 1944 was a shocking experience.
During the period of stationary war, the elevation and romanticism,
with which the collective hardships had been addressed in the early
stages of Finnish participation in World War II, began to ring hollow
also on the home front. It became all the more difficult to maintain
good morale among the population, which was struggling to make
ends meet. Although open expressions of disaffection were mostly sup-
pressed and the perceived unity maintained on the surface, the social
solidarity was seriously tested by various disintegrating phenomena,
such as the spread of black market profiteering, alcoholism, crime and
venereal diseases. Elevated rhetoric was more and more often under-
stood as pure propaganda. Wartime experience transformed into eve-
ryday experience, where there was little space for elevation. A special
cultural feature in wartime Finland was the dance prohibition issued
by the state at the outbreak of the Winter War in 1939. The prohibition
was originally meant to honor the fallen and to emphasize the collec-
tive sorrow and piety over individual, bodily desires and joy. But dur-
ing the long stationary war period, its meaningfulness became
contested and it lead to a culture of secret “corner dances,” in which the
people tried to escape the hardships and boredom of war, at least for a
moment.80
Also the sacredness of soldiers’ sacrificial death was in danger of
turning into a banal experience void of cohesive meanings. A routine-
like confrontation with violent death could be counter-productive. On
his way from home to conscription into the Army in the winter of
79
KA/SArk, T 10601/22, Information Department of the High Command (Ttus.2/
PM), “Kevyttä ajanvietettä,” 1944.
80
Maarit Niiniluoto, On elon retki näin, eli: Miten viihteestä tuli sodan voittaja;
Viihdytyskiertueita, kotirintaman kulttuuria ja Saksan suhteita vuosina 1939–45
(Helsinki, 1994), pp. 40–2.
1941–42, a young man encountered a depressing sight of newly arrived

coffins laying on the frozen ground:
Only then did I notice the thick cardboard coffins that had again been
brought from the front during the night and unloaded from the truck.
They always left them there at the crossroads, next to the cemetery cross.
After two or three hours, the handful of village men that were left would
come and drag the coffins on makeshift sleds made of skis to a plank shed
in the back of the cemetery where the undertaker kept his picks and
shovels as well as the flag of Finland, made of crepe paper. […] So, is this
how it will be?81
In this emotional atmosphere created by the protracted warfare, mate-
rial shortages and dance bans, the rhetoric of war produced by the
state, the military and the mainstream press gained a more demanding
tone. The binding example set by the military fallen became a crucial
motivator in the home front’s propaganda.82 The following extract is
from a commemoration speech for the fallen in May 1943 given by a
military chaplain:
Could we have avoided sacrifices? Could our people have chosen some
other easier and less bloody path? […] In the midst of war and in the
midst of changing moods on the home front, we have the courage to ask
these questions. So obvious is our people’s path of sacrifice that we have
the chance to answer these questions without having to guess. The con-
sequences of choosing a different path everywhere surround us. Everyone
knows what would have happened had our nation, in the hour of its des-
tiny, not detached itself from the gigantic carcass of its eastern neighbor
and pushed the strangers to the other side of the border in the winter of
1918. We would have become one with the Soviet people, part of the rot-
ting corpse of the Soviet Union. The fate of Soviet Eastern Karelia pro-
vides the answer to the question of whether our people then would have
suffered fewer casualties. Her deserted villages and destroyed homes, her
separated families and Siberia’s immeasurable expanses of land illustrate
the casualties caused by Bolshevism. Those sacrifices are manifold to our
sacrifices.83
In stressing the sustained meaning of sacrifices one can read the fear of
disintegration and loosening morale. But such reassurances were also
one reason for the spreading escapism—together with the experiences
81
SKS KRA, Mieselämäkerrat Collection 1993, p. 3027.
82
Luostarinen, Perivihollinen, p. 356; Tepora, “Elävät vainajat,” p. 119.
83
O. Korpijaakko, Puhe sankarivainajien päivänä 15.5.1943 (Helsinki, 1943), p. 3.
Emphasis in original.
of violence, the continuous talk of sacrifices, disinterested struggle and

“national existence” had a numbing effect and created a need to imag-
ine a different world altogether. Two of the most classic Finnish fairy-
tales have their roots in this period of the Continuation War, Tove
Jansson’s Moomins (the first book published in 1945) and Yrjö Kokko’s
Pessi ja Illusia (1944). They both use the language of fantasy to depict
the vulnerable goodness and child-like innocence surrounded by a
dark, threatening and violent outside world. Fairy tales were not only a
form of escapism: the allegories of good and evil, threat and rescue
helped to touch the anxieties and uncertainties of the time.84
Finally, the psychological burden and the problems of motivation
during the stationary war are indicated by Finnish soldiers’ suicides, as
Heidi Mustajoki has recently shown. At the same time as the combat
casualty figures declined and remained remarkably low, the number of
suicides rose steadily and reached its peak in May 1944, just before the
Soviet summer offensive. During the quiet period of war from January
1942 to May 1944, 2.6 percent of the Army’s total fatalities were sui-
cides; in May 1944, the figure was 5.5 percent.85 Although not exactly
“escapism,” the suicides tell of the emerging meaninglessness and des-
peration experienced by many at the front. All in all, it would be wrong
to say that the Finnish Army and home front in the spring of 1944
would have been largely demoralized: the majority of soldiers and
civilians fulfilled their tasks and were ready for further hardships. But
the war weariness had taken its toll. Had the sacrificial ethos of 1939–
40 and 1941 neared an end in itself, now the suffering and stamina
demanded were seen pragmatically as a necessary requirement for
stepping out of the war and saving as much as possible of national
sovereignty.
The Crisis and Recovery in the Summer of 1944

The great Soviet offensive against Finland began on the Karelian
Isthmus on 9 June 1944. The first and second Finnish defensive lines
84
Meinander, Suomi 1944, pp. 154–63.
85
Heidi Mustajoki, Kohtalo omissa käsissä: Suomen sodissa 1939–45 itsensä surman-
neiden sotilaiden omaisten asema vuosina 1939–1960, unpublished MA thesis
(University of Helsinki, 2010).
Fig. 5.1. A community of commemoration and sorrow: Memorial Day for the Fallen
at the Hero’s Cemetery in Vyborg, May 1943. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces
Fig. 5.2. Dead Finnish soldiers on the Karelian Isthmus, June 1944. The bodies were
washed and tidied up in special “evacuation centers for the fallen” before being sent to
their home parishes. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 153443.
were soon penetrated, counter-attacks failed and by 15 June the Finnish

Army on the Isthmus was in full retreat. The following week was
characterized by the strong Soviet initiative and superiority, failed
Finnish attempts to consolidate the front and the improvised, some-
times panicky withdrawals of the Finnish units fearing encirclement
and annihilation. On 20 June, the defense of Vyborg collapsed in a few
hours. A day later, the Red Army also launched its offensive in Eastern
Karelia, which the Finns had stripped of reserves in an effort to trans-
port all possible troops to the Karelian Isthmus. From the last week of
June until mid-July, the repeated Soviet assaults were finally repulsed
in fierce battles, whereby the military support from Germany had an
important role. Unconditional surrender was avoided, but in the armi-
stice of September 1944, Finland was faced with the burden of heavy
peace terms.86
The period of about six weeks from 9 June 1944 onwards has come
to define much of the Finnish memory of World War II. For a long
time, it overshadowed both the Winter War and the expansive offen-
sive of 1941. The events of 1944 largely defined the political reality and
position of Finland for the coming decades until the collapse of the
Soviet Union. The canonic Finnish story of World War II in Väinö
Linna’s The Unknown Soldier pushed aside the “lyrical” Winter War
and emphasized the prosaic experience of 1944. Today, in the “neo-
patriotic” trend of commemoration, the mythic Winter War has made
a come-back and the summer battles of 1944 are mostly interpreted as
a defensive victory,87 but such a significance was not so readily at hand
for the postwar contemporaries: for many, the hasty retreat and the
outcome of war in 1944 signified national defeat, the shipwreck of
Greater Finland idealism and the final loss of Finnish Karelia. Besides
the horrific strength of the Soviet offensive, the particularly traumatic
features in the summer of 1944 were the military desertion and the
Army’s countermeasures. Regarding the matter of violence, they posed
cracks in both the cherished ideal of a soldier’s sacrificial death and the
perception of the state’s monopoly on violence, which was thus enforced
through executions.
86
The military and political history of the summer of 1944 is studied in detail in
Pasi Tuunainen’s and Henrik Meinander’s chapters in this book.
87
Vesa Vares, “Kuitenkin me voitimme! Uuspatrioottiset tulkinnat talvi- ja jatkoso-
dasta suomalaisissa populääriesityksissä,” in Markku Jokisipilä, ed., Sodan totuudet:
Yksi suomalainen vastaa 5.7 ryssää (Helsinki, 2007), pp. 183–5.
The corrosive effects of the prolonged stationary war became indeed

visible in the summer of 1944. Unlike in the Winter War, the Soviet
assault in June 1944 resulted in desertions on an unforeseen scale, and
combat motivation also dipped among those who did not leave their
duties. Regarding the desertions, there were great differences between
different units: some regiments experienced only minor incidents,
whereas in others the desertion developed into a mass-scale phenom-
enon, which seriously handicapped battle performance. Under a vio-
lent Soviet onslaught, some Finnish units dispersed to the woods.
Shocked soldiers wandering towards the rear and telling horror stories
of the Red Army’s power welcomed the new reinforcements arriving at
the front, thus spreading the resignation further. The lack of proper
anti-tank weapons and the heavy concentration of Soviet firepower
caused demoralization even among the experienced Finnish troops
before the situation became more balanced at the end of June. During
the most chaotic week of withdrawal on the Karelian Isthmus, the
average daily number of both deserters and the soldiers who had lost
their unit was around 6,000—roughly the strength of two infantry
regiments—and their total number on the Isthmus in June was esti-
mated to have been as high as 29,000.88 In June–August 1944, the psy-
chiatric military casualties requiring hospital treatment also climbed
to several thousand, although the number did not reach the highest
figures during the Finnish offensive in 1941.89 Yet all this does not
mean that the Finnish troops would not have fought in 1944: as Jukka
Kulomaa has counted, even in the infantry division with the worst
proportional desertion figure, there were two wounded or fallen sol-
diers for each deserter. In the division, which suffered the heaviest
casualties of all, there were only 0.14 deserters for each fallen or
wounded soldier.90
Nevertheless, the desertion and other perceived signs of disintegra-
tion among the troops were a real shock to the Finnish military. At the
Finnish High Command in Mikkeli, the swift loss of Vyborg on 20
June caused great alarm and the fear of Soviet tanks rolling deep
into Finland in a matter of days or even hours. The most dramatic con-
sequence of desertions and the fear of collapse was the use of death
88
Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, pp. 263–6. The total number of Finnish troops on the
Karelian Isthmus grew from 88,000 to about 150,000 at the end of June 1944.
89
Matti Ponteva, “Psykiatriset sairaudet Suomen puolustusvoimissa vv. 1941–1944,”
Annales medicinae militaris Fenniae 52 (1977): Suppl. 2a (pp. 31–208), p. 87.
90
Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, pp. 268–71.
penalties. As stated above, the execution of Finnish soldiers had been

very rare before the summer of 1944. Now, the code of law was hur-
riedly changed so that death sentences could be passed for repeated
desertions and “war cowardice.” This extended right for the military
was immediately put into action: in July 1944 alone, 45 death sentences
were given and 31 of these immediately carried out. Between July and
September, 46 Finnish soldiers altogether were executed after court-
martial.91 The executions had a demonstrative and symbolic nature:
they were meant to show the determination of the military to uphold
the front at any cost. Yet the executions were also understood to be
very problematic, and the frontline soldiers reacted to them in contro-
versial ways. On the other hand, they effectively underlined the ulti-
mate authority of the state over its citizens and thus made clear that
there was no way to escape from one’s martial tasks. But on the other
hand, they caused depression, anger and resentment among the troops
by cruelly revealing the inherent violence of the military institution
towards its subjects.92
Such a notorious phenomena as the executions were, there were
attempts to consign them with some collective significance other than
a mere draconian punishment. Here, again, we are at the question of
the relationship between violence and sacrifice: the executions threat-
ened to undermine the willing nature of soldiers’ sacrifice, which was
essential for the national self-image and for the understanding of dem-
ocratic citizenship. Furthermore, the dead bodies of the executed
needed a place in the national cosmology based on regenerative sacri-
fices; more precisely, as with the deceased Reds of 1918, the society’s
internal violence, which they epitomized, required a shared meaning
in order to become neutralized as a divisive threat.93 Interestingly, the
91
Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, pp. 319–28. These are the figures for officially court-
martialed cases; the officer’s use of weapon to shoot deserters at the spot is still a con-
tested topic among researchers and no exact figure of these unrecorded shootings can
be given here. Heikki Ylikangas has estimated this figure to be as high as 250, whereas
other researchers have considered Ylikangas’ number a wild exaggeration. Heikki
Ylikangas, Romahtaako rintama? Suomi puna-armeijan puristuksessa kesällä 1944
(Helsinki, 2007), pp. 292–7; Jukka Kulomaa & Jarmo Nieminen, eds., Teloitettu totuus –
Kesä 1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
92
Cf. Pipping, Infantry Company, p. 165; Kulomaa, Käpykaartiin, pp. 327–8;
Ylikangas, Romahtaako rintama, pp. 297–306.
93
It is depictive that the Finnish soldiers executed by the Finnish military were
considered disturbingly problematic, although they presented only a small part of the
total number of wartime death penalties in Finland. All in all, 681 death sentences
Army’s chief of chaplains Johannes Björklund explicitly touched this

question when giving advice on how to organize the burial of the exe-
cuted on the home front: the burials should not have offered easy
opportunities for criticism of the Army, but nor should they have
become occasions for “cheap condemnation” of the men, who through
their heavy punishment “had redeemed discipline” for the whole
Army.94 Björklund’s conciliatory wording represented the executed as
an offering at the altar of national survival.
Lutheran religion was one of the most decisive cultural forces shap-
ing wartime Finnish identity. In the summer of 1944, military chap-
lains working at the front recognized soldiers’ emerging need to find
religious consolation for their burdens and thus to resort to Christian
motives and symbols.95 Nevertheless, in the heat of combat, the moti-
vation of the troops was largely shaped by the situational and military
factors at hand.96 After the initial shock, the confidence in successful
defense was restored by the end of June 1944, along with the growing
sentiment that the struggle was about national survival rather than
some undefined aim of “final victory.” On the home front, where the
violence of war was less concrete and more symbolic, the news from
the front and the imminent “Bolshevist threat” boosted religious fatal-
ism similar to the Winter War, but more desperate in nature. Especially
for those who had strongly identified with the national ethos of
war and with the idea of Greater Finland, the rapid loss of all that
had been gained in 1941 presented a truly shattering, even traumatic
experience.97
The fear of total collective disintegration created a necessity to rein-
force national unity and to experience concretely the existence of the
were given between 1939–46, and at least 528 of them were carried out. About 77 per-
cent of the sentenced and 84 percent of the executed were Soviet citizens, their main
crime being espionage; Jukka Lindstedt, Kuolemaan tuomitut: Kuolemanrangaistukset
Suomessa toisen maailmansodan aikana (Helsinki, 1999), pp. 196–203.
94
KA/SArk, T 21731/30 III, Ecclesiastical Department of the High Command
(Kirk.os./PM), chief of chaplains Johannes Björklund, No. 7193/3/30 henk., 12 October
1944.
95
E.g. KA/SArk, T 21731/16 II, V Army Corps Headquarters (V AKE), army chap-
lain Jyrki Järnefelt, No. 303/XVI/81.sal., 21 August 1944.
96
This is well illustrated by the large questionnaire on the causes of desertion and
panic, which was circulated among the Finnish front officers in August 1944; KA/
SArk, T 9776, “Upseerikysely joukkoilmiöistä kesällä 1944,” with 192 responses.
97
“Traumatic” in the meaning of cultural rather than psychological trauma, see
Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley, CA,
2004).
collective. In an interesting example of interplay between religion,

nationalism and the concepts of time in the sense of Benedict
Anderson,98 Finnish radio began to broadcast the bell tolls of the
national cathedral in Turku at every noon from 19 June 1944 onwards.
These tolls were meant as a reminder of the religious basis of the
Finnish “way of life,” and as a kind of collective heartbeats, they sym-
bolized both the faith in a living nation and the threatened vulnerabil-
ity of the national “organism.” Ideally, the noon tolls on the radio acted
as a symbolic synchronization mechanism restoring the sacred time of
sacrifice, which was seen as having disappeared in the midst of the
banalities of war. In an important radio speech given by the First Lady
Gerda Ryti at noon on 16 July 1944, the whole Finnish nation was
called to take part in collective prayers:
Our fatherland is in dire need, and no man, no woman, no child can
withdraw from this battle that God has made our inevitable share. The
fatherland needs all of the strength that each of Her citizens has, because
the frighteningly somber hostility of the Bolsheviks threatens to drown
our lives in a bottomless sea of misery. The fatherland will release no one
from responsibility, because we are all tightly bound to each other. […]
Let therefore each one of us silently pray to the Almighty every noon.
And in those moments we shall grow into a united, praying people who
shall believe in finding help from God.99
In the end, the Finnish soldiers in the summer of 1944 fought with
considerable skill and determination, measured by any reasonable mil-
itary standards and compared to the similar Red Army offensives else-
where in Europe during the latter half of World War II. For each occur-
rence of panic and bad performance, there were a number of examples
of spirited resistance and dutifulness.100 On the home front and in the
high staffs, the shock caused by the Red Army’s rapid advance and the
seeming lack of spirit among the Finnish troops was largely a result of
anachronistic expectations. During the long lull of 1942–44, the mythic
memory of the Winter War had created an unrealistic faith in the
overall Finnish capabilities and the superiority of a Finnish soldier.
98
Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 22–36, 145.
99
Gerda Ryti’s radio appeal for prayers, 16 July 1944, website of the Finnish
Broadcasting Company YLE, www.yleradio1.fi/id5133.shtml, accessed 29 March 2010.
100
Halsti, Ratkaisu 1944, pp. 358–60, 394–402; U.E. Moisala & Pertti Alanen, Kun
hyökkääjän tie suljettiin: Neuvostoliiton suurhyökkäys kesällä 1944 Karjalan kannak-
sella veteraanitutkimuksen ja neuvostolähteiden valossa (Helsinki, 1988), passim.
Faced with the radically different circumstances of 1944, these high

expectations made quite normal phenomena of a modern warfare
seem as signs of unforeseen disintegration and demoralization. It is
illustrative that after the first major defensive successes at the end of
June 1944, the commander of the Finnish troops on the Karelian
Isthmus called forth the binding legacy of the Winter War, the spirit of
which was to be found again.101 Yet there was no return to 1939–40; the
cohesive ethos of 1944 was the solidarity in survival rather than the
communion in sacrifice.
The official armistice between the Finnish and Soviet troops came
into force on 4 September 1944. Or it should have—as a violent
reminder of the Finnish defeat, the Soviet artillery revengefully bar-
raged the Finnish positions for a further 24 hours. This incident is well
and bitterly remembered by the war veterans in many reminiscences: it
was a final demonstration of Soviet power and aimed at underlining
the Finnish vulnerability.102 As such, it was a symbolic overture for the
dawning Cold War period.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Lapland War against the
German troops in Northern Finland from September 1944 till April
1945 has no major place in the Finnish memory culture of World
War II. Indeed, this last episode required by the Allied Powers was a
kind of a symbolic anti-climax if compared to the two wars against the
Soviet Union: the Lapland War was understood to be a political neces-
sity, but it was void of any other collective, national meanings and sym-
bolism. The final defeat of Nazi Germany was expected soon, and the
Finnish Army was demobilized already in November 1944. After the
first intensive battles around Tornio and Rovaniemi in October,
the war in the far north was fought with reduced conscript units and
thus fittingly called the “Children’s Crusade.” It did not really touch the
everyday life of the great majority of the Finns, although the German
scorched earth tactics, which destroyed much of Lapland’s infrastruc-
ture, caused public anger. It was difficult to uphold the combat motiva-
tion of the troops, when the rest of the country was already returning
to a civilian life, and the continuing sacrifices and violence were hard
to consign with any regenerative significance other than fulfilling the
101
Lieutenant General K.L. Oesch, 3 July 1944, cited in KA/SArk, Order of the Day
No. 24 of Infantry Regiment 12, Colonel Yrjö Hanste, 21 July 1944.
102
See e.g. Halsti, Ratkaisu 1944, pp. 479–80.
political articles of the Armistice Treaty.103 Any attempt to describe the

Lapland War against the former “brothers-in-arms,” who had just a few
months earlier delivered crucial military support to halt the Red Army
offensive against Finland, as an “antifascist liberation war” would have
been absurd—instead, the conflict was characterized by resigned bit-
terness and the experience of futility, probably on both sides.
***
In a grim irony, only two European countries are able to put such an
emphasis on the patriotic memory of World War II in their national
epic: Russia as the successor state of the Soviet Union, and Finland.
Everywhere else, with the exception of Great Britain, the years 1939–45
were branded by (consequent) occupations, the loss of independence,
devastating violence with no regenerating meaning and the trauma of
Holocaust and collaborationism. Although the societal context and
the political system of the two countries were completely different,
the rationale regarding violence in Finland and the Soviet Union is
surprisingly analogous. For the latter, the “Great Patriotic War” of
1941–45 against the external “fascist intruders” undid the horrifying
internal violence of the Great Terror and collectivization. Thus, the war
and its mythic interpretations consolidated the Soviet system in the
postwar period.104 In Finland, the Winter War symbolically purified
the divisive violence of 1918. “The Spirit of the Winter War” devalued
the reciprocal violence of the Civil War. In this respect, the ethos of the
Winter War in the popular Finnish memory managed to include also
the Continuation War. In both Finland and the Soviet Union, the fallen
soldiers of World War II acted (and still act) as the sacrificial corner-
stones in the nation building.
As we have shown above, the varying meanings of wartime violence
can be seen as a pendulum oscillating between the altruistic, nationally
regenerating sacrifice and the pointless, devastating death. Notwith-
standing the myriad of individual and situational experiences, the
Finnish wartime culture was, by and large, able to consign collective
significance to soldiers’ and civilians’ hardships and suffering, thus
upholding the social cohesion. One reason for this was the exceptional
103
Cf. Sampo Ahto, Aseveljet vastakkain: Lapin sota 1944–1945 (Helsinki, 1980),
pp. 182–5, 273, 278–80, 294–7.
104
Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the
Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2001); Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red
Army 1939–45 (London, 2005).
fact that, in an age of total war, the Finns were able to limit the violence
almost exclusively to the frontlines: civilian casualties were scarce and
the country was not occupied. Thus, the Finnish war experience fol-
lowed a rather “conventional choreography” of warfare, in which the
roles for soldiers and civilians remained clear. The losses of war could
be seen as meaningful sacrifices in the nationalist sense of the word—
indeed, they were quite justifiably seen as the reason for avoiding the
fate of the Baltic States and other Eastern and Central European coun-
tries devastated by consequent foreign occupations. Nevertheless, the
prolonged Continuation War seriously challenged the meaning of fur-
ther sacrifices and compromised the mythic unity experienced during
the Winter War. In the end, the regenerative power of sacrifices did not
vanish, but it lost its highly elevated, self-contained edge in the spirit of
pro patria mori; the sacrifices came to be seen more modestly as a pain-
ful, yet unavoidable means to secure the political existence of the coun-
try. Maybe paradoxically, for the Finnish left and working class the
wars of 1939–40 and 1941–44 against the Soviet Union were a demon-
stration of loyalty, which thus redefined the memory of 1918 and
empowered the descendants of the Reds to an equal political citizen-
ship. Thus, despite the many controversies and violent ruptures the war
had created, the shared war experience also made way for various
politically overarching societal contracts and bonds in the emerging
postwar welfare state, the history of which would require a presenta-
tion of its own.
In contrast to the ethos of patriotic sacrifice, the defenseless victims
of war rightly characterize the contemporary Western memory of
World War II. The case of Germany and the Holocaust is naturally the
most horrendous in scale and nature. Furthermore, the glorious image
of the liberating Red Army is stained both by the fate of Eastern and
Central European civilians under its power in 1944–45 and by the dra-
conian measures of the Stalinist regime towards its own soldiers and
citizens. But the British and the Americans, too, have the troublesome
memory of Dresden and Hiroshima to cope with. All in all, it is the
brutal, excessive, often racist and genocidal violence towards the inno-
cent that defines the years 1939–45. As the other chapters in this book
make clear, Finnish wartime history is far from immaculate regarding
the civilians of Eastern Karelia, the Soviet prisoners-of-war and even
the Holocaust. But these issues, even if recognized, have not managed
to touch the core of the Finnish experience and memory of war.
Instead, the violence of 1939–45 has been successfully embedded with
continuing national meaning and significance. The major reason for

this may be found in the fact that World War II serves as the virtual
birth myth and the cornerstone of the Finnish nation even today. The
remembrance of the war is the key element in national celebrations, as
it usually goes without mentioning that Finland actually gained its
independence in 1917, not in 1939–44. Thus, it is difficult to change the
perception of the war—the nation cannot ground its existence on
ambivalent memories. The sacrifices of World War II still stand at the
center of national self-image and history. This may be one (but only
one) explanation for the relatively strong contemporary Finnish
national identity and social cohesion; it may also be one explanation
for the rather exclusive and introspective understanding of Finnishness.
Nevertheless, it seems that recent years have seen a gradual change in
the collective remembrance of the war. Besides the politicized memory
culture of the Cold War era and the neo-patriotic identity politics of
the 1990s, a collective narrative of mourning and even acceptance of
the losses has emerged. This narrative emphasizes common people’s
suffering across the borders; it is also more open to perceive the true
violence of war.
CHAPTER SIX
FAMILIES, SEPARATION AND EMOTIONAL COPING IN WAR

BRIDGING LETTERS BETWEEN HOME
AND FRONT, 1941–44
Sonja Hagelstam
In a number of previous studies about frontline soldiers there has

been a strong notion of two divided and separate fronts: the battle-
front and the home front.1 In recent years this view of two opposite
spheres has been re-evaluated and the focus has been shifted from the
front to the interplay between the soldiers and their families at home.2
Drawing on wartime letters between five Finnish soldiers and their
families, this chapter investigates the connection and communication
between the absent soldier and his family during the Continuation
War 1941–44.3 The aim is to examine the role of personal correspond-
ence in trying to maintain the relationship between family members
during the long-term separation. I depart from the assumption that
the regular exchange of letters lessened the risk of alienation from the
family and contributed to bridging the spatial and experiential gap
between the front and home.
The correspondents were in daily or at least weekly contact, which
suggests the great importance of regularly keeping in touch with loved
ones. Letter writing therefore led to family ties often remaining strong
during the wartime separation. The chapter discusses what strategies
the writers employed in their efforts to maintain their mutual lives
1
See e.g. Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat & Identity in World War I, 1979
(Cambridge, 2009); Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 1975 (Oxford,
2000); Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behaviour of Men in Battle, 1985, rev. ed.
(London, 2004); Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London, 1979).
2
See e.g. Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War
(Manchester, 2009); Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood,
and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999),
pp. 11–49.
3
Letters had naturally also been important during the Winter War, but because of
the short duration of the conflict, the correspondence did not have time to develop to
such a socially and culturally central practice as during the long Continuation War.
278 sonja hagelstam
and in trying to overcome the strains of war. A central question is how

different emotions were handled in the epistolary dialogues. In addi-
tion, the meaning of creating and maintaining a sense of normality,
continuity and stability will be discussed.
The source material consists of four extensive collections of letters
written during the war in 1941–44, with one of the collections includ-
ing two different soldier-correspondents. Thus altogether five corre-
spondences are studied. Two of these were carried on between husband
and wife, and three between soldier-sons and their parents.4 The focus
will therefore be on the gender aspect as well as on the generational
aspect of communication in times of war. All the correspondents were
members of the Swedish-speaking population in Finland and therefore
the letters are written in Swedish.5
The characteristic feature of the epistolary form is an intense aware-
ness of the addressee or the reader. The letter is addressed to a spe-
cific, known person, and the communication is therefore always shaped
by both correspondents. The correspondent takes into account the
recipient’s possible reactions to what he writes, and to a great extent
this anticipation of the expected response determines what is brought
up in the letters and also the style and tone of what is written. A cor-
respondence thus contains a dialogue between two writers.6 Each cor-
respondence contains an authentic conversation which has been taking
place in reality and that has survived in the letters. Even if the corre-
spondences contain genuine conversations it does not mean they con-
vey the past “as it really was.” Instead they contain what the writers
wished to relate to their loved ones. The focus in this chapter is on the
personal experiences and interpretations of the correspondents, and
4
Åbo Akademi University Library, The Manuscript and Picture Unit: Björkman
Collection (Max 4:4), Björkman Sven (husband), letters to and from wife Rakel;
Enroth Collection (Max 17:3), Enroth Curt (husband), letters to and from wife Martha;
Sax Collection (Max 12:2), Sax Nils (son), letters to parents Arne and Hilma and
brother Göran; Sax Göran (son), letters to and from parents Arne and Hilma;
Segerstråle Collection (not in the database), Segerstråle Ulf (son), letters to and from
parents Lennart and Marie-Louise and sisters.
5
The Swedish-speaking Finns amounted to 9.6 percent of the Finnish population
in 1940, and the majority of Finnish Swedes resided in the coastal areas of South-
ern and Western Finland. Finnäs, Fjalar, Finlandssvenskarna 2002: En statistisk rap-
port, Finlandssvensk rapport No. 41 (Helsinki, 2004), p. 8, online version available at
www.kaapeli.fi/~fti/pdf/finlandssvenskarna2002.pdf.
6
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and transl. Caryl Emerson,
rev. ed. (Minneapolis, MN, 2003), pp. 205–7.
families, separation and emotional coping in war 279
on the meanings of different subjects in the epistolary dialogues. Thus,

the following questions are relevant: What functions did the different
topics have in the dialogues? Why did the correspondents express the
things we can now read in their letters? The assumption is that many
subjects were uttered with the intention of lessening the gap between
the two fronts and to construct a sense of normality and continuity in
the context of war.
When analyzing letters it can be difficult to avoid an element of
bias towards the better-off, educated and literate people. As we can see
from the short presentation of the correspondents below, there are
some differences in their social and cultural background, but there is
an emphasis on people with a middle- or upper-class background. The
differences can, for example, be seen in how the writers expressed
themselves and in the topics they brought up, but also in their way of
life on both of the fronts.
The soldiers in this chapter represent different military ranks.
One of them was a professional officer, three of them were reservists
and one was a conscript. Finland was forced to mobilize an exception-
ally high percentage of its men in order to form an effective military
force, and the peacetime cadre army was extended with a large number
of conscripts and reservists. As a consequence there were great age
differences between the men serving on the front,7 which also can be
seen in the presentations below.
Colonel Sven Björkman (1898–1981) is the only professional soldier
in this study. During the Continuation War he was the commanding
officer of the Finnish Army’s only Armored Brigade. He was married to
Rakel (1899–1979), who was a kindergarten teacher. The couple had
two daughters aged fourteen and eleven when the war began in the
summer of 1941. The family lived in an officer’s house in one of the
garrisons in Hämeenlinna in Southern Finland. As an officer’s wife
Rakel had a position of her own within the military community. During
the war she volunteered in hospitals and canteens, and organized par-
ties for soldiers and for children. The reciprocal correspondence of
Rakel and Sven Björkman consists of 646 letters written in 1941–44.
Lieutenant Ulf Segerstråle (1916–1944) had begun studying art in
Stockholm in 1939. He came from an upper-class family and his father
7
Antti Juutilainen & Matti Koskimaa, “Maavoimien joukkojen perustaminen,” in
Jari Leskinen & Antti Juutilainen, eds., Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (Helsinki, 2005),
pp. 77–9, 82–3.
280 sonja hagelstam
and grandmother were both well-known artists. Ulf had two younger
sisters born in 1920 and 1928. The family lived in Porvoo on the south-
ern coast of Finland. All family members actively took part in different
war efforts on the home front. During the Winter War Ulf went through
officer training. When the Continuation War began he served in a
Swedish-speaking infantry regiment8 as a platoon leader. During the
stationary war 1942–44 he functioned as a sports officer and as an edu-
cation officer. He was killed in action on 29 June 1944. This corre-
spondence consists of about 900 letters from Ulf to his mother, father
and his two sisters, and from all of them to him.
Staff Sergeant Curt Enroth (1912–1988) served in the field artillery
as a battery section leader and periodically as a quartermaster sergeant.
He had already served in the Winter War and therefore probably had
some notion of what he was in for when he was once again called up for
military service in June 1941. In civilian life he was a schoolteacher and
managed a small village elementary school. The school was closed dur-
ing the war because of his absence. His wife Martha (1894–1974) was
a housewife, and she took care of their home and household while
he was away. The couple had got married in February 1938, but they
had no children. Their correspondence includes 1,414 letters in both
directions.
Nils Sax (1920–2004) and Göran Sax (1922–2003) were the two eld-
est brothers in a farming family from the Swedish-speaking part of
Ostrobothnia in Western Finland. They also had a sister and a younger
brother, who was too young to be in the army. Their farm was quite
large and the family grew crops and had livestock.
Corporal Nils Sax served in a Finnish-speaking infantry regiment,
first as a squad leader and later as an orderly non-commissioned officer
(NCO). In August 1941 he was wounded, but returned to his regiment
at the beginning of 1942. After the war Nils took his law degree at the
University of Helsinki. In 1947 he got married and the family moved to
Sweden in 1957. He lived in Sweden for the rest of his life where he
worked as a teacher. There are 254 letters from Nils to his parents Arne
and Hilma in the Sax collection. The letters from his parents are how-
ever not in the collection.
8
There were Swedish-speaking army units (both infantry regiments and field artil-
lery units) within the Finnish Army. Lars Stenström, Krigsvägar: Finlandssvenska fält-
förband 1939–44 (Porvoo, 1995). Three of the soldiers in this chapter served within
Swedish-speaking units and two of them in Finnish-speaking units.
Private Göran Sax served in a Swedish-speaking infantry regiment

within a mortar platoon. After the war he followed in his fathers foot-
steps and became a farmer. He got married in 1957. The Sax collection
includes 295 letters from Göran to his parents and also 119 letters from
them to him. Additionally there are 24 letters from Nils to Göran in the
collection.
To the Front: The Correspondence Begins
In Finland the total war affected the entire population in very tangible
ways. Practically everyone had family members, relatives and friends
on the battlefront. Many regions on the home front were bombed, and
the rationing and shortage of supplies affected everyone.
The outbreak of war was an extreme turning point in the lives of the
men who left for the front. The war interrupted their civilian life and
possible plans they had for the future. The war also brought about a
sudden and often unprepared separation from their family and the
accustomed life at home, and the men were forced to enter into a new
and unfamiliar environment away from home. Moreover, the wartime
military service on the front took place in an extremely stressful,
demanding and dangerous environment.9
On the front the soldiers became members of a tightly organized
social unit where fellow soldiers could develop very close bonds. For
many these relations could also meet the need for emotional support
and understanding. In contrast to the family at home the soldiers
shared experiences of combat and life on the battlefront—a life that
could be more or less inconceivable for the civilians.10 Notwithstanding,
a continuing engagement and interest in the life of the family at home
was maintained throughout the war among the soldiers.
When the men left home, personal contact with their families was
mainly kept up through letters and very occasional visits.11 Writing
9
Cf. Ofta Mayseless & Hai Ilan, “Leaving Home Transition in Israel: Changes in
Parent-Adolescent Relationships and Adolescents’ Adaption to Military Service,”
International Journal of Behavioral Development 22 (1998): 3, pp. 589–609.
10
Roper, Secret Battle, pp. 5–6; Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s
Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London, 1999), pp. 124–53. Bourke, however,
reminds us that all soldiers did not adjust into social unity on the front, see p. 151.
11
Home leave was generally granted three or four times a year depending, for
example, on the marital status of the soldier, and normally it lasted for about ten days
282 sonja hagelstam
letters thus became a widespread practice among the whole popula-

tion. Due to the compulsory education for all Finnish children since
1921, practically all the soldiers had at least a basic literacy.12 During
the Continuation War the Finnish Army Postal Service forwarded
approximately one billion pieces of mail between the battlefront and
home front.13 Letters were written both by experienced correspondents
and by people who had not taken up a pen before the war. Thus the
archives today hold collections of wartime letters representing the
whole spectrum of the population.
In this chapter the focus is laid on the epistolary interaction between
soldiers and their close family, but during the war many people were
also involved in correspondences with friends and relatives, and with
people they did not know from before. Letters and parcels from the
home front were sent to unknown soldiers, and many soldiers found
new pen friends by answering ads in the newspapers or by getting
addresses from fellow soldiers. These correspondences often included
a romantic streak.14
In fact, writing letters between home and front was strongly encour-
aged by the Army and other officials. They understood the importance
of continuous contact between front soldiers and their loved ones, and
consequently epistolary interaction was considered a duty. The Army
Postal Service therefore played an important role in sustaining morale
both at home and on the war front.15 Besides the risk of confidential
information spreading to the enemy, the officials were also well aware
of the danger of negative morale spreading through the letters.
Therefore the mail was subjected to postal censorship. The soldiers
were forbidden to write about the location of the troops, the effects
of enemy fire and the physical and moral condition of the troops.16
at a time. Juha Mälkki, “Sotilaat lomilla,” in Martti Turtola et al., eds., Sodassa koettua,
Vol. 3: Arkea sodan varjossa (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 48–9.
12
Pekka Tarkka, “Nuoren tasavallan taide ja tiede,” in Paula Avikainen et al., eds.,
Suomen historia, Vol. 7 (Helsinki, 1987), pp. 87–8.
13
Teuvo Rönkkönen, “Kenttäposti ja postisensuuri,” in Leskinen & Juutilainen,
Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen, p. 646.
14
Knut Pipping, Kompaniet som samhälle: Iakttagelser i ett finskt frontförband
1941–1944 (Turku, 1947), p. 150; Elina Haavio-Mannila, “Miesten ja naisten väliset
suhteet sodan aikana,” in Riikka Raitis & Elina Haavio-Mannila, eds., Naisten aseet:
Suomalaisena naisena talvi- ja jatkosodassa (Porvoo, 1993), pp. 307–12.
15
Kalle Lehmus, Kolme kriisiä (Helsinki, 1971), p. 177.
16
The field post guide issued by the Army High Command: Kenttäpostiopas
(Päämajan huolto-osasto, 1941), p. 19.
Nor were they supposed to complain about conditions on the front.

They were reminded of the fact that people on the home front had
enough on their plates without having to worry about morale on the
battlefront.17 Similarly, the correspondents at home were advised not to
write about troubles at home and other depressing and discouraging
subjects. Encouraging letters with descriptions of everyday life at home
would keep spirits high on the battlefront.18
Since the amount of mail was so immense, the mail was only cen-
sored through random sampling.19 The correspondents of course
noticed this at home and on the front. Some mentioned the number of
wounded and killed soldiers; some took the liberty of spelling out the
location of the troops, even if they were well aware of the restrictions.
Sometimes it seemed more important to the soldiers to give utterance
to different topics than to follow the regulations by the letter.
In the exchange of letters between loved ones self-censorship often
had greater influence on the content than did the postal censorship.
Historian David A. Gerber uses the concept strategy of silence when
the writer refuses to address certain subjects in order to spare or pro-
tect the addressee and maybe also himself. At the same time, this strat-
egy allowed for maintaining of the commitment to correspond and
to write about a lot of other things, including subjects that could be
expected to please the addressee.20
The geographical distance between the Finnish home front and the
battlefront was relatively short and reachable.21 In fact the postal ser-
vice functioned very well for most of the war. Normally the letters
17
The respective orders of the Army High Command in Päämajan Käskylehti 35,
15 December 1942.
18
Helsingin Sanomat, 28 June and 8 July 1941.
19
The most relevant guidelines on mail cencorship and control can be found in KA/
SArk, T 10683/20, Information Department of the High Command (Ttus./PM), K.D.
230/Ttus 4/III b/sal., 3 September 1941; K.D. No. 505/Ttus 4/IIIb/sal., 31 October
1941; No. 1401/sens.tsto/17.sal., Order No. 31, 5 May 1944.
20
David A. Gerber, Authors of Their Lives: The Personal Correspondence of British
Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 2006), pp. 99–100.
21
In comparison, many American and British soldiers of World War II were in
a quite different situation. Their mail had to travel great distances overseas. Mail
transit, for example, to the British forces in Africa, India, the Middle East and the
Far East could take several weeks or even up to two to four months, if the mail
got through at all. See the website of the Royal Engineers Museum and Library,
www.remuseum.org.uk/specialism/rem_spec_pcsww2.htm. In the case of German
soldiers the mail could, on average, be on its way for 12 to 30 days. See Gerald
Lamprecht, Feldpost und Kriegserlebnis: Briefe als historisch-biographische Quelle
(Innsbruck, 2001), p. 46.
284 sonja hagelstam
arrived within a week or even quicker. In the correspondence between

Curt and Martha Enroth, we find examples of letters arriving at the
front in just two days. This enabled a very close and intense contact
between the correspondents. Because of the frequency of the corre-
spondences the letters contain many “trivial” details of everyday life
during the war. Of course the mail could be delayed for many reasons
throughout the war. During combat and when the troops were mobile
the Army Postal Service sometimes had problems keeping up with the
troops, and under these conditions there was always a risk of the post
never reaching its recipients. Sometimes heavy snow or muddy roads
obstructed the postal service, and when a letter happened to pass
through the censor it was always delayed a few days.22 In the context of
war, unknown reasons for delays always caused intense anxiety with
the recipient. Therefore the men always informed their addressee well
in advance if they knew there would be delays or if they would not be
able to write.
As mentioned above, the Finnish Army mobilized a very large seg-
ment of the male population in 1941. This led to a situation where the
civilian status of the soldiers on the war front varied greatly. It is impor-
tant to understand this difference both in the soldiers’ age and marital
status when analyzing the meaning and content of the correspond-
ences. The three unmarried soldiers in my sample are Lieutenant Ulf
Segerstråle (25 years old in 1941), Corporal Nils Sax (21) and his
brother Private Göran Sax (19). Their correspondences with their fam-
ilies will be studied first in Section I. The two married soldiers are
Colonel Sven Björkman (43 years old in 1941) and Staff Sergeant Curt
Enroth (29)—their correspondences with their wives are studied in
Section II.
I. Sons at War: Continuity of Parenting and the Need of Support
Parent-Son Relations and the Dangers of War

Regarding the relation between sons and parents there are some sig-
nificant differences compared to the relationship between husband
and wife. It is a relation between two generations and as such a verti-
cal and asymmetrical relationship, where the parents are first and
22
Roper, Secret Battle, pp. 51–2; Rönkkönen, “Kenttäposti ja postisensuuri,” p. 646.
Fig. 6.1. “Write to your missus. A letter to your darling leaves at

20 o’clock.” A mailbox at the River Svir frontlines, March 1942. Photo: Finnish Defence
foremost caretakers who look after and protect their children.23 Unlike
married couples the goal for soldier-sons and their parents was not to
resume their mutual life after the war. The three sons—Ulf, Göran and
Nils—were still unmarried and had not yet left their family homes for
good when the war began. Thus they were still members of their child-
hood family, but it was understood that they were on their way to
establishing homes and families of their own. However, the regular and
23
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern
Age, 1991 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 39–40; Lynn Jamieson, Intimacy: Personal
Relationships in Modern Societies, 1988 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 161–3.
286 sonja hagelstam
Fig. 6.2. The supportive bond: Wedding at the military hospital, September 1941.
Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 46431.
frequent correspondences between the sons and parents demon-

strate the importance and need for close contact also under these
circumstances.
Drawing on the correspondences it is apparent that there was conti-
nuity regarding the roles within the parent-child relationship also
during the wartime separation. This can most plainly be perceived in
the way the writers addressed each other. The parents wrote to their
dear son or boy, and the sons to their parents, mother and father
or mum and dad. Probably the most significant feature about the rela-
tionship between soldier-sons and their parents was the continuity
concerning the parental role as caretakers. One can even assume this
role strengthened in comparison with the period just before the war
when the boys already were on their way to an independent life of
their own. In fact, the letters tell us that the sons relied heavily on their
parents during the war.
The parents looked after and assisted their sons in many practical
ways, aside from providing care and support on an emotional level.
The families regularly sent parcels by mail or with soldiers who had
been home on leave. The parcels often contained foodstuffs, but also
clothes, medicines and things that were not absolutely necessary, but
were thought to bring some joy to the son. In this way, the families
tried to do everything in their power to make life on the frontline a bit
more bearable. In fact, sending parcels became a widespread cultural
practice and a component of everyday life on the home front during
the war.
Generally the mothers took on most of the responsibilities of send-
ing parcels. They cooked, they baked, they mended and they got hold
of things in short supply. They tried to foresee what their son might
need in the near future, and they repeatedly asked their sons to write
about what they needed:
It is horrible that it is so cold again. One constantly thinks about you and
all the rest there in the cold and wilderness and war! Write about what
you need, and we will immediately try to provide it for you. […]—Well,
how have you managed through the heavy marches and have you felt
your sciatica? Did you notice the C-vitamins in the parcel Pian sent to
you. Take them! […] I hope you will cope and that no harm will come
to you despite the cold and everything else. (Marie-Louise Segerstråle to
her son Ulf, 28 October 1941)
On the front the vulnerable body was constantly threatened. Besides
the injuries weapons could cause, the bodies of the soldiers were also
288 sonja hagelstam
exposed to cold, heat, wet, vermin, contaminated water, poor hygienic

conditions and infectious diseases.24 To be a soldier thus required man-
aging the heavy demands of the climate, environment and combat.25
As the body was constantly threatened, physical changes sometimes
gave reason for concern. After all, the body cannot hide physical
strains, but signals its condition. The body of the son thus became the
object of observations and an arena for caretaking efforts. The observa-
tions of the body could be based on the accounts of life on the front
conveyed in the letters or they could be made during home leave:
“My dear boy! It was wonderful to have had you here and to have seen
you so well and strong,” Marie-Louise wrote to her son in December
1941 after his first home leave.26 Through the next quotation we see
how a few photographs Göran had sent from the front caused his
mother to reflect on the well-being of her son:
But we shall hope that the day will come, when you will come home safe
and sound, just as you left. You have probably lost some weight, I think
you looked so thin in the last pictures you sent us, the ones where you
stand by the trench mortar and by the horse. (Hilma Sax to her son
Göran, 1 September 1942)
The mentioning of possible weight loss implicitly contains the fear of
the son not being well. In addition, utterances like “safe and sound”
hold a strong awareness of the vulnerability of the body. The words
reveal a fear of the son being killed, but also that his body would
get hurt or be mutilated. Hilma probably uttered the words “safe
and sound” euphemistically as a shield and invocation against the
danger.27
In reality the parents had of course no means of protecting their
sons from the threats they were subjected to. Sending parcels and the
other ways of looking after their sons can therefore be perceived as an
attempt to get some feeling of control in a situation they could not
influence in any way.28 There also seemed to be a need to shoulder
24
See e.g. Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London, 2005), pp. 31–77;
Holmes, Acts of War, pp. 176–91.
25
Rachel Woodward, “It’s a Man’s Life: Soldiers, Masculinity and the Countryside,”
Gender, Place and Culture 5 (1998): 3, pp. 291–3.
26
Undated letter from Marie-Louise Segerstråle to her son Ulf, probably written
19 December 1941; cf. Roper, Secret Battle, pp. 86–93.
27
Keith Allan & Kate Burridge, Euphemism & Dyspehmism: Language Used as a
Shield and a Weapon (Oxford, 1991), pp. 153–4, 221–2.
28
Ibidem, p. 229.
some of the burden the sons had to carry on the battlefront: “You can
understand how wonderful it is for us to send you everything you
need. It is almost like taking part with something substantial,” Lennart
wrote to his son Ulf in the beginning of November 1941.29
The young men on the battlefront were extremely happy and grate-
ful for every parcel and all the practical assistance they got. They did
however not wish their parents to give up things they needed them-
selves. This is a good example of the feelings of solidarity and consid-
eration that frequently can be traced in the wartime correspondences:
Mother, dearest. You have sent two magnificent parcels and I do have to
protest. You may send me buns and also bun plaits, pieces of cake, a loaf
now and then, but when you start exporting butter, then it’s just too
much. Don’t! But the orange was delicious and what a wonderful scent.
Oh …..! (Ulf Segerstråle to his mother Marie-Louise, 31 January 1944)
Every parcel and every letter was a concrete manifestation and a mate-
rialization of the devotion, care and engagement that the family felt for
their absent son. Therefore the material care was also an expression of
emotional support.
The Role of the Parents in Containing Difficult Experiences

You could very well write us about your experiences in more detail. After
all, we must bear reading about everything you have to endure in reality.
Or maybe you want to forget about it all when you write. (Marie-Louise
Segerstråle to her son Ulf, 16 October 1941)
Predominantly the soldiers on the front wrote about subjects that bore
reference to civilian and normal life. The letters for example contain
detailed descriptions of what the soldiers had done in their spare time:
reading, listening to radio, card-playing, cooking and writing letters.30
These subjects could be related to life at home and were probably also
easier for the civilians to understand.
Even if the letters were mostly filled with accounts of “normal” eve-
ryday life on the front, the darker side of war was also a subject in the
letters. When comparing the contents of the letters from the sons to
29
Lennart Segerstråle to his son Ulf, 7 November 1941.
30
The Continuation War can roughly be divided into three different periods: 1. the
Finnish offensive against the Soviet Union in 1941; 2. two and a half years of stabilized
stationary war; and 3. the Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944. During the long
quiet period the soldiers on the front could use their spare time for many “civilian”
activities and practices.
290 sonja hagelstam
their parents with the letters from the two husbands to their wives, it is
however apparent that there was more room for the abnormalities of
war in the letters from the sons. The following two extracts will exem-
plify the violence made visible in the letters from the sons:
Last night a Russian reconnaissance patrol tried to come through, but
they failed completely. The guards let them pass on purpose and then
they were surrounded and captured. Some of them had Finnish uniforms
and spoke Finnish and they were immediately shot as spies. They were
communists who had run away from Finland. About the same time that
night our sappers were out blowing up a Russian bunker. They got near
the guard and when he jumped up they took him by the throat to stop
him from shouting, then the others crawled to the bunker and threw in a
hand grenade. The Russians hurried to get out, but a sapper stood ready
with his submachine gun by the door to liquidate them when they got
out. (Nils Sax to his parents, 27 July 1941)
The Russians are attacking furiously on all sectors on the front. […] yes-
terday we had ten fallen soldiers in our battalion and even more wounded,
we took shells to the maintenance of the battalion and I brought back a
horse’s corpse and the two other men who were with me brought back
two fallen boys each and there were still six left behind, it is horrible,
some had no head and some had just half a head left and wounds all over
their bodies. (Göran Sax to his parents, 12 April 1942)
Why do the letters from the three sons contain more accounts of com-
bat and violence and descriptions of weapons and destruction? One
explanation might be found in the differences in the dialogical rela-
tionships between husband and wife on the one hand and parents and
sons on the other. Since a letter is always constructed taking into
account the possible reactions of the recipient, one has to assume that
the dialogic relationship between sons and parents allowed for a greater
openness than the one between husband and wife.31
The horrors of war and the abnormal life on the battlefront are how-
ever not entirely concealed in the letters written by the husbands, as we
can see from the following example: “A boy from H. […] was killed in
action the day before yesterday […] and his whole head disappeared.
But now I am talking about things that are not at all healthy for my
Darling.”32 When the husbands mentioned death and violence in their
31
Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, transl. Vern W. McGee, ed.
Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist, 1986 (Austin, TX, 2002), pp. 68–9, 94–7.
32
Curt Enroth to his wife Martha, 16 July 1944.
letters, they often immediately tried to tone down the impression the
news might give by making different kinds of reservations and mitiga-
tions.33 For the husband it was probably more important not to worry
his wife than to unburden himself in the epistolary dialogue.
In his work about the relationship between young British civilian
soldiers and their mothers, the historian Michael Roper has drawn on
psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion’s theories about emotional experiences
and how these are handled within the mind of an individual. In the
context of war Bion’s thinking concerning the mother’s ability to be
receptive to the emotional state of the infant and how it is coping with
feelings of anxiousness is of particular interest.34
Roper contends, in line with Bion, that mothers during World War I
got the role of taking in and containing the emotional experiences of
their adolescent soldier sons.35 I depart from the assumption that the
process of containing provided a foundation for the dialogical relation-
ship between the son and his mother and subsequently gave form to
their epistolary conversation. When taking into account the possible
reactions of his mother/father, the soldier-son more or less consciously
knew he could express emotions of fear, frustration and anger in this
dialogue, knowing this would help him to relieve his pain without
affecting the relationship in a negative way. Furthermore, the contact
with his mother/father would perhaps instill him with a feeling of
security and consolation.
As caretakers the parents probably felt a need to carry their sons
through all the upheavals, crises and risky situations their children
could be exposed to.36 The next quotation shows how the mother could
perceive her role in relation to her soldier son:
There’s something I’ve been meaning to write to you about: you should
calmly or fiercely write down your bad mood or whatever is bothering
you. It is absolutely vital to be able to unburden one’s mind and I just take
it as it is and know that your spirits will change and be better when you
get an outlet for your bad feelings. Remember this! (Marie-Louise
Segerstråle to her son Ulf, 12 April 1943)
33
Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, pp. 205–7.
34
Michael Roper, “Between the Psyche and the Social: Masculinity, Subjectivity and
the First World War Veteran,” Journal of Men’s Studies 15 (2007): 3, pp. 253–4; Roper,
Secret Battle, pp. 250–4.
35
Roper, Secret Battle, p. 1.
36
Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 40–1
292 sonja hagelstam
Bion mentions nothing about the father’s ability to contain difficult

emotions. I do not, however, want to leave the father outside this pro-
cess. The present correspondences contain examples of the sons turn-
ing to their fathers in difficult situations and of the fathers having a part
in relieving the emotional burden of the soldier-sons. It is for example
striking how the following quotation corresponds with Bion’s theories
about containing. Ulf ’s father wanted his son to know that
[…] there must constantly be an unfilled part, a lovingly receiving, empty
bowl, that is reserved for each of you [children], so that you can leave
everything in it we, your mother and me, shall take into our hearts and
with which we will be connected to you every day in a spiritual union,
and that doesn’t tie you, but unburdens you. (Lennart Segerstråle to his
son Ulf, 22 August 1941; original emphasis)
Even if the dialogue between parents and sons allowed for difficult
emotions to be communicated, there are not many open expressions of
fear in the letters. Fear is fundamentally about the body—its vulnera-
bility and fragility. Fear is something that is felt inside the body: the
heart is pounding, the hands are trembling, the breathing quickens.
But fear is an emotion that gets its meaning from and is made visible
through discourse.37 Göran is the one who most openly wrote about
the fear he felt in battle: “Today is the worst day I have lived through in
my life. I have been so frightened and I have not been able to stop trem-
bling, but that doesn’t help,” he wrote on Midsummer Eve in 1944 after
the Red Army had begun its major offensive.38
Death, also, was generally taboo in the letters, but the risk of being
killed was not completely concealed. Göran felt very pessimistic
regarding his chances of surviving the war. To articulate this fear in his
letters might be perceived as a strategy he employed to make it easier
to handle the awareness of the risk of dying:
I have given up all hope of getting out of this alive. But one must of course
trust in God that he will help in all times of need. […] I shall stop writing
for now it is unknown if I’ll have any opportunity to write again. (Göran
Sax to his parents on Midsummer Eve, 23 June 1944)
Sometimes death was mentioned as a reservation at the prospect of
some future event or plan or when writing about friends who had been
37
Bourke, Fear, pp. 7–8.
38
Göran Sax to his parents, 23 June 1944.
killed. Sometimes death was articulated when the sons explicitly

wrote a letter for the purpose of showing they were still alive:
Now the war has broken out on our section, too, and I have to write you
so that you may hear I’m still alive. […] Don’t think about me too often
now. Other people have their sons here too. God will help us through the
worst moments. (Nils Sax to his parents, 1 July 1941)
The parents naturally worried about losing their sons. Even if the risk
of getting killed or wounded was seldom explicitly mentioned in their
letters, the fear nevertheless becomes visible in their urgent requests to
their sons not to be foolhardy and in their appeals to be careful, as we
see from the next quotation:
With dread in our hearts we think about you and all the rest out there!
Beware of every bush and stone. We’ve read horrible accounts in the
newspapers about their [the enemies’] contempt of death and their tough
resistance. […] My dear son, may everything be well with you! (Marie-
Louise Segerstråle to her son Ulf, 7 July 1941)
In the letters from home different kinds of wishes, pleas, petitions and
prayers were in fact frequently articulated: “My dear son may you get
through everything,” “May God protect you and shield you,” “I hope
you keep your spirits up.” These requests contain intensive pleadings,
but they are not directed to the son (even if they often contain the word
“you”) but to a higher force. Requests for divine intervention include
both active and passive elements. The outcome of the situation is per-
ceived to be resting in the hands of a higher power, but the one who is
pleading for divine intercession is at the same time actively attempting
to affect the outcome.39
These actions were attempts to appease or even to subdue the forces
or dangers that threatened the son. In expressing wishes and pleas in
the letters, that is in sharing these feelings, a sense of closeness and
belonging could be communicated to the sons on the battlefront:40
My dear son! I can’t help wondering how far you have made it and if you
have met hard resistance and got through dreadful experiences? These
days are so worrying and alarming. Maybe we’ll soon receive a letter
39
Kenneth I. Pargament, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research,
Practice (New York, 1997), p. 183. Of course, wishes and pleadings form a part of the
epistolary conventions. However, in the context of war, different kinds of petitions and
prayers were used beyond convention.
40
Pargament, Psychology of Religion, p. 184.
294 sonja hagelstam
from you, but they are always 3 to 4 days old and a lot might happen in
the meantime. I hope everything will be alright! […] I just wanted to call
on you, and calm my worries. May God be with you! (Marie-Louise
Segerstråle to her son Ulf, 3 September 1941)
To articulate prayers and pleas in the letters can also be perceived as a
means of mediating trust and confidence—to urge the son to feel hope
and to believe that everything would turn out well in the end. In addi-
tion, it was an expression of affection and care. It was a way of mani-
festing that the parents constantly had their child’s well-being in mind:
I want you to know how close to you mother and father are all the time.
You can understand how the uncertainty of your situation makes us
think about you even more and to be with you in our thoughts and
prayers. (Lennart Segerstråle to his son Ulf, 14 March 1943)
However, feelings of concern and distress fluctuated during the war.
When the family at home knew it was relatively quiet on the front, the
most alarming feelings withdrew for a while. But immediately when
the situation grew worse the fear was back. The parents wrote to their
sons that they had trouble sleeping, that the situation on the front con-
stantly occupied their mind and that it was difficult to concentrate on
anything else:
Our dear Göran! We got a letter from you today. We hear you are in a bad
way now there in the wilderness. I wonder how it is there now in the
evening in the darkness and rain, to be nailing and hammering and
then to see the barbed wire, it’s impossible to think about. […] Last night
I could hardly sleep, I just kept thinking about you and folded my hands
and prayed the Lord would protect you and lead you on your way. You
shall also fold your hands in prayer when you are in distress, he will hear
our prayers. (Hilma Sax to her son Göran, 15 October 1943)
Even though the sons knew they could unburden themselves in the
epistolary exchange with their parents, they did not want to worry
them unnecessarily. Sometimes the sons explicitly tried to calm their
parents down, which was a way of showing consideration:
It would be the luck of God to survive this misery but I suppose there is
not much hope since they are bombing and ravaging here in every way.
But you there at home shall keep calm, fate will decide what will happen
to me. (Göran Sax to his parents, 20 June 1944)
The family at home also had to restrain their worry to some degree and
not let it take up too much space in the dialogue. A panicky worry
would probably not have helped the son but only make him worry
about his loved ones. Letter correspondence consequently became a

balancing act between relieving difficult feelings and sparing the loved
ones. The sons knew they could depend on their parents when they
were in need of support, consolation and encouragement. The family
and home also offered the soldier a sense of stability and safety. In this
way the family functioned as a safety net for their soldier-sons.
Therefore, the correspondences became of vital importance in the
effort to overcome the strains of war.
Maintaining the Civilian Life of the Soldier-Sons

A further strategy in the project to get through the war was the mutual
efforts to keep up the civilian roles and identifications of the civilian-
soldier. The letters thus became an important arena for trying to main-
tain some consistency between their life before and during the war. On
the front the soldiers were confronted with a new and foreign social
and cultural reality. In this environment they also got new roles and
affinities as a result of the partial and temporary transformation from a
civilian to a soldier.41 It was however important to maintain a strong
link to civilian life in order to avoid abrupt feelings of discontinuity
and estrangement.
For the soldier, it could be important to be seen and acknowledged
as a civilian. The young men could try to show their family that they
were “still the same”—that war had not changed them. To mark conti-
nuity and to try to maintain normality was important for the gap not to
grow too wide between the soldier and his loved ones. I will now deal
with different subjects in the epistolary dialogues, which functioned as
uniting elements bridging the experiential gap.
Ulf shared his former civilian interest in art and also nature with
his family and especially with his father. During the quiet periods on
the front, Ulf regularly got opportunities to paint and draw. He often
illustrated his letters with drawings with motifs from nature or from
life on the battlefront. He made watercolor paintings, portraits of
his fellow soldiers and got commissions to decorate the walls in can-
teens on the front and also the walls in the colonel’s lodgings. In their
41
Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality:
A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, 1966 (London, 1991), pp. 181–2. For a civil-
ian, becoming a soldier necessitated a partial and temporary transformation of
civilian identifications and roles.
296 sonja hagelstam
letters the father and son often discussed art and possible motives and
techniques.
Ulf was very much encouraged to paint by his parents. They thought
the painting functioned as an important counterweight to life on the
front and everything it entitled. To paint and to observe the changes in
nature served as a means of coping with the strains of war. Painting was
a civilian activity and nature reminded Ulf of the civilian and normal
world. These activities thus helped him to escape the horrors of war.
It was very nice to see your watercolor paintings. That’s the way my dear
son! Let the brushes express what you feel and see. That releases and col-
lects oneself. […] It feels so meaningful to once again be able to experi-
ence you the way you are deepest inside. (Lennart Segerstråle to his son
Ulf 19 September 1942; my emphasis)
The painting was a sign that Ulf had not become a stranger during his
life on the front. Ulf ’s father was also convinced that the experiences
on the battlefront would affect his son’s art in the future. This attitude
can be perceived as a means of attaining significance to life during the
war. A search of significance is an important step in the process of cop-
ing.42 The time spent on the front would not be wasted, but would give
rise to something good in the future. The citation below is an example
of making life on battlefront intelligible:
You know, my son, I think all these highly charged impressions [you’ve
got on the front] one day will become a deep and meaningful treasury of
things, which from underneath will provide you with inspiration and
give you a mature feeling of nature. (Lennart Segerstråle to his son Ulf, 18
November 1943)
Göran, the younger of the Sax brothers, also remained closely con-
nected to his farmer family especially by sharing a great interest in the
work on the farm. He often asked questions, commented on what his
mother and father had written and sometimes gave his opinion on
matters at home. He often wrote how he wished he were home taking
part in the work there. Thus homesickness was often connected to his
work at home:43
Well now it’s the 1st May and the weather is beautiful, so it would be
really nice to be at home now. […] I suppose they are harrowing with full
42
Pargament, Psychology of Religion, pp. 90–5.
43
See also Benjamin Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany 1914–1923,
transl. Alex Skinner (Oxford, 2007), pp. 117–21.
steam there at home also now. It would have been nice if one was allowed
to be there and to drive the tractor but that did not happen. (Göran Sax
to his mother Hilma, 1 May 1942)
The main theme in the letters from Arne and Hilma was the work on
the farm. They described what they had done and what was to be done
in the near future. They wrote about problems they had due to the
shortage of labor and due to the requisitions of agricultural products.44
They often expressed how important it would have been for Göran to
be at home instead of being on the front:
It would be nice if you could come home on leave for a little while and
help with the sowing, since we have so much to do, and I am almost alone
with all the work. (Arne Sax to his son Göran, 10 April 1942)
These kinds of utterances acknowledged Göran’s vital role within the
family and the workforce on the farm, and made it very clear that he
was much needed at home. This was for instance manifested in their
talk about the tractor, which was given an almost symbolic meaning in
the dialogue between the parents and Göran. In April 1942 Hilma
wrote to her son: “It felt very strange yesterday when they took out the
tractor […] it felt like something was missing since you weren’t here.”45
Göran’s older brother Nils, on the other hand, had no intention
of becoming a farmer and in 1943 he registered at the University of
Helsinki. He reasoned it would be wise to be registered when the war
finally ended, and also to use the spare time on the front for something
useful. Time is often perceived as something valuable that should be
kept well. The feeling of time being wasted, as well as boredom, can
have an extremely demoralizing influence on the soldiers.46 When
the war dragged on soldiers were therefore encouraged by the Finnish
military authorities to study on the front and different schooling
opportunities were made available for interested soldiers.47 However,
Nils seldom wrote about this topic, which indicates that his interest in
44
Henrik Meinander, “Självständighetstiden,” in Henrik Ekberg, ed., Finlands histo-
ria, Vol. 4 (Espoo, 1999), p. 248.
45
Hilma Sax to her son Göran, 23 April 1942.
46
Terhi Utriainen, “Loppuva ja täyttyvä aika,” in Eeva-Liisa Haanpää, Ulla-Maija
Peltonen & Hilpi Saure, eds., Ajan taju: Kirjoituksia kansanperinteestä ja kirjallisuu-
desta (Helsinki, 2001), p. 82; Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation
of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, 1961 (London, 1991), pp. 66–8.
47
Antti Laine, “Koulut ja yliopistot sota-ajan yhteiskunnassa,” in Silvo Hietanen,
ed., Kansakunta sodassa, Vol. 2: Vyö kireällä (Helsinki, 1990), pp. 170–5.
298 sonja hagelstam
studying was not something he had in common with his parents.

Instead, work at home functioned as a uniting subject, even if he did
not share Göran’s great interest in the work on the farm.48
When the soldiers wrote about themes connected to civilian life they
showed that they had not lost their connection to their former life. The
civilian life of the soldiers was thus actively maintained both by the
soldier-sons and by their families in their epistolary dialogues. The let-
ters therefore contributed to keeping the sons connected with the
home and in maintaining the relationship between the family mem-
bers during the separation.
II. Missing You: Separated Husbands and Wives
War and the “Gender Contract”

When the war broke out in June 1941 Sven and Rakel Björkman had
been married for sixteen years and Curt and Martha Enroth since
1938. Thus the marriage and family life of both couples were already
well established before the war. The assumption is that, in order for the
couples to resume with their married life after the war, they needed to
keep up their relationship on a practical and emotional level during the
separation.49
Throughout the war Sven and Curt were primarily soldiers, and
their civilian positions and roles within family and home—as husband,
father and “head of family”—inevitably had to be set aside for the time
being. War therefore altered everyday life at home and placed new
responsibilities upon the wife. The changes in society caused by the
war thus led to rearrangements between men and women. As the male
labor force was sent to the front, the women had to step in on many
levels in society.50
In many previous studies concerning wartime gender roles the
focus has often been on the changes versus the continuities regarding
48
Nils Sax to his parents, 10 July 1941 and 29 June 1944.
49
Irene Götz, Klara Löffler & Birgit Speckle, “Briefe als Medium der
Alltagskommunikation: Eine Skizze zu ihrer kontextorientierten Auswertung,”
Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 89 (1993): 2, p. 179. In comparison, the newly-
weds had to construct a feeling of togetherness as long as they lived apart.
50
Pia Olsson, “Nainen ja työn muuttuvat normit,” in Turtola, Sodassa koettua,
pp. 156–61, 164–7.
the status and situation of women in society. There has been a great
emphasis on questions about whether the women who had entered the
public sphere and the paid labor force could keep the positions they
had obtained after the war. Studies from France, Great Britain and the
United States have shown that the war did not change the status per-
manently; when the veterans returned home, the women stepped back
into the home sphere.51 Also in Finland the need to normalize life
after the war seems to have been greater than immediate changes in
gender roles. The war however functioned as a starting point for the
struggle between new and old attitudes, norms and ideals concerning
the societal position between men and women.52
War’s effect on gender roles and family life has also mostly been
studied on a general level. Gender relations between married couples
on an individual level have on the contrary not received much atten-
tion. When analyzing the relationship between husband and wife,
I find the concept of gender contract relevant. The concept was intro-
duced by historian Yvonne Hirdman. According to Hirdman there is
a stereotypical gender contract in every society. This “standard con-
tract” works on a normative, political and institutional level determin-
ing and forming the roles of men and women. In addition to the
standard contract, every couple has a gender contract of their own.53
In her thinking, Hirdman puts great emphasis on power relations
and gender conflicts, which I find inadequate when studying relation-
ships on an individual level and especially in times of war. In my
view historian Lena Sommestad calls attention to a relevant aspect of
the theory when stressing that the relationship between men and
women basically is a question of solidarity, cooperation and problem
solving, and not about continuous gender struggles. She further argues
that the need for cooperation, connectedness and solidarity between
husband and wife increases in different crisis situations in society
during which survival, safety and reproduction might be threatened.54
51
See e.g. the disussion in Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime
Lives (Manchester, 1998). See also articles in Margaret R. Higonnet et. al., eds., Behind
the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, CT, 1987).
52
Mirja Satka, “Sota-aika perhekäsitysten ja sukupuolten suhteiden murroksena,”
in Pertti Haapala, ed., Hyvinvointivaltio ja historian oikut (Tampere, 1993), pp. 68–71.
53
Yvonne Hirdman, “Om genuskontrakt,” Häften för Kritiska Studier (2002): 2,
pp. 28–34.
54
Lena Sommestad, “Genuskontrakt och försörjning: Gemensam problemlösning
på ojämlika villkor,” Häften för Kritiska Studier (2002): 2, pp. 45–7.
300 sonja hagelstam
War certainly was an extreme crisis, which in many ways increased the
need for men and women to join their forces in order to get through
the war. The changes also influenced everyday practices, thus forming
new versions of the gender contract of individual couples.
Keeping Things Running: Everyday Life of the Family

during Separation
In this section the shifting of gender roles primarily concerns women’s
roles within the home sphere. When Sven and Curt were absent, the
two women had to take full responsibility of the household, the econ-
omy and, in the case of Rakel, also the upbringing of the children. But
as I will maintain, by using different means the women tried to include
their husband in everyday life at home and to share their life in spite of
the separation. This was important in order to maintain a sense of con-
tinuity and normality, which was an important step in sustaining the
relationship and in overcoming the strains of war.
In most cases Rakel and Martha carried out the work at home inde-
pendently and without any major difficulties. They ordered firewood
for the winter, paid invoices, worked in the garden and did their best to
try to get hold of food and basic necessities in short supply. Every
month both women also accounted for the “finances” by including a
list of income and expenditure in a letter. As a rule they wrote about
these matters just to report the latest news. It was very important to
show the husbands that everyday life kept on running without prob-
lems, so the men did not have to worry about things at home:
I have had lots of mushrooms to take care of. Today I have preserved
7 jars […] + 1 jar with minced meat and a lot of onion. […] I have also
pickled 40 cucumbers. As you can see everything gets on little by little,
and your Homefront manages well. (Martha Enroth to Curt, 24 August
1941)
But sometimes, especially when the women had to deal with some-
thing for the first time, they claimed they would not be able to cope by
themselves and that it was necessary for their husbands to come home
straight away. Both women, for example, proclaimed they needed help
with the tax return: “Listen, dear child, how is it with the tax return?
Do you think you could come home to fix it? You know how silly I am
with those kinds of things,” Rakel wrote on 9 January 1942.
When Sven left for the front his role as a father also had to withdraw.
In spite of the absence he could act as a father by taking an active part
in the life of their daughters by letter. He sometimes sent letters or

postcards to the girls and discussed things that had to do with them in
the letters to his wife. The letter therefore became an arena where
fatherhood could be maintained at a distance. In practice, however,
Rakel had to take full responsibility for their children, and sometimes
she felt very lonely in the role of sole parent:
The reason why I’m not in the mood for writing is of course Pricken.55
She makes me completely mad. Whatever I do I fail. I admit my peda-
gogic capacity fails—over and over again. Whatever I say she opposes it
[…]. I feel very tired and deeply grieved and—lonely. […] Well, forgive
me for talking like this. But who can I talk to if not to the father of the
child. (Rakel Björkman to Sven, 4 March 1942)
However, it is sometimes difficult to determine if the two women really
thought they would not manage by themselves or if these statements
mostly were meant to acknowledge their husbands as able and good
men. To diminish their own capacities or to ask the husband for advice
can be seen as ways of stressing that he still had an important role
within family and home. These kinds of statements could be extremely
important for the absent one not to feel unneeded and unnecessary
within the family.
When the women included their husbands in life at home, it can
further be perceived as a strategy to keep up their mutual life in spite of
the distance and to create a sense of continuity and normality—to act
like everything was just as it always had been. Another possibility is
that the wives at least at the beginning of the war still felt unsure of
their new role and unsure of how much they could decide without
involving their husbands in the decision-making:
I’m so glad you are pleased with my businesses. I was a bit anxious about
what you would think, when I suddenly went ahead with such a big pur-
chase on my own and without writing to you first. (Martha Enroth to
Curt, 8 October 1942)
The separation meant that the prewar gender contract between the two
couples at least to some extent became inappropriate and that new
positions had to be negotiated between husband and wife.56 The efforts
to maintain the civilian roles of the absent men can therefore also be
55
“Pricken” was the nickname of the younger daughter.
56
Sommestad, “Genuskontrakt och försörjning,” pp. 45–6.
302 sonja hagelstam
perceived as an attempt by the women to maintain, observe or to

imitate their former gender contract.57
The men could not, of course, come home whenever their wife
asked them to, but both Sven and Curt very much wished to read about
everyday matters at home. They felt that these accounts carried them
home for a little while and that the letters from home contributed to
a feeling of participating in life at home.58 Most of the time, both men
gave their wives a free hand to decide about different matters at home,
but they did not leave themselves completely outside. They some-
times asked questions, gave instructions and reminded the women of
upcoming tasks.59 The following quotation is an example of interest
in the family economy:
How is it with the finances. You have of course withdrawn my wages,
haven’t you. […] If I remember rightly the local taxes have to be paid this
month. I gather you will manage with the money I’ve sent you […] How
is it with the fire insurance, didn’t we pay it at the beginning of the sum-
mer? (Sven Björkman to Rakel, 2 September 1941)
To take part in the everyday life of the family was, however, not always
easy. New regulations concerning rationing, taxes and other changes in
wartime society made it difficult to contribute with useful help. The
formerly familiar world at home could even begin to appear foreign
and unfamiliar.60
On the whole, there was seldom any cause for disagreements when
it came to everyday concerns at home. The husbands were satisfied
with the way their wife managed the household and also gave them
recognition for all the work they did.61 On the whole, the couples
seemed to avoid unnecessary conflicts in every possible way. Referring
to Sommestad this can be perceived as a manifestation of the height-
ened need for cooperation, consideration and solidarity between
husband and wife.
57
Yvonne Hirdman, Genus—om det stabilas föränderliga former, 2001 (Malmö,
2008), p. 95.
58
Sven Björkman to Rakel, 23 July 1941 and 7 January 1943; Curt Enroth to Martha,
10 July and 23 October 1941, 23 May 1942.
59
E.g. Sven Björkman to Rakel, 2 September 1941.
60
E.g. Sven Björkman to Rakel, 2 November 1944: “I’m nowadays totally daft when
it comes to the taxes.”
61
E.g. Sven Björkman to Rakel, 1 June and 14 August 1942; Curt Enroth to Martha,
28 September 1941 and 13 June 1942.
However, in the correspondence between Curt and Martha Enroth

we find a good example of differences in opinion concerning a practi-
cal matter at home. In the winter of 1943 Martha wrote about her plans
to buy a pig to keep over the summer. She liked the thought of having
some pork meat in autumn.62 Curt got quite alarmed about the news
when her letter reached him. He was afraid she would not manage to
take proper care of the pig. After all, she had no previous experience
of taking care of domestic animals:
I think you have enough trouble with the garden […]. I’ll just get a new
thing to worry about, since I’m well aware that you know almost nothing
about taking care of a pig. Would you 7 years ago have imagined that you
were to take care of a pig all by yourself? I don’t want to deny you defi-
nitely, but I do feel a bit sceptical, although I must say pork meat is very
tasty. Well, there is still some time to think it over. (Curt Enroth to
Martha, 15 January 1943)
As it happens the postal service was slow this particular period, and
when Martha did not get a reply from her husband, she went ahead
with buying the pig: “I wonder what you think about that? I was mean-
ing to wait with the order of the pig until I got your reply, but since no
letters came, I just had to go ahead with it,” she wrote in January.63
Subsequently, Martha’s letters written in the summer of 1943 were
filled with descriptions of her taking care of the pig.
Traditonally there has been an influential cultural image and ideal
of the hardworking, strong and persistent Finnish woman,64 and these
traits became even more accentuated during the war. The women
were supposed to work hard without complaining, to make sacrifices
and to endure. These ideals are also emphasized in womens’ memories
from the war. Feelings of regret, bereavement, exhaustion and fear as
well as experiences of happiness and hope are seldom verbalized in the
memoirs. Many women probably experienced these emotions, but
they do not correspond with the narrative of the persistent Finnish
woman and are therefore almost absent in the memoirs.65
62
Martha Enroth to Curt, 12 January 1943.
63
Martha Enroth to Curt, 19 January 1943.
64
E.g. Pirjo Markkola, “Women in Rural Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” in
Merja Manninen & Päivi Setälä, eds., The Lady With the Bow: The Story of Finnish
Women (Helsinki, 1990).
65
Olsson, “Nainen ja työn,” pp. 151–61, 167–83.
304 sonja hagelstam
The present correspondences include the whole spectre of emotions.

When writing frequently there was room for all sorts of subjects, feel-
ings and attitudes in the letters. Rakel and Martha did not, for example,
always have the strength not to complain, and the letters reveal that
they sometimes felt distressed, worn out and resigned. On the other
hand, they also experienced many enjoyable occasions in the middle of
war. Therefore, wartime letters may contribute to a more nuanced
image of different war experiences.
Absent Husbands and Included Wives

Listen, could you tell me a little about where you sleep, how your clothes
are washed (if they are washed), do you sometimes get coffee or tea. Do
you feel hungry sometimes? […] It would be very nice to hear about such
tiny unimportant details. (Rakel Björkman to Sven, 5 August 1941)
Almost as important as the accounts of everyday life at home for the
husbands, were the descriptions of life on the war front for the wives.
To have some kind of conception of the surroundings, the people, the
lodgings and the daily routines on the front contributed greatly to a
feeling of togetherness and closeness in spite of the distance between
the spouses:
You must write to me and tell me all about your new location, it’s
much nicer to so to speak become acquainted with the place and to
form an image of how you are there. That way I feel much closer to my
Darling. (Martha Enroth to Curt in an undated letter, probably written 10
March 1942)
The outsideness of the two wives was apparent when it came to life on
the front. As a high-ranking officer’s wife Rakel had some notion of
military life, but the conditions on the battlefront were very foreign to
her, too. A couple of times during the war Rakel had the opportunity
to visit Sven on the front, which considerably improved her abilities to
understand Sven’s situation. After the visits she also felt closer to him
and almost as if she in some way was with him in his world.66 A visit to
the front was of course a great privilege and not something that was
granted to everybody and least not to the wives of “ordinary” soldiers:
It feels so nice now, since I’m now able to be with you there in Äänislinna
[Petrozavodsk] so vividly in my imagination. I feel so much closer to you
66
Rakel Björkman to Sven, 25 and 27 May 1943.
and in some way more included. It’s probably much nicer for you too, to
relate and describe life there when you know I will understand much
more than before. (Rakel Björkman to Sven, 25 May 1943; original
emphasis)
Since life on the battlefront differed from civilian life, there was a risk
of an experiential gap growing between husband and wife. With
descriptions of everyday life on the front, the men could however
include their wife in their lives and the risk of drifting apart could be
lessened at least to some extent. Rakel and Martha also very much
wished to be present in the everyday life of their absent husbands as
much as possible. Both women participated in many practical ways in
their husbands’ life on the front. The letters suggest that the wives
sometimes took on a role of mothering toward their husbands. As the
mothers, the wives also showed great interest in the well-being of their
husbands and urged them to be careful at all times and to take care of
themselves in every possible way.67 They frequently sent parcels with
foodstuffs, clothes, vitamins, books and cigarettes. Sending parcels
became a very important way of showing care and devotion. Especially
for Martha, the number and content of the parcels became a measure
of her being a good and capable wife:
Now I shall sleep and wake up to a new day when I can make a parcel for
my darling. I really have a bad conscience and feel like a bad wife since
I have not sent you anything in a long time. (Martha Enroth to Curt, 26
January 1942)
In fact, Martha spoiled Curt with parcels. She knew how much he
enjoyed cooking “civilian” meals in the evenings and tried to supply
him with everything she could possibly think of. Sometimes Curt pro-
tested. He was afraid Martha gave up too much, but for Martha all her
efforts in preparing the parcels were important tokens of care and
solidarity:
[…] You shall enjoy everything [I send you] without thinking that I don’t
have anything to eat. I have all sorts; I live in my own home and sleep
in a comfortable bed and I often feel that this is unfair. I would gladly
have it worse if I only had my darling here with me. Life is so empty and
miserable without my love. (Martha Enroth to Curt, 6 February 1942)
67
E.g. Rakel Björkman to Sven, 19 September 1942; Martha Enroth to Curt,
15 August and 16 October 1941.
306 sonja hagelstam
Participating in life on the front contributed to sustaining wifely roles

and also the former gender contracts between the spouses. For exam-
ple, both Rakel and Martha wanted to help the men to get installed
and comfortable in their lodgings. They offered to send curtains, table-
cloths and other things to make living on the front more homelike. The
next two quotations are good examples of how the wives participated
in the home-making project on the front:
I would very much like to come to visit you in your tent and put flowers
on the table. Do you have a quilt for the night. (Rakel Björkman to Sven,
20 September 1941)
I suppose your dugout is nice and comfortable now. Write to me if there
is something you would like to have to make it more homelike. May-
be you even would like to have curtains. (Martha Enroth to Curt,
11 September 1942)
The lodgings, food, friends and spare time activities were subjects with
connections to civilian life. Consequently, these topics were relatively
familiar to the wives and something they could relate to and under-
stand. To write about such topics probably brought the two fronts
closer by giving an impression of life not being that different on the
battlefront and this probably contributed to bridging the gap between
the spouses. Also, by writing about the “civilian and normal” activities
on the front, the men avoided describing the extreme and abnormal
reality of war. In addition, by translating the abnormal life on the front
into something almost normal, the men themselves could perhaps also
feel closer to home and their civilian life.
Love, Support and Understanding: Sustaining the Marriage on an

Emotional Level
Spatial separation can be perceived to constrain the connectedness of a
pair. In addition the war probably brought even more strain on the
marriage.68 Through the correspondences the writers were involved in
68
Ernest R. Mowrer, “War and Family Solidarity and Stability,” The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science (1943): 229, p. 105; Leslie A. Baxter
& Barbara M. Montgomery, Relating: Dialogues & Dialectics (New York, 1996),
pp. 97–8. There was a sharp increase in divorces after the war, which indicates that war
affected marriages in negative ways. One must, however, keep in mind that some of
these broken marriages had been entered into in haste during the war and between
people who hardly knew each other. See e.g. Sari Näre, “Kuin viimeistä päivää: sota-
ajan sukupuolikulttuuri ja seksuaalinen väkivalta,” in Sari Näre & Jenni Kirves, eds.,
Ruma sota: Talvi- ja jatkosodan vaiettu historia (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 335–6, 375–8.
an ongoing process of weaving together their lives. As we have seen,

this was done on a practical and everyday level, but the correspondents
also employed different strategies in order to keep up the marriage on
an emotional level.
In the two correspondences in this study, the writers regularly
expressed explicit feelings of love, closeness and devotion. They also
wrote about happy memories and about plans and dreams for the
future. When a marriage is mainly maintained through correspond-
ence it is of utmost importance to clearly and frequently articulate
thoughts and feelings to ensure enduring love and support. In addi-
tion, the conversation has to be continual and consistent in order to
keep up emotional stability. Since the correspondents are not able to
communicate by facial expressions or by body language, everything
one wishes to convey has to be written down. All this was important in
order to continually confirm the significance of the other and for mis-
understandings to be avoided.69 The following quotation is an example
of how the commitment to the marriage could be communicated:
Thank you darling for all the wonderful things you sent for Christmas.
We would have been without tinsel and candles if you hadn’t sent some,
but now we have a very nice christmas tree. Our most confirmed bache-
lor wondered where we had got all the tinsel and candles from. I said,
that this is how it is when you have a caring wife, and now he’s planning
to get married after the war. (Curt Enroth to Martha, 24–5 December
1941)
But feelings for the other could also be expressed in other more indi-
rect ways. Expressions of longing were for example important in
affirming the meaning of the marriage and the relationship. The letters
were in fact filled with expressions of longing. The longing could how-
ever take somewhat different forms. It could be a longing to be together
again and to go on with family life; it could be a longing for home or a
longing away from the battlefront:
Good night my Dream, my Everything! I’m afraid I will go to pieces from
happiness the day I come home. I just hope that day will come soon oth-
erwise I’ll go to pieces from longing. (Curt Enroth to Martha, 6 January
1942)
In addition, all the consideration, solidarity, understanding and care
the correspondents showed for each other can be seen as tokens of
69
Berger & Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality, pp. 43–5, 174; Gerber, Authors
of Their Lives, p. 75.
308 sonja hagelstam
togetherness and closeness. They also did their best to support, com-
fort and encourage each other. Very often Curt expressed how impor-
tant it was for him to know that he had Martha, who he knew cared for
him and always had him in her thoughts. Every letter and parcel was a
sign of him not being forgotten. She and the “normal” life at home gave
him strength to persevere, even though he periodically suffered enor-
mously from battle fatigue:
Many times I have wondered what it would be like not to have my Darling
[…]. I think life would be much worse if one did not have someone to
long for, letters to wait for and parcels to open and someone to worry
about. I think it is all this that keeps one here, as a sane person, otherwise
one would soon be like an animal. (Curt Enroth to Martha, 1 March
1942)
The quote above demonstrates that Curt perceived the continual
contact with his wife as necessary for his mental well-being. In many
letters both Curt and Martha mentioned the risk of the nerves break-
ing down. This probably gave rise to all the efforts of encouragement
one can observe in their correspondence. Their letters show how they
jointly tried to support each other so that they—together—would get
through the war. To overcome all the hardships thus became a mutual
project for them: “My Darling shall just think about our happy future
and you will get by […] And until then, my Darling, we shall persevere,”
Martha wrote to Curt in October 1941.70
The wife could thus also be called on to contain the difficult emo-
tional experiences of the husband. In his letters, Curt very often poured
out all the frustration, despair and anger he felt toward the Army and
life on the front. The letters thus became a space where he could get
some form of release from these feelings—feelings that would have
been impossible for him to articulate in a satisfying way among the
people on the battlefront, at least without serious consequences.
On this point the correspondence between the Björkmans differs
from that between the Enroths. As a career officer Sven Björkman was
well adjusted to the military system and accepted everything it entitled.
Therefore he did not feel a need to dissociate himself from the Army by
grumbling and complaining in his letters. On the contrary, familiarity
with the military culture probably helped him to overcome at least
some of the strains caused by war.
70
Martha Enroth to Curt, 25 October 1941.
Even if it was important for Curt to get an outlet for the frustration,
he was at the same time aware that these outpourings could worry his
wife: “Don’t get worried if you think the letter seems hopeless and
depressed, but sometimes one just has to vent one’s feelings,” Curt
wrote in September 1942.71 This is one indication that the process
of containing took an alternative form in the dialogic relationship
between husband and wife. It seems to me that married men could
not turn to their wife in the same way as the sons were able to turn to
their mother.
The dialogic relationship between a son and mother, on the one
hand, and a husband and wife on the other differ fundamentally in the
continuity regarding the role of the mother in sustaining her son psy-
chologically. It also differed in that mothers could be counted to love
their sons regardless, when the relationship of a married couple was
founded on an arrangement that meets the affectional desires of the
individual.72 In addition, there could be certain expectations for a
husband to live up to in relation to his wife. For example, how could
a husband who was expected to protect his wife, family and home
openly express feelings of fear and horror?73 Therefore, I think, married
men had to try to overcome possible feelings of anxiousness at least
to some extent without the aid from their wife.
In the case of married couples the process of containing also worked
the other way around. The two women sometimes also needed to
unburden themselves and their letters therefore include difficult emo-
tions, which they sought to relieve in the dialogue with their husbands.
The quotation below is an example of how the husband tried to encour-
age his wife:
My love. Thank you for your letter yesterday although it was rather mel-
ancholic. What shall we do to cheer you up […]. Sleep peacefully and
have a good rest and try to find something nice to think about even if life
seems dreary sometimes. (Sven Björkman to Rakel, 24 July 1942)
As we have seen, the letters convey an ongoing process of stitch-
ing together their lives during the long-term separation. However, the
71
Curt Enroth to Martha, 6 September 1942.
72
Roper, “Between the Psyche,” pp. 257–9; Mowrer, “War and Family Solidarity,”
pp. 102–3.
73
Cf. Sanimir Resic, American Warriors in Vietnam: Warrior Values and the Myth
of the War Experience During the Vietnam War 1965–1973 (Malmö, 1999), pp. 172,
180, 242.
310 sonja hagelstam
correspondences between the two couples also show how problem-

atic it could be to try to maintain the closeness of a relationship by
letter. Even if they clearly expressed warm feelings, supported each
other, shared their experiences and included the other in their lives, it
was not always enough. It is possible that the dialogue between the
couples was not always intensive enough, even if they wrote to each
other regularly.
In her letters, Rakel openly expressed that she suffered from being
separated from her husband. From time to time she wrote that she felt
lonely and that she missed family life. This is a good example of how
people sometimes felt they had to express feelings of distress even if
they knew they were supposed to write cheerful letters. Her husband’s
absence began to feel endless and she was afraid they would become
estranged from each other:
If you’d been here now, I would put my head on your shoulder and cry—
because the war never ends and because you never come home—and
when you do, the long separation has made us strangers to each other.
(Rakel Björkman to Sven, 9 August 1942)74
In a number of letters in June and July 1942 Curt and Martha were
involved in a discussion about fidelity. The subject had come up in a
conversation between Martha and Curt’s sister, who had stated that
every soldier would be unfaithful whenever they got an opportunity
for it. Martha got a bit concerned and brought up the subject in one of
her letters. The whole following discussion made both parties feel very
unhappy and disappointed, and they thought the subject was difficult
to deal with by letter. The delays in the communication between the
sent letter and the answer gave rise to misunderstandings and frustra-
tion when impatiently trying to solve the problems:
The main thing is that everything is alright again. Forgive me Darling, for
having tormented you without the intention to. I kiss you good night
over and over again, my Silky thing, my very own Tiny Tot. Now I’m
starting to wait for [home leave] again […] Home to my Darling to kiss
away all the misunderstandings! (Curt Enroth to Martha, 28 June 1942)
Martha and Curt also found a strategy to turn the war and the separa-
tion into something meaningful, which, as we have seen, was an
important element in the coping process.75 Being forced to live apart,
74
Also Rakel Björkman to Sven, 6 September 1942.
75
Pargament, Psychology of Religion, pp. 90–1.
and all the waiting, longing and worrying, would not be made in vain.
The sacrifices they had made would teach them to value what they had
and this would contribute to future happiness:
When I really think about it, I’m actually grateful for the war. I think we
would never have been this happy if the war hadn’t taught us so many
lessons. And now my love we just have to hope that we can continue in
peace and quiet after we have paid the price for our happiness. (Curt
Enroth to Martha, 11 January 1943)
***
Home and Front—Separate Worlds and Bridging Letters?

This chapter has examined the epistolary communication between sol-
diers and their closest family. The main focus has been on the meaning
of this communication during the exceptional times of war. Among
other things, I have discussed different strategies employed by the
writers in order to maintain their relationship and family life during
the long-term separation. The letters continuously crossed the dis-
tance, with the aim of bridging the gap between home and front.
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the view of two
divided and separate fronts has previously been widely accepted.
According to these studies the soldiers felt an inability among the civil-
ians to understand their reality on the battlefront. At the same time
they themselves became more and more alienated from home and
civilian life.76 I agree with this view, but only to some extent.
Since life on the front differed from civilian life, the experiential gap
between soldiers and their loved ones inevitably grew the longer the
war continued. However, drawing on the present correspondences,
I am convinced that the soldiers felt close to the family and home dur-
ing the war, and that they did everything in their power to lessen feel-
ings of alienation and a growing distance. By corresponding regularly,
the soldiers felt they did not lose touch with their civilian life and they
were able to keep up their civilian relationships and identities at least
to some extent.
76
Leed, No Man’s Land, pp. 110, 188–9, 204–7; Fussell, Great War, pp. 86–8, Holmes,
Acts of War, pp. 88–93; Winter, Death’s Men, pp. 166–7. One explanation for this shift
of views might be found in the source material used. Leed, Fussell, Holmes and Winter
analyzed autobiographies, memoirs, diaries and letters produced by soldiers and veter-
ans. They focused on accounts about experiences on the battlefront and not on the
contact between the war front and the home front.
312 sonja hagelstam
Consequently, I believe that possible feelings of alienation did not

become fully evident until the soldiers came back home after the war.
The first indications of how problematic it could be to return home,
was however, maybe already felt on the wartime visits home. Home
leave was often associated with great ambivalence. According to the
present correspondences, the short visits were impatiently awaited for,
but home leave was also always a disruption in the life of the soldier
and could therefore in many ways be problematic for both him and his
family. It was not easy to suddenly step out of the world on the battle-
front and enter into a few days of “civilian life.”
The correspondences examined in this chapter stopped abruptly and
without warning when the troops were demobilized in the autumn of
1944 and the soldiers were sent home, and therefore they reveal noth-
ing about how the soldiers experienced life after the war. In one of the
present correspondences homecoming was, however, anticipated, and
the next quotation indicates an awareness of possible difficulties in
readjusting to life at home. Getting through the war had been a mutual
project for the correspondents, and getting on with life after the war
would also require teamwork and mutual efforts:
Of course, one is longing now too, but at the same time one is a bit afraid
and not so little either. How will everything start to work with these
[peace] terms, and how will one fit into everything. I’m even afraid of
how my Darling will cope with me. It will take some time before the
bad habits and all the edges are rubbed from me, I can imagine there
are a number of things that will irritate you in the beginning. After all
these years of longing, I’m writing like I’m afraid of coming home, and
I am a little too, even if I’m longing as before. […] But I think every-
thing will be easier when I come home and we go ahead together meet-
ing the unknown future ahead of us. (Curt Enroth to Martha, 22–3
September 1944)
PART THREE
IDEOLOGIES IN PRACTICE
CHAPTER SEVEN
WAR AND THE EMERGING SOCIAL STATE

SOCIAL POLICY, PUBLIC HEALTH AND CITIZENSHIP
IN WARTIME FINLAND
Helene Laurent
World War I is usually seen as a watershed in the relationship between

the state and society in Western Europe. The war damaged irrevocably
the political and intellectual foundations of classical liberalism. The
new ways of thinking and the new bureaucracies formed in 1914–18
made it untenable for states to separate themselves from their postwar
economies. The welfare of citizens would belong to the responsibility
of the state.1 This process, however, was not seen in Finland, where the
consequences of World War I were experienced only indirectly. Instead,
Finland went through a civil war, which left the country politically
divided in the wake of independence.2 Rather than nuanced social leg-
islation and policies, an extensive land reform was high on the list of
priorities in agrarian Finland, where the uneven distribution of land
property was seen as one main reason for the radicalization of the rural
poor in 1917–18.
Thus, the state-centered ideas on social policy found their way to
Finland only belatedly and through second-hand experience. They
were largely neglected until the latter half of the 1930s, when the pros-
pect of a new war was already visible. Consequently, the outbreak of
World War II in 1939 brought to a halt a number of emerging new
initiatives in Finnish social policy. Impoverished by the war effort in
1939–45 and by the following reconstruction and the war reparations
to the Soviet Union, Finland had only scarce resources to employ in
social and health issues until the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, the
war years also acted as a kind of catalyst, experiment and rehearsal for
1
Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern
Politics (New York, 1994), pp. 161–2, 167–9.
2
On the general history of Finland, see e.g. David Kirby, A Concise History of
Finland (Cambridge, 2006).
316 helene laurent
new policies and practices, in which the state and its institutions would
have a key role. This chapter discusses the wartime developments and
the war’s ramifications on Finnish social policy with a strong focus on
health issues. It will also study the practical implementation of the
Finnish social policy ideology and the crucial role of international con-
tacts and aid for Finland at war.
I. Prewar Public Health and Social Policies
“Poor Relief ” and Philanthrophism

The primary task of the Finnish state during the first years of inde-
pendence was considered to be the maintenance of law and order and
keeping the nation together. The ideology of the governance was
strongly judicial; most of the higher state officials had a degree in law.3
The tradition of local self-governance was strong in Finland. Both pri-
mary health care and social assistance, or “poor relief,” were tradition-
ally the responsibility of the local authorities. Philanthropic associa-
tions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) complemented
public services, especially in the field of child welfare. However, this
was true only in urban areas. In most municipalities, especially in rural
regions, the “poor relief ” functionaries were laymen, who did their
work voluntarily and without training. In bigger cities the profession-
alization of social work had already started at the beginning of the
twentieth century. This local autonomy resulted in wide regional dif-
ferences, political and personal relations and controversies affecting
the decision-makers. The economic depression in the early 1930s did
not significantly change the old traditions of social politics. The state
assumed some responsibility for unemployment by organizing relief
work. However, the central government’s social expenditure amounted
to only one to three percent of total state expenditure in the 1920s and
1930s.4
3
Risto Eräsaari, Taloudellinen jälleenrakentaminen ja “sosiaalivaltio” Suomessa
toisen maailmansodan aikana ja sen jälkeen (Helsinki, 1978), p. 29; Seppo Tiihonen,
Välillinen julkinen hallinto sota-aikana: Erityisesti kriisihallintoon liittyvät järjestelyt
(Turku, 1984), pp. 6–7.
4
Matti Alestalo & Hannu Uusitalo, “Finland,” in Peter Flora, ed., Growth to Limits:
The Western European Welfare States since World War II, Vol. I (Berlin, 1986),
pp. 200–1.
war and the emerging social state 317
A strong moral stigma was attached to poor relief. Becoming a “ward

of the county” was a mark of personal and moral failure, the recipients
of public aid being divided into the “deserving” and the “undeserving”
poor. The concept of citizenship was still ambiguous in interwar
Finland. Although the state provided civic and political rights to its
citizens, the right to vote was reserved only for those who showed that
they had earned it. The citizenship rights were lost if the person was
receiving poor relief, was convicted of a political crime or was confined
to an asylum.5
In the middle of the 1930s a new ideology of preventive social work
was emerging, which was gradually seen at the level of legislation and
central governing bodies. New acts on social care in the mid-1930s,
concerning children in need of protection, vagrancy and alcoholics
were coming into force. The Act on Sterilization in 1935 reflecting the
concern for degeneration of the Finnish race was also a part of the pre-
ventive ideology.6 State committees agreed that the local administra-
tion was in need of rationalizing, which necessitated a groundbreaking
reform of the tradition of local self-government by laymen. New social
laws led to the need for formal training. By the end of the 1930s most
municipalities were forced to employ a particular individual qualified
to take care of the paperwork required by the local social welfare
system.7
Primary health care, too, was the responsibility of the local authori-
ties provided with insufficient or no state aid, which led to enormous
differences inside the country and between urban and rural areas.
5
Political rights with the reservation that the Communist Party was forbidden until
1944. Full suffrage for all Finnish citizens was not granted until 1972, when those adult
persons under guardianship obtained the right to vote—suffrage for permanent poor
relief recipients was granted in 1948. The concept of “the loss of civic confidence” in
criminal law, which precluded from voting, was abolished in 1969. Marjatta Rahikainen,
“Miten kansakunta pidetään puhtaana: Rotuhygienia ja äänioikeuden epääminen,” in
Anne Ahonen, ed., Kansakunnat murroksessa: Globalisoitumisen ja äärioikeisto-
laistumisen haasteet (Tampere, 1995), pp. 15–37.
6
All Scandinavian countries introduced laws on sterilization in the 1930s. They
were not repealed until after the 1960s, in Finland in 1970. See e.g. Paul Weindling,
“International Eugenics: Swedish Sterilization in Context,” Scandinavian Journal of
History 24 (1999): 2, pp. 179–97.
7
Mirja Satka, Making Social Citizenship: Conceptual Practices from the Finnish Poor
Law to Professional Social Work (Jyväskylä, 1995), pp. 95–6, 101–4; Pauli Kettunen,
“The Tension between the Social and the Economic: A Historical Perspective on a
Welfare State,” in Jari Ojala, Jari Eloranta & Jukka Jalava, eds., The Road to Prosperity:
An Economic History of Finland (Helsinki, 2006), p. 294.
318 helene laurent
Physicians usually practiced in urban areas and hospitals.8 Only 50 per-

cent of the rural municipalities had employed a physician, midwives
and deaconesses often being the only health care professionals. A new
professional, the public health nurse specializing in disease prevention,
was making her appearance in the late 1920s. However, public health
nurses were in short supply and difficult to hire in remote areas.9
Preventive health care was the responsibility of NGOs receiving state
and municipal aid. The NGOs—most notably the Finnish Red Cross,
Mannerheim League, Folkhälsan and Anti-Tuberculosis Association—
were often closely connected to the government and functioned as
expert bodies in the planning of new regulations and legislation.10
The central administration of health care, as well as the central social
administration, was weak and undeveloped. The Finnish National
Board of Health (Lääkintöhallitus) was organized under the Ministry
of the Interior, which reflected its original role as a controlling organ,
its main functions being prevention and surveillance of epidemics and
securing the professional standard of health care personnel. In fact, the
Finnish constitution did not contain regulations obliging the govern-
ment to be active in health politics unlike, for instance, in education.11
Health care resources of the state were directed to hospitals, the 1920s
and 1930s being an era of institution building. Tuberculosis sanatoria
and mental asylums were built with both state and local money.12
The National Board of Health was small and had very little formal
contacts with other countries in the interwar years, even though
Finland had joined the League of Nations in 1920. Culturally and polit-
ically Finland had strong ties with Germany, and English was not
commonly spoken. The public health organizations, instead, had been
8
The number of physicians was low; in 1939, the population of Finland being
3.7 million, there were 1,347 physicians, 173 of them women. “Lääkintöhallituksen
kertomus vuosilta 1939–1952,” in the Official Statistics of Finland (SVT) XI,
Lääkintölaitos 56 (Helsinki, 1955).
9
Committee Report 1939/9: Maaseudun terveydenhoito-olot ja niiden kehit-
täminen: Maaseudun terveydenhoitokomitean mietintö (Helsinki, 1939).
10
Committee Report 1939/9. The Finnish Red Cross provided health care in remote
frontier regions. The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare and Folkhälsan, active
among the Swedish-speaking population, promoted pediatric health care. The Finnish
Anti-Tuberculosis Association was responsible for the tuberculosis dispensaries.
11
Sirpa Wrede, “Suomalainen terveydenhuolto: Jännitteitä ja murroksia,” in Ilkka
Kangas, Sakari Karvonen & Annika Lillrank, eds., Terveyssosiologian suuntauksia
(Helsinki, 2000), p. 19.
12
Allan Tiitta, Collegium medicum: Lääkintöhallitus 1878–1991 (Helsinki, 2009),
p. 180.
actively sending health personnel, especially public health nurses, to

both Great Britain and the United States already since the beginning of
the 1920s with scholarships granted by different international organi-
zations, e.g. the International Red Cross and the Rockefeller Fund. The
Rockefeller Fund had not been very interested in investing funds in
Finnish public health projects because of the strong German connec-
tions of the government.13
The dawn of the era of a Finnish “social state,” whereby the state
began to take responsibility for the social welfare of its citizens, is usu-
ally pinned down to 1937 with the appointment of the so-called “Red
Earth” government by the social democrats and the centrist parties.
The development in other Nordic countries with their social democrat-
ic governments served as a positive example for Finland. The leading
civil servants were well aware of the idea of the Swedish folkhemspoli-
tik, which emphasized society as a place or “home” where people’s
social needs, welfare and social security were among the continuous
concerns of the state. In the late 1930s, the focus of Finnish govern-
mental activity was directed towards rural areas where, as was slowly
realized, social and economic conditions had been left behind. The
declining birth rate, a common phenomenon in all Europe, was reach-
ing alarming proportions and combined with the high failing percent-
age of the conscription recruits led to a discussion concerning the
possibilities of Finnish society to increase the quantity and quality of
the rising youth. In the face of the growing threat of war national unity
was becoming an important issue.14
Shortly before the outbreak of war the parliament approved several
welfare laws, the Act on National Pension and the Act on Maternity
Benefits being the most important. Some health care laws approved in
1939 had to be postponed because of the war.15 Committees were set up
to investigate e.g. housing, health care and nutrition. The reports
revealed the “rural plight” in several fields. Reforms regarding rural
areas were planned on the basis of the committee reports. Among these
was also a reform in health care, with stress on preventive measures.
13
Marianne Tallberg, “Rockefeller-säätiön tuki Suomen kansanterveystyölle 1929–
1941: Katsaus terveyssisarlaitoksen näkökulmasta,” Hippokrates (2000), pp. 122–33.
14
Satka, Making Social Citizenship, p. 120; Kirby, Concise History of Finland,
pp. 195–6.
15
E.g. the Act on Primary Health Services in the Rural Communities, which made
the employment of a physician obligatory, and the Act on Venereal Diseases, both
coming into effect in 1943 during the stationary war period.
320 helene laurent
There was a definite trend away from philanthropic organizations

towards publicly organized health care, but the outbreak of war inter-
rupted the implementation of the reforms for a while.16
Anxiety about the Future Generations

In contrast to the morally stigmatized “undeserving poor,” Finnish
children of all social classes could be more readily accepted as benefi-
ciaries of social aid and support. Concern about the children reflected
a more general concern about the nation and its future in the turbulent
interwar era. At the beginning of the 1930s, the fast decrease in fertility,
accentuated by the deep economic crisis, was causing alarm all over the
Western world. The decrease in birth rates had started rather late in
Finland, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century among the
urban middle class. In the 1930s it had reached the southern rural
areas, the number of births being at its lowest in 1933.17 One month
prior to the publication of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal’s famous Crisis in
the Population Question in 1934, which brought to the fore the declin-
ing birthrate in Sweden, Finnish statistician Gunnar Modeen predicted
that the population of Finland would never rise over four million.18
A lively public debate followed, in which the economic plight of fami-
lies was stressed. The first move towards a family-friendly state policy
was the introduction of the “bachelor’s tax” in 1935. The year 1937 is
usually marked as a starting point for active population politics in
Finland when the law on maternal support to mothers of low income
was passed in the form of a “maternity package” consisting of supplies
for the baby. From 1949 onwards this package was given to all mothers
and it is still in use in Finland. The precondition for receiving the ben-
efit was a prenatal examination either by a physician or a midwife. Also
free childbirth to mothers with little or no means was guaranteed in
1937.19
16
Committee Report 1939/9.
17
Kari Pitkänen, “Infant Mortality Decline in a Changing Society,” Yearbook of
Population Research in Finland XX (1983), pp. 46–73. The number of births in 1933
was 65,047. Next time the peacetime birth rate went as low was in 1970 with 64,559
births; Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja 1997 (Helsinki, 1997), pp. 98–9.
18
Gunnar Modeen, “Suomen väkiluvun tuleva kehitys ja sen taloudelliset seurauk-
set,” Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja VI (1934).
19
Jarl Lindgren, “Aspects of Population Questions in Finnish Social Development
Policy,” Yearbook of Population Research in Finland XIV (1975–76), pp. 17–41.
The first legal reforms were thus directed towards the mothers. The
Finnish maternal mortality was exceptionally high in international
comparison, the explaining factors being twofold. First, in cities the
high frequency of criminal abortions led to infections, deaths and
infertility. It was estimated that in Helsinki every fifth pregnancy
among married women and two in three pregnancies among unmar-
ried women led to abortion by illegal “angel-makers.”20 Second, in
rural areas the prenatal and birthing services were scarce: virtually all
babies were born at home, often without professional help, which led
to both high maternal mortality and stillbirths.21 The solution, in addi-
tion to economic assistance to poor mothers, was on the one hand to
increase the prenatal consultations for mothers and on the other
hand to increase birthing services, preferably by building maternity
hospitals.22
To deal with the high infant mortality rate, child health centers had
already been set up by philanthropists in bigger cities before Finnish
independence in 1917, after the example of the French goutte de lait
milk depots. The first “milk drop station” was established in 1904 in
Helsinki. It provided sterilized milk for mothers not able to breastfeed,
on the condition that the babies were weighed and inspected regularly.
In the 1920s, when the newly independent state was recovering from
the devastating Civil War, which had created a problem of thousands of
war orphans, the child welfare movement became an important field
for innovations in preventive health care. The most important and
influential organization was the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare
founded in 1920 by bourgeois philanthropists close to the government.
The figurehead of the League, General Mannerheim, had been the
leader of the White troops in the Civil War. The Mannerheim League
was resented by the socialists due to its close connection with the vic-
torious “white side” of the Civil War.
20
Aulis Apajalahti, “Keskenmenojen lisääntymisestä ja siihen vaikuttavista teki-
jöistä Helsingin sairaaloista vuosilta 1901–1937 kerätyn aineiston perusteella,”
Duodecim 55 (1939): 4, pp. 263–84; Kari Pitkänen, “Contraception in late Nineteenth-
and Early Twentieth-Century Finland,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (2003):
2, pp. 187–207. Abortion for social reasons was not legalized until 1970.
21
The first prenatal clinic was set up in Helsinki in 1926 by the Mannerheim League.
Publication of the Mannerheim League 17/1927, p. 11.
22
Erkki Leppo, “Äitiyskuolleisuus meillä ja muualla: Suomessa se on maailman
korkeimpia,” Suomen Punainen Risti 7/1944, pp. 130–3.
322 helene laurent
The newly elected professor of pediatrics, Arvo Ylppö, who had

worked for over ten years in Germany prior to returning to Finland in
1920, was elected as chairman of the League. He had very strong ties to
Germany and brought with him the German practices in child health
care.23 The Mannerheim League obtained a semi-official status on the
national level. It was very well connected to the government through
its sponsors and acted as an expert body for the government and an
initiator of new forms of child welfare.24 The League founded child
health centers from 1922 onwards with the help of its local branches
mostly in cities and bigger industrial localities. By 1939 there were
child health centers in all bigger cities; most of them were run by the
Mannerheim League or the Swedish-speaking Folkhälsan.25 The cent-
ers were widely frequented and had proven effective in lowering infant
mortality and chronic ailments such as anemia and rickets. Before the
outbreak of the Winter War in 1939, there were 161 child health cent-
ers in Finland. The richer and more advanced municipalities supported
the private organizations or founded child health centers of their own.
The poor and conservative rural areas had been reluctant to set up
these services due to the financial costs and because it was felt that see-
ing healthy children was unnecessary and a waste of money.
The developing social policy and non-governmental activity for
child and maternal welfare can be considered as the first step towards
the Finnish social state. Together with the rising standard of living,
improving hygiene and education, the prewar infant mortality rate
had declined in the more developed parts of the country to about five
percent. However, in rural areas and especially in the poor and sparsely
inhabited regions in Northern and Eastern Finland, the infant mortal-
ity rate approached ten percent. As there was yet no legislation con-
cerning preventive health care for small children and infants, no
23
Aura Korppi-Tommola, Terve lapsi—kansan huomen: Mannerheimin lastensuoje-
luliitto yhteiskunnan rakentajana 1920–1990 (Helsinki, 1990), pp. 24–36; P.M. Dunn,
“Arvo Ylppö (1887–1992): Pioneer of Finnish Paediatrics,” ADC Fetal & Neonatal
Edition 92 (2007): 3, pp. 230–2.
24
Korppi-Tommola, Terve lapsi, passim; the annual reports of the Mannerheim
League 1921–31.
25
Samfundet Folkhälsan i Svenska Finland was founded in 1921, and it was initially
established to promote the “health and race” of Swedish-speaking Finland. Eugenic
undertones were seen in its ideological principles. Marjatta Hietala, “From Race
Hygiene to Sterilization: the Eugenics Movement in Finland,” in Gunnar Broberg &
Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark,
Sweden, Norway and Finland (East Lansing, MI, 1996), pp. 195–258, 207–18.
governmental financial aid was provided to the local authorities.26 The

poor health and nutritional status of rural children was a familiar fact
to the state officials from the work of the Committee on Nutrition,
which had been set up in 1936 after the initiative of the League of
Nations.27
II. War, Health and Population
The Changing Role of the State

Heikki Waris, professor of social policy at the University of Helsinki,
claimed in his inaugural speech in 1948 that there were three impor-
tant elements in Finnish wartime social and health policies that left
their permanent mark on postwar Finland. The first was “the January
Engagement” in 1940, an official declaration issued by the two central
employers and labor union confederations to the effect that they recog-
nized each other as equal bargaining partners. This declaration has
been seen as the point of departure for the stabilization and develop-
ment of the postwar Finnish labor market. The second element men-
tioned by Waris was the updating of public health care, and the third
was the voluntary work of the civic, non-governmental organizations.28
This chapter will focus on the two latter aspects with labor politics
being left out of the scope. It is worth mentioning, though, that imme-
diately after the war in 1946, with the strengthening of the political left,
labor legislation was widely updated.29
The question of the impact of war on social and health policies
has been discussed widely in Great Britain, where the rise of the wel-
fare state has been directly linked to reforms carried out during World
26
Committee Report 1939/9; Erkki Leppo, “Lastenhoidosta ja sen kohottamisesta
Suomessa,” Suomen Lääkäriliiton Aikakausilehti 4/1940, pp. 223–51.
27
Committee Report 1940/5: Tutkimuksia kansanravitsemustilan parantamiseksi
(Helsinki, 1940). The report is a massive account on the nutritional problems of the
Finnish population. The main result was that there was still widespread malnutrition
both among the rural and urban poor. Similar investigations were conducted also in
other European countries, see Iris Borowy, “Crisis as Opportunity: International
Health Work during the Economic Depression,” Dynamis 28 (2008), pp. 29–51.
28
Heikki Waris, Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan sosiaalipolitiikka, 1961, 6th rev. ed.
(Porvoo, 1978), pp. 24–6; Kettunen, “Tension between,” p. 294; Kirby, Concise History
of Finland, p. 216.
29
Waris, Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan, p. 27; Kirby, Concise History of Finland,
pp. 234–8.
324 helene laurent
War II.30 In his famous essay “War and Social Policy,” Richard Titmuss
defined social policy during the time of war as acts of the government
deliberately designed and taken to improve the welfare of the civil pop-
ulation. The dominating effect on social policy has been the increasing
concern of the state with the biological characteristics of its people:
first with the quantity and later with the quality of the population.
During World War II it was imperative for the maximized war effort
that the authorities concerned themselves with “civilian morale.” The
war could not be won unless millions of ordinary people were con-
vinced that the state had something better to offer them than the
enemy—after the war as well. It was a call for social justice.31
In Finland, the war years brought to the field of social assistance
persons who were in no way culpable of their own predicament. The
evacuees, the families of the soldiers, the war invalids, war widows and
orphans were all entitled to statutory benefits and were considered not
only “deserving poor,” but also national heroes and victims who had
sacrificed their home, their health or their family members for their
fatherland. The new mode of the state’s activities for its people could be
called “care of the masses” in order to separate it from the traditional,
means-tested poor relief. A huge organization for delivering assistance
had to be built, the local boards of municipal welfare being clearly
mere executors of the decisions made by the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The Ministry gave exact norms for the amount of benefits and for the
target groups. Prewar local autonomy was minimized.32
A relatively radical and rapid change in the emphasis and mentality
of the Finnish state government from the coercive control of the 1930s
to “people’s welfare” in the war years was connected with modern war-
fare, the total scale and strategies of which required a new attitude of
the state towards its population. Heikki Waris, the wartime general
secretary of Finland Relief and the leader of its Morale Preparedness
Committee, wrote in 1941 that the aims of morale preparedness include
the maintenance of patriotism, the will for defense and the promotion
30
Dorothy Porter, Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from
Ancient to Modern Times (London, 1999), pp. 215–8.
31
Richard M. Titmuss, “War and Social Policy,” in idem, Essays on “The Welfare
State” (London, 1958), pp. 79–82; on association between warfare and welfare, see also
Asa Briggs, “The Welfare State in Historical Perspective,” European Journal of Sociology
2 (1961): 2, pp. 221–58, 257.
32
Satka, Making Social Citizenship, p. 119.
of active cooperation, a sense of solidarity and a community spirit both

among the civilians and between the front and the home front. He
emphasized the state’s concern that each individual is treated as a valu-
able and contributive member of the society.33
Organizing Relief Aid

The start of the war in 1939 found Finnish society largely unprepared.
The state of emergency was declared in October 1939, and in less than
two months preparations for the wartime care of the civilians had to be
made. On 30 November 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland, thus
starting the Winter War. In a country with 3.7 million inhabitants, the
war caused a massive refugee problem of about half a million evacuees,
of whom more than 400,000 were to lose their homes permanently in
the forthcoming peace settlements in March 1940 and September
1944.34
Already by October 1939 voluntary organizations both on a national
and local level, irrespective of political affiliation, had started to pre-
pare relief work among the evacuees together with the state adminis-
tration, one goal being to foster national consensus in times of crisis.
Despite the preparations the first days of war were chaotic. The frontier
areas had been partially evacuated already during the state of emer-
gency. However, there were still people living close to the eastern bor-
der at the time of the offensive. Some were trapped behind enemy lines
and were interned in the Soviet Union until the end of the war. The
border area had to be evacuated in a rush, meaning that people had to
leave behind most of their belongings and be transported inland inad-
equately clad in a harsh winter climate.35
The Soviet offensive received much attention in the foreign press,
and in many countries relief funds were founded to collect donations
for Finland. Former U.S. president Herbert Hoover exercised pressure
to form an independent relief committee in Finland to ensure that all
contributions were directed solely to humanitarian purposes, not guns.
The Finland Relief Committee (Suomen Huolto -toimikunta), a non-
governmental independent organ, was thus founded in December
33
34
Silvo Hietanen, “Talvisodan evakuoinnit,” in Lauri Haataja et al., Suomi 85:
Itsenäisyyden puolustajat, Vol. 2: Kotirintamalla (Porvoo, 2002), p. 45.
35
Ibidem, pp. 42–5.
326 helene laurent
1939 by prime minister Risto Ryti for the distribution of foreign

humanitarian aid. The Committee was in contact with the local relief
teams comprised of both volunteers and public employees through
county committees led by the governors. After the outbreak of the
Continuation War, the Finland Relief Committee was reorganized in
July 1941 to include both the representatives of the state and of 17
politically diverse civic organizations. It was renamed Finland Relief
Incorporated (Suomen Huolto r.y.).36 For the sake of clarity only the
term “Finland Relief ” will be used hereafter.
The care of the evacuees stretched Finnish society to its limits, and
the state and local services were not able to manage without the help of
volunteers from civic organizations. In this situation, the established
conservative, centrist and general organizations of the “white civil
society” of interwar Finland—the Lotta Svärd Organization, the
Martha Association for housekeeping advice, the Finnish Red Cross
and the child welfare societies—were indispensable. In cities the social
democratic women were working among victims of the air raids. In
Finland the evacuations succeeded well in comparison to many other
countries at war in the sense that no refugee camps were set up at any
time, neither in 1940 nor in 1944, when the largest masses were on the
move. The fact that about 80 percent of Finns were still living in the
countryside helped in the relocation of the refugees. Local schools and
community centers were used as provisional accommodation where
usually the marthas or lottas attended to the care of the evacuees who
were then transferred to private homes as soon as possible.37
During the Winter War Finland Relief divided its activity among
both immediate relief, such as the distribution of food, clothes and
necessary supplies, and the more permanent projects, such as setting
up hospitals as well as organizing workshops for the evacuees. The
function of the above-mentioned Morale Preparedness Committee
was to uphold spirit and confidence among the evacuees. Relief among
children was one of the main fields of activity. Supplementary feeding
of schoolchildren was carried out throughout the war years. Several
homes for orphaned or undernourished children were also maintained
until 1945.38
36
Tiihonen, Välillinen julkinen hallinto, pp. 63–4; Keskitetty vapaa huoltotyö 1939–
1949, Vapaan Huollon julkaisuja 30 (Helsinki, 1949), passim.
37
Tiina Kinnunen, “Lottien sota,” in Haataja et al., Suomi 85, p. 255; Silvo Hietanen,
“Jälleen maantiellä—vuosi 1944,” in Haataja et al., Suomi 85, pp. 234–43.
38
Keskitetty vapaa huoltotyö, pp. 12–4.
During the Winter War and the following Interim Peace, the biggest
donations came from the United States through the Finnish Relief
Fund headed by Herbert Hoover. Swedish donations were also sub-
stantial. Gift supplies were used for the benefit of the evacuees and
especially for the children. The total monetary value of humanitarian
relief aid to Finland between 1939 and 1941 was 335 million Finnish
Marks. When the war started again in June 1941 and Finland became
an ally of Germany, the relief aid from the United States stopped and
did not resume until 1945, when the war was over.39 In the long run the
focus on child health was to make the most permanent impact on
Finnish society.40
During the entire Winter War the provision of health care to civil-
ians experienced difficulties because health resources, both personnel
and hospitals, were allocated almost completely to the armed forces. In
principle, civilians could be treated in military hospitals, which how-
ever proved to be difficult. Retired physicians and female medical stu-
dents were sent to care for the civilians, but even then health services
were scarce in rural areas.41
In February 1940, alarming reports began to arrive about epidem-
ics among the evacuees in Northern Finland. Housing conditions
were especially bad and crowded. An expedition of two pediatri-
cians and nurses was organized immediately with the “Hoover money”
to study the health situation of children among the evacuees. The
American representatives of President Hoover, Mr. R. Maverick and
Mr. F. Muto, as well as Dr. Spencer from the American Red Cross, were
accompanying the expedition, which lasted for two weeks. 17 locali-
ties, mostly schools, were visited and 755 children were examined.
A total of 349, or 46 percent, of the children were ill, suffering from
rickets, respiratory ailments and skin diseases. An epidemic of measles
and whooping cough had swept simultaneously through the refugee
population causing several deaths in children already weakened by
nutritional disorders and the hasty evacuation. Many children were
suffering from ear and lung problems. They came from poor rural
39
Keskitetty vapaa huoltotyö, pp. 95–100, 166–8. 335 million Finnish Marks in 1940
corresponds to 483 million Finnish Marks in 2005, equivalent to 81 million Euros.
Source: www1.nordea.fi/appx/fin/eco/include/fimtable.asp, converted 1 June 2007.
40
41
Pekka Somer, “Lääkintähuollon yleisjärjestely v. 1941–44 sodassa,” Sotilas-
aikakauslehti 31 (1956): 7, pp. 337–44.
328 helene laurent
areas near the Soviet border where access to health care had been
almost non-existent.42
Dr. Spencer gave his expert advice and suggested using the new sul-
pha antibiotic M&B 693 for the treatment of pneumonia, which
resulted in a fast recovery in several cases. This was the first time anti-
biotics were used on a large scale in Finland for the treatment of res-
piratory infections in children. Seeing the poor health situation and
the lack of hospitals Dr. Spencer suggested that Finland Relief should
establish a special health committee responsible for providing health
care and setting up hospitals for the evacuees and the civilian popula-
tion in general.43
In February 1940, Finland Relief appointed a separate Health Com-
mittee to organize health care for the evacuees. The Health Committee
published a program called “The Improvement of Health Care of the
Civilian Population Suffering from War.”44 The program was written by
Dr. Severi Savonen, “the father of public health in Finland,” an enthu-
siastic public health campaigner active in tuberculosis prevention in
the 1930s. The program outlined the main guidelines of health care
emphasizing the care of children and expectant mothers. All of these
projects were eventually carried out mainly with foreign relief money,
“Hoover money” being the most important source. The Hoover repre-
sentatives in Finland were kept informed of all the measures with regu-
lar reports.45
During the first months, setting up hospitals for the evacuees was an
important task. Altogether 192 hospitals were founded in 1940, 45 of
them being reserved for children. The hospitals were usually small
sickrooms, with often less than 30 beds. The children’s “cottage hospi-
tals” were a new concept that proved to be important for the future,
because they familiarized the population to the idea that children
could be treated in hospitals. They were often set up in regions where
42
KA, Cajander Collection I, folder 119, “Selostus kiertävän lastenneuvolan toimin-
nasta Oulun läänissä 17.II.–2. III.1940.”
43
Paavo Kuusisto, Sairaanhoito ja terveydenhuolto vapaan huollon työmuotona,
Vapaan Huollon julkaisuja 7 (Helsinki, 1942); KA, Cajander Collection I, folder 120,
Hoover Report.
44
KA, Kyllikki Pohjala’s Private Collection, “Suomen Huollon sekä Vapaan Huollon
lääninkeskusten edustajien II neuvottelukokous Helsingissä helmikuun 21 ja 22 p:nä
1940.”
45
Jyväskylä Provincial Archive (JMA), Archives of the Finland Relief Health
Committee (FRHC), Ca:1, attachment to minutes, 20 February 1940.
services had been previously scarce. Indications for hospitalization

varied: in addition to sick children with rickets, anemia or respiratory
diseases, many children were admitted for social reasons, e.g. difficult
home conditions, some of them being orphans or suffering from
invalidities.46
The members of the Health Committee were ardent long-term pub-
lic health advocates and influential activists from different political
parties. The chairman was the social democratic MP, director of the
National Board of Health, Dr. Oskar Reinikainen, and among the
members were Dr. Severi Savonen, chairman of the Finnish Anti-
Tuberculosis Association and head of the public health division of the
National Board of Health; Kyllikki Pohjala, a conservative MP, leader
of the Finnish nurses’ association; and Professor Arvo Ylppö, chairman
of the Mannerheim League.
The Health Committee members worked closely together, meeting
once or twice a week throughout the war years, widening eventually its
scope of interest to concern all Finnish citizens touched by the war,
developing e.g. tuberculosis and diphtheria vaccination and vitamin
programs for children. The Health Committee contributed to the for-
mation of several public health reforms at the time.47 It continued to
function until 1950 with essentially the same composition and never
suffered from political and other controversies troubling Finland Relief
later. After the war, the consensus mentality receded slowly and the
politically diverse members of Finland Relief could no longer work
together as harmoniously as they had during the war.48 The biggest
endeavor of the Health Committee was to supervise the construction
of over 500 “health houses” in post-World War II Finland.
Population Politics: Maternal and Child Health

When foreign minister Väinö Tanner announced in his radio speech
on 13 March 1940 the cessation of hostilities and the conditions of
peace with the Soviet Union, he said: “We lost because we were too
few.” The direct losses of the Winter War were approximately 28,000
persons, but the direct civilian mortality was low, about 1,000 persons.
However, indirect mortality, the result of epidemics, exposure and
46
JMA, FRHC, Db:1, annual reports, 1940–44.
47
JMA, FRHC, Ca:1–6, the minutes, 1940–50.
48
Waris, Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan, p. 26.
330 helene laurent
exhaustion, was responsible for approximately 4,000 lives, mostly

infants and elderly people.49 The hasty evacuations could also lead to
unintended catastrophes when, for instance, 32 patients from an old-
age home in Ilomantsi died in the evacuation train, probably due to
dehydration and exposure.50 The demographic shock of the Winter
War gave a further impetus to population politics, which had already
started before the war. Väestöliitto, the Family Federation of Finland,
which operated as an umbrella organization for several likeminded
civic associations, was founded in February 1941 to promote popula-
tion growth and the welfare of families. The organization emphasized
the importance of mothering: Rakel Jalas, civil servant of the Ministry
of Social Affairs, declared that becoming a mother was the respon-
sibility and particular calling of every able-bodied and married young
Finnish woman. The ideal reproduction norm for the Finnish fam-
ily was set to six healthy descendants, four children being the
minimum.51
After the Winter War, the pressure for legal reforms in family poli-
tics was rising. One way of increasing the population was to provide
economic incentives for families; the other way was to improve the
health care of children. The example of child health centers had showed
that it was possible to lower infant mortality by very simple and inex-
pensive means. Thus, in the summer of 1941, the National Board
of Health started sending circulars to the local authorities urging
them to set up child health centers and sending model regulations for
them.52
By the end of the 1930s, a plan had been developed according to
which a model teaching health center for public health nurses would
be built close to Helsinki and financed jointly by the municipality,
the National Board of Health and the Rockefeller Fund. The comple-
tion of the project was delayed because of the Winter War in 1939,
49
On the concepts of direct and indirect civilian mortality, see M.R. Smallman-
Raynor & A.D. Cliff, War Epidemics: A Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in
Military Conflict and Civil Strife, 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 25–7.
50
“Ilomantsilaisten evakuointi vuosina 1939–1945,” e-publication, www.joensuu.fi/
mekri/sotahistoria/evakko.htm#talvi, retrieved 8 May 2010.
51
Reino Lento, “Väestöpoliittisen ajatustavan synty ja tähänastinen kehitys
Suomessa,” in Väestöpolitiikkamme taustaa ja tehtäviä, Väestöliiton Vuosikirja I
(Porvoo, 1946), pp. 41–85, 77–9; Satka, Making Social Citizenship, p. 124.
52
KA, Archives of the National Board of Health (LHA, Lääkintöhallituksen ark-
isto), Circular No. 732, 1941.
but the health center was able to open its doors in September 1940. In
this situation, personal contacts established with the international
and American relief and public health organizations proved to be
beneficial.53
The Health Committee of Finland Relief supported the new child
health centers economically by paying the doctors’ fees for one year
and by providing equipment for the clinics. Foreign donations could
thus in this peculiar situation be used as a leverage in impoverished
Finland to convince the municipalities to start investing in preventive
health care. In June 1941, the number of child health centers had
almost doubled from the prewar 161 to 300 centers, many of them pro-
viding prenatal maternity counseling as well. The new centers were
built in rural areas, close to the evacuees. Attitudes were changing with
the help of public campaigning and financial aid to the municipalities.
The health centers were also used for vaccination campaigns against
diphtheria and for the distribution of donated vitamins and food sup-
plements, e.g. Ovomaltine.54
In the spring of 1940 the Health Committee launched a new form of
service when five mobile child health clinics were sent to circulate
among the evacuees. The purpose of these tours was to collect infor-
mation on the health of the evacuated children, to treat common
ailments, to give instructions in proper childcare and to locate children
in need of hospitalization. The ambulatory clinic, “the clinic on wheels,”
proved to be successful in counseling and treating children, distribut-
ing vitamins and also in getting a good overview of the children’s health
situation. Altogether, 56,000 children were examined in these clinics
between 1940 and 1941.55 The mobile clinics were especially well
suited for the remote, scarcely inhabited regions where distances were
long. They operated throughout the war years and even after the war
until 1953, when the network of child health centers started to reach
the remotest regions of the country. Many of the reports of these
excursions, conducted usually in the summertime, are available in
the archives and constitute an interesting source of information on
the health of children and also on the attitudes of the examining
53
Ann Yrjälä, Public Health and Rockefeller Wealth: Alliance Strategies in the Early
Formation of Finnish Public Health Nursing (Turku, 2005), pp. 130–3, 150–4.
54
55
Kuusisto, Sairaanhoito.
332 helene laurent
physicians, often putting blame on the mothers for neglecting their

role as caregivers.56
The Interim Peace period in 1940–41 was characterized by strong
propaganda advocating population policies. Reports on the evacuated
children’s health situation were distributed and published widely in
order to attract attention to the refugee problem; on the one hand to
increase relief aid from abroad and on the other hand to increase
domestic pressure for preventive health care reforms. Several articles
by pediatricians and public health activists were published in both
newspapers and professional journals propagating the building of
infant and maternal health centers. Strong rhetoric was used, especially
after the restart of hostilities in the summer of 1941. Dr. Severi Savonen
wrote in 1942, in the midst of the Continuation War, an article titled
“Public Health Care as a Factor in Population Policy,” where he counted
how many lives could be saved yearly by improving health care ser-
vices, fighting against communicable diseases and directing efforts
towards maternal and child health. He came up with a figure of 5,000
lives:
As every healthy and able-bodied citizen is most valuable capital for our
country, this achievement will signify an extraordinary victory for the
whole nation […] If we want the Finnish state to remain on the earth as
an independent nation, our population must grow strongly. If this doesn’t
happen, it shows that the Finnish nation is not viable, but it is dying, and
the great riches and possibilities of our country remain to be used by
foreign nations.57
Infant mortality, having soared in 1940 up to 8.8 percent, went down in
1941 to an unprecedented 5.9 percent, which was interpreted by the
pediatricians as being the result of the work of the Health Committee
of the Finland Relief in propagating proper child care and providing
both prophylactic and curative services for the population.58 It is true
that the Health Committee was active through the war years; e.g. the
instruction leaflet for childcare went through six reprints, the print run
being altogether 350,000 copies.59 However, in 1941 there were no large
56
KA, Mannerheim League, annual reports 1944–48; “Neuvola-auton mukana
Lappia kiertämässä,” Punainen Risti 3/1953.
57
Severi Savonen, “Kansanterveystyö väestöpoliittisena tekijänä,” Suomen
Lääkäriliiton Aikakauslehti 2/1942, pp. 52–60.
58
Toivo Salmi, “Imeväiskuolleisuudesta ja siihen vaikuttavista tekijöistä Suomessa
viime vuosina,” Duodecim 60 (1944): 11, pp. 537–68.
59
JMA, FRHC, Db:1, annual report, 1945.
evacuations and no significant epidemics, which also provides an

explanation for the decreased mortality. Also the food rationing sys-
tem favored children, protecting them from the malnutrition that
troubled the adult population at times.
Public health, and the preventive approach that had already started
before the war, was now accentuated. The experience of the Winter
War emphasized the need for a stronger central administration espe-
cially in public health matters. That is why in 1943 the Department of
Public Health was set up in the National Board of Health. During the
Continuation War, when the front settled into a stationary war, plan-
ning and reformative legislative work was continued with a strong
population political aspect leading to the so called “public health laws”
on maternity and child welfare clinics and public health nurses.
These law proposals were put forward by the governmental
Population Committee in May 1942. According to the proposal a
maternity and child health clinic had to be built in every community.
The midwife was responsible for the antenatal counseling and the pub-
lic nurse for the infant and child health counseling. The state aid would
cover 75 percent of the salaries. The preamble noted that
For population political reasons it is extremely important that the mortal-
ity of women giving birth and of newborn babies stays as low as possible
and that all necessary steps are taken in order to improve the health of
small children […] Experience has shown that health counseling by pub-
lic health nurses and midwives is very effective and least expensive.60
The proposal stated that the work done by voluntary child welfare
societies had been groundbreaking and commendable, but had proven
to be ineffective due to the lack of both personnel and economic
resources. In order to expand counseling to the most remote parts
of the country it was necessary to make it an obligatory service pro-
vided by the municipalities, subsidized, but also controlled by the
state. In order to reach all layers of society the service had to be free
of charge.61 When the law proposals were finally presented to the par-
liament in March 1944, the director of the National Board of Health,
Dr. Oskar Reinikainen, stated that during these late war years it had
become clear that
60
KA, Archives of the Finnish Government (Valtioneuvoston arkisto), Collection
of the Population Committee, the law proposal, 13 May 1942.
61
Ibidem.
334 helene laurent
Public health care is one of the fundamental prerequisites for the exist-
ence of our nation […] It is self-evident that in public health care deter-
mination and centralized administration are required. It belongs to the
state.62
The laws were passed unanimously in parliament and became effec-
tive in July 1944 when heavy battles were still being waged against
the Soviet summer offensive. During the war, several other family-
supporting laws were enacted, e.g. loans for young families for building
homes and support for families with five or more children.63 In 1948, a
law on a universal child benefit was passed.
New Approaches to Contagious Diseases

As mentioned previously, the idea of prevention was becoming a per-
vasive ideology in social policy and health care. This was also seen in
the new strategies of managing contagious diseases. Infectious diseases
were still the most important causes of mortality and morbidity. Thus,
measures that would reduce infectious diseases would have a strong
effect on the health of the population. During the war years in Finland,
a new approach to prevention of infectious diseases with vaccinations
was making its debut.
Prewar Finland had still been in the middle of the epidemic transi-
tion, whereby the main causes of morbidity and mortality were due to
infectious diseases.64 Life expectancy at birth in 1939 was 53 years for
males and 59 years for females. For comparison, in Sweden, where
infectious diseases were already receding into the background, life
expectancy was 64 years for males and 67 years for females.65 The two
most important causes of death affecting the length of the productive
years of Finnish citizens were tuberculosis and the infectious dis-
eases of infants under one year of age. The degenerative diseases of
old age were the second largest cause of death, but at the time they
62
Parliamentary Records, 3 March 1944.
63
Armas Nieminen, “Viisi vuotta toimintaa terveen väestönkehityksen sekä kodin,
perheen ja lasten yhteiskunnan hyväksi: Väestöliitto 1941–1946,” in Väestöpolitiikkamme
taustaa ja tehtäviä.
64
On epidemic transition in Finland, see Väinö Kannisto, Mauri Nieminen
& Oiva Turpeinen, “Finnish Life Tables Since 1751,” Demographic Research 1 (1999), e-
publication, www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol1/1/1-1.pdf, retrieved 30
April 2010.
65
The Statistical Yearbook of Finland, 1940; Statistisk Årsbok för Sverige, 1947.
were not considered as important for the nation, because the working
years were not greatly affected. Besides, effective drugs and treatment
possibilities for degenerative diseases and cancer were not yet
available.66
From past experience it was feared that infectious diseases, espe-
cially tuberculosis, would spread during the war years. After World
War I the devastating influenza pandemic had taken more lives than
the war, and in Finland approximately 30,000 people had perished
from the disease.67 However, during World War II the expected catas-
trophe of uncontrollable epidemics was never realized in Finland, as
was the general case also elsewhere in Europe. The explanation was
probably not medical, but related to the relative orderliness in wartime
Finland. The evacuations were made mainly in controlled fashion.
When this was not the case, as in December 1939 in Lapland, the mor-
tality from infectious diseases in children rose dramatically. The only
major epidemic was diphtheria that started spreading in 1943 and con-
tinued until 1948.
The only vaccine used on the entire Finnish population in the pre-
war years was the smallpox vaccination that had been obligatory since
1883.68 By the late 1930s, it was becoming evident that Finland was
lagging behind in its immunization practices. The success of the
Canadian diphtheria eradication program was convincing, as well as
the Swedish results with a tuberculosis vaccine.69 Attitudes towards
preventive medicine in Finland were changing; interest in domestic
production of new effective vaccines and sera was gaining ground. The
threat of war was also rising, which would mean the closing of borders
and difficulties in importing medical supplies. In 1938 the Finnish
Medical Society Duodecim proposed the establishment of a National
Public Health Institute responsible for public health education as well
66
SVT XI, the official health statistics of Finland between 1939 and 1952; Väinö
Kannisto, Kuolemansyyt väestöllisinä tekijöinä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1947); Savonen,
“Kansanterveystyö.”
67
Eila Linnanmäki, Espanjantauti Suomessa: Influenssapandemia 1918–1920
(Helsinki, 2005).
68
K.J. Pitkänen, J.H. Mielke & L.B. Jordes, “Smallpox and its Eradication in Finland:
Implications for Disease Control,” Population Studies 43 (1989): 1, pp. 95–111.
69
Jane Lewis, “The Prevention of Diphtheria in Canada and Britain 1914–1945,”
Journal of Social History 20 (1986): 1, pp. 163–76; Severi Savonen, “Calmetten suo-
jarokotuksesta keuhkotautia vastaan,” Suomen Lääkäriliiton Aikakauslehti 6/1940,
pp. 198–204.
336 helene laurent
as vaccine and serum production. The plan was unfortunately thwarted

by the ensuing war.70
The changes in vaccination practices are best illustrated by the atti-
tudes towards managing tuberculosis and diphtheria. In the prewar
years, tuberculosis was still very common in Finland. It was estimated
that almost the entire adult population had been exposed to the disease
and that 45,000 suffered from active infection, often unknowingly. The
mortality had slowly gone down, being approximately 7,000 per year
before the Winter War. Tuberculosis was the most common cause of
death of people of working age.71 Active campaigning against tubercu-
losis had started at the beginning of the twentieth century by the
founding of the philanthropic Finnish Anti-Tuberculosis Association
(FATA) in 1907. A fairly extensive dispensary system and a network of
sanatoria had been built by FATA in the 1930s in cooperation with the
municipalities and the state. In 1939, there were 5,000 beds for treat-
ment of tuberculosis and approximately two-thirds of the population
was reached by the dispensary network. Bovine tuberculosis was eradi-
cated from Finland in the 1930s by the slaughtering of cattle infected
with the bacteria.72
When the Winter War started, most of the patients were sent home
from the tuberculosis sanatoria, which became military hospitals. For
example, the building of the Tiuru sanatorium close to the Soviet bor-
der was completed in September 1939, but the hospital was immedi-
ately handed over to the Finnish Army and was not ceded back to
civilian use until the end of World War II. During the war years, mor-
tality from tuberculosis increased slightly among the soldiers at the
front, but tuberculosis cases among women stayed about the same.73 In
1948, the tuberculosis dispensaries were transferred to the public
authorities and in the same year tuberculosis screening and treatment
became obligatory.
70
A. Sakari Härö & Veijo Raunio, Seerumit aseina—vastustajina mikrobit:
Kansanterveyslaitoksen ja sen edeltäjien historia (Helsinki, 1990), p. 66; Severi Savonen,
“Euroopan hygieniakouluista ja kansanterveyden edistämislaitoksen perustamisesta
Suomeen,” Duodecim 54 (1938): 5, pp. 387–98.
71
A. Sakari Härö, “Tuberculosis in Finland: Dark Past, Promising Future,”
Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases Yearbook 24 (1998), pp. 15, 30.
72
A. Sakari Härö, Vuosisata tuberkuloosityötä Suomessa: Suomen Tuberkuloosin vas-
tustamisyhdistyksen historia (Helsinki, 1992), pp. 88–92, 106, 113.
73
Ole Wasz-Höckert, “Tuberkulosdödligheten i Finland under krigsåren,” Nordisk
Medicin 8 (1946): 32, pp. 2276–9.
The secretary of FATA, Dr. Severi Savonen, actively promoted tuber-

culosis prevention and treatment in Finland. He had been participat-
ing in the European conferences on tuberculosis in the 1930s, where
the general attitude towards BCG, the tuberculosis vaccine, was hope-
ful. A debate concerning the BCG had been going on for years in
Finland. By 1939 it was clear that the vaccine was riskless and efficient;
Savonen was finally reassured by the positive experience in Sweden,
where BCG was introduced generally from 1937 onwards. In the
United States the BCG vaccination was never added to the vaccination
program.74
Finally, during the Interim Peace in December 1940, the National
Board of Health made a decision to start voluntary BCG vaccinations.
The first targets were the infants born into tubercular homes, who were
cared for from their birth until one to two years of age in the so-called
Christmas Seal Homes founded in 1936, as well as the tuberculin nega-
tive teenagers, who were seen as a susceptible group.75 The vaccine was
obtained as war relief from the Gothenburg tuberculosis laboratory in
Sweden, from where it was flown weekly to Helsinki free of charge
until 1950. During the first two years the immunizations proceeded
slowly, mainly because of the war that had started again in June 1941.
The first mass vaccination was organized among the Finnish Army
recruits in 1943. Altogether 10,775 recruits were inoculated between
1943 and 1944 and were monitored for possible side effects. In this way
a wide experience of BCG was gained in a short period of time.76
Between 1948 and 1949 Finland was one of the countries where
the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Red Cross
associations of Nordic countries introduced a BCG mass vaccination
campaign. It could be easily organized because of the functioning
infrastructure not destroyed in the war. In 1949, WHO selected Finland
to serve as an experimental basis in the BCG campaigns. Since then all
newborns were vaccinated in their first days of life until 2006, when the
74
Linda Bryder, “ ‘We shall not find salvation in inoculation’: BCG vaccination in
Scandinavia, Britain and the USA, 1921–1960,” Social Science & Medicine 49 (1999): 9,
pp. 1157–67.
75
The Christmas Seal Homes were financed with the sale of colorful Christmas
stamps. In these homes, altogether 5,100 children from tubercular families were cared
for between 1936 and 1973. From 1940 onwards all infants were vaccinated with BCG
on arrival. Antti Tamminen, Joulumerkkikotimme 1936–1973 (Helsinki, 1982), pp.
88–89.
76
Härö, Tuberculosis, pp. 96–9; Härö, Vuosisata tuberkuloosityötä, p. 170; Savonen,
“Calmetten suojarokotuksesta.”
338 helene laurent
side effects of the vaccination were deemed to be greater than the

benefit.77
In the pre-vaccine era, diphtheria was a dreaded, highly endemic
childhood disease found in temperate climates. It remained one of the
leading causes of childhood death until widespread vaccination was
implemented. The antiserum treatment discovered by German Emil
Adolf von Behring in the late nineteenth century lowered the mortality
rate below ten percent. In the 1920s, diphtheria vaccines were devel-
oped and were used successfully in Canada and the United States. In
France, tetanus and diphtheria inoculations became mandatory for
army recruits in 1936.78
The onset of World War II catalyzed the last diphtheria pandemic in
Western industrialized countries starting in Germany and spreading to
the countries which it occupied. Holland, Denmark and Norway suf-
fered severe epidemics following the German occupation, Norway
being the most intensely infected country: in 1939 it had 54 diphtheria
cases, in 1943 there were 22,787 cases.79 In prewar Great Britain the
diphtheria vaccinations had not taken off. However, in 1940 a national
campaign for vaccination against diphtheria was launched by the
Ministry of Health, which caused a marked fall in diphtheria figures.
The continental epidemic never reached Great Britain.80
In Finland diphtheria was managed until 1940 solely with diphthe-
ria-antiserum and quarantine. Between 1927–37 there were around
300 to 1,000 cases a year with a mortality rate of seven to eight percent.
From 1938 the incidence began to rise and in 1943 an epidemic started,
peaking in 1945 with 18,000 cases.81 In December 1940, 30,000 doses
of diphtheria vaccine were received as war relief from the United States.
The Finnish physicians were not used to vaccines; they had treated the
local epidemics using the antiserum as a preventive measure as well.
The expiration date for some of the vaccine lots was July 1941, and they
77
Härö, Tuberculosis, p. 98; Eeva Salo, “BCG in Finland: Changing From a Universal
to a Selected Programme,” Eurosurveillance 11 (2006): 3.
78
Lewis, “Prevention of Diphtheria.”
79
J. Eskola, J. Lumio & J. Vuopio-Varkila, “Resurgent diphtheria—Are we safe?”
British Medical Bulletin 54 (1998): 3, pp. 635–45; S.D. Collins, “Diphtheria incidence
and trends in relation to artificial immunization, with some comparative data for scar-
let fever,” Public Health Reports 61 (1946), pp. 203–4; G. Stuart, “A note on diphtheria
incidence in certain European countries,” British Medical Journal 2 (1945): 4426,
pp. 613–5; Food, Famine and Relief 1940–1946 (Geneva, 1946), pp. 106–7.
80
Stuart, “Note on diphtheria”; Lewis, “Prevention of Diphtheria.”
81
Härö & Raunio, Seerumit aseina, pp. 84–5; SVT XI, 1939–52.
thus threatened to be spoilt. The National Board of Health wrote a cir-

cular to the physicians urging them to take advantage of the new pre-
ventive measure. In an article on diphtheria vaccine in a journal of the
Finnish Medical Association, the writer proclaimed that mass vaccina-
tion against diphtheria would be the solution in the future. All of the
donated 30,000 doses of vaccine were subsequently used with success
and thus both the Finnish health personnel and the public became
accustomed to the idea of vaccinations.82
When the diphtheria epidemic started in September 1943, the
National Board of Health ordered a general and voluntary immuniza-
tion against diphtheria for children aged between one and fifteen years.
The military recruits were immunized as well. The vaccine was bought
from the Axis countries Germany, Italy and Hungary. The bacterial
laboratory of the Finnish military had also started manufacturing
diphtheria vaccine, and by the autumn of 1944 Finland produced
enough vaccine for its own needs. The population brought their chil-
dren for inoculation readily. Approximately 400,000 children were
immunized in 1943–45. The vaccinations were conducted in schools
and in child welfare centers. Despite the campaign, the mortality rate
was considerable: altogether 3,000 persons died due to diphtheria in
the same period. The diphtheria epidemic from 1943 onwards finally
marked the onset of regular mass vaccinations of children and army
recruits, which could be conducted from 1944 onwards with domesti-
cally produced vaccine, a true relief in postwar Europe where there was
a shortage of almost everything.83
General Wartime Health of the Population

Looking at the wartime health situation in Finland, the mortality sta-
tistics do not reveal dramatic changes. Except for the slightly height-
ened mortality associated with the evacuation periods in 1940 and
1944–45, the civilian mortality did not rise; only the trend of secular
decline seen in the 1930s was leveled off.84
The rationing system favored children and evened out societal dif-
ferences. From 1943 onwards, schools provided free lunches, which
82
Lauri J. Järvinen, “Aktiivi-immunisoinnista difteriaa vastaan,” Suomen
Lääkäriliiton Aikakauslehti 1941, pp. 162–5; KA, LHA, Circular No. 721, 1941.
83
KA, LHA, Circular No. 812, 1943; KA, LHA, Eba 15; SVT XI, 1939–52.
84
SVT VI B, Väestötilastoa 122, 1941–45.
340 helene laurent
improved the nutrition and consequently the health of children. The

growing network of antenatal and child health care centers was also
important, especially for small children. The civilian war mortality was
considerably low, approximately 2,100 persons, being only a small part
of the general mortality. So, for example in 1941–45, 569 Finnish
women were killed in the air raids, but during the same period 1,627
women died from complications following pregnancy and birth.85
The problems in civilian health during the Winter War were con-
nected to the inadequate health resources allocated to the civilian
population. Luckily the war was short, and, except for the epidemics
among the evacuated children in Lapland, the population in general
remained healthy. There was also no lack of food or medical supplies at
the time. During the Interim Peace, experiences from all aspects of
civilian welfare, including health care, were collected and the errors in
organizations were duly noted. However, when the Continuation War
started in 1941, the mobilization was again total among the health per-
sonnel, because the war was expected to last only a few months at most
and no special arrangements would be necessary. Thus all the reforms
in, e.g., mother and child health care had to be halted. The physicians
were forced to stay at the front even though there was an almost
total standstill in war from the beginning of 1942 onwards. A local
doctor from Suistamo municipality serving in the Army wrote in
29 March 1942:
It would be high time for me to start with real work! It must be said that
this country is extremely rich when it can afford to keep hundreds of
physicians in total idleness! The job I’m doing doesn’t require a doctor!
[…] time passes so slowly in this idleness. It is a serious underestimation
of the training of a physician to keep us here doing almost nothing, but
this is how the system functions. We must hope that the war ends soon
so we can leave the card games and start to do real work.86
It was not until later in 1942 that some of the health personnel could be
demobilized or given three-month furloughs to work on the home
front. On the other hand, military hospitals with their specialist ser-
vices could also treat civilians, when it was otherwise quiet. Thus, for
instance, in the city of Sortavala in the reconquered Finnish Karelia,
85
SVT VI B, Väestötilastoa 101–2, 1941–45.
86
Mikkeli Provincial Archive (MMA), Archives of the Sortavala district physician
(Sortavalan piirilääkärin arkisto), Ec:1.
the military hospital also had a maternity and a children’s ward under
its roof.87
In the course of 1941 the food and supply situation worsened slowly.
The weather conditions of the summer and autumn were unfavorable;
the summer was dry and winter started early. Because the men were
at the front, the crop could not be harvested in full. The winter was
harsh and the potatoes were frozen. The food situation became precari-
ous. People were losing weight and vitamin deficiencies were common.
The difficult food situation continued until the summer of 1942, when
the new harvest was filling the supplies.
The scarcity of food was seen already in the autumn of 1941, but
worse times had been seen before. A medical officer in the prosperous
Ruovesi province reported in the spring of 1942 that
Weight loss due to lack of food is very common in the countryside among
people dependent on rationings, but usually not among children and not
at all among farmers. Some otherwise healthy people have lost even 30 to
40% of their weight. However, diseases and symptoms caused by hunger
such as edema or scurvy that were very common in the summer of 1918
have not been noticed.88
A medical officer of Kuusamo province, situated in Northeastern
Finland close to the Soviet border, concluded that
Considering the difficulties in 1942 the population has fared reasonably
well. Despite the scarcity of provisions, the monotonous and meager
nutrition, acute distress or directly devastating consequences have not
arisen. Before the worst the situation has always been corrected.89
This report has to be seen against the prewar situation, when malnutri-
tion in Kuusamo was still common. Studies carried out by the
Committee on Nutrition in 1940 showed that there were difficult nutri-
tional problems in the remote rural border regions in Eastern and
Northern Finland. Stunted growth in army recruits was common, and
approximately one-third of school children were inadequately fed. The
diet was monotonous, consisting of bread, potatoes and milk. If butter
was not available and milk was skimmed, calorie and vitamin deficien-
cies were imminent. The Committee on Nutrition proposed in 1940
serving free lunches for all elementary school children, because it was
87
KA, LHA, Eba:13–5, annual reports of the district physicians.
88
KA, LHA, Eba:14.
89
Ibidem.
342 helene laurent
shown that in the regions where school canteens were functioning,

malnutrition was reduced. The Act on Free School Lunches was then
passed in 1943.90
In this sense the wartime rationing and free, warm school lunches
secured better nutrition for many children from poor families than
they had had available before the war. For instance, a medical officer of
the southern city of Hamina noted that during the war the health of the
children had improved.91 The same equalizing phenomenon was seen
also in Great Britain, where free milk was served during the war years
in schools.92 However, malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies were still
recorded. In April 1942, after the long and difficult winter, a physician
of the mobile child health clinic circulating in Finnish Karelia close to
the eastern border reported that 30 percent of the inspected children
displayed initial signs of scurvy, Vitamin C deficiency. The situation
was directly related to the lack of potatoes. However, administration of
Vitamin C tablets received as war relief healed the children fast.93
One way of assessing the health of Finnish children during the war
is to examine the children who were sent to Sweden. By the end of
1942, around 20,000 “war children” had been transferred to Sweden,
especially from cities in Southern Finland and from the evacuated
Karelian families. In these families, the exceptionally difficult condi-
tions had already lasted several years. It can be expected that the health
of these children, who were mostly from poor urban families, would be
worse than average.
The children had not been examined by physicians in 1942 before
leaving Finland. Sweden started to perform thorough health inspec-
tions with blood tests and chest x-rays when it became evident that
many of the transferred children were ill. During the lengthy train and
boat travels, the children’s diseases, such as measles or chicken pox,
spread readily, which resulted in the hospitalization of 20 percent of
the children on arrival due either to acute infection or chronic ailment.
Several of the war children were underweight, many clearly malnour-
ished. Every third child was carrying head lice and about two percent
90
Committee Report 1940/5, pp. 201–2, 299–301, 429–31.
91
KA, LHA, Eba:14.
92
Food, Famine and Relief 1940–1946, pp. 60, 83, 118; Ina Zweiniger-Bargelowska,
Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption 1939–1955 (Oxford, 2000),
pp. 135–6.
93
MMA, Archives of the Sortavala district physician, Hf:1, “Laatokan-Karjalan
kiertävä lastenneuvola 1942–43.”
of the children suffered from tuberculosis. In prosperous Sweden, mal-

nutrition had become uncommon and tuberculosis had been receding
for a long time. The poor condition of the Finnish children was a shock
for the Swedish physicians. Dr. Olle Elgenmark claimed in 1943 that
the condition of more than 4,000 war children was so poor on arrival
in Sweden that they would probably have perished in Finland without
treatment. The number seems exaggerated and is clearly in conflict
with the opinions of Finnish physicians.94 The problem was obviously
partly due to cultural differences between Sweden and Finland as well
as to the vast gap in the standard of living at the time. The difficulties
experienced with the evacuations in Great Britain described by Richard
Titmuss were in many ways analogous.95
In Finland the possibilities for the medical treatment of severely ill
children were almost non-existent during the war. Finland Relief had
set up small children’s “cottage hospitals,” where minor illnesses were
treated by general practitioners. The pediatric surgical facilities were
almost totally lacking. By the summer of 1943, 2,300 sick children had
been sent to Sweden, half of them suffering from different forms of
tuberculosis. The children with tuberculosis of the bones and joints,
already very rare in Sweden, received specialist care that lasted for at
least six months. Congenital malformations were treated surgically,
among them 32 children with cleft lip and palate. The youngest of them
was a two-month-old baby, who was flown to Sweden for an operation
and brought back to the mother after five days.96
The Finnish nutrition situation can also be assessed by examining
the height and weight records of wartime children. There is an exten-
sive database of over 20,000 persons born in Helsinki between 1924
and 1944, the so-called Helsinki Birth Cohort, obtained from mater-
nity hospitals, child health clinics and schools.97 Using the data on
school children and comparing it to the children’s growth records in
other Nordic countries, it has been concluded that in occupied Norway,
where energy restrictions were the highest, a pronounced effect is seen
94
Olle Elgenmark, “Svensk sjukvård för finska barn under år 1942,” Svenska läkar-
tidningen 1943, pp. 654–62; Margit Jalo, “Tilastoa lastensiirroista Ruotsiin vuosina
1941–1946,” Sosiaalinen aikakauskirja 1950, pp. 107–16.
95
Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London, 1950), pp. 101–9.
96
Elgenmark, “Svensk sjukvård,” pp. 654–62.
97
On the Helsinki Birth Cohort, see David J.P. Barker, Clive Osmond, Eero
Kajantie & Johan G. Eriksson, “Growth and chronic disease: findings in the Helsinki
Birth Cohort,” Annals of Human Biology 36 (2009): 5, pp. 445–58.
344 helene laurent
Fig. 7.1. Civic society at work. The members of the Lotta Svärd Organization and
nurses attending the evacuees in June 1941, when the border areas were again emptied
of civilians. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 20251.
Fig. 7.2. A Finnish “war child” from the Karelian Isthmus on his way to Sweden, May
1944. The fate of these children was twofold: having to leave their families and homes
often in traumatic circumstances, yet at the same time being secured safety and com-
fort unavailable in Finland. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA
150046.
346 helene laurent
on height and weight development. Some effect is also observed in

the youngest school children from Helsinki between 1941 and 1942.
No effect of war was found in Swedish and Danish children.98
A rationing policy that favored children had its dark side, which
was directed towards the inmates in prisons and mental asylums.
These “outsiders” fared worst in the crisis situation. The prevailing pro-
natalist atmosphere protecting the potentially productive citizens vir-
tually abandoned these “burdens on the society,” who were totally
dependent on rationing. In prisons the worst period was experienced
in 1941–42, when food rations were totally inadequate, leading to ema-
ciation and the loss of the ability to work. In the notorious prison of
Sukeva food supplies intended for prisoners were stolen, which led to
legal action against the prison managers. There were 27 official deaths
from starvation in wartime prisons, but no statistics exist on the deaths
indirectly caused by deficient nutrition.99 As the following chapter by
Oula Silvennoinen demonstrates, the “hunger winter” of 1941–42 was
also the deadliest period for the Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finnish
custody.
In mental asylums the mortality rate approximately doubled during
the Continuation War. The reasons were manifold. The patients who
were able to work and could be cared for by their families were dis-
missed from the hospitals. Many of the mental hospitals were con-
verted to military hospitals in the summer of 1941, and the civilian
patients were transferred in trains without proper care and supervision
to other hospitals, the travel taking several days due to the simultane-
ous mobilization of the Finnish Army. In consequence, several patients
died during the transfers. In the winter of 1941–42, many patients
were starving. In the mental hospital of Pitkäniemi, one of the best-
managed institutions of its kind in Finland, it was becoming clear
already in the autumn of 1941 that food rations for the patients were
not adequate. Even if the rations were increased, mortality started
to rise. The problem was not exclusively due to insufficient nutrition,
but also due to the lack of space; part of the hospital was reserved for
98
E. Angell-Andersen et al., “The association between nutritional conditions dur-
ing World War II and childhood anthropometric variables in the Nordic countries,”
Annals of Human Biology 31 (2004): 3, pp. 342–55; see also Katri Malmivaara,
Helsinkiläislasten pituus- ja painokasvusta 0–14 vuoteen toisen maailmansodan aikana
(Helsinki, 1949).
99
Jussi Nuorteva, Suomen vankeinhoidon historiaa, Vol. 4: Vangit, vankilat, sota
(Helsinki, 1987), pp. 186–90.
military patients and the patients from evacuated hospitals also had to
be accommodated. Even if nutrition was getting better, the mental hos-
pitals were crowded until the end of the war, resulting in the spread of
communicable diseases. Typhoid fever and tuberculosis were common
causes of death.100 The increased mortality in asylums did not affect
general population statistics owing to the relatively small number of
inmates.101
In the general civilian population, the food crisis of 1941–42 did not
notably affect mortality figures, because the worst of it lasted only for a
few months. People stayed put because of the harsh winter and difficul-
ties in transport, which prevented the spread of epidemics. Infectious
diseases were slightly more common, but the use of the new sulpha
antibiotic lowered significantly the mortality of respiratory diseases,
such as pneumonia, which partly explains why “the hunger winter” did
not leave its mark on the mortality statistics.102
The period of stationary war lasted until June 1944. The long period
of war had resulted in a slow impoverishment of the country. Caring
for personal hygiene was becoming difficult as no soap was available.
The textile situation was alarming: the linen in hospitals were reduced
to rags and there was a severe shortage of bandage supplies. Various
paper products were used as substitute. Paper sheets, curtains, blankets
and bandages were introduced, many products remaining in use even
after the war. The food situation was reasonably good, even if the diet
was low in fat and meat products. Families were encouraged, when
possible, to grow their own potatoes and root vegetables for the winter.
Mushrooms and berries were picked from the woods. New species
were introduced: the growing of tomatoes became popular.103
All in all, wartime people were leaner and fitter and the children had
better teeth when no sugar was available. The meager diet resulted, on
one hand, in the decrease of illnesses related to obesity, but on the other
100
Ilkka Taipale & Ari-Pekka Blomberg, “The Fate of the Mentally Ill in War:
Statistics of Finnish Mental Hospital during World War II,” International Journal of
Mental Health 35 (2006): 4, pp. 40–1; KA, LHA, Egb:1–13, reports from mental hospi-
tals, 1938–45; SVT XI, 1939–45.
101
There were approximately 9,000 beds in mental hospitals. The number of civil
prisoners during the war years varied between 5,000 and 11,000. Nuorteva, Suomen
vankeinhoidon historiaa, pp. 21, 122.
102
SVT VI B, Väestötilastoa: Kuolemansyyt vuosina 1941–1945.
103
Maija Riihijärvi–Samuel, “Sotavuosien suomalainen ruokapöytä,” in Haataja
et al., Suomi 85, pp. 100–1; on the Finnish food crisis during World War II in general,
see Kaija Rautavirta, Petusta Pitsaan: Ruokahuollon järjestelyt kriisiaikojen Suomessa
(Helsinki, 2010), pp. 91–152.
348 helene laurent
hand the reserves were low and many suffered from latent malnutri-
tion and vitamin deficiency, especially Vitamin C. Together with
impaired hygiene the increase of skin problems, boils and scabies were
noted. The situation was precarious, which was seen in the autumn of
1944, when civilian mortality started to increase.104
The new evacuation of Finnish Karelia in the summer of 1944 was
performed without greater problems in health care. It could be con-
ducted in a more orderly fashion and in better weather conditions than
the evacuations during the Winter War. However, the evacuation of
over 100,000 civilians in late 1944 at the onset of the Lapland War
caused a considerable rise in mortality. Northern Sweden received
56,500 Finnish refugees that were accommodated in camps. The situa-
tion was analogous to the evacuations in 1940 with epidemics and high
mortality among small children. Medical services and isolation possi-
bilities in the barrack camps were insufficient, which caused a sanitary
crisis, the spread of infections and deaths among the children exhausted
by the often long and tiresome evacuations. For instance, in Vilhelmina
municipality in Sweden, 900 Finnish evacuees were received and
16 children died of infections, mostly from pneumonia. The case was
published in the Swedish newspapers causing a heated discussion,
which, however, did not have a marked effect on the situation.
Physicians and public health nurses were brought to the camps, but at
their arrival the damage had already been done.105
The civilians of Lapland evacuated to Western Finland, many of
them indigenous Sami people, were also experiencing health prob-
lems. They were accommodated as a rule in families, but the long travel
was exhausting. Tuberculosis was also spreading among the Samis not
yet been exposed to the disease and consequently susceptible to conta-
gion. Meri Virkkunen, a medical officer of the northernmost Finnish
province of Ivalo and Utsjoki, told in her report to the National Board
of Health about the vicissitudes of the evacuation period:
The evacuation of Lapland conducted in September 1944, when people
were forced to travel for days in crowded trains and trucks without
proper nourishment and without the chance to wash themselves, was
followed already during the journey by a difficult and persistent diarrhea
104
This was seen in the reports of the provincial district physicians; KA, LHA,
Eba:15–6.
105
Silvo Hietanen, “Jälleen maantiellä,” pp. 234–5; articles from Svenska Dagbladet,
Svenska Morgonbladet and Stockholms-tidningen in January–February 1945.
going through virtually all refugees. When no medical services were

organized at the receiving end, the circumstances were wretched.106
The health situation was difficult in the whole country in the winter of
1944–45, even if the war was almost over for Finland. People were on
the move, the soldiers were demobilized and the Finnish Karelians,
having permanently lost their homes, had to be resettled. In cities the
lack of housing was so severe that temporary accommodation was
organized in schools and in former air raid shelters. Infectious diseases
were again on the rise. A new whooping cough epidemic was one of the
reasons why infant mortality started to rise again and did not return to
the level of 1943 until 1949.107 Nevertheless, in the postwar European
comparison the Finnish hardships and challenges in health and social
issues were still relatively manageable and could be adhered to by func-
tioning state institutions and infrastructure.
The immediate postwar time was marked by rootlessness and inse-
curity of the future. The restless times reflected also on the incidence
of venereal diseases. The explosive increase of syphilis and gonorrhea
was experienced at the end of the war when the soldiers were demobi-
lized and returned home. The incidence of syphilis was at its highest
in 1946, when 4,769 cases were reported. Gonorrhea was consid-
erably more common: the peak was reached in 1945 with 22,833 new
cases. According to the new venereal disease law from 1943, the treat-
ment of venereal diseases was free of charge, but also obligatory. The
medical officers had an obligation to report all known cases and also to
track the possible infection carriers. In the case of gonorrhea, self-
medication was quite common in the war years, because at the time
sulpha antibiotics were still sold over the counter. The reckless use of
sulpha was already leading to the resistance of the gonorrhea bacte-
ria.108 Luckily, penicillin started to become available in Finland from
1945 onwards, being effective against both syphilis and gonorrhea.
III. Postwar Reconstruction
Postwar reconstruction could already be started in Finland in late

1944, earlier than in other European war-waging countries, even if
106
KA, LHA, Eba:16.
107
SVT XI, 1939–52.
108
Ibidem; KA, LHA, Eba:13–5, reports of the district physicians.
350 helene laurent
the war against the Germans continued in Lapland. In the greatly

impoverished Finland, the restart of foreign aid interrupted by the
Continuation War was essential also for the provision of social and
health services. The winter of 1944–45 was bleak, food supplies were
low, but the evacuees had to be attended to. Mortality was on the rise,
mostly due to infectious diseases.
International isolation started to ease in 1945 with Sweden acting as
a mediator. The officials of Finland Relief visited Sweden in late 1944 to
negotiate with the Swedish relief agencies.109 Foreign aid, which had
dried up after 1941, was resumed again when Finland started to receive
material and financial aid mainly from Sweden, from the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA),110 from
Switzerland and later from the United States. The fact that Finland had
fought also against the Germans in the Lapland War facilitated the
postwar humanitarian relief.111 Accordingly, most of the UNRRA aid
was directed to welfare services in Lapland: for the construction of
children’s homes and schools and for direct social assistance to the
families. A considerable part of the aid was used to rebuild the infra-
structure such as electrical power plants, hospitals and health centers
destroyed by the Germans. Supplementary feeding of children with
donated food supplies in schools, organized by Finland Relief, was
continued until the end of the 1940s.112
The postwar development of primary health services was very
quickly being boosted by foreign aid. The public health acts of July
1944 came into full force when hostilities were ceased and the health
care personnel could return to their civilian duties. Unlike some coun-
tries that had been isolated from foreign influences during the war
years and thus fallen behind in medical science, Finland had been
indirectly in contact with the Anglo-American medical research
through Sweden. As an ally of Germany, Finnish physicians had
109
Archives of the Finnish Foreign Ministry (UM), Foreign Aid Committee
(Ulkomaisen Avun Toimikunta), 540, 111:12, the minutes in 1944–45.
110
UNRRA, acting in 1943–49, was established to plan and administer the relief of
war victims in any area under the control of any of the United Nations. Finland was
able to receive 2.5 million USD from UNRRA after the consent of the Soviet Union in
August 1945. The aid was to be used exclusively in the regions ravaged by the Germans
in Northern Finland.
111
112
Keskitetty vapaa huoltotyö, pp. 268–71; UM, Foreign Aid Committee, 540,
111:16, the correspondence in 1949–56.
actively followed the developments in wartime German medicine.113

The “care of the masses” in the Finnish Army of both surgical and med-
ical patients had naturally improved the professional skills of the mobi-
lized physicians and helped to develop new, efficient techniques and
treatments.114 The foreign aid directed to health care was used for the
building of both maternity and child health centers and children’s hos-
pitals in Helsinki, Kuopio and Rovaniemi. In rural areas over 500 so-
called “health houses” were built between 1946 and 1955. By offering
housing the communities could attract public health nurses and mid-
wives to more remote regions. The “sponsor-commune movement”
between Swedish and Finnish municipalities, mediated by the
Mannerheim League, was to become the most successful way of assis-
tance. Finland proved to be a “model country” for relief because of the
functioning, relatively stable civil society, low corruption and a high
number of trained professionals.115
It is evident that the relationship between the state and its citizens
changed in many ways during the war. When the state expanded its
functions into new areas that touched intimately on the lives of its
citizens it meant also that the people felt more bound to it and per-
ceived it as “their own.” Participation in the war effort also brought
rewards in the form of new social and health benefits. This was true,
however, only for the productive or potentially productive citizens. The
stark contrast in the Finnish wartime health policies towards mothers
and children and towards the mentally ill and imprisoned demon-
strates this clearly. As Sonya O. Rose has noted, when the definition
of citizenship is reserved for the “independent and rational” persons
who can be “trusted to fulfill the formal and informal obligations of
community members,” the exclusion of citizenship rights from the
“non-productive” members of the community can be easily justified.116
113
Marjatta Hietala, “Tutkijat ja Saksan suunta: Suomalaisen tutkijoiden kontakteja
ja kohtaloita toisen maailmansodan aikana,” in Marjatta Hietala, ed., Tutkijat ja sota
(Helsinki, 2006), pp. 30–141.
114
G. af Björksten et al., Sotakirurgisia kokemuksia (Porvoo, 1946). The Finnish
medical community had traditionally had very close ties to the German scientific
world. In the late 1940s, it started to turn towards the United States, when an extensive
system of scholarships was set up.
115
Aura Korppi-Tommola, Ystävyyttä yli Pohjanlahden: Ruotsin ja Suomen välinen
kummikuntaliike 1942–80 (Helsinki, 1982), passim.
116
Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime
Britain, 1939–45 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 17–8.
352 helene laurent
Thus, the eugenic measures, sterilization and isolation of mentally ill

and handicapped people could exist simultaneously with the new
health and social reforms—indeed, they could be developed
hand-in-hand.
The postwar program of the Finnish left-center government included
a general statement according to which “social policy must be directed
so that it provides maximum social security for every citizen.” Following
the British example famously sketched by economist William
Beveridge, in 1948 Professor Heikki Waris emphasized universal
social security as a “unifying concept of modern social policy.”117 The
Finnish war years seem to have produced specifically the principles of
state social politics directed towards the whole population, the so-
called universalistic criteria of social policies.118 It can be said that
T.H. Marshall’s idea of social citizenship, where the duty of the state, in
addition to civic and political rights, is also to provide social and eco-
nomic protection for all of its citizens, was emerging in Finland.119
In the immediate postwar years the idea was still on a rhetorical level
and concerned only the productive part of society. In the postwar
reconstruction era, however, the share of social expenditure in the cen-
tral government budget rose from three percent in 1945 to 13 percent
in 1950. The majority of the new social legislation was related to family
policies, the most important being the Act on Universal Child Benefits
from 1948.120
The intensive reconstruction period ended in 1952, when the final
war reparations were paid to the Soviet Union and the Olympic Games
were held in Helsinki. However, the reconstruction era can be seen as
continuing until the mid-1950s, when the pro-natalist projects in
health care were completed. The state policies that favored families
were not equivalent with a welfare society. The Public Sickness
Insurance Act was not passed until 1964, with Finland being one of the
last countries in Europe.121 Welfare legislation was lagging behind the
117
Flora, Growth to Limits, p. 202.
118
Eräsaari, Taloudellinen jälleenrakentaminen, p. 45; Satka, Making Social
Citizenship, p. 117.
119
On social citizenship, see T.H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class,” in
Christopher Pierson & Francis G. Castles, eds., The Welfare State Reader (Cambridge,
2005), pp. 32–41; cf. Bryan S. Turner, “T.H. Marshall, Social Rights and English
National Identity,” Citizenship Studies 13 (2009): 1, pp. 65–73.
120
Flora, Growth to Limits, pp. 201–2; Eräsaari, Taloudellinen jälleenrakentaminen,
passim.
121
Pauli Kettunen, “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of
History 26 (2001): 3, pp. 225–47.
Western average, as most of the respective laws were introduced in and

after the latter half of the 1950s. Only then was the strong emphasis on
family policies put in the background and, in hindsight, the building of
“welfare Finland” started.122 Having focused so predominantly on the
policies of child and maternity health and, at the same time, neglecting
the male population resulted in a situation in the 1960s, when Finland
was inhabited by the “healthiest children” and the “sickest men” in
Europe.123
***
The “long World War II” spanned from 1939 to approximately 1955 in
Finland, as the war reparations and reconstruction lengthened the
period. From the perspective of social and health policies, the begin-
ning of this period can be stretched to 1937, when the “Red Earth”
government started to implement a new, state-centered approach to
public health and social issues. Thus, continuity rather than breakages
can be seen in the development of Finnish social and health policies
from the prewar to the postwar era. Reformist attitudes and a stress on
prevention were typical for the prewar period of economic boom.
With the increasing threat of war, national unity and consensus were
aspired to. Especially in public health, many reforms were realized dur-
ing and after World War II that had been already planned in peacetime.
The state became stronger during the war and the controlling role of
the central administration was indispensable in seeing through the
several large reforms. The old “poor relief ” changed slowly to a profes-
sionalized social work. Even if the voluntary relief work proved to be
crucial during the war years, the NGOs were pushed aside after the war
both in social work and in health care as the state took the leading role.
No dramatic changes were noticed in the health of the population.
The changes in morbidity and mortality were connected more with
sanitary problems related to the evacuations than with problems in
nutrition. Legislative groundwork for public health, which stressed
prevention and maternal and child health, was prepared during the
war years, thus enabling its rapid take-off after the war. The postwar
family policies coincided with the baby boom era, but it is difficult to
assess how much the increased birthrate was influenced by the social
122
Flora, Growth to Limits, 212–3.
123
Pekka Kuusi, 60-luvun sosiaalipolitiikka (Porvoo, 1962), p. 256. Available also in
English, Social Policy for the Sixties: A Plan for Finland (Helsinki, 1964).
354 helene laurent
benefits and how much it was just a question of marriages being delayed
by the war. The high fertility peak of the latter 1940s eventually evened
out in the 1950s.
The wartime mentality that aspired towards social equality was
directing Finland towards the social state and the universalist Nordic
welfare society, which, however, did not make its true appearance until
the 1960s. Even if it cannot be said that the welfare ideology originated
from the war or was caused by it, the war, nevertheless, functioned as a
vast “experiment” for the capability of the state to organize, administer
and master massive social projects. Many of the ideologues and agents
of the welfare politics of the 1960s and 1970s had been active already
during the war years gaining both practical experience and ideological
principles on the proper role and functions of the state in society. The
national consensus strengthened during the wartime, and the engage-
ment of the Finnish left in the war effort created the political condi-
tions that made it possible to approve and push through major social
reforms after the war.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIMITS OF INTENTIONALITY
SOVIET PRISONERS-OF-WAR AND CIVILIAN INTERNEES
IN FINNISH CUSTODY
Oula Silvennoinen
In all wars where prisoners have been taken, the very act of surrender-
ing has probably been the most dangerous moment for a soldier giving
him- or herself up. In the heat of battle, soldiers can easily overlook
instructions and exhortations for proper treatment of enemy combat-
ants. Fear, hatred, agitation and errors of judgment all combine to
ensure that many of those who decided to throw up their arms never
reached the prisoner-of-war collecting places. In all armies, enemy sol-
diers were killed while they were trying to surrender, killed immedi-
ately after having surrendered by soldiers thirsting for revenge and
even killed when they were being taken to the rear, often simply for
reasons of convenience or because they were thought to present a secu-
rity risk to their captors’ own troops.
After a surrendered enemy soldier had reached a prisoner-of-war
collecting place, an organizing camp or a permanent prisoner-of-war
camp situated well beyond the combat zone, he was usually already in
a relatively safe position. In World War II, the fulfilling of the basic
needs of a prisoner-of-war should have been guaranteed according to
the international treaties all the belligerents had either signed and
ratified or which they at least claimed in some way to observe and
adhere to.
These treaties as international law stipulated that prisoners-of-war
everywhere should be guaranteed shelter, food, medical care and a
chance of contact with home. The reality of war, and of World War II in
particular, was that these basic stipulations were all too often disre-
garded, and the prisoners-of-war were subjected to inadequate or even
deliberately murderous conditions and treatment. Finally, for certain
groups of prisoners-of-war, like Jewish soldiers or the political officers
of the Red Army, the situation was even grimmer as they were targets
of an active campaign of systematic mass murder.
356 oula silvennoinen
Finland participated in World War II for almost the whole length

of the conflict in Europe. On the last day of November 1939, the coun-
try became first a victim of Soviet aggression in the resulting Winter
War and then an ally of Nazi Germany in the Continuation War
between June 1941 and September 1944. After that, Finland still had
to continue making war against the German troops retreating into
Norway until April 1945. During these conflicts, Finland also became
one of the powers to have enemy soldiers in its custody. The story of
the way the Finns treated these soldiers, Soviet and German, as well
as the Soviet civilians in the areas occupied by Finland in 1941–44, tells
something important about the psychology of not just this particular
country at war, but perhaps also something of humans at war in
general.
I. International Law and the Prisoners-of-War in 1939–40
Finland and the International Treaties

Upon becoming an unwilling belligerent power in a conflict later
known as World War II, Finland had to find ways to deal with enemy
soldiers falling into Finnish hands as prisoners. Finnish civilian
and military authorities had already pondered these questions for
some time, encouraged by the increasing threat of war in the autumn
of 1939. The basic problems arose from expectations of reciprocity
and economy of effort; for most states, there was a clear incentive to
adhere to the already well-established international law on the rules
of war in general, as the enemy could then also be expected and
required to do so. If it would not, there was little reason to waste
resources by following international treaties to the letter, but instead, at
the very least, cut corners here and there to make matters easier to
handle.
As a result, the Geneva Convention was to be violated everywhere in
the coming conflict, ranging from deliberate and systematic mass
violations to the occasional, minor and individual. The root source for
the impotence of the international treaties to curb the horrors of war
was ultimately that the dictatorial or authoritarian regimes of Europe
and Asia, such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union,
saw the treaties as merely tactical tools, not declarations of principle
they would be bound and willing to respect. And it was the Soviet
Union Finland was at war with, a state whose level of commitment to
limits of intentionality 357
international law was at best questionable and whose record as a part-

ner in international efforts at cooperation elicited little trust.1
The legislative basis on which to base the emerging Finnish pris-
oner-of-war policy was also discovered to be anything but unambigu-
ous, even though Finland had in 1922 joined the signatories of the
Hague Convention of 1907. Section IV of this treaty laid out the basic
principles of international law in regard to prisoners-of-war: they
were the responsibility of the capturing power, which was also liable
to take care of their upkeep and was responsible for ensuring that
their basic rights would be respected. Finland had also signed the
1929 Geneva Convention, further elaborating on the rights of prison-
ers-of-war and stipulating on the treatment of enemy wounded and
sick, as well as introducing the very term “prisoner-of-war” into inter-
national law. Finland had eventually not ratified the treaty because
parts of it were seemingly in conflict with the Finnish military penal
code. The conflicting parts had to do with the right of the capturing
power to punish a prisoner-of-war. The Finnish law in this aspect
was notably harsher than what the Geneva Convention would allow,
handing out capital punishment for deeds aimed against the war-
making capabilities of Finland and its allies, as well as for mutiny or
escape.2
The problem of reciprocity emerged from the unclear status of the
Soviet Union in respect to the decrees of the Hague and Geneva
Conventions. Imperial Russia had been one of the original signatories
of the Hague Convention in 1907, but the Soviet government had not
taken a clear stand on which treaties it saw as binding. The Soviet
Union had also not signed the Geneva Convention, preferring instead
to draw up legislation of its own, which in theory guaranteed its adher-
ence to the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The Soviet Union had no
wish to bind itself with international treaties, especially as the Soviet
1926 penal code defined surrendering to the enemy as treason. By
adhering to international treaties on the treatment of prisoners-of-war,
the Soviet Union would have opened up another hazardous channel
1
Jonathan F. Vance, ed., Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment (Millerton,
NY, 2006), p. 471.
2
dassa (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 151–2; see also Antti Kujala, “Illegal Killing of Soviet
Prisoners of War by Finns during the Finno-Soviet Continuation War of 1941–44,”
Slavonic and East European Review 87 (2009): 3, pp. 429–51.
for international meddling and possibly created a route for the dreaded
spies to get inside the Soviet system.3
As a result, upon the commencement of hostilities between Finland
and the Soviet Union in 1939 both sides of the conflict had, for their
own reasons, refrained from fully adhering to the Hague and Geneva
stipulations. This left both the Finnish and Red Army prisoners-of-war
falling into Finnish or Soviet hands without full formal protection.
On the Finnish side there was from early on a clear understanding that
the Hague and Geneva Conventions formed a binding form of interna-
tional law, but it was possible, to a degree, to overlook their stipulations
by appealing to technicalities.
Winter War: The First Prisoners-of-War

The Finnish authorities began to take measures for prisoners-of-war in
late November 1939, at a time when the threat of war was already
clearly in the air. Specific problems to be addressed were the placement
of the prisoners, supply needs and guarding arrangements. In the
event of war, Finnish planning provided for a capacity to house 5,800
prisoners. The system to emerge from this prewar planning was cen-
tered not on the Army, but on a paramilitary organization, the Civil
Guards Defense Corps, and on the civilian prison administration. The
Civil Guards were seen as a natural partner, able to release the Army to
more pressing tasks. It had a prominent role in the Finnish defense
system with an organization present in every parish on the home front.
The Civil Guards with its nation-wide organization thus came to
form the backbone of the system. Its General Staff, reformed for war-
time needs and named the Home Forces General Staff (Kotijoukkojen
Esikunta) took responsibility for transporting and guarding the pris-
oners. Lodgings were to be provided by the prison administration, the
majority of the Winter War prisoners-of-war ending up in regular
Finnish prisons and prison camps instead of specific prisoner-of
-war camps. The Army supplied the Civil Guards with funding and
guard personnel, and was supposed to oversee the functioning of the
system by setting up the Office of Inspector of Prisoners-of-War
(Sotavankitarkastaja). The first occupant of this position was Colonel
Maximilian Spåre, a veteran of the Finnish Civil War, who had received
3
Dmitri Frolov, Sotavankina Neuvostoliitossa: Suomalaiset NKVD:n leireissä talvi-
ja jatkosodan aikana (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 59–64; Kujala, Vankisurmat, pp. 24–5.
his officer training in the Imperial Russian Army (Hamina Cadet

School) and served in peacetime as a police chief.4
The Finnish Red Cross also became active already before the start of
the hostilities. In October 1939 it approached the government and
the Army and offered to take care of registering the prisoners and of
transmitting information concerning them as required by the Geneva
Convention. To this end, the Finnish Red Cross was allowed to set
up a central registry containing the personal information of all the
prisoners-of-war registered by the Finnish authorities. This informa-
tion was, as further stipulated in the Convention, to be forwarded to
the International Red Cross (Comité international de la Croix-Rouge)
in Geneva, to be exchanged with information provided by Soviet
authorities on Finnish soldiers in Soviet custody.
The Soviet Union, however, failed to reciprocate. As no official Soviet
declaration on the matter or any information concerning Finnish
prisoners-of-war in Soviet hands was seen to be forthcoming after the
opening of the hostilities, Finland retaliated by also withdrawing from
some of its treaty obligations. No prisoner-of-war information was
therefore exchanged through the International Red Cross during the
Winter War, and the stipulations of the Geneva Convention were thus
made irrelevant. The Finnish Red Cross nevertheless continued to
enter the personal information of the individual prisoners into its reg-
istry, which came to contain 5,594 cards, each representing a Soviet
prisoner-of-war. This number does not include every Soviet prisoner-
of-war of the Winter War, however. The Red Cross failed to register
cases it was not, for one reason or another, given information about,
and the true count of Soviet soldiers taken prisoner by the Finns is
closer to 6,000, perhaps even more than that.5
The thousands of Red Army soldiers entering Finnish captivity were
in an unenviable position, and there were little grounds to expect leni-
ency from their captors. Both Finnish and international opprobrium
was being heaped on the Soviet Union for its naked aggression against
a peaceful neighbor. Ethnic hatred of Russians, a rather widespread
feature of the interwar Finnish mindset, consciously stoked by some
4
Juha Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit Suomessa,” in Jari
Leskinen & Antti Juutilainen, eds., Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (Helsinki, 2005),
p. 1033; Lars Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen sodanaikainen kuolleisuus
Suomessa (Helsinki, 2009), p. 67.
5
Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, pp. 69–70.
nationalist and right-wing groups, also raised its head, accentuated by

the current crisis between Finland and the Soviet Union. And finally,
Red Army soldiers, and especially their political officers, were easily
seen as political soldiers of the communist regime and had to face the
often sharply anti-communist attitudes of Finnish officers and men.
There were, however, important psychological mechanisms working
for the prisoners. Finland was widely understood to be engaged in a
struggle for survival, where the country was continuously staring
defeat in the face. There was little point in mistreating the prisoners,
because it would serve only to endanger the sympathy felt towards
Finland, have an adverse effect on the supply of international help
Finland was receiving and weaken the negotiating position in possible
peace talks. Furthermore, should the worst happen and Finland fall
under Soviet occupation, retribution for the mistreatment of the pris-
oners might be savage.
It must also be noted that Finland was not yet experiencing the
shortages in food and resources, which so indelibly were to character-
ize its later participation in World War II. There was still enough food
to keep the prisoners adequately fed. As the Finnish Army was engaged
in defensive operations, producing modest numbers of prisoners any-
way, the capacity of the prisoner-of-war administration also proved
adequate, especially as it was raised to 8,000 prisoners after the begin-
ning of hostilities. The Inspector of Prisoners-of-War, Maximilian
Spåre, aptly summarized the Finnish attitudes in his letter to the Home
Forces General Staff in January 1940:
While there is no reason for us to pamper them [Soviet prisoners-of-war],
I do think it necessary to so arrange matters, that the reputation we are
enjoying among the civilized world will not be unnecessarily tarnished
through incompetent or inappropriate treatment.6
A total of 135 Soviet prisoners-of-war are recorded to have died in
Finnish custody during the Winter War. This translates into a total
mortality of 2.4 percent, a figure in no way outrageous concerning
World War II prisoners-of-war in general. The real number is in
all likelihood somewhat higher, considering that the total number of
prisoners-of-war in Finnish custody had to have been higher than
the figure recorded by the Finnish Red Cross. Taking into account that
many of the prisoners were taken after having spent considerable
6
As quoted in Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, p. 69.
periods of time surrounded, out of supplies and exposed to harsh win-

ter conditions, and that many of them were already wounded when
taken prisoner, the mortality rate among the Soviet prisoners-of-war in
the Winter War has to be considered low.7
After the end of the Winter War in March 1940, Finland repatriated
a total of 5,648 Soviet soldiers from Finnish captivity, and had by the
summer of 1940 received 847 Finnish prisoners-of-war in return. For
some of the Soviet prisoners, repatriation proved much more danger-
ous than captivity had been, as some of those returning to the Soviet
Union were to face repression or death simply because of the accident
of having been taken prisoner in a war.8
The number of Soviet prisoners-of-war taken in the Winter War,
roughly 6,000, was much lower than the number of people that the
Finnish prisoner-of-war administration had to cope with in the next
war Finland was to fight during World War II. By the time Finland
joined the German assault upon the Soviet Union in the summer of
1941, many things had changed, in both the ability and willingness of
the Finnish authorities to handle their prisoners-of-war strictly within
the limits set by international law. By late 1941, serious problems had
begun to crop up.
II. Prisoner-of-War Administrations on Finnish Territory, 1941–45
Finland emerged from the experience of the Winter War scarred and
shaken, both physically and psychologically. Having been given a sharp
reminder of the way might makes right, embittered and grief-stricken
for the loss of life and important territories, having to resettle in the
remaining part of the country some 400,000 refugees streaming from
the area to be ceded to the Soviet Union, politically isolated and being
subjected to Soviet threats of a new war or occupation, sympathies
toward the Soviet Union were difficult to find. The experience of the
7
The number is drawn from the database containing the results obtained by
the Finnish National Archives research project “Finland, Prisoners-of-War and
Extraditions, 1939–55.” The database is accessible through the Internet, http://kronos
.narc.fi/wwar/wwar.html.
8
Juha Pohjonen, “Soviet Demands for Repatriations from Finland between 1944
and 1955,” in Lars Westerlund, ed., POW Deaths and People Handed Over to Germany
and the Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report by the Finnish National Archives
(Helsinki, 2008), pp. 180–1.
Winter War provided a radicalizing stimulus to Finnish attitudes,

already tempered with strong traditions of anti-communism and feel-
ings of ethnic superiority or outright hatred towards Russians. It is
against this background that the developments in the treatment of
Soviet prisoners-of-war soon to fall into Finnish hands have to be seen
and taken stock of.
For every warring army, prisoners-of-war formed both an opportu-
nity and a liability. They were a burden to resources and logistics, as
they had to be transported, fed, clothed, accommodated, guarded and
given medical treatment. A large number of prisoners could mean a
serious strain on the resources of the capturing power. At the same
time, prisoners were a potential source of valuable intelligence con-
cerning the enemy. Their work potential could also be exploited, and
the prisoners, especially Soviet prisoners not necessarily too eager in
their loyalty to Stalin, formed a recruiting base from which it was pos-
sible to find individuals, or even the personnel for whole combat units,
who would be willing to serve a new master.
The war against the Soviet Union saw all these features and more.
The prisoners on both sides, Axis and Soviet, were, as a rule, treated
exceptionally harshly even according to the standards of World War II.
For the Nazi regime, the prime reason to this was that the majority of
Soviet prisoners represented nationalities considered to be active and
hereditary “racial enemies” of Germany and Germandom, either “sub-
humans” or politically “undesirable elements” within the areas already
planned to form the postwar German empire in the east.
Soviet reasons for mistreating and brutalizing their prisoners lacked
a similar clearly defined racial motivation, while ideologically the Axis
prisoners-of-war were in Soviet eyes no better. For the Soviet govern-
ment, enemy prisoners were representatives of the fascist aggressors
who had caused enormous damage to the Soviet state and society. The
prisoners could thus be freely exploited with at best only a rudimen-
tary regard for their survival. Notably ruthless toward its own citizens,
the Soviet regime came to treat even its own captured soldiers as trai-
tors to the Socialist Motherland. Unsurprisingly, enemy soldiers falling
into Soviet hands could expect no leniency, but were as a rule subjected
to brutal treatment, suffering from malnourishment, disease and expo-
sure. The ingredients for major tragedies in the prisoner-of-war camps
on both sides of the frontline were at hand from the very beginning of
the German-Soviet war.
Dealing Out Scarcity: Finnish Prisoner-of-War Administration

By the opening of hostilities with the Soviet Union in June 1941,
Finnish prisoner-of-war administration was still organized along the
same principles as during the Winter War. This meant that the few
prisoners falling into Finnish hands during this early period of inactiv-
ity by the Finnish armed forces were still being placed in regular pris-
ons and prison camps. But the Finnish Army was already busy setting
up a prisoner-of-war administration in earnest during the first days of
July 1941, with military operations against the Soviet Union from
Finnish territory about to commence.
The official Finnish position at the start of the war in 1941 was that
the Soviet government had failed to announce that it would consider
itself bound by the Hague Convention. Finland was thus reciprocally
free from putting it fully into practice with regard to Soviet prisoners-
of-war. At the end of June 1941, the Finnish Army High Command
issued a set of guidelines on the treatment of prisoners-of-war. It was
defined that the prisoners were the responsibility of the Finnish gov-
ernment and their treatment had to follow humanitarian principles,
but that they could be used as workforce depending on their capabili-
ties and condition. It was further decreed that wounded or sick prison-
ers had to be given treatment. So far, these stipulations were roughly in
line with the Hague Convention.9
The use of prisoner labor, however, came to form a permanent fea-
ture of Finnish prisoner-of-war administration. From early on able-
bodied prisoners were widely employed in tasks such as road-building
or fortification works, which supported the Finnish military opera-
tions. The only compensation the prisoners received for their work
were better rations. To be able to take the offensive Finland came to
mobilize an unusually high percentage of its available manpower, with
considerable consequences for agricultural production. Attempts to
relieve the burning shortages of workforce in the agricultural sector led
first to the demobilization of the older men as soon as the operative
situation allowed. Later in the war, the measures adopted led to the
employment of prisoner labor also in the civilian sector of the econ-
omy, and prisoners-of-war were lent to individual farmsteads as agri-
cultural workforce. The farmers were instructed to keep a strict distance
9
Kujala, Vankisurmat, pp. 152–3.
from the prisoners but, understandably, living under the same roof
often led to much more intimate relations. For most of the prisoners so
employed, a posting to a Finnish farm at least meant that there was
more and better food available. Prisoner labor had a significant effect
on Finland’s ability to keep the population fed during the last phase of
the war, when all age groups again had to be called into service under
the pressure of the Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944.
The Hague Convention was not considered binding in regard to
punishments dealt out to the prisoners, but, as in earlier Finnish prac-
tice, the Finnish military penal code was to be followed instead. In
early July 1941, the High Command issued new instructions on meth-
ods of discipline, which gave camp commanders the right to subject
offending prisoners to physical punishment. Prisoners-of-war making
themselves liable to prosecution were made to stand trial in Finnish
military courts. For grave offenses, such as deeds aimed at endangering
Finnish troops or their allies, mutiny and sometimes even escape
attempts, the punishment scale went all the way to capital punishment.
Physical punishment typically meant lashes, with a 25-stroke upper
limit, while executions were carried out by shooting.10
In contrast to its earlier practice, in July 1941 the Soviet government
announced, in a diplomatic note to Germany, its readiness to adhere to
the Hague Convention if its enemies would also do so. In August, the
Finnish government told the International Commission of the Red
Cross that it would consider itself bound by Article IV of the Hague
Convention if the Soviet Union would reciprocate. Germany, however,
refused the Soviet feelers. As a result, the Soviet Union in August 1941
made an announcement to the effect that it would not consider itself
bound to the Convention without a reciprocal German declaration.
Thus, the status of prisoners-of-war in all the countries embroiled in
war against the Soviet Union was left unclear. It was up to the individ-
ual governments how far they would respect the existing international
law in regard to the prisoners in their custody.11
Finland entered a new war with a prisoner-of-war administration
system that in its essentials was carried over from the makeshift organ-
ization established during the Winter War. The Administrative Office
of the Organizational Department of the High Command (Päämajan
10
11
Järjestelyosaston hallinnollinen toimisto) was technically in charge of

prisoner-of-war affairs, but the organizational basis was thin. As the
permanent prisoner-of-war camps were situated in the home area, far
away from the frontlines and the jurisdiction of frontline units, the
practical responsibility for prisoner-of-war affairs fell naturally to the
Home Forces General Staff. Besides running the permanent prisoner-
of-war camps, the wartime tasks of the Home Forces General Staff
came to include duties in training new recruits for the armed forces
and manning anti-aircraft positions.12
Red Army soldiers laying down their arms were first taken from the
frontlines to a prisoner-of-war collection point (sotavankien kokoa-
mispaikka), run by divisions and comparative operative units. After
that, the prisoners were taken to organizing points at the army corps
level. From there, the prisoners left the area of operations and were
transported to organizing camps (järjestelyleiri), from where they were
finally sent to permanent prisoner-of-war camps (sotavankileiri) in
Finland. Female prisoners were sent to regular camps in separate
detachments. Officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and Red
Army political officers were separated from the rank-and-file.13
Prisoners naturally represented a potentially valuable source of
information about the enemy, its disposition of troops, general condi-
tions among enemy forces and even about Soviet society and the likeli-
hood of it collapsing in the near future. Interrogations of the prisoners
were therefore begun as soon as possible, usually immediately upon
capture, when the prisoner had had no time to think about his answers
and was likely to be in a position least resistant to questioning, due to
the shock and confusion of combat. Prisoners appearing cooperative
or especially knowledgeable were then interrogated repeatedly all the
way during their transfer to permanent prisoner-of-war camps, where
interrogators attached to camp personnel took over. Prisoners consid-
ered especially valuable were taken to be handled by professional inter-
rogators at the Finnish High Command.14
By the end of August 1941, when the Finnish Army had begun
its operations against the Soviets also in the south and the first consid-
erable batches of prisoners began to come in, there were already
12
Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,” p. 1033.
13
14
Ibidem, p. 1034.
20 prisoner-of-war camps in existence. They were concentrated in the

southern half of Finland, close to the railroad network and away from
the vicinity of the front. In addition, two separate organizing camps
were set up to handle the reception of prisoners from frontline units,
quarantine them to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, interro-
gate the prisoners and convey them to permanent prisoner-of-war
camps in a practice that had its German counterpart in the system
of the Durchgangslager. During the last months of 1941, three more
prisoner-of-war camps were set up, but these were in operation for a
short time only. For the rest of the war, the camp system set up in July
1941 remained the permanent core of Finnish prisoner-of-war admin-
istration handling the vast majority of prisoners.15
Altogether, there came to function a total of 32 Finnish prisoner-
of-war camps. Not all of these were active throughout the war, how-
ever, but instead sprang into existence only to be run down or merged
with other camps. Major camps had under them a number of sub-
camps and work detachments. To look after the medical needs of the
prisoners, a network of five prisoner-of-war hospitals had been set up
by the autumn of 1941 to take care of wounded or sick prisoners.
Recalcitrant prisoners and those who had attempted escape could,
from July 1942 onwards, be sent to a special camp with stricter
discipline.16
On the other end of the spectrum, a special prisoner-of-war camp,
Camp No. 21, was set up in early September 1941 to house prisoners-
of-war belonging to the supposedly Finnish-oriented Finnic nationali-
ties of the Soviet Union. On the initiative of the Finnish occupation
authorities, eager to find future inhabitants for the conquered territo-
ries from among the prisoners-of-war, the High Command gave
a directive in which it described the conditions on which the prison-
ers were to be selected for placement into this camp. The primary
condition was fluency or at least satisfying knowledge of Finnish.
Prisoners stemming either from Eastern Karelia, Ingria, Estonia,
Vepsian district or from the Finnic enclaves around Tver and Novgorod
were deemed “Finnish enough.” After a period of instruction at the
camp, the prisoners were freed to join a special combat battalion for
15
Lars Westerlund, ed., Talvi-, jatko- ja Lapin sodan sotavanki- ja siviilileirit 1939–
1944: Käsikirja (Helsinki, 2008), passim.
16
Ibidem, pp. 127–36; Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,”
p. 1033.
Finnic volunteers (Heimopataljoona 3), which was activated in

November 1942.17
Two prisoner-of-war camps came to function in a special role from
the outset of the war. These were Camp No. 1, set up in the southwest-
ern parish of Köyliö in late June 1941, and Camp No. 3, set up in
October 1941 in Ruokolahti in Southeastern Finland. Camp No. 1 was
reserved for officers, Camp No. 3 for politically suspect prisoners-of-
war. Among these were the political officers of the Red Army, political
commissars and lower-ranking politruks, members of partisan detach-
ments and desanty—reconnaissance and sabotage operatives infiltrated
or parachuted across the frontline to operate in the Finnish rear—and,
as the initial directives formulated it, “suspect Jews,” Jewish prisoners
with a supposedly communist background. These were all people it
was thought fit to isolate from the other prisoners to prevent the
spreading of communist propaganda or other agitation, which might
make the other prisoners more difficult to handle.18
The Finnish Army and the Home Forces General Staff was, by the
start of its active operations against Soviet troops, quite prepared to
handle considerable numbers of prisoners. The planned capacity of the
camps in existence was 24,000. Yet the number of Soviet soldiers sur-
rendering took the Army planners by surprise. Throughout the whole
conflict in 1941–44, some 65,000 Soviet soldiers ended up in Finnish
captivity. The true number is still somewhat higher, because prisoner
registration happened only after the prisoner had been conveyed to the
rear: this left a sometimes considerable period of time during which
the prisoners were in the hands of their immediate captors, and in dan-
ger of being killed either through ongoing combat activity or through
illegal executions.19
Further accentuating the problems the Army and the Civil Guards
had in handling the prisoners was the fact that the vast majority of the
total mass of prisoners were taken during a very short period of time.
Once the Finnish Army began its advance first into Finnish and even-
tually Soviet Karelia in the summer of 1941, the amount of prisoners
falling into Finnish hands began to rise prodigiously. For instance, the
17
laisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 146–7.
18
Juha Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan politrukki- ja upseerisotavangit,” in Leskinen &
Juutilainen, Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen, pp. 1041–2.
19
Kujala, “Illegal Killing,” p. 434.
operations reaching their conclusion upon the liberation of Vyborg in

late August 1941 resulted in 9,000 prisoners, including a commander
of a Soviet division. By December 1941 there were roughly 56,000
prisoners-of-war in Finnish hands. Thereafter, the rate at which pris-
oners kept coming in began to sharply stagnate, but considerable num-
bers of prisoners were still taken in 1942. By August 1942, Finland had
taken captive 63,000 of the total of 65,000 registered prisoners taken
during the entire war. By that time, the halting of the Finnish offensive
deeper into the Soviet Union had greatly reduced the number of pris-
oners falling into captivity. Thereafter the situation remained practi-
cally unchanged throughout the rest of the war. The total number of
prisoners in Finnish captivity only began to rise again with the Soviet
offensive against Finland in the summer of 1944.20
A prisoner-of-war administration system based on prewar planning
could not survive the influx of huge masses of prisoners entering cap-
tivity during the summer and autumn of 1941. By the beginning of
1942, when it had become clear that the war would still last and the
number of prisoners in Finnish custody was still growing, it was
decided that the Army needed to take firmer control of the matter. To
get rid of the recognized sources of inefficiency and to better facilitate
the handling of the mass of prisoners, their supply and the exploitation
of their work potential, a new system was devised by May 1942,
whereby the High Command was given its first administrative body
specializing in prisoner-of-war matters, the Prisoner-of-War Office
(Sotavankitoimisto). At the same time, the Army duly took over the
running of the former prison camps used to house prisoners-of-war
from the civilian prison administration.
Colonel Sulo Malm, a career soldier in service since 1919, was made
the chief of the new office. The Home Forces General Staff still retained
its capacities on the home front, and there thus continued to exist
two overlapping administrative bodies taking care of the same tasks.
In September 1943, with foreign criticism mounting towards the
Finnish Army for the way the prisoners were treated, Marshal
Mannerheim finally issued orders for a total overhaul of the system.
An office of a prisoner-of-war commander (sotavankikomentaja) was
created and a staff formed under him. Malm, however, continued as
head of this new office. The newly appointed chief of Prisoner-of-War
20
Ibidem, p. 434; Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,” p. 1036.
Administration and his staff officially took over the running of pris-
oner-of-war issues, camps and hospitals. This was the high-water mark
of efforts to centralize prisoner-of-war matters under the Army, but
until the end of the war the Home Forces General Staff continued
alongside, being responsible for the supplying of prisoner-of-war for-
mations within the home area.21
Arctic Paradoxes: German Prisoner-of-War Administration in Finland

The plans for a joint Finnish-German offensive against the Soviet
Union in 1941 called for the Finnish Army to be concentrated into the
southern half of Finland, while Germany would run the northern half
as a German-controlled theater of war. German forces in the area
would be organized under Armeeoberkommando (AOK) Norwegen,
with a command centre (Befehlsstelle Finnland) in Rovaniemi. With
the German forces would come everything necessary for the conduct
of independent operations across the Finnish-Soviet border. A notable,
initial exception to this scheme was to be the prisoner-of-war adminis-
tration. Early planning had assumed that any prisoners falling into
Axis hands in the northernmost part of the Eastern Front were simply
to be handed over to Finnish authorities, so that German prisoner-of-
war administration would stay altogether out of the northernmost
third of the initial length of the Operation Barbarossa frontline.
There are few sources detailing either the German-Finnish prewar
discussions concerning prisoner-of-war questions or the development
of German plans for Northern Finland and Norway in this regard.
Throughout the spring of 1941, however, plans were made for the set-
ting up of German prisoner-of-war camps also on Finnish territory,
ostensibly to serve at least as collection points for prisoners soon to be
handed over to Finnish authorities. In late April 1941, a representative
of the AOK Norwegen conducted talks in Berlin with precisely this
purpose in mind. As the demands placed by the Arctic environment on
the German troops operating there, as well as the possibilities beckon-
ing on the other side of the Finnish-Soviet border, began to manifest
themselves to German planners, their vague initial thoughts seem to
have solidified into concrete commitment. This planning seems to
have had its motivation in the need to ensure an adequate workforce
21
Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,” pp. 1036–7.
for the service of German troops in Lapland and Northern Norway,

and it went on for some time against what the AOK Norwegen had
initially envisaged. The AOK was still, as late as 10 June 1941, in the
belief that the prisoners as a rule would be handed over to the Finns,
and it advised the units under its command of that fact in a circular.22
Despite the AOK circulars, the orders for the setting up of prisoner-
of-war camps for NCOs and the rank-and-file (Kriegsgefangenen-
Mannschafts-Stammlagern, Stalag) under the Rovaniemi command
center of AOK Norwegen had already been given out in early May
1941. Stalag 322 was to be positioned in Elvenes in Norway, just across
the Finnish border, and Stalag 309 came to be situated in Salla, Finland,
as soon as the town, lost to the Soviet Union after the Winter War, had
been retaken by the German-Finnish troops. The camps remained in
place until the German withdrawal from Finland. These were camps
for NCOs and privates. Any officer prisoners were still, according to
the original plan, to be handed over to Finnish authorities after the
Germans were done with their questioning.23
The German prisoner-of-war administration thus also made its
presence felt in Finland. The German system was organized along lines
familiar from other parts of the Eastern Front. The German Army
High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH) took care of the
prisoners on the field of battle and the operations area. The OKH
administered the prisoners and then conveyed them towards the rear,
the final destination being the permanent prisoner-of-war camps
within the area of the German Reich. Here, the administration of the
camps was ultimately the responsibility of the Armed Forces High
Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) and specifically
under the control of Colonel Hans-Joachim Breyer’s Prisoners-of-War
Section (Abteilung Kriegsgefangenenwesen). Further on, the Section
was a part of the Allgemeines Wehrmachtamt led by Lieutenant
General Hermann Reinecke, a man of conspicuous loyalty to the Nazi
regime.24
22
Reinhard Otto, “Soviet Prisoners of War on the German Lapland Front 1941–44,”
in Lars Westerlund, ed., Prisoners of War and Internees: A Book of Articles by the
National Archives (Helsinki, 2008), p. 65.
23
Ibidem, pp. 65–8.
24
Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944, ed.
Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hamburg, 2002), pp. 191–9; Alfred Streim,
Die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im “Fall Barbarossa”: Eine Dokumentation
(Heidelberg, 1981), pp. 7–9.
At the end of June 1941, with Germany already in the war and
Finland about to enter, Germany also became more active in advising
the Finns on how to conduct their business with the prisoners-of-war.
Through both the German embassy and the military attaché Horst
Rössing in Helsinki, the Germans made known their suggestion that
Finland should consider standardizing its practices according to the
German model. By early July, the first memorandum testifying to these
efforts, drawn up by the Inspector of Prisoners-of-War within the
Finnish Army High Command, Colonel Maximilian Spåre, was ready.
In it, Spåre laid emphasis on the supposed efficiency of the German
system. Whatever the origin, the Finnish prisoner-of-war administra-
tion adopted similar practices to the German one. The most notable
similarities, neither of which was entirely new to the Finns, however,
were the dividing up of the prisoners according to their nationality and
their political reliability, as well as the widespread use of prisoners as
labor.25
The Finnish Army intelligence organ noted in mid-July 1941 that
the experiences in the Winter War showed that separation of the
prisoners-of-war into groups by nationality was advisable. This meant,
in essence, that Soviet minority nationalities were, in order to improve
the results achieved in instruction and propaganda work as well as in
intelligence gathering efforts, to be isolated from ethnic Russians into
separate camps: “In them the prisoners-of-war belonging to minority
nationalities tell more freely about the things they know and are more
receptive for instruction.”26
By this time, a scheme according to which the prisoners were to be
separated was also ready. It divided the nationalities of the Soviet
Union into Slavic, Turko-Tatar, Finno-Ugrian and Caucasian groups of
nationalities. The plan was the handiwork of several Finnish ethnolo-
gists and linguists drafted into the Army, who here had a chance to
make use of their scholarly expertise. After the adoption of the system
into Finnish prisoner-of-war administration, it continued to grow. By
late 1942 the system recognized a grand total of 91 different national
categories, even if not all of them were represented among the prisoner
population. While the Finnish system had been designed in Finland
25
Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, p. 343.
26
KA/SArk, Prisoner-of-War Office of the Home Forces General Staff (Kotij.E.
sotavankitoimisto), Fa 1, 17 July 1941. I am grateful to historian Ida Suolahti for mak-
ing her manuscript (in preparation) concerning these issues available to me.
and bore only a limited similarity to the German model in both pur-
pose and implementation, it also made it easy to separate the ethnic
Russians into a distinct group. This came to have consequences.27
Soon after the beginning of the advance across the Finnish border
and into Soviet territory had begun in July 1941, the Germans began to
fully appreciate the harshness of the sub-Arctic and Arctic terrain and
climate. German troops were soon heavily committed in several labor-
intensive tasks demanded by mechanized war in uninhabited wilder-
ness: building and maintaining roads through the forests and marshes,
hauling supply, logging, constructing railroads, cutting firewood and,
during winter, keeping the roads and tracks passable by building vast
lengths of snow-fences, as well as being constantly on call to shovel
away the most recent buildups of snow clogging the roads.
For all this, prisoners-of-war seemed to be a most promising supply
of labor, but there simply were not enough of them. Since the initial
advances in the summer of 1941, the German offensive on the north-
ern sector of the front had by the end of the year been brought to a
virtual standstill. Increasingly desperate calls went out from the AOK
Norwegen to either get prisoners transferred from Finnish camps or to
have some thousands of them shipped into Finland from the German-
controlled areas in the south. These appeals had no practical effect
until the summer of 1942, when large numbers of Soviet prisoners
began to arrive in Finnish ports from the German prisoner-of-war
camps in the Reich. By August 1944, a total of some 21,000 Soviet
prisoners-of-war had been brought into Finnish Lapland and Northern
Norway through Finland to serve the German Army as laborers.28
The result was a paradox in stark contrast with the studied murder-
ousness of the German prisoner-of-war administration towards the
Soviet prisoners-of-war in general. While Soviet prisoners-of-war in
German custody elsewhere were by late 1941 already dying of hunger,
disease and exposure, those in the far north were simply too valuable
to be wasted. The German district commander for prisoners-of-war in
Finnish Lapland from September 1942 onwards, Colonel Arthur
Buchwiser, summarized the attitudes the Arctic forest and tundra had
taught to German soldiers in his directive titled “The Value of the
Prisoner-of-War”:
27
KA/SArk, T 19661/B60, “Vähemmistökansallisuusjaottelu,” 31 December 1942.
28
Otto, “Soviet Prisoners of War,” pp. 68–71.
[…] each individual prisoner-of-war represents valuable labor […] The

labor of the prisoner-of-war is the primary means of the Army for
the accomplishment of all beneficial construction and supply tasks […]
The fundamentals stated herein are a permanently valid and important
guideline for all divisions of the Army.29
If the German Army had quickly learnt to value the prisoners-of-war
as workforce, there were other forces at work with less concern towards
the practical value of prisoner labor. Late June 1941 had also been
a time for hectic planning within the SS, concerning the shape of things
to come in the unfolding war of extermination in the east. The respec-
tive orders defining German attitudes towards Soviet prisoners-
of-war in the coming conflict were issued relatively late: during the
period from mid-May to early June 1941. By that time, all the key
orders laying the base for an ideological and racial war of extermina-
tion, including enemy prisoners-of-war and civilian population, cul-
minating in the infamous “Commissar Order” of 6 June 1941, had been
given out.30
On 28 June 1941, the German Reich Security Main Office
(Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) issued a written order meant to be
a guideline for the security police for the work it was to carry out
among the captured Soviet soldiers in prisoner-of-war camps, along-
side the similar and by far better known campaign of murder against
the Soviet civilian population. Specific “Einsatzkommandos” of the
Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were to be formed
also to work within the prisoner-of-war administration to weed out the
racially or ideologically “unwanted elements” flowing into the German
prisoner-of-war camps among the mass of captured Soviet soldiers: all
Soviet officials or persons holding leading positions in the Soviet
machinery of state, members of the Soviet intelligentsiya, any political
officers of the Red Army, as well as any and all Jews.31
The decision to extend the German prisoner-of-war administration
into the north meant also that yet another Einsatzkommando had to be
established to carry out the tasks, a thought that was belatedly realized
by the SS during June, as the plans for the nature of prisoner-of-war
29
As quoted in Otto, “Soviet Prisoners of War,” pp. 78–9.
30
Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, pp. 43–55.
31
Bundesarchiv in Berlin, R 58/272, RSHA Amt IV, “Richtlinien für die in die
Stalags abzustellenden Kommandos des Chefs der Sipo und das SD,” Berlin, 28 June
1941.
arrangements took shape in the final days before the German assault
on the Soviet Union.
While sources describing the practical activities of the German
security police in Northern Finland and Norway are limited, we get
a glimpse of their work through a document dated 11 November
1941. Shortly before this date an agreement concerning the exchange
of ethnic German prisoners-of-war in Finnish custody for Finnic
nationalities in German custody had been reached, and the first
batch of 80 ethnic Germans had landed in German hands. The
Einsatzkommando screened the prisoners in the hope of finding
out any “undesirable” elements among these prisoners considered in
principle fit to be introduced back into the Germanic race. After the
preliminary interrogations, the prisoners were either given acceptance
as trustworthy or consigned to further interrogations. Each had been
given a short description, not necessarily more than one word in
length, summarizing the status of each prisoner: “is lying,” “appears
Jewish,” “father’s name Isak,” “married to a Pole.” Six prisoners
had been outright categorized as politically undesirable: “courier of
the NKVD,” “Jew,” “Communist,” “probationary member of the
[Communist] Party.” Eventually, 23 prisoners were separated from
those considered trustworthy for further investigations in the Stalag
309 in Salla.32
Estimates for the actual number of executions carried out by the
“Einsatzkommando Finnland” are difficult to make with any pre-
cision. According to eyewitness testimonies, which unfortunately are
virtually the only sources available, the figure most probably comes
down to a few hundred. The Finnish authorities handed over a total
of 521 suspected or confirmed political officers and active com-
munists to the Einsatzkommando, among them also 47 Soviet sol-
diers identified as Jews. No further information about the eventual
fate of these individuals is contained in the surviving Finnish or
German sources. Eyewitnesses have later described mass executions
and mass graves with hundreds of victims. For the time being, that is
where the estimates must lay. All in all, and in addition to the better-
known mass murders committed in the occupied areas of the
Soviet Union, the SS-Einsatzkommandos operating exclusively in
32
Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomalais-saksalainen turvallisuuspoliisi-
yhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki, 2008), pp. 223–4.
German prisoner-of-war camps within the borders of the German

Reich alone are estimated to have murdered some 40,000 Soviet
prisoners-of-war.33
In the name of fighting communism and bringing about the collapse
of the Soviet Union, the Finnish security police and military authori-
ties went along with the Nazi plans for an ideological war of extermina-
tion. They were fully cognizant of the nature of the operations the
Einsatzkommando Finnland was conducting in Finnish Lapland. After
the war, however, no serious investigation into the matter was ever
started, despite the occasional surfacing of evidence, such as a slip of
the tongue by Colonel Sulo Malm, the Finnish Army High Command’s
prisoner-of-war commander in 1943–44. In the autumn of 1944, Malm
had told the Finnish military attaché in Stockholm, Colonel Martin
Stewen, about “the handing over of Russian politruks and [political]
commissars to the Germans in Salla, where they were killed by the
Germans.”34
The mortality of Soviet prisoners-of-war in German custody in
Finland and Northern Norway can also not be stated exactly. According
to the calculations made by German historian Reinhard Otto, the
German AOK Norwegen, later renamed 20th Mountain Army, either
took captive or brought into its area of operations a total of roughly
30,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war during the course of the war. He fur-
ther estimates that close to ten percent, every tenth man, lost their
lives. While the number significantly exceeds, for instance, the mortal-
ity rate of Western Allied prisoners-of-war in German custody, it is
remarkably low in comparison to the reality reigning in most other
parts of the German Eastern Front. It is also in stark contrast to the
much higher mortality in Finnish prisoner-of-war camps. In more
than one sense, the Arctic became a land of paradoxes for the German
Army and its prisoner-of-war administration.35
The Three Horsemen: Prisoner-of-War Mortality and Its Causes

As the war against the Soviet Union began in 1941, it rapidly became
clear that the Finnish prewar plans had gravely underestimated the
necessary size of the prisoner-of-war establishment. The number of
33
Ibidem, p. 226; Otto, “Soviet Prisoners of War,” pp. 96–7.
34
Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet, pp. 327–8.
35
Otto, “Soviet Prisoners of War,” pp. 108–10.
Soviet prisoners peaked by December 1941, when there were some

56,000 prisoners in Finnish custody, and by that time the Finnish
prisoner-of-war organization had already been thrown into disorder.
Having temporarily escaped one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse,
War, the prisoners-of-war in Finnish camps during the critical phase
between late 1941 and mid-1942 now had to face the full fury of the
remaining three: Famine, Pestilence and Death.
The most immediate consequence of the huge influx of prisoners
from the autumn of 1941 onwards was overcrowding. In the Finnish
organizing camps, which received the prisoners being sent to the rear
by the combat units, accommodation could consist of nothing but a
field surrounded by barbed wire, or tents. When the prisoners reached
the permanent camps they were crammed into overcrowded barracks.
In the prisoner-of-war camp set up for officers in Köyliö, there was
room for 300 prisoners, at most, but by the end of 1941 the camp
housed over a thousand prisoners. There were not enough barracks to
house the prisoners in this camp set up in the buildings of a former
prison, and the prisoners had to make do on cold and wet stone floors
with straw as their only comfort. As long as the weather stayed warm
such a situation was still manageable, but once the autumn rains began,
and with the onset of winter, problems began to multiply.36
The main mass of prisoners had been captured during the summer
months, and thus they had to survive in their thin summer clothes. By
this time Finland was already also experiencing severe shortages in
textiles and clothing items, and the needs of the prisoners-of-war were
definitely not a priority. Insufficient clothing, combined with the use of
prisoner labor in heavy outdoors work began to cause accidents and
frostbite injuries as the winter set in. A practice, similar to the one
adopted by the Germans, to make the prisoners work barefoot and
with bare hands during the summer months to prolong the serviceabil-
ity of hand- and footwear, probably caused a fair share of accidents and
injuries, too.37
A practice possibly adopted from the German model was to divide
the rations of the prisoners into categories according to their tasks. The
Finnish High Command issued an order to this effect already at the
36
Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan politrukki- ja upseerisotavangit,” pp. 1046–7; Kujansuu,
“Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,” pp. 1039–40.
37
Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan neuvostoliittolaiset sotavangit,” p. 1038; Westerlund,
Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, pp. 343–6.
beginning of July 1941, dividing the rations into two categories.

Category A was meant for prisoners not assigned to any particular
tasks or those who were not capable of work due to illness or injury.
Category B was established as the standard for prisoners doing normal
work. The nutritional values of these rations were initially very modest.
Several army physicians awoke to this state of affairs rather rapidly and
during the autumn of 1941 began to make demands for the raising of
the calorie content of prisoner rations, but it took until December
before even modest improvements to the official norms could be
achieved. In January 1942, a further Category C ration begun to be
dealt out to prisoners engaged in particularly heavy tasks, such as log-
ging or railroad construction. C-rations could be given to sick prison-
ers as well, but not without orders from a physician. With a calorie
content of 2,800 per day, even the C-rations could not be described as
sufficient.38
By that time, slow starvation of the prisoners was already a reality.
Furthermore, it was one thing for the Army to issue regulations con-
cerning prisoner nutrition and another thing to actually ensure the
prisoners got what the regulations provided. The food meant for
the prisoners often disappeared in transit or arrived spoiled so that the
prisoners were reduced to eating whatever they could lay their hands
on. In the Ajossaari prisoner-of-war camp set up in an island off Kemi,
a town on the north shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, during the worst
months of crisis between the autumn of 1941 and the summer of 1942,
the prisoners were reportedly eating spoiled meat set aside for the
making of soap, grass, leaves and other parts of plants as well as half-
rotten dead fish they happened upon on the shore.39
Such signs of the setting in of the starvation process did not go
unnoticed, but even among medical practitioners the plight of the
prisoners-of-war did not necessarily arouse much sympathy. Rationing,
food shortages and nagging hunger were uncomfortably familiar to
Finnish civilians as well, and the prisoners could not expect much con-
cern while the Finns were also hungry. As the Army chief intendent
Verner Gustafsson wrote in his comment to a letter written by a gen-
eral demanding better rations for prisoners engaged in heavy labor:
38
Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, pp. 180–1; Pirkka Mikkola,
Sotavangin elämä ja kuolema: Jatkosodan neuvostosotavankien suuren kuolleisuuden
syyt, unpublished MA thesis (University of Helsinki, 2000), p. 64.
39
Mikkola, Sotavangin elämä ja kuolema, pp. 59, 72.
“To be answered that also our own people have to make do with smaller
rations.” The situation also was not uniform, and food supply could be
dramatically better in other places. If the camp commander or head of
the work-detachment could handle supply questions, if the guards
could be relied upon not to steal the rations meant for prisoners or
replace them with inferior foodstuffs, if food happened to be readily
available in the surrounding area, or a number of other causes, could
mean the difference between life and death.40
Hunger, however, was followed by its inevitable and ancient com-
panion, disease. According to statistical information, the period dur-
ing which illnesses claimed the most lives among the prisoners-of-war
was precisely the same crisis period also accompanied by the most dire
hunger, from late 1941 until the spring and summer of 1942. Intestinal
disorders, such as typhoid fever and dysentery, were the most lethal
form of disease to which the prisoners succumbed, followed by res-
piratory diseases, such as influenza. To reduce the mortality rate, from
the spring of 1942 prisoners-of-war began to receive vaccinations
against typhoid fever and typhus, easily spread in unsanitary camp
conditions by lice.41
The attitudes of the Finnish population towards the prisoners-of-
war varied greatly. Civilians were sometimes berated by authorities,
like the security police, for acts of kindness towards the prisoners, rais-
ing suspicions of communist sympathies. Combat troops were likewise
occasionally reprimanded for their friendliness towards their prison-
ers, stuffing them with cigarettes or bread before the prisoners were
taken to the rear. After that, it was up to the luck of the individual
prisoner. According to the estimate of historian Antti Kujala, the Finns
shot roughly 1,200 of their prisoners-of-war without formal court pro-
cedure resulting in a death sentence. These prisoner-of-war deaths
were usually reported as “shot while attempting to escape.” This formu-
lation, however, was also clearly used to mask illegal executions of pris-
oners, often committed out of a variety of causes including fear, hatred,
incompetence, alcoholism or simple sadism.42
An example of the spectrum of Finnish opinions in regard to the
Soviet prisoners-of-war are the directives issued by General Karl
40
Ibidem, pp. 144.
41
Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, pp. 321, 331.
42
Lennart Oesch, commander of the IV Army Corps, notable and quite

exceptional for their harshness even among the higher officers.
According to written instructions issued by Oesch in November 1941,
Treatment of the prisoners has to be extremely strict. Any laxity is out of
the question […] Recalcitrant prisoners are to be executed on the spot to
make an example for the others […] One must bear in mind, that a
Russki is always a Russki, and has to be treated and disciplined accord-
ingly. Any mildness is out of the question, as the Russki is not accus-
tomed to it and will consider it as a sign of weakness in his master […]
Recalcitrant prisoners and agitators (politruks) are to be done away with-
out mercy. If executions are undertaken, such prisoners are to be marked
in the documents as “removed” […]43
Due to all causes, hunger, disease, accidents, violence among prisoners
or executions, either legal or illegal, at least 19,085 Soviet prisoners-of-
war lost their lives in Finnish custody. The real figure, which must also
include the non-registered cases, will again be somewhat higher. Even
so, this translates into a total mortality rate of 30.3 percent, with the
grimmest period between November 1941 and September 1942, after
which there was a decisive drop in the mortality rate until the end of
the war. The system of separation by nationality also bore on the mor-
tality issue, as ethnic Russians became the Soviet nationality to suffer
the most, with a mortality of 33.2 percent. The reason for this was that
in Finnish eyes, Russians tended to represent the lowest rung on the
nationality ladder, an ethnic group often seen as responsible for the
Soviet system, with a racial bent towards communism. Consequently,
in terms of food, clothing or lodgings, their needs were the last to be
taken care of.
In comparison, among the Soviet nationalities that received the best
treatment were the Finnic groups, who were given preferential care,
and the Soviet Germans and Baltic nationalities, who were almost to
a man handed over to the German authorities by the beginning of
1942. All of these groups suffered a total mortality of roughly five per-
cent or even less. Among the groups with a significantly lower mortal-
ity rate were also, perhaps surprisingly, Jewish prisoners-of-war. Their
mortality rate of 19.5 percent, while still high, was considerably lower
than that among the Russians. Separation by nationality again seems to
have formed an explaining factor as the Jews were kept isolated from
43
As quoted in Kujala, Vankisurmat, pp. 171–2.
the most underprivileged Russians, and credit must also be given to

the efforts of Finnish Jews to support their co-religionists in the
camps.44
In comparison it can be noted that throughout the Finnish-Soviet
war in 1941–44, over 3,000 Finnish soldiers ended up in Soviet captiv-
ity, two-thirds of them taken prisoner during the Soviet offensive
against Finland in 1944. Conditions in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps
were often catastrophic, with hunger and disease, especially diphtheria
and dysentery, claiming the lives of weakened prisoners. Official Soviet
figures, published in 1956, established the mortality rate of Finnish
prisoners-of-war in Soviet custody at 17 percent. Like Soviet statistics
in general, this figure cannot be taken at face value. The estimates of the
real mortality rate among the Finnish soldiers fallen into Soviet captiv-
ity range from 32 to 40 percent. Considering the relatively short period
most of the prisoners had to spend in Soviet camps, the numbers speak
for themselves.45
Mutual Interests: Exchanging Prisoners-of-War

During the course of the war in 1941–44, Finnish authorities exchanged
roughly 2,000 prisoners-of-war with the Germans. The exchanges were
arranged on the principle of reciprocity, meaning that both partners, in
theory, got a corresponding amount of prisoners in return. In practice
this principle was not followed, but at the end of the war the balance
nevertheless was more or less equal.
The reasons for this activity were largely pragmatic, but contained
also an ideological ingredient. The Finns in general were interested in
prisoners representing the Finnic nationalities of the Soviet Union,
while the Germans were also primarily interested in getting certain
nationalities, like Volga Germans and Caucasians, in exchange. Within
the schemes concerning the postwar order of the conquered Soviet
Union harbored not just among the Nazi leadership, but also in Finland,
44
45
Frolov, Sotavankina Neuvostoliitossa, pp. 117, 272; Timo Malmi, “Jatkosodan
suomalaiset sotavangit,” in Leskinen & Juutilainen, Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen,
p. 1028. There is some dispute over the actual number of Finnish prisoners-of-war in
the Soviet Union. The official Soviet figure from the year 1956 counts a total of 2,377
Finnish prisoners. In his doctoral dissertation, Dmitri Frolov arrives at a figure of
3,114 on the basis of his own calculations, while according to Timo Malmi the true
figure is over 3,500. Frolov estimates the mortality rate at 32 percent, but Malmi sug-
gests that 40 percent is closer to the truth.
these nationalities had been reserved roles as collaborators, buffers or

racially preferable settlers of the new empires.46
Practical concerns drove the prisoner-of-war exchanges between
Finland and Germany. As the overcrowding in Finnish prisoner-of-
war camps worsened during late 1941, the Home Forces General Staff
began to look for ways to ease the situation and contacted the High
Command to get the Germans’ agreement to an exchange plan. The
Finns would hand over their prisoners belonging to Caucasian nation-
alities (Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis coming to form the
three largest groups among them) to be transferred to “Southern
Russia,” where the climate was believed to be more suitable for them.
Behind the initiative was concern for the already high mortality rate
among prisoners of Caucasian ethnicity. As not much could be
expected from these prisoners regarding their work efficiency, it was
better to remove them from Finnish camps where they formed a con-
tinuous drain on resources while producing little. Late 1941 in general
was a busy time for making arrangements on the human material
formed by the mass of prisoners-of-war, and an agreement concerning
the exchange of ethnic Karelians and Ingrian Finns on German camps
for ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Belorussians and Baltic nationalities
on Finnish camps was reached at the same time. The first group of
some 600 prisoners left Finland around New Year 1942.47
While agreement had been reached in short order, it took consider-
ably longer to realize the transfer of a large mass of prisoners-of-war
from Germany. To sort out the Finnic prisoners languishing in German
prisoner-of-war camps, a special commission set out from Finland in
June 1942. It made its way to the German prisoner-of-war camp in
Stablack, East Prussia, where the German authorities had gathered
their Finnic prisoners. The commission was headed by Lieutenant
Vilho Helanen, a noted radical nationalist and Greater Finland activist.
A military physician to ensure the prisoners were fit for transfer and a
representative of the security police to ensure they were politically reli-
able completed the makeup of the commission. In late July 1942, the
main body of over 700 prisoners arrived in Finland, to be placed in a
screening camp for further organizing. The work of the commission set
the standard for later transfers, even though the German SS for a time
46
47
Frank Nesemann, “Kaukasialaisten sotavankien luovutukset Suomesta vv. 1943–
1944,” in Westerlund, Prisoners of War and Internees, pp. 202–3.
had its own plans for the recruitment of Finnic prisoners-of-war into
Waffen-SS volunteer battalions.48
On the Finnish side, the question of the transfer of Ukrainians and
Caucasians dragged on until early 1943, when it was finally put into
practice. A group of 502 prisoners was shipped to the German authori-
ties in Tallinn, Estonia. Altogether the Finnish authorities handed over
a total of 534 Caucasian prisoners into German hands, a number of
them eventually ending up in the “national legions” Germany set up to
lend support for its effort to defend and police the occupied east.49
The prisoner-of-war exchanges between Finland and Germany were
not explicitly covered by international law. The Geneva Convention
stipulated only that wounded or sick prisoners should not be trans-
ferred if it could hamper their recovery. Further decrees concerning
exchanges of prisoners between belligerents or third parties were only
laid down after the war in the Geneva Convention of 1949. The trans-
fers which occurred, however, arose from practical considerations and
did not directly serve the Nazi policies of genocide and mass murder.
For instance, the majority of the 478 Jewish prisoners-of-war in Finnish
custody stayed in Finnish hands until the end of the war, when those
still alive were returned to the Soviet Union.50
III. Nationals and Non-Nationals: Civilian Internees in the Finnish-

Occupied Eastern Karelia
Prisoners-of-war were not the only enemy nationals Finland found

itself forced to deal with. By mid-September 1941, the advancing
Finnish troops were already deep within the Soviet Union, having
reached the River Svir already in early September. The Army continued
by capturing Petrozavodsk in early October and reaching the Maaselkä
Isthmus north of Lake Onega by the end of the year, thus establishing
itself in a new role as an occupier of foreign territory. With the territory
also came its inhabitants. Even though the Soviets had drafted men of
military age into the Red Army and evacuated the significant majority
48
Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot, pp. 148–51.
49
Nesemann, “Kaukasialaisten sotavankien luovutukset,” pp. 206–8.
50
Ida Suolahti, “Prisoner-of-War Transfers During the Continuation War,” in
Westerlund, Prisoner-of-War Deaths, p. 137.
Fig. 8.1. Soviet prisoners-of-war in the early stages of the Continuation War, August
1941. The coming “hunger winter” of 1941–42 turned out to be fatal for many. Photo:
Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 31199.
Fig. 8.2. Civilian internees of a concentration camp in Petrozavodsk returning from

their day’s work, April 1942. In reaction to what had proved to be an unhappy choice
of terms, the camps were renamed “transit camps” in 1943. Photo: Finnish Defence
of the civilian population, there were still a considerable number of

Soviet civilians that the Finnish occupation authorities had to account
for. The treatment of the civilians of Soviet Eastern Karelia came to
have important parallels with the treatment of the prisoners-of-war.
Plans for the administration arrangements of occupied territory had
been afoot since the spring of 1941. As the occupation turned into real-
ity, however, it became clear that any captured territory had to be
administered by the Army until such a time as it would be convenient
to create a civil government in the area. Thus it was left to the Army to
organize some form of administration for the occupied territories.
Both the Finnish Army and civilian authorities, however, considered
the Finnish presence in former Soviet territory as permanent from the
outset. The Finnish authorities thus seldom used the term occupation,
preferring to speak of conquest when referring to the status of the
occupied Soviet Karelia.
By late July 1941, a commander of Military Administration had been
appointed. He was Colonel Väinö Aleksanteri Kotilainen, a Finnish
industrialist and former cabinet minister with expertise in economic
and social policy issues. Directly under him, there was an administra-
tive body, Eastern Karelia Military Administration Staff (Itä-Karjalan
Sotilashallintoesikunta). Further advice was to be given by a twelve-
member advisory committee, consisting of notable Eastern Karelians
who had escaped from the Soviet Union after the abortive uprising of
Karelians in 1920–21 and had since lived in Finland as refugees. The
administrative staff was further divided into sections to take care of the
needs of the area and the specific interests of the Army. The com-
mander was also given a legal counselor, Professor Veli Merikoski, to
advise the commander on questions of international law.51
While on paper the structure and composition of the occupation
authority seemed quite unproblematic, there were also other factors at
play. The members of the Eastern Karelia Military Administration Staff
were recruited through networks of personal contacts, and nationalist
activists gained a considerable share of the top positions as section
heads under the commander. Many key positions were manned by
members of the Academic Karelia Society (AKS), a student organiza-
tion and a particularly vocal mouthpiece for Finnish radical national-
ism during the interwar period. The AKS nurtured an agenda of a
monoethnic and monolinguistic Finland and was committed to real-
izing an irredentist vision of Greater Finland, with Finnish borders
pushed all the way to the shores of the White Sea.52
By the coming of World War II, Soviet policy had already reduced
the Karelians to a minority group in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic bearing their name. Soviet repressive measures had
51
Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot, pp. 65–8. Laine’s study on the Finnish occupa-
tion of Eastern Karelia, published already in 1982, is still the seminal work on the
subject, and this section is mostly based on his findings.
52
Ibidem, pp. 88–9.
caused some 25,000 to 30,000 Karelians either to lose their lives or be

forcibly deported, and Soviet plans to develop the area had brought a
great influx of new non-Finnic inhabitants, especially into the areas
along the railroad connecting the port of Murmansk to the rest of the
Soviet railroad network.53
Not surprisingly, the new Finnish administrative body was therefore
anxious to deal with the population question. The reality encountered
across the border, however, was something other than the romantic
visions of erstwhile student activists. The Eastern Karelia Military
Administration set out to calm the fears of the remaining population
by showing them that the Finnish occupation would both be perma-
nent and that Finland had a genuine commitment to take care of the
needs of the population. From the outset, however, it was understood
that the ethnically non-Finnic part of the population was unwelcome
and would have to be removed sooner or later. This was considered
essential so that the remaining Karelians and other Finnic groups could
then be seamlessly incorporated into the future enlarged Finnish
nation. One of the ways to bring this about was to sow dissension
among the different ethnic groups of the Eastern Karelian population
by stoking the memories of the 1920s anti-Soviet uprising and portray-
ing the present conflict as direct continuation for the battle for the free-
dom of Karelia.54
Before the commencement of the Finnish advance into Soviet
Karelia, in early July 1941 the High Command had already issued
orders laying down ground rules concerning the treatment of the civil-
ian population in the occupied area. Signed by Marshal Mannerheim
as the commander-in-chief, the order expressly told that ethnic
Russians were to be imprisoned in concentration camps (keskitysleiri),
a name that was to prove an unhappy choice. The idea was to secure the
area by removing a potentially unreliable population from the vicinity
of the frontlines. While the Finnish concentration camps in Eastern
Karelia were not comparable to Nazi concentration camps nor to Soviet
prison camps, they definitely were a tool for preparing what would
nowadays be called ethnic cleansing. As a rule, the inmates were to be
isolated from contacts with the outside world. Yet, for instance, they
53
Ibidem, pp. 92–4.
54
Ibidem, pp. 61–4.
could be given leave to visit relatives upon approval of the camp

commandant.55
The importance of ascertaining the ethnic composition as soon as
possible was paramount in the orders given out by the Military
Administration commander already in late August 1941. To find out
the actual ethnic composition of the population of Eastern Karelia, the
Finnish occupation authorities decided to take a census, which pro-
ceeded in pace with the military operations. By early 1942, the popula-
tion had been registered and the occupation authorities had a clearer
picture of the situation. Plans had been laid in anticipation of a popula-
tion of some half a million, but it turned out that there were at most
only 85,000 people under the new administration. The area was espe-
cially devoid of men of military age, and also significant parts of the
civilian population had been evacuated by Soviet authorities.
The census gave the Finnish authorities a basis on which to plan
their policy, and at the same time it facilitated an exact measure-taking
of the ethnic composition of occupied Eastern Karelia. The methods
used were taken from the current racial theories. The basic dividing
line was drawn between “national” and “non-national” population.
The “nationals” consisted of the Finnic nationalities of the area:
Karelians, Vepsians, Ingrian Finns and Estonians. The dominant group
of “non-national” populace was formed by Russians, but also repre-
sented were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, Tatars, Latvians and eth-
nic Germans. According to the head of the population section of the
Military Administration Staff, Niilo Järvilehto, the population of the
area had to be cleansed of “alien elements,” so that the remaining popu-
lation could then be viewed as belonging to the Finnish nation and
incorporated without difficulties into the populace.56
Nationality, as established in the census, became an almost all-
important factor when further treatment of civilians in the area was
considered. It was the basis for deciding where a given person could
move, where to settle, how much food he was to get and what kind of
wages he would be paid. Finnic nationalities were given preferential
treatment. The “non-nationals,” however, were to be isolated from the
rest. By March 1942, when the number of civilian internees in the con-
centration camps peaked, there were almost 24,000 persons in the
55
56
camps. After this, the number of inmates began to drop, due both to
mortality and the policy adopted by the occupation authorities to
release those inmates who were not deemed to constitute an immedi-
ate threat. By early 1944, there were some 11,000 people imprisoned in
the camps.57
In November 1941 the legal counsel of the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration Staff, Veli Merikoski, went on a fact-finding mission to
Berlin and Cracow to learn about German experiences in arranging
the administration of occupied territory. He had also been authorized
to appeal to the Germans to receive the ethnic Russians from Finnish-
occupied Eastern Karelia, to be settled elsewhere in German-occupied
areas. The idea was to create an ethnically homogenous area containing
only Finnic nationalities. It was also hoped that in return the Germans
would hand over Finnic peoples to replace the Russians in Eastern
Karelia.58
The vast majority of camp inmates consisted of “non-nationals,”
with persons with Finnic backgrounds forming less than two percent
of the camp population at any given time. The main reason for them to
be placed in a camp was suspect political background, meaning activ-
ity as a communist. The occupation authorities saw some hope of rec-
onciling these persons into their proper national identity and set up a
special camp for “unreliable Finnic elements.” While placement into a
camp was deemed to be a cautionary measure to prevent any sabotag-
ing of Finnish administration in the area, the inmates were also sub-
jected to nationalistic indoctrination with a view to weaning the
inmates off Bolshevism and making them viable citizens in the future
Greater Finland.59
With the visible turning point of the war after Stalingrad, Finnish
occupation authorities found it necessary to reconsider several of their
former policies, and doubts about the advisability of the planned mass
deportations awoke. The Foreign Ministry’s legal expert in interna-
tional law, Erik Castrén, in a memorandum in March 1943, came to the
conclusion that such deportations were contrary to the Hague
Convention. If based on voluntary choice, their legality was not in
question, but problems might still follow in the eyes of third parties not
57
Ibidem, p. 105; Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen, pp. 149–50.
58
KA/SArk, T 9729/15, Eastern Karelia Military Administration Staff (ItäKar.SE),
Memorandum, 1 December 1941.
59
Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot, p. 121.
ready to accept the voluntary nature of the deportations. Castrén’s

memorandum was a clear signal advising against any mass transports
of people in a situation where the future was uncertain.60
International opprobrium on both German and Finnish occupation
policies also began to make its effects felt. As Finland was already look-
ing for a way out of the war, it became essential to avoid being in any
way identified with Nazi practices. In October 1943, the Eastern Karelia
Military Administration produced a memorandum calling for the abo-
lition of the term “concentration camp” when speaking of the camps
for non-national population in Eastern Karelia:
As these camps are called concentration camps, the name is as such
somewhat misleading. It is well known that the term “concentration
camp” is in the popular imagination easily understood to mean some
kind of a stricter isolation, forced labor, discipline or even punitive camp,
where persons considered a danger to society, work-shy, unruly, recalci-
trant or even criminal, are incarcerated. For this reason, somewhat mis-
leading notions of the function and purpose of Eastern Karelian
concentration camps have unnecessarily arisen among outsiders […]
As the taking of root and spread of such notions among the general pop-
ulace, possibly also abroad, may have harmful consequences, there seems
to be reason to change the name of the camps to better correspond to
their purpose.61
With this, the concentration camps were renamed “transit camps”
(siirtoleiri). They continued to be plagued with similar problems to the
prisoner-of-war camps, arising out of insufficient food supply and
healthcare. The concentration camps had undergone a period of high
mortality in 1942, with significant peaks experienced still in February,
March and June 1943. A registered total of 4,279 civilians lost their
lives in the concentration and transit camps in Eastern Karelia. This
translates into a mortality rate of roughly 17 percent. The number is
considerably lower than the mortality rate among the Soviet prisoners-
of-war, but remarkably high in international comparison considering
the status of the camp inmates as civilian internees. The camp system
remained in use until June 1944, when the occupation authorities
released the inmates after Finnish troops had withdrawn from the area.
60
Archives of the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Fb 110, A.3.c, Memorandum, 30 March
1943.
61
KA/SArk, T 2870/14, Population Office of the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration Staff (ItäKar.SE/Väestötoimisto), Memorandum, 5 October 1943. I am
grateful to Ida Suolahti for this information.
With them went the dreams of an ethnically homogenous Eastern

Karelia.62
***
Aftermath
Right after the conclusion of an armistice between Finland and the
Soviet Union in September 1944, an Allied Control Commission
entered Finland to oversee the fulfilling of the armistice terms. Headed
by Andrei Zhdanov, a close ally of Stalin, the Commission was domi-
nated by the Soviet Union, its few British members merely window-
dressing without any influence into the way the Commission worked.
A further complication arose from the fact that Northern Finland was
still occupied by German forces. It was unclear what their reactions
would be, but the armistice terms included that Finland should disarm
German troops in Finland. Any prisoners taken in connection with
this were to be handed over to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Finland
was to intern German and Hungarian citizens residing in Finland as
enemy nationals.63
The Allied Control Commission soon began to make forceful
demands for more active measures from the Finnish Army for the
eviction of the Germans troops in the north. This meant war with
Germany. By the end of October 1944, fighting had begun between the
retreating Germans and the pursuing Finns. Active fighting meant that
German prisoners-of-war also began to fall into Finnish hands. Exact
figures are lacking, but up until March 1945, when all combat opera-
tions against German troops in Finland were practically concluded,
the Finnish Army took around 3,000 German prisoners-of-war. Most
of them were taken in the abortive attempt by the Germans to seize
control of Hogland Island on the Gulf of Finland in September 1944.
There were 44 recorded deaths among the German prisoners, bringing
their mortality rate to 1.8 percent. The Soviet Union, however,
demanded the handing over of the German prisoners-of-war in Finnish
custody, which the Finns, fearful of Soviet countermeasures, duly
did. By November 1944, Finland had already sent 2,562 German pris-
oners into the hands of Soviet authorities, and continued to funnel
62
63
Pohjonen, “Soviet Demands for Repatriations,” p. 180.
both prisoners-of-war and German deserters hiding in Finland into

the Soviet Union until February 1946, when the last such individual
was deported from Finland.64
The armistice treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union had also
stipulated the return of any Soviet or Allied prisoners-of-war Finland
might hold, as well as the release of such interned Soviet citizens who
still remained in Finnish hands. The approaching end of the war had
already in the autumn of 1944 began to arouse mixed feelings among
the prisoners-of-war themselves. Camp No. 1 for officer prisoners in
Köyliö experienced the highest recorded number of escapes in
September 1944, when news of the coming armistice and repatriation
to the Soviet Union reached the prisoners, some of whom chose to
escape rather than face being returned to their homeland. Many pris-
oners also expressed a wish to be able to either stay in Finland or get to
Sweden in order to avoid repatriation into the Soviet Union. These
wishes were granted only to a special few who had rendered valuable
services to Finland in the war, even though many managed to escape
from the repatriation transports with the help of Finnish officials turn-
ing a blind eye.65
The mass repatriations of the prisoners-of-war began in the middle
of October 1944, after which the prisoner-of-war camps were emptied
in rapid succession. By the beginning of November 1944, a total of
42,495 former prisoners-of-war had already been sent to the Soviet
Union together with 1,615 Soviet civilians and 178 German civilian
internees. The forced repatriations and deportations became a drawn-
out affair, continuing until March 1955, when the last individuals were
sent across the border. After this, an amnesty was granted in the Soviet
Union and the Finnish authorities understood that they were no longer
expected to actively look for those former Soviet citizens who might
still be hiding in Finland.
The total count of those repatriated came to comprise over 47,000
returning prisoners-of-war, interned civilians, former Red Army sol-
diers who had entered Finnish service, German prisoners-of-war, as
well as a group of individuals specifically demanded by the Soviets,
including Russian émigré activists and other Russians in Finnish ser-
vice, and even one Finnish SS-volunteer. In the Soviet Union they had
64
Ibidem, pp. 182, 186.
65
Kujansuu, “Jatkosodan politrukki- ja upseerisotavangit,” p. 1048.
to face either an execution squad, imprisonment in the Gulag or

resettlement.66
With the ending of the war, the prospect of facing the victor’s justice
began to appear likely in Finland. The Soviet Union had already in
1943 established special committees for each Soviet republic under
occupation for the gathering of evidence and investigation of war
crimes in the occupied areas of the country. For Soviet Eastern Karelia,
a committee headed by General Gennadiy Kupriyanov was set up, and
it published its main report in 1945. The result was a collection of wit-
ness statements and documents. It is not possible to achieve much of a
certainty about the veracity of the often lurid stories, but the very pro-
cess of preparing such a report seemed an ominous enough sign. Yet
the contents failed to materialize into actual criminal charges. The
report seems to have been mainly intended for domestic propaganda
use, considering that 20,000 copies were eventually circulated within
the Soviet Union.67
From October 1944 onward, however, the Allied Control
Commission in Finland began to make initiatives towards bringing
Finnish war crime suspects to justice. There was every reason for the
Finnish government to wrest the initiative from Soviet hands in this
matter. Failing to act on the promptings of the Commission could
conceivably lead to the Soviets acting unilaterally, in the worst
case transferring the judicial processes to Soviet courts. A specific
Finnish Committee for Investigation of Prisoner-of-War Camps
(Sotavankileirien tutkimuskeskus) was therefore set up at the begin-
ning of November 1944. Later, the work was taken over by a special
war crimes section in the Ministry of Justice. The work of the Committee
came to be centered upon crimes committed against prisoners-of-war,
with manslaughter being the most common count of indictment.68
As a result, by the beginning of the year 1947, over 3,000 alleged war
crimes cases had already been investigated, with almost 1,400 indict-
ments arising from the investigations. Roughly half of the charges were
dropped. In the autumn of 1948, there were still 98 convicts in Finnish
66
Pohjonen, “Soviet Demands for Repatriations,” pp. 182–5.
67
Kujala, Vankisurmat, pp. 127–8; Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen,
p. 38.
68
Oula Silvennoinen, “Still Under Examination: Coming to Terms with Finland’s
Alliance with Nazi Germany,” Yad Vashem Studies 37 (2009): 2, pp. 80–2; Kujala,
“Illegal Killing,” p. 440.
prisons serving the longest sentences for war crimes cases. By that
time, many convicts had already been pardoned, and by the beginning
of the 1950s investigations into war crimes and judicial processes aris-
ing out of them were over.69
What the Finnish war crime trials failed to achieve was any kind of
a sense of national reckoning with the past. The reasons for this were
rather clear. The Soviet Union had put heavy pressure on Finland in
1945 to bring about a Nuremberg-style trial against former president
Risto Ryti, key Finnish cabinet ministers and one ambassador for
“crimes against peace,” that is, for bringing on the war. Seen almost
universally in Finland as a blatant example of victor’s justice, this case
also left its mark on other war crimes processes. By denying the Finns
any sense of reciprocity, the Soviets failed to create an atmosphere con-
ducive to a fair reckoning.
What thus still remains at best a half-digested hard fact for modern
Finns is that the total mortality rate of registered prisoners-of-war in
Finnish custody, over 30 percent, is a remarkably high figure. It is
roughly comparable, especially if one accounts the somewhat different
premises used in calculating the corresponding Soviet figure, to the
mortality of Finnish prisoners-of-war in Soviet camps, a more impre-
cise figure ranging from 32 to perhaps 40 percent. While it still con-
trasts favorably with conditions in German camps for Soviet
prisoners-of-war with their mortality rate of 57 percent, it is in the
same scale as the figures of Imperial Japan, notorious for the brutal
treatment of prisoners-of-war in Japanese custody. The overall mortal-
ity rate of Western Allied prisoners-of-war in Japanese hands during
World War II was roughly 27 percent. This figure was higher for some
groups of prisoners, with U.S. and Australian prisoners receiving the
harshest treatment and experiencing mortality rates of roughly 35 per-
cent. Furthermore, it is to be noted that the mortality rate of Soviet
prisoners in German custody within the Lapland and Northern
Norway theater of war was significantly lower than that of Soviet sol-
diers in Finnish custody.70
One must also note that the most critical period of mass deaths of
Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finnish camps fell roughly to the same
69
Jukka Tarkka, 13. artikla: Suomen sotasyyllisyyskysymys ja liittoutuneiden
sotarikospolitiikka vuosina 1944–1946 (Porvoo, 1977), pp. 84–5; Kujala, Vankisurmat,
pp. 160–5.
70
Vance, Encyclopedia, pp. 458, 462.
months as it did in German camps, both in the occupied territories and

in the area of the Reich. Those months stretched from the autumn of
1941 to the spring and summer of 1942. The immediate reasons of
course, both in Germany and in Finland, were the same familiar fac-
tors: exposure, malnutrition, disease. But this period of time is remark-
able also because it was the period when confidence in a decisive
military victory was still at the maximum among both Germans and
Finns. With victory seemingly assured, there were few who were pre-
pared to raise their voices on behalf of the soldiers of a despised, hated
and soon-to-be defeated enemy.
The treatment Soviet prisoners-of-war were to receive in Finnish
hands reflected rather directly the shifting fortunes of war and expecta-
tions of its likely outcome. In the Winter War, prisoners who safely got
through the experience of falling captive could generally expect decent
treatment. The available figures in no way suggest problems within the
Finnish prisoner-of-war administration that one would not have
encountered anywhere else. The Continuation War of 1941–44, how-
ever, was another matter. Here as well, as the war progressed and hopes
of victory faded, interest in the decrees of international law grew.
Practices deemed contrary to the letter or the spirit of the Hague and
Geneva Conventions were quietly modified or dropped. As Finland in
1943 seriously began to look for ways to get out of the war, it could no
longer afford to lose sympathy in Western eyes. At the same time, it had
become clear that Finland would also have to deal with the neighbor-
ing Soviet Union in the future.
During its quest for peace from 1943 onwards, as well as later during
its quest to live with the consequences of peace, Finland again had to
turn its face towards the international law for what it was worth in the
way of offering protection from the Allies, especially the Soviet Union.
Reciprocity could still not be expected, even less demanded. It had,
however, become clear that refusing to stick to international law—as
well as economizing on the country’s treaty obligations because of
unfulfilled expectations and unmet demands for reciprocity—was a
move fraught with risk. This point was forcefully driven home by the
belated realization that Finland would have eventually been better off
had the Finns not lost sight of the stipulations of international law even
during the headiest months of 1941.
CHAPTER NINE
GREATER FINLAND AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

FINNISH SCHOLARS IN EASTERN KARELIA, 1941–44
Tenho Pimiä*
Our obvious and urgent obligation is to save for scholarship everything

that is about to vanish. That could be the motto of the present. It would
indeed be difficult to describe a scholarly task more worthy of generous
support from academic institutions than this one. Only the future gen-
eration will enjoy all the opportunities to work on clarifying the material
we have compiled. But only the present generation has been assigned the
work of preserving the ingredients; the ingredients without which eth-
nology cannot attain its goal.1
The above statement was written in 1926 by Professor E.N. Setälä,

Finnish linguist and influential social figure. As “national scholarship,”
the task of ethnography, the study of Finnish language, folk poetry and
history was to save from extinction the still available ancient cultural
heritage that was understood to be Finnish. The view was that this
information was first and foremost to be found in the nooks of Eastern
Karelia—in villages where the Karelian folk and rune singers had pre-
served the age-old traditions uncorrupted by modernization and
“foreign influences.” Already in the first half of the nineteenth century,
Elias Lönnrot had compiled Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala,
mainly using Karelian folk poetry, and, according to the strong national
romantic mode of thought, the living roots of Finland’s people were
most readily discernible expressly in the east.2
After the border separating independent Finland from Soviet Russia
was ratified in Tartu in 1920, Eastern Karelia closed to Finnish research-
ers for over two decades. Finnish national activists participated in
* Translated from the Finnish by Hannu Tervaharju

1
E.N. Setälä, “Kansatiede, sen ala ja tehtävä,” in A. Kannisto et al., eds., Suomen
suku, Vol. 1 (Helsinki, 1926), pp. 21–2.
2
On Finnish nationalism and its conceptions of the Finnish past in English, see
Derek Fewster, Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish
History (Helsinki, 2006).
396 tenho pimiä
1918–22 in voluntary expeditions fighting against the Red Army in

Eastern Karelia and the Ingria region. The expeditions failed in their
objectives to separate Eastern Karelia and Ingria from Soviet Russia
and to incite a widespread uprising in the area against the new
Bolshevik regime. Many of these activists were students, scholars, mili-
tary officers, physicians and cultural figures who worked toward vari-
ous nationalist objectives throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Many of
them cherished the notion of Greater Finland that would include at
least Eastern Karelia but possibly also Ingria and other eastern regions.3
All in all, during the time between the world wars Eastern Karelia was
a cherished obsession of university people who saw it as their calling to
preserve the national cultural heritage. The leading ideologues were
mainly humanists whose explicit task was nation-building and defin-
ing the notion of “Finnishness” over and against pressure from both
west and east, that is, from both Sweden and Russia.4
News leaking from behind the closed border provided Finnish
scholars, already horrified at the threat of eastern dominance, with
indisputable evidence of the downfall of Karelian culture in the Soviet
Karelia of the 1930s. Several Russification and collectivization projects
as well as campaigns of terror directed against ethnic minorities
changed the region’s population structure dramatically.5 Finnish schol-
ars could do nothing but helplessly witness how Stalin’s reign quickly
disrupted the Karelian population’s language use and the Orthodox
worship so important to them.
Against this backdrop, the beginning of the Continuation War in
1941 and the rapid progress of Finnish troops into Eastern Karelia
across the border of 1920–39 seemed to open up unprecedented oppor-
tunities for ethnological research. One of the largest projects directed
at Finnic cultural heritage was realized in the regions Finland occupied
in the east between 1941–44. The occupation gave scholars time to
gather a large ethnological collection of artifacts from cemeteries,
prayer houses and homes abandoned because of the war. Within those
3
Toivo Nygård, Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten auttaminen: Aatteellinen heimotyö
itsenäisessä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1978), passim.
4
Next to humanities, natural sciences, foremost geography, geology and biology,
also took part in defining “natural borders” for Greater Finland, see Mari Vares,
“Luonnollinen Suomi: Käsityksiä Suomen ‘sijainnista ja suuruudesta’ 1917–44,”
Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 108 (2010): 1, pp. 47–59.
5
laisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 92–6.
greater finland and cultural heritage 397
few years Finnish researchers, together with the military administra-

tion, succeeded in collecting significant oral folk information from the
Eastern Karelian population remaining in the occupied territory, as
well as from refugees coming to Finland, from Finnic Ingrians trans-
ferred to the country in 1943–44 from the German occupation zone,
and from the Soviet prisoners-of-war with Finnic roots. These wartime
scholarly activities amassed a large but dispersed collection of Karelian
cultural material, a “collection” currently spread throughout many
parts of Finland.
Most of the people actually doing ethnographic work during the
Continuation War were researchers ideologically committed to the
idea of Greater Finland who did not hesitate to pronounce their often
negative views concerning the Russians. Ethnographers and research-
ers of folk poetry followed the advancing troops and collected tradi-
tional materials all through the Continuation War. They were often
accompanied by armed escorts. The Finnish occupation of Eastern
Karelia guaranteed folklorists a unique opportunity to meet and inter-
view remote Soviet Karelia’s last rune singers and their descendants.
In World War II, the scholars wanted to justify the Finnish occupa-
tion of areas in Eastern Karelia by proving that the region had an
organic connection to Finland through a common past and through
folk culture. Within the national scholarship, occupied Eastern Karelia
presented itself first and foremost as a living museum where signs of
ancient connections to the Finnish population across the border were
still visible. Its uniqueness notwithstanding, the project did have pre-
decessors. When Germany began its own European occupations
toward the end of the 1930s, scholars hurried along with the invading
army in order to chart the borders between Indo-European and “non-
Aryan” cultures and thereby justify a large empire for Greater Germany.
Analysis of the materials piled up in Finnish museums and archives
during the occupation of Eastern Karelia sheds light on cooperation
between folklore research and national projects as a part of expansion-
ist nationalist ideology and policy. Simultaneously, it becomes an inte-
gral part of the World War II debate concerning the cultural heritage
that was lost during the war, or hidden and therefore subject to recla-
mation demands. Like the problems that have emerged in earlier
European research, the chapter at hand attempts to shed light on
themes that have been largely neglected in the history of Finnish folk-
lore research. The key questions are: Who collected the spoils of war
that remained in Finland after the war? From where, from whom and
398 tenho pimiä
for what reason was the occupied area’s folk culture recorded? And
how did the Finno-Ugric prisoners-of-war taken to Finland during the
war and the Ingrians moved from the areas Germany took from the
Soviet Union wind up as instruments of major Finnish power
aspirations?
Documents remaining from the work of academic societies and
individual researchers form the core of the archive material used as
sources for this chapter. The most significant among the academic
societies is in this respect the Finno-Ugric Society. Out of the archival
material left by individual researchers, the largest body of data encom-
passing the entire timeframe of the study comes from the remaining
ethnological notes and research-related field diaries of MA Helmi
Helminen. The role of the Finnish military administration in the
research and charting has been studied with the help of the archive of
the Eastern Karelia Military Administration’s Education Department.
Furthermore, the chapter has made use of several archive collections
concerning the research carried out among Finnic prisoners-of-war,
refugees and immigrants from Ingria.
Two remarks must be made for a reader unfamiliar with the theme
of the chapter. First, it should be clarified that all the following refer-
ences to “Karelians” refer only to the Karelian population of Eastern
Karelia. They are an ethnic people or group in their own right in the
sense that they speak Karelian, whereas Finnish Karelians living in
Southeastern and Eastern Finland speak Finnish and are completely
integrated into the Finnish population at large. Second, the term
“Finnic” has been used as shorthand for the Finnish noun and attribute
heimo, which is difficult to translate directly. Literally heimo would
mean “tribe” or “tribal,” and it is commonly used to refer to the ideol-
ogy, interest and practical work (heimoaate and heimotyö) aimed at
supporting the Finnic peoples outside the Finnish borders.
I. Scholarship Serving the Nation: Ideological and Political Contexts
Looking Towards the East and the Past

Towards the end of the 1930s, the hearts of young Finnish students
beat “against the Devil and the Russian,” as one of the nationalist activ-
ists’ slogans stated. In Finland’s university and cultural life between the
world wars, the Academic Karelia Society (AKS) gathered together
nationalistic university people who were enthusiastic about the Finnic

Greater Finland idea. Due to the efforts of AKS and many other ideo-
logically similar societies, no researcher starting out in folkloristics
could remain unaware that the national Finnish cultural heritage was
in danger of extinction in the east and the west alike. The work of sav-
ing it was primarily a national calling. If the work was actually going to
achieve something, it should be started quickly.
In the 1930s, more and more women researchers took up ethnologi-
cal work, and this trend intensified after the outbreak of the war. Like
their contemporaries, many of them had done their first fieldwork and
met their first colleagues in Sweden: there Swedish ethnology professor
Sigurd Erixon had organized folklore gathering expeditions to the so-
called “forest Finns” in Swedish Värmland and “Baltic Circle” research
meetings meant to gather together cultural research and researchers
from the nations around the Baltic Sea. Finland’s folk research in the
first decades of the twentieth century rejected modernization and con-
centrated on cherishing national traditions.6 An investigation of the
national pursuit of scholarship before World War II makes clear that
the tasks scholars considered central were in one way or another con-
nected to the creation of a national self-image and to measures sup-
porting a united nation-state. Separation from Russia had been one of
the most enduring undercurrents forwarding the research of Finnish-
related peoples. Approaching the Continuation War, this political
agenda ensured that folk-cultural research became more and more
clearly a part of the Finnic policy that gained its momentum primarily
from a rigorous opposition to Bolshevism.
Academic interest in Eastern Karelia and other Finnish-related
regions also became part of a wider nationalist project, which looked
forward to a politically united nation-state, sharing a common cultural
heritage and language: Greater Finland. In addition to regions in close
proximity to Finland—Estonia, Eastern Karelia and Ingria—a number
of Finno-Ugric peoples lived deep in Russia, most of them far away
across the Urals in Siberia. Embracing these distant “tribes” as peoples
inside one Finnish nation and state seemed utopian, but researchers
still showed an interest in these distant linguistic relatives. Closer to
6
Seppo Knuuttila, “Hiljainen kevät: Miksi kansanrunoudentutkimuksessa ei oltu
tietääkseen kansalaissodasta puoleen vuosisataan,” in Heikki Ylikangas, ed., Vaikea
totuus: Vuosi 1918 ja kansallinen tiede (Helsinki, 1993), p. 49.
400 tenho pimiä
home, in the 1920s and 1930s many activists considered perfectly fea-
sible a new national borderline in Eastern Karelia going “from the
White Sea to Lake Ladoga.”7 This emphasis on the importance of the
eastern dimension in the process of creating Finnish cultural identity
carries with it a certain irony. In earlier eras, mainstream Finnish peo-
ple had experienced the Eastern Karelian way of life and its representa-
tives as alien and “Russian,” but now they became the guardians of
Finnish cultural heritage and the focus of national culture work.
Moving ancient Karelian culture into the interpretive center of the
Finnic peoples as a whole demanded the imagining of a shared past.8
This move inevitably gave rise to problems of definition: Eastern
Karelian people, for example, belonged to the Orthodox religion while
most Finns were Lutheran. Was the Orthodox faith a foreign Russian
element, the “Russkies’ church,” or was it to be respected as part of
genuine Karelian cultural heritage?
While all Western nations shared a concern about an all-engulfing
triumph of modernity, the concern was particularly great in nations
aspiring to expand their territories, like Finland and Germany, and
where many political, nationalist principles made reference to an
ancient national past and common folk traditions. A major tradition-
salvaging operation had commenced in Germany in 1927: the ethno-
logical charting project Atlas der Deutschen Volkskunde, meant to
preserve in archives the last remnants of traditional German folk cul-
ture “once more before the final triumph of modern standard culture.”9
From the national political point of view, the essential purposes of the
charting were to document the spread across German state boundaries
of chosen typically national characteristics and simultaneously to
strengthen the belief in family connections independent of borders
and a common past shared among different regions. The culture charts
included an option for new territorial occupations, and ethnological
observations inevitably became a part of geopolitics.10
7
Nygård, Suur-Suomi, passim.
8
Pertti J. Anttonen, “Cultural Homogeneity and the National Unification of a
Political Community,” in Pertti J. Anttonen et al., eds., Folklore, Heritage Politics and
Diversity (Botkyrka, 2000), p. 271.
9
Lauri Hakulinen, “Saksalaisesta kieli- ja kulttuurimaantieteestä,” Suomalainen
Suomi 6/1934, p. 315.
10
Tenho Pimiä, “German Folk Culture Research in Karelia in the 1930s: Ideological
Decoration of Nazism or Serious Research on Ancient History?” Ethnologia Fennica 31
(2004), pp. 12–20.
One of the key issues in the policy pursued by the National Socialists
during the 1930s was the redefinition of the status of the German pop-
ulation living outside Germany’s national borders. The goal of the
National Socialists was to establish a German network of loyal sup-
porters outside Germany.11 German-based populations in different
parts of Europe formed ethnic enclaves, kinds of bridgeheads of
Germanization politics, located physically in the territories of other
sovereign nations but psychologically part of the German common-
wealth. They were considered metastases preserving authentic national
tradition, living outdoor museums that were in danger of disappearing
unless the motherland paid attention to their interests. Their political
propaganda value was therefore significant.12 In Finland as well the
folk culture worth preserving was interpreted as arising from an agrar-
ian way of life that had succeeded in avoiding (or had had to avoid) the
impact of modernization.
In his research Linguistics and the Third Reich (1999), linguist
Christopher M. Hutton has shown that linguistics were part of the ide-
ological structure of the Third Reich. He emphasizes that the concept
“Aryan” was not deliberately misused by Nazi-minded scholars but
more accurately a hypothesis that academic scholarship itself had
birthed, as they mated the ideas of language and race. According to
Hutton, linguistics was simultaneously the mother and the offspring of
the race theory, and according to him this intertwining of notions of
race and language culminated in a situation where real or imagined
wrongs against small German-speaking minorities could be used
as grounds to occupy countries in Central Europe.13 The links between
a nationally-orientated administration and ethnology research are
complex. The academic field reacted to the new operational surround-
ings, for example, after the National Socialists rose to power in the
1930s, but the scholarly field also produced tools that facilitated the
emergence of the nationally-oriented politics. The dynamic cannot
be compressed into a simple cause and effect relation where scholar-
ship creates one negative stereotype after another. The otherness-pro-
ducing structures of anthropology, folkloristics and ethnology do not
11
Britta Hiedanniemi, Kulttuuriin verhottua politiikkaa: Kansallissosialistisen
Saksan kulttuuripropaganda Suomessa 1933–1940 (Helsinki, 1980), pp. 30, 37.
12
Christopher Hutton, Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue Fascism, Race
and the Science of Language (London, 1999), p. 144.
13
Hutton, Linguistics, p. 3.
402 tenho pimiä
in themselves cause the demonization of a given ethnic group, wide

discrimination or dehumanization of a group experienced as an enemy.
Those negative outcomes arise from the combined forces of the sur-
rounding culture and its history.14
As a result of the strong leader cult and the search for a new kind of
religious life, the Nazi administration worked industriously to make
use of received tradition but also to create “new” traditions and
symbols. In Finland this esoteric tendency of German ethnology
research mainly caused confusion. Finnish ethnologist Kustaa Vilkuna
described the researchers sent to Finland by a German institute in the
1930s mainly as victims of childish fantasies, attempting to find in
Karelia some last remnants of ancient Aryan culture.15 Finnish ethnol-
ogy research did not adopt the Nazis’ wild theories about an Aryan
master race, a choice certainly influenced by the fact that the Finns
and other Finnic peoples did not rank very highly in the German
race hierarchies. The Finns had in fact gotten into an awkward situa-
tion in the race debate of the late nineteenth century, when certain
French race theorists tried to prove the weak genetic makeup of
the Prussians through their connection to “Mongol-related” Finns,
while the Germans adamantly denied the existence of such a racial
connection.16
Despite the rejection of master race theory, Finnish ethnology and
linguistics, too, did construct hierarchical ethnic patterns. Paavo
Ravila, professor of Finnish and related languages, for example, worked
during World War II in the charting of Finno-Ugric peoples, their his-
tory and anthropological definitions, in a German institute, Institut für
Grenz- und Auslandstudien, the task of which was to look at questions
concerning borders and foreigners, and to map foreign peoples living
in Russia.17 In this respect it can quite justifiably be argued that Finnish
scholarship was firmly tied to expansionist policy and extra-scholarly
political, military and economic interests in the years of the
Continuation War in 1941–44.
14
Thomas Hauschild, “Christians, Jews, and the Other in German Anthropology,”
American Anthropologist 99 (1997): 4, p. 746.
15
Pimiä, “German Folk Culture Research,” p. 18
16
The debate was named “the Finnish question” (die Finnenfrage), Aira Kemiläinen,
Finns in the Shadow of the “Aryans”: Race Theories and Racism (Helsinki, 1998),
pp. 68–70, 166–70.
17
Marjatta Hietala, “Tutkijat ja Saksan suunta,” in Marjatta Hietala, ed., Tutkijat ja
sota: Suomalaisten tutkijoiden kontakteja ja kohtaloita toisen maailmansodan aikana
(Helsinki, 2006), pp. 114–7.
The Occupation of Eastern Karelia and Finnish Culture Work

Before World War II the interest in Eastern Karelia was mainly cultural
and academic. When Finland moved increasingly closer to Germany
after the Winter War, and when war against the Soviet Union began to
appear likely, the Karelian question took on a high political signifi-
cance. At the same time, those ethnological and historical questions
that had been understood as mainly academic became heavily politi-
cized. First and foremost, the issue was preparing for new border defi-
nitions should Germany succeed in crushing the Soviet Union. Already
in 1940, President Risto Ryti initiated a project aiming to use scholarly
arguments to explain to Germans why Soviet Eastern Karelia and the
Kola Peninsula belonged to Finland. The responsibility for the work
was given to geographer Väinö Auer and historian Eino Jutikkala.
Their research was published the next year under the title Finnlands
Lebensraum.18 In the spring of 1941, different border options were for-
warded also on ethnographical grounds. The work resulted in historian
Jalmari Jaakkola’s Die Ostfrage Finnlands.19 According to his analysis,
“several ethnographical factors” and the Kalevalan poetry that had
originally spread into Eastern Karelia from Western Finland showed
that the spiritual inheritance of the region “had no organic connection
to Slavonic culture or worldview.”20 No less than five different border
suggestions were presented, and at the same time it became obvious
that “foreign Russian elements” needed to be cleared from the area to
be occupied.21
In addition to gathering evidence for the justification of Greater
Finland, scholarly research during the Continuation War was moti-
vated by the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 on the previ-
ously ongoing research on Finno-Ugric peoples in the east. A hiatus of
several decades had increased the academic interest among research-
ers. Having witnessed from afar the development of Soviet reality,
Finnish scholars of the 1920s and 1930s had every reason to suspect
the other side’s earnest desire to cherish the cultural heritage of minori-
ties. Researchers who did manage to plan projects on the other side of
18
Väinö Auer & Eino Jutikkala, Finnlands Lebensraum: Das geographische und
geschichtliche Finnland (Berlin, 1941).
19
Jalmari Jaakkola, Die Ostfrage Finnlands (Helsinki, 1941).
20
Jaakkola, Ostfrage Finnlands, 16.
21
Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot, pp. 47–8; also Antti Laine, “Tiedemiesten
Suur-Suomi—Itä-Karjalan tutkimus jatkosodan vuosina,” in Eeva-Liisa Aalto & Rauno
Endén, eds., Historiallinen Arkisto 102 (Helsinki, 1993), pp. 91–202.
404 tenho pimiä
the eastern border were often disappointed when their projects were
cancelled by suspicions on both sides. The major socialist power, poi-
soned by paranoia, did not wish Finnish researchers to wander along
its sensitive western border, measuring villages and houses and inter-
viewing the locals. The tense atmosphere can be illuminated by an
order of a Soviet Karelian district committee in 1935 to burn the kro-
pnitsas (wooden tomb huts) so spies coming from Finland could not
sleep in them.22 Practical experiences with national policy during
Stalin’s era had also inevitably elicited in Finns the idea of some kind
of “program to save Finnish relatives,” to gather the last remaining bits
of a vanishing folk culture—regardless of the final outcome of the
recently begun Continuation War.
During the summer and autumn of 1941 the idea of Greater Finland
seemed actually to become reality, as Finnish troops took the Olonets
and Dvina Karelia all the way to the River Svir and the Maaselkä
Isthmus, and occupied Eastern Karelia’s capital Petrozavodsk at the
same time as the Germans besieged Leningrad and proceeded to the
gates of Moscow. Different options for the future border were discussed
between Finns and Germans in semi-official contexts.23 But the occu-
pied areas of Eastern Karelia were not officially annexed to Finland;
instead, the Finnish Army established the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration to administer them. Several reasons can account for this
restraint, the most important of them being Finland’s foreign political
situation. Finland strove to maintain good relations with the Western
Powers and therefore insisted in its westward communications that
Finland was waging its own, independent defense war with the only
aim being to reclaim the areas lost in the Winter War. This show of cau-
tion proved wise. The Soviet regime did not collapse in the autumn of
1941, and the next winter the Red Army launched its counter-attack.
At the same time the war escalated into a real world war as the United
States joined it. In this situation, Finland’s occupier status became
problematic and underlining it through official and unilateral border
changes would only have weakened Finland’s international position.
Nevertheless, the military and political setbacks in the winter of
1941–42 did not prevent low-profile scholarship and culture work in
22
Sami Koski, Mika Rissanen & Juha Tahvanainen, Hävityksen historiaa:
Eurooppalaisen vandalismin vuosisadat (Jyväskylä, 2007), p. 28.
23
Ohto Manninen, Suur-Suomen ääriviivat: Kysymys tulevaisuudesta ja turvalli-
suudesta Suomen Saksan-politiikassa 1941 (Helsinki, 1980), passim.
Fig. 9.1. “Finland and her natural eastern frontiers.” A map showing the expansive
reaches of Greater Finland in Jalmari Jaakkola, Die Ostfrage Finnlands (Helsinki,
1941), p. 67.
406 tenho pimiä
Fig. 9.2. Greek Orthodox religion was an essential part of the Eastern Karelian culture
and tradition. The interior of the Alexander-Svirsky monastery church, May 1942.
Photo: Finnish Defence Forces Photographic Centre SA 84998.
Eastern Karelia. The ethnographic expeditions in Eastern Karelia in

1941–44 were mainly realized as cooperative efforts between the
Finnish Academic State Committee on Eastern Karelia (Valtion tieteel-
linen Itä-Karjalan toimikunta), established by the Ministry of
Education, and various academic societies. The Finnish government
took on many projects recording folk culture, such as clearances of the
ethnic origin of the inhabitants in some of the villages in the occupied
areas. Many officers and officials of the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration were prewar nationalist activists who naturally cher-
ished the idea of Greater Finland. The Military Administration
attempted determinedly to influence the collecting of endangered folk
culture. Due to this determination, the military groups operating in
the occupied areas had, well in advance, been given instructions con-
cerning the gathering and protection of ancient relics. The Military
Administration also reached out to the area’s population, encouraging
local teachers, agronomists and civil tutors to help in collecting
folklore.24
The Finnish Military Administration was already aware of the schol-
arly fieldwork that would open in Eastern Karelia. The Administration
provided military chaplains, education officials, military police and
cleaning teams with guide leaflets trying to awaken them to the task
and encouraging them “to maintain a continuous interest in ancient
Eastern Karelian culture.” “For if the recently occupied area can boast
some enthusiastic and loyal workers, they can save a lot of things with
cultural historical value,” as the drafters of the cultural heritage salvag-
ing program themselves stated.25
When the Finnish troops pushed to the east in the summer and
autumn of 1941, the Soviet authorities evacuated most of Eastern
Karelia’s population. The men were drafted into the Red Army, and
other able-bodied workers were transported out. Only some 85,000
Soviet citizens, both Russian and Finnic, were left in the area occupied
by the Finns, largely children and elderly people.26 In rapidly occupied
24
Tenho Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta: Suomalaistutkijat miehitetyillä alueilla
1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2007), pp. 25–6, 29–30.
25
Ibidem; KA/SArk, T 5684/5–6, Memorandums and general correspondence
of the Education Department of the Eastern Karelia Military Administration Staff
in 1941–44 (hereafter Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE), a memorandum on the most urgent
tasks to save the Eastern Karelian cultural relics, Military Official Eino Nikkilä, 15
November 1941.
26
408 tenho pimiä
Eastern Karelia, the people who fled their homes left most of their pos-
sessions behind, at the mercy of the conquerors. They could take only
absolute necessities. The fate of their possessions and the uncertainty
of their future return weighed heavily on the minds of the evacuees: it
was a well-known fact that, in addition to the scholars’ drive to collect
cultural artifacts, ordinary Finnish rank-and-file soldiers also wanted
to pack into their rucksacks their own share of the “land of poems.”
Author Olavi Paavolainen, who served during the war as a lieutenant
in the Army’s propaganda troops, found a note on the doorjamb of a
cottage: “Dear neighbor, when you visit here, don’t take our things
with you, as we don’t have that many in any case. Kind regards, Vihtori
Koljonen.”27 The situation of occupied Eastern Karelia disappointed
the Finns. They found fewer people defined as Finnic “nationals”—
Karelians and Vepsians28—than they had expected: only some 40,000
people. The “non-national population,” i.e. mostly Russians, presented
a problem for the occupiers aiming at an “ethnically clean” area. The
economic backwardness and outright misery in Eastern Karelia con-
trasted sharply with the national romantic Karelia image. The Finns
saw everywhere the impact of the Soviet regime and the destruction of
Karelian culture.
At the beginning of 1942 the Finnish Academic State Committee
on Eastern Karelia approached academic societies interested in
Karelia and Karelian folk culture. The committee consisted of eth-
nologist Kustaa Vilkuna, linguist Väinö Salminen and archaeologist
Sakari Pälsi. In the early stages of the war Pälsi published his book
Voittajien jäljissä (“Following the Victors,” 1942): a propagandistic
work describing the Finnish occupation. Salminen’s Viena-Aunus:
Itä-Karjala sanoin ja kuvin (“Dvina-Olonets: Eastern Karelia in
Words and Pictures,” 1941) served similar expansionist politics. The
book contained a description of “Fake Ivan as a scarecrow,” and
revealed much about the writers’ attitude towards Russians and
Russian culture.29 Like many of their colleagues, these researchers,
thoroughly familiar with folklore and Finnic peoples, were recruited
27
Olavi Paavolainen, Synkkä yksinpuhelu, 1946 (Helsinki, 1963), p. 90.
28
Like Karelians, the Vepsians were a small Finnic people, which spoke its own
language and lived mainly in Olonets Karelia. There were some 7,000 of them in the
occupied area.
29
Väinö Salminen, Viena-Aunus: Itä-Karjala sanoin ja kuvin (Helsinki, 1941),
Illustration No. 68.
in the service of war effort—in reporting, reconnaissance, propaganda

and censure.
The committee sought to create plans for research involving the
occupied area and its population. The Finnish Literature Society, the
Finno-Ugric Society, the Finnish Antiquarian Society, the Kalevala
Society, the Finnish Dictionary Fund and the Place Name Committee
of Finnish Learned Societies submitted a joint memorandum outlining
future research plans: the Finnish Literature Society would handle folk
poetry and gathering of the related vocabulary; the Finnish Antiquarian
Society would carry out archaeological excavations; the Kalevala
Society would gather folk art and folk music; the Finnish Dictionary
Fund would complement collections of Eastern Karelia language; and
the Place Name Committee of Finnish Learned Societies would handle
Eastern Karelian names. The Finno-Ugric Society concentrated on
more remote related languages and research among prisoners-of-war
in Finland.30
All the main Finnish cultural institutions were involved in the
study of the occupied area. Other cultural projects were also dir-
ected towards Eastern Karelia, and their goals were similar to the eth-
nological research: the connection of the area to Finland proper was
to be emphasized and the “foreign elements” were to be sieved
out. Although the borders were not moved, the place names of the
area were changed to Finnish ones as the most visible signs of includ-
ing Eastern Karelia in the Finnish cultural circle. So, for example
Petrozavodsk, Petroskoi in Karelian, was re-named Äänislinna
(“Onegaburg”) in Finnish. A particularly significant form of cul-
tural work was carried out by the Finnish elementary school system,
which was quickly brought to Eastern Karelia. The school system
sought to alienate Soviet Karelian children from “Bolshevist influ-
ences” and to plant in them an awareness of their own Karelian cul-
tural identity and their ties to Finland. Schoolteachers were recruited
from Finland, and, as the Finnic idea had been supported especially
by the nationalist body of teachers, there was no shortage of willing
volunteers. The teaching emphasized patriotism and Christian faith
as opposed to the communist ideology. The textbook designed for
Eastern Karelian children was Suuren Suomen kirja (“Book of Great
30
Archives of the Kalevala Society, a letter by the Finnish Learned Societies,
23 February 1942.
410 tenho pimiä
Finland”),31 edited by Kaarlo Merikoski. Russian children in Eastern

Karelia were excluded from this teaching, but later on they also began
to receive elementary schooling.32 During 1942–44, when the military
events of the world war made a quick political solution to Eastern
Karelia’s fate impossible, the cultural, scholarly and educational pro-
jects going on there offered a channel, however small, for national
action and kept alive the expansionist idea of Greater Finland.
II. Scholarly Practices in Prosaic Circumstances
Military Administration in Museum Work

A central part of the cultural work was ethnographic research and
recording aimed at collecting Karelian culture and preserving it. The
primary goal was to save what could be saved, but at the same time the
researchers looked boldly to the future, to a time when political and
military circumstances might possibly allow the realization of wider
national culture projects. Eastern Karelia’s Finnish military adminis-
tration played a crucial role, and the administration focused much of
its energies on this far-from-military work. From the military admin-
istration’s point of view it appears to have been quite clear from the
outset why museum pieces were being collected from the conquered
area. Prehistoric, historic and ethnological artifacts were collected
primarily for a Karelian central museum to be founded in the future
and for Finland’s National Museum. In practice the realization of the
military cultural project was the task of Eastern Karelia Military
Administration’s Education Department, which also included person-
nel trained in ethnology.
The operation was meant to be systematic, and, to support the col-
lecting, the Military Administration established a central warehouse
where the items and the information about them could be stored.
Attention was paid also to careful collecting of church artifacts dis-
persed in the area so that they—if possible—could later be returned to
their original locations. Quick decisions had to be made about how
many items could be transported to the National Museum’s collections
31
Kaarlo Merikoski, ed., Suuren Suomen kirja: Isänmaallinen lukukirja Itä-Karjalan
sekä Kanta-Suomen kouluille ja kodeille (Helsinki, 1942).
32
Sari Näre & Tuomas Tepora, “Suur-Suomen lapset Itä-Karjalassa,” in Sari Näre et
al., eds., Sodassa koettua, Vol. 1: Haavoitettu lapsuus (Helsinki, 2007), pp. 171–93.
in Helsinki. Literary collections and their future housing also demanded

attention. Should the planned Eastern Karelian central archive be
located near the planned Eastern Karelian museum, the literary mate-
rials and photographs would naturally be housed there. The plan par-
ticularly stressed that the people responsible for the collection of
folklore in the occupied area would be personnel with profound expe-
rience in such work.33 These plans made in 1941 provided a point of
departure for all subsequent ethnological activities in the occupied
area.
The occupying forces understood that they would find a number of
museums in the area, but they had no precise information about what
kinds of museums existed or what condition the Soviets might leave
them in. Immediately after the occupation of the area towards the end
of 1941, the Education Department’s expeditions charting cultural
historical sites acquired more accurate information about the state
museum in Petrozavodsk presenting Bolshevik propaganda and some
outdoor museums in the Vepsian area. The propaganda institution’s
exhibitions in Petrozavodsk, decorated with slogans and “pictures
of revolution in the wrong place,” did not give “cause for cheering,”
according to a Military Administration’s representative.34
Nevertheless, the museum also held archaeological, historical and
ethnographic booty the Finnish Military Administration considered
worth preserving. The best artifacts were carried to a basement storage
room and the prehistoric clay jars were packed into boxes away from
the eyes of marauding Finnish soldiers. In addition, a number of cop-
per and bronze artifacts lay in the anteroom of the museum left there
by “Russkies who had taken them from the museum collections to be
evacuated.” The Military Administration’s “museum officer” who had
carried out the inspection recommended in his report that either the
museum be closed or a full-time caretaker be employed. In order to
prevent items disappearing from the museum, entrance to the museum
should be allowed only in extremely important cases.35
The Finnish Lutheran church had also taken interest in the
Petrozavodsk museum. The clerics wanted to turn the building back
33
Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta, pp. 30–4.
34
Ibidem; citations from the above mentioned memorandum by Eino Nikkilä, 15
October 1941.
35
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a report on the inspection of cultural relics in
the Olonets Karelia, Military Official Eino Nikkilä, 21 December 1941.
412 tenho pimiä
into a church, which it had originally been. As the church was built
in the classical style, it was considered most fitting for Lutheran use.
An architect and a military chaplain reported that the museum could
serve as a place of Christian ceremony with relatively little effort, if the
concrete intermediate floors laid by the Bolsheviks for their museum
were demolished.36 The relationship of Finland’s Lutheran church and
the military clergy towards the Orthodox faith was conflicted. Negative
attitudes towards the Orthodox faith had long traditions in Finland,
relating, for example, to the Russification efforts before the nation’s
independence, as well as to Russophobia. Strong Lutheranism was an
important part of Finnish national ideology and identity, and priests
and students of theology had been one of the power groups of the
Academic Karelia Society. It is instructive that the quite small Orthodox
minority in Finland was widely called “those of Russki faith.” So, the
Finnish clergy and the Military Administration expressed a desire to
bring the Lutheran church into the area and even to take up active
proselytizing efforts. On the other hand, some among the same groups
acknowledged that Orthodox Christianity was an integral part of
ancient Karelian culture and that it had acted as a counterweight to
atheist Bolshevism during the Soviet regime and had therefore suffered
much. This conflict was never entirely resolved during the occupation
era, and in places it created schisms between the Finnish occupiers and
the Karelians.37
A corresponding contradiction also manifested itself in the Finns’
attitude towards Eastern Karelian architecture. In addition to public
buildings, occupied Petrozavodsk was full of Karelian and Russian
wooden houses. According to the Military Administration the town
provided examples of how folkloristic building style had developed a
unique town house, aesthetically pleasing, especially as regards its dec-
orative shapes. Nevertheless, the Administration decided that the
houses would soon have to give way to better and more practical houses
in the Finnish style, with only a few houses left as museum sites. The
town had many uninhabited houses of Karelian origin. When these
houses were searched in hopes of finding some objects of museum
quality, the inspectors found that most of the things had disappeared
or were broken due to wartime pillaging or in other ways.38 The Finns
36
Ibidem.
37
38
Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta, p. 33.
tried to separate the elements expressing “genuine Karelian character”

from Russian influences in the architecture of Petrozavodsk and
Eastern Karelian villages, but in practice making this distinction
proved to be quite difficult. On the one hand the Finns admired the
traditional construction methods and architectural ornaments of the
abandoned houses, but on the other hand they were amazed by the bad
condition and untidiness of the buildings. This, of course, they blamed
on the Russians and the Bolsheviks.
The Military Administration had foreknowledge of Eastern Karelian
churches, tsasouna chapels, monasteries and hermitages (i.e. “skites”)
on the basis of older archival sources. These religious sites and the
artifacts they housed offered Finnish researchers opportunities for
important and internationally significant work since the Karelian
Greek Catholic faith expressed Byzantine traditions in their most
peripheral form. Finnish researchers might open new vistas by com-
paring Karelian religious objects with the most glamorous representa-
tives of the Eastern Church. Basic projects proved nevertheless more
urgent than breakthrough research on church art: churches in the
occupied area had to be catalogued and their locations, conditions
and possible movables noted. Destroyed churches also had to be
catalogued, and the information about them had to be complemented
later with the help of old documents and reminiscences of the area’s
population.39
The most famous of the cultural sites remaining in the occupied area
was the Alexander-Svirsky monastery north of the River Svir near Lake
Ladoga. It was known as one of the oldest centers of Eastern Karelian
Christianity. The origins of the monastery are linked to the life of a
spiritual searcher, Alexander, who was born in the mid-fifteenth cen-
tury and in 1484 built on the shore of the Svir the wilderness retreat
(keljo), which later grew into the monastery. The story of his life is rela-
tively well known, as it is partly preserved in a collection of old hagio-
graphic texts. In his lifetime Alexander was known as a healer who was
sanctified by the church in 1547. The first icons portraying him were
created during his lifetime by his disciples. Eventually the monastery
also became a popular destination for pilgrimages. After the Bolsheviks
rose to power in 1917, the leaders of the monastery were taken to
be executed and the most valuable items were removed from their
39
Ibidem, pp. 28–9.
414 tenho pimiä
original places. After this the monastery functioned as a mental insti-

tution, a prison camp and an orphanage.40
At the time of the Finnish occupation in 1941 the monastery
contained two separate complexes some hundred meters apart and
several separate church buildings. The Russians had closed the church
that had been used most recently by bricking shut the main entrance.
The paintings and icons had at the beginning been left inside the
church, “but when the Finns came, the windows were used as entrances
and everything easily transportable has been taken from the church.”
Pillaging of art had started in the main church area immediately
after military action had ceased.41 The monastery had been used as a
prison, so the few remaining artifacts had mostly disappeared. Even
the stone tiles in the floor had been taken. Yet the monastery still
housed valuable items, some of them hidden. The main church of
the monastery still held more than one hundred large paintings, and
its ceiling, walls and pillars were covered with murals. However, the
remaining cultural treasures were still in danger. The monastery was
located only ten kilometers from the front, and every once in a while
shells and bombs hit the wall of the church—so far without inflicting
serious damage. The Finns expected that with the coming of spring
the enemy’s aerial activities would increase and accurate targeting
of such a visible landmark would improve remarkably. In order to pre-
vent their destruction, the paintings needed to be taken down from
the walls and either transported further from the monastery or at least
stored in its basement vaults.42
As the occupation continued, however, it became clear to the
Military Administration Education Department that the troops were
not always willing to do the work of preserving cultural memorabilia.
They simply did not have the museum expertise required to follow the
instructions about collecting artifacts like paintings. “In the war zone
such matters were brushed aside,” as Military Administration official
Eino Nikkilä commented.43
Different groups of artifacts also disappeared from the Petrozavodsk
museum. Among the missing things were art industry objects brought
40
Mikko Savolainen, “Syvärin luostarissa,” Ikonimaalari 2/2004, p. 57
41
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a travel report of an assignment to Eastern
Karelia, 30 March—20 April 1942, Military Official Eino Nikkilä.
42
43
Travel report by Eino Nikkilä, 30 March—20 April 1942.
to the basement of the museum from the Czar-era villas, as well as a

large number of hand-painted bowls, vats, plates, tea and chocolate
cups and other glassware, goblets of fine art glass whose antiquity and
value were hard to calculate. Later it turned out that the artifacts were
in use at the local officers’ club. During another inspection tour it
turned out that an entire Finnish military unit had privately collected
booty for their own “museum” consisting mainly of icons and ethno-
logical artifacts. The icons and ethnologically valuable artifacts were
coveted memorabilia of the conquest of Eastern Karelia.44
To prevent such pillaging, the most valuable part of the Petrozavodsk
museum was moved to the safety of the vault of the Bank of Finland
in Helsinki. In Nikkilä’s opinion even more artifacts could have been
moved there, but the museum’s basement vault was deemed sufficient
for the time being. The artifacts hidden in the basement included a
collection of icons that had until then been in a closet, a selection
of Greek Catholic priests’ ceremonial clothes and some collections of
archives and pictures. Finally the door of the museum’s basement vault
was nailed shut and covered with wallpaper to hide it from possible
burglars.45
In addition to the Military Administration, the staff of the actual
fighting units also showed an interest in cultural work. Lieutenant
General Taavetti Laatikainen and Colonel Kai Savonjousi, command-
ing the Finnish troops on the Maaselkä Isthmus, explained their cul-
tural objective: “close cooperation between the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration and the field army operating in Eastern Karelia can
hopefully save for posterity those cultural and ancient memories
which can still be saved in the Finnic country ruined by Bolshevism
and war.”46 The VII Army Corps, the staff of which was positioned in
Petrozavodsk during the stationary warfare of 1942–43, was the Army’s
most serious supporter of collecting ancient artifacts. Although it was
clear that the results of wartime collection projects would inevitably
remain small in the academic sense, this did not stop the VII Army
Corps from participating in the creation of the future of Eastern
Karelian folklore research. All in all, a total of 700 icons and other
44
45
Ibidem, pp. 40–1.
46
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a letter by Lieutenant General T. Laatikainen to
the commander of the Eastern Karelia Military Administration J.V. Arajuuri on col-
lecting the cultural relics, 21 February 1943.
416 tenho pimiä
religious items were collected. Furthermore, it is quite possible the sol-

diers also organized more “private” collecting, the results of which
were naturally kept in secret.47
In each unit and regional headquarters in the VII Army Corps area
a commander of ancient relics was ordered to catalogue the collected
items and to send them to designated destinations. In order to ensure
proper collecting, the commanders were given detailed instructions.
Most often the task was assigned to the units’ educational officers. Each
collector had corresponding instructions for collecting, marking and
storing the ancient relics. In addition to icons and other valuable items,
the collectors were interested in everyday objects typical for the area,
such as boats. The Military Administration also conducted research on
the traditional handiwork of Karelian women. Enthusiasm often com-
pensated for expertise, when collectors, for example, assumed that the
Bolshevik social order had infected the embroidery of Karelian hand
patchwork. According to one observer “Russians considered their
hand patchwork embroidered with red thread about 100% more valu-
able and better than the many times more arduous and more beautiful
white lace crocheting and drawn-thread work.” “Is this primitive ado-
ration of the red color or political correctness from the Bolshevik era,”
the Military Administration pondered.48
Despite the detailed instructions, the practical success of collection
efforts varied in different parts of the VII Army Corps. Motivation for
the work for the most part was absent, and very few concentrated on
the mission assigned to them. Also the handling of museum pieces
during transportation was often careless. Difficult transporting condi-
tions in the occupied area offered an endless number of new challenges.
In the wintertime there were few opportunities to conduct collecting
expeditions—the roads blocked by snow and the short days took care
of that. Boats and vehicles of high enough quality to pass as museum
pieces were left to spend the winter under a thick blanket of snow.
Accommodation was difficult particularly near the frontlines, and the
collectors or researchers could not even dream about extended stays
near the front. Procuring daily food also proved difficult during the
47
Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta, pp. 105–6, 113.
48
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a report on the existence and collection of
ancient relics in the Eastern Karelian region governed by the VII Army Corps in 1942–
43, Lieutenant V.R. Tolonen, 20 February 1943.
collecting expeditions, particularly in the regions where there were no

troops.49
The Education Department of the Military Administration paid par-
ticular attention to the church relics of the conquered Olonets Karelia
region, and a special set of instructions was drafted for the project. The
objective was “first and foremost to save church relics and buildings
from destruction.” The primary measure was to close off the churches
and chapels the Bolsheviks had not ruined “from outside watchers and
collectors of war mementoes.” At the same time the hope was that ser-
vices could still be held in these churches so dear to the Eastern
Karelians. The derelict tsasouna chapels representing folk style were—
if possible—to be temporarily repaired and photographed. The icons
the Finns had already collected were to be locked away. Showing them
to outsiders was no longer accepted, as “war mementoes still keep dis-
appearing” according to the Military Administration’s information.50
The guiding principle was that icons that had found their way from
churches to private Karelian homes should not be reclaimed from their
current holders. According to the Military Administration, only the
clergy of the local Orthodox faith close to the people could reclaim the
icons from private individuals, and even then in a way that would
assure the local inhabitants that the icons were being kept for them and
close by. The Military Administration’s view was that “with an eye on
the special Karelian soul, we should avoid the implication that Finns
are taking church relics away by force and that they will be transported
out from Karelia forever.” The Military Administration also thought
that the population, having witnessed museums being built around
Bolshevik revolutionary ideology, would not like to see their hallowed
icons on display in the midst of revolutionary memorabilia or other
unholy collections. “Karelians can probably not tolerate the idea that
their holy pictures would be placed next to reptiles preserved in for-
maldehyde,” as the memorandum of the Education Department bluntly
stated.51
A project that was launched in 1943 but finally went unrealized
involved transporting a tsasouna from the occupied area to the
Seurasaari outdoor museum collection in Helsinki. The building
49
50
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a program draft on rescuing and protecting the
Karelian church relics, 31 March 1943.
51
Ibidem.
418 tenho pimiä
reserved for this purpose was in bad shape, but nevertheless a repre-
sentative one and still fixable. The village inhabitants had not used the
tsasouna for spiritual worship for decades, and it had been turned into
a warehouse a long time ago. For this reason it was thought that trans-
porting the tsasouna to Finland would not offend the villagers, who
were few in any case.52
Within the Military Administration the person mainly responsible
for the documentation and collecting of church art was Second
Lieutenant Lars Pettersson, an art historian who later did his life’s work
as professor of art history at the University of Helsinki. It was mainly
due to Pettersson that the Eastern Karelia Military Administration also
financially supported the repair and conservation of icons. Travelling
in the Lake Onega region in the autumn of 1942, Pettersson met in the
Kosmajärvi village perhaps the only Eastern Karelian icon painter liv-
ing at the time, Ivan Miheinpoika Abramov, born in 1869. According
to Pettersson it was obvious that
there have been local icon painters elsewhere in Eastern Karelia and they
have been part of the so-called Eastern Karelian culture image, and it
would be important to reconstruct in a suitable state museum an icon
atelier where visitors would have a chance to familiarize themselves with
the making of icons, the various work stages, tools and methods.53
Pettersson also thought about more far-reaching ways to present
Eastern Karelian icons and church art in Finland as well as in Europe
at large. At that time, not one illustrated publication focusing on this
field had appeared in any language despite the fact that, according to
experts, the region’s icon art was significant enough to earn a place in
any European museum of art. When “the history of Eastern Karelia’s
icon art is one day written, it will be a magnificent chapter in the his-
tory of Finland’s art as well.”54 The writer of that history would tell the
story of the protection of Eastern Karelian cultural heritage, but would
also extol the artistic heritage of Greater Finland. In this way, Finland
would get an internationally opportune chance to introduce itself—not
only as a conqueror promoting its own interests but also as a protector
aware of cultural values.
52
53
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, Second Lieutenant Lars Pettersson’s account to
the Finnish Archeological Committee regarding Ivan Miheinpoika Abramov.
54
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, Second Lieutenant Lars Pettersson’s initiative
regarding a publication on the Kizhi church, 15 May 1943.
The icon collecting and other scholarly activities undertaken by the

Military Administration was motivated by the principle that
the faster the circumstances in Eastern Karelia can be stabilized and suf-
ficiently combined with the rest of Finland, the faster her rich natural
resources can be made to benefit the common good, and the faster schol-
arly research on the region can begin to bear valuable fruit, the more
certain it will be that Eastern Karelia belongs in Finland in the eyes of
Finns, Eastern Karelians and the rest of the world.55
This formulation by the Military Administration explicitly demon-
strates the intertwining of expansionist politics, economical reasoning
and scholarly interests in their Finnish wartime context.
Helmi Helminen and the Practices of Scholarly Work

As has been noted above, in addition to the collecting and charting
projects within the Military Administration, several Finnish academic
and cultural societies began to promote research on Eastern Karelia.
The Ministry of Education established the Finnish Academic State
Committee to coordinate the work, and all in all more than 200 work-
ing weeks were dedicated to humanist research in the occupied area.56
Many of the researchers were women just starting their scholarly
careers; most of the men were naturally in military service. The motive
of the work, especially in the initial phase, was a desire to map the situ-
ation for cultural projects to come and to strengthen the occupied
area’s bond to Finland proper through scholarly means. When
Germany’s fortunes in the war later turned and it started again to seem
that Finland might have to withdraw from Eastern Karelia, the need
grew to try to salvage the information that might again be inaccessible
on the other side of a closed border. The following uses MA Helmi
Helminen’s collecting expeditions to the occupied area as an example
of the nature and goals of Finnish researchers’ work.
Helmi Helminen (1905–1976) was a young Master of Arts in Finnish
history who had much experience in collecting traditions and who had
worked in the service of Finland’s National Museum’s Ethnological
Department since the mid-1930s.57 On 3 October 1941, she was handed
55
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a memorandum on establishing Eastern Karelia
Research Institute.
56
Laine, “Tiedemiesten Suur-Suomi,” p. 194.
57
Kustaa Vilkuna, “Helmi Helminen-Nordberg 1905–76,” Kotiseutu 3–4/1976,
p. 19.
420 tenho pimiä
an assignment certificate that gave her permission to travel to Repola

with Cleaning Team No. 47 as an expert in ancient relics. Special edu-
cation in museum research had already been given to the team depart-
ing for Karelia in Helsinki’s Seurasaari outdoor museum.58
Helminen’s work area of Repola-Porajärvi was located immediately
east of the 1939 border between Finland and the Soviet Union. On the
Finnish side of the border the nearest population center was Ilomantsi.
The area had been famed for its strong Karelian rune singing tradition.
In the autumn of 1941, Helminen’s research area of Repola consisted of
six village regions, each encompassing from one to twelve smaller vil-
lages. Repola had quickly become an important base for the use of
Finnish armed forces, with large depot areas, garages, canteens and
military graves. The area included the ethnologically significant vil-
lages of Vuosniemi and Haukkasaari. Preliminary information about
collecting ethnological material was not very promising according to
Helminen, as Repola was supposed to contain “nothing but emptiness
and ashes.” The researcher was assisted by a local inhabitant born in
Repola in 1896 and evacuated to Finland in 1921. The outcome of
Helminen’s first ethnological expedition to Eastern Karelia’s occupied
area was 409 museum pieces, 72 photographs and more than one hun-
dred sketches.59
Repola was also an important destination from the point of view
of the creation of wartime political ideology, because it was closely
linked with the national political martyr myth built around Bobi Sivén
(1899–1921). Sivén was an icon of the nationalist Greater Finland ide-
ology. He had taken part in voluntary military expeditions into Eastern
Karelia in 1918–19. Later he worked as head of the county constabu-
lary in Repola until the peace treaty signed in October 1920 made
Repola and Porajärvi parts of Soviet Russia. Sivén shot himself at
Repola town hall in January 1921 as a protest to this “disgraceful peace.”
The lethal bullet was later hidden inside the Academic Karelia Society’s
banner under which the society’s new members gave their oaths.60
In 1942 the collecting of Karelian folk culture in the occupied
area was mainly conducted around Porajärvi, southeast of Repola.
According to the Finnish ethnological opinion it was part of a
58
Ethnological Manuscripts Archive of the Finnish National Museum (SKM:
KTKKA), No. 957, Helmi Helminen, 8 October 1941.
59
SKM: KTKKA, 957 Helminen, 7 and 21 October, 18 November 1941.
60
Jussi Niinistö, Bobi Sivén: Karjalan puolesta (Helsinki, 2001).
traditional area, the western edge of which was on the Finnish side of
the border in the eastern villages of Ilomantsi. Folk culture had been
collected from the area 15 years earlier in 1927, but the results had not
been published until towards the end of the 1930s.61 The Finns had
conquered Porajärvi in the early autumn of 1941. Unlike during the
research in the first year of the war, researchers now had better oppor-
tunities to use as their sources the original inhabitants who had
remained in their homes—mostly elderly women and children. Due to
the Eastern Karelian Military Administration’s movement of popula-
tion, most of the people dwelled only partly in their original home
areas. The researchers welcomed meeting real Karelians at last after
making all their previous ethnological conclusions on the basis of life-
less relics alone. In addition to Helmi Helminen, another group of folk-
lore researchers worked in the Porajärvi area in 1942, mostly studying
construction and handiwork traditions.
The situation around Porajärvi was restless. Discussions at the base
included reports of violent enemy patrols and more and more daring
bears wandering in search of carrion. The uncertainty was further
increased by air raids on Porajärvi and Kuutamolahti on the night of
7 October 1942.62 The increased activity of the Red Army was a threat-
ening signal that indicated a change in the hitherto successful
campaign.
Helminen wrote out her notes concerning Porajärvi during the
next year. The Ethnological Department of Finland’s National Museum
got the notes on material culture, and the folk poetry archive of Finnish
Literature Society received the information concerning annual and
family ceremonies, beliefs and other spiritual traditions.63 Helminen
specifically looked for folklore manifesting ancient Finnish roots in the
area. She collected beliefs, spells, charms, omens, proverbs, Kalevala-
measure songs, folk songs, dirges and general ethnological descrip-
tions. According to the Finnish Literature Society’s collector
information, Helminen collected a total of 976 “tradition units” from
Porajärvi and a total of 2,455 from Tulemajärvi.64
As the final outcome of the war approached in 1943, there was
already a clear awareness of the kinds of difficulties and practical
61
SKM: KTKKA, 957 Helminen, an attachment letter to a manuscript, 24 May
1973.
62
SKM: KTKKA, 957 Helminen, 4–7 October 1942.
63
SKM: KTKKA, 957 Helminen, 12 October 1942.
64
SKS KRA, a data analysis on folklore collectors.
422 tenho pimiä
arrangements the expeditions to the occupied area meant. The careful

instructions the researchers received lessened the friction between
researchers and the Military Administration. In the summer of 1943
the military administration informed the researchers that it wanted
copies of the travelogues, pictures and research results of expeditions
into its administrative district. They wanted the fresh research data
“because it would be useful for the garrison of Äänislinna [Petrozavodsk]
as well as the officers of the Eastern Karelia Military Administration to
have accurate information about Eastern Karelia based on the research
of Finnish scholars.”65 The military thought that the information would
make administering the area easier and increase the soldiers’ under-
standing of the area’s resources, the characteristics of the population
and correct strategies for interacting with them.
Finland’s weakened political status also reflected on the instruc-
tions given to scholars leaving for Eastern Karelia. Provoking the
enemy was to be avoided in all ways. Therefore researchers’ orders
strictly forbade publishing research results and information concern-
ing their trips without the authorization of the Eastern Karelia Military
Administration’s education commander.66 Ethnologists had a strong
standing as scholars making Eastern Karelia familiar to the public, and
therefore the writings they published interested the officials. Most of
the researchers were strongly committed to the ideologically common
national goal. This Finnic spirit combined with often faulty informa-
tion about the war’s overall situation to produce attitudes underesti-
mating and mocking the enemy. These attitudes were not particularly
useful at the turn of 1943–44.
In the summer of 1943 Helminen collected ethnology in Olonets
Karelia as an envoy of the Finnish Academic State Committee on
Eastern Karelia with the support of a grant from the Finnish Literature
Society.67 The 10,000 Finnish mark grant also included fees for the
interviewees. Experience had taught that during the busiest work sea-
son of the year it was almost impossible to reach interviewees without
paying them. To avoid days of wandering around the villages it was
best to hold on to those that were already close at hand.
65
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, an initiative on lectures about Eastern Karelia.
66
Archives of the Research Institute for the Languages in Finland, Helmi Helminen
Collection (KOTUS/Helminen), “Instructions for the researchers coming to work in
Eastern Karelia,” education commander of the Eastern Karelia Military Administration
Staff, 27 May 1943.
67
KOTUS/Helminen, curriculum vitae, 6 November 1965.
In 1943 the Military Administration approached the teachers and

pupils of the elementary schools Finns had founded in the area, because
elementary school pupils of the occupied area were to be made part of
the folklore collecting conducted by the Military Administration.
Expectations for the project were relatively high, albeit it was known
that “Eastern Karelian children are not yet on the same development
level as Finland’s school pupils.” A corresponding collecting project
had been carried out in Finland a few decades earlier. A questionnaire
in the field of ethnology had recently been directed to the occupied
area’s nurses and civil tutors and, according to the Education
Department, had produced relatively satisfactory results. The primary
goal was simply to “map the phenomena of folk culture in various parts
of Eastern Karelia in order to get a better orientation on the most
important research tasks for the future.”68
The Karelian cultural heritage work of both Finnish researchers and
the Military Administration came to a dramatic end in the summer of
1944. The major attack of Soviet troops that started from the Karelian
Isthmus on 9–10 June spread towards the end of June to the Svir front
and the Maaselkä Isthmus. The Finns did not stay to fight for Eastern
Karelia; instead, due to the overall military situation all available troops
were dispatched to the major battles on the Karelian Isthmus, and the
remaining forces withdrew behind the 1939 border. The Red Army
took the hastily evacuated Petrozadovsk without resistance by the end
of June. In the original evacuation plans drawn up in the winter of
1943–44 the idea had been to take Eastern Karelia’s “national popula-
tion” along with the Finnish Army to the west. In the summer of 1944,
however, the ideas and orders concerning the evacuation were contra-
dictory. The Eastern Karelians themselves felt they were in an impos-
sible situation. On the one hand, they did not want to leave their homes
and sever family connections; on the other, they feared harsh reprisals
from the Soviet administration, especially if there was cause to suspect
individuals of collaboration with the Finnish occupiers. Some of the
families had men fighting in the Finnish Army. Eventually the choice
of staying or evacuating was left to the Eastern Karelians themselves,
and in the chaotic situation only some 2,800 people followed the
Finns.69
68
KA/SArk, Valistusos./Itä-Kar.SE, a letter addressed to the teachers in the
occupied territory.
69
424 tenho pimiä
Ethnological research did not end with the loss of Eastern Karelia,
however. After the Soviet offensive, the researchers turned their atten-
tion to Finnic Ingrians transported earlier to Finland from Ingria
around Leningrad: the area the Germans conquered in the autumn of
1941. Between the spring of 1943 and the summer of 1944 there had
been time to evacuate a total of 63,000 of them to Finland, to be safe
from the threatening Red Army and to be employed in the workforce.
The Ingrians were located mainly in Southern Finland.70 Helmi
Helminen, for example, recorded Ingrian folklore and Votian tradi-
tions in Southwest Finland in August 1944.71 From the perspective of
the ethnographers, the “elite” informants of the refugees proved to be
Ingrian women born in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
While most of the men had already adopted Russian ways and forgot-
ten the traditions of old Finnic villages, there were still many knowl-
edgeable interviewees among the women. For the recorders of folk life,
the refugees who had come to Finland from across the border or had
been evacuated were already a familiar research target. Finnic refugees
had started to stream into the country in the autumn of 1917 to escape
the unrest following the Bolshevik Revolution: by the end of 1918 there
were some 3,000 of them. In 1919, when the first attempt to liberate
Eastern Karelia from Soviet rule failed, the number of refugees in
Finland quickly rose to some 15,000 people. At that time the number
of Ingrians was also at its largest, about 8,000.
The Ingrians had already been interviewed in camps administered
by Germans in Estonia. The fact that Finnish researchers were also
interested in them and their past made these quite ordinary people
suspicious and confused. What was the point of all the questions?
In the homesteads of the evacuees there had been similar questioning
at the start of Stalin’s persecution policy, and the people understood
that the outcome had been far from pleasant. As the success of the Red
Army grew on every front, the researchers found that their informants
were less and less willing to talk. Many grew silent, and a few old ones
said that they had in recent years suffered so much that they had lost
their memories and could not tell what they had known even if they
wanted to. Many of those still willing to be interviewed seemed only to
70
Pekka Nevalainen, Inkeriläinen siirtoväki Suomessa 1940-luvulla (Helsinki, 1990),
pp. 59, 296–7.
71
KOTUS/Helminen, curriculum vitae, 6 November 1965.—The Votians were a
Finnic people smaller in number than the Ingrians, and also lived in Ingria.
hope the interview would be over soon. People who had confronted
war, occupation and evacuation sometimes experienced the research-
ers’ questions as insulting. They might only answer something like:
“In times like these it is not fitting to reminisce about the good old
times. This is the time of weeping.”72
And so gaps opened between Finnish researchers and their inter-
viewees. When in 1941 the researchers and military officials, motivated
by lofty national romantic ideas, went in search of ancient Finnish cul-
tural heritage that would for its part serve in realizing the glorious
national future, they met a people that had long suffered from eco-
nomic difficulties, war and outright oppression. For these people the
goals and question settings of the researchers seemed in many ways
alienated from everyday life, and the new Finnish occupation regime
in Eastern Karelia gained only a handful of wholehearted supporters.
The cultural and political expansionist goals of the research collided
with an everyday reality that made many of the researchers forget the
illusions of a grand commonwealth of Finnic peoples.
Prisoners-of-War as Sources of Study

Soviet prisoners-of-war had their own role in ethnological research
during the Continuation War. As Oula Silvennoinen has noted in the
preceding chapter, there were representatives of Finnic peoples among
the prisoners-of-war, and a separate camp was set up for them. They
were treated better than the “non-national” prisoners-of-war, and
mortality rates among them were clearly lower in Finnish imprison-
ment than that of other groups. Finnish authorities also exchanged
prisoners-of-war with Finnic prisoners-of-war the Germans had cap-
tured. Finnish researchers grasped the opportunities the situation
offered—they were now able to familiarize themselves with Finnic
peoples living far away in Russia that had in practice been out of the
researchers’ reach in the past decades.73
In the spring of 1942 the Finno-Ugric Society set up a committee
to create principles for the practical realization of research among
prisoners-of-war. Aside from the representatives of the Finno-Ugric
Society, the committee had members from the Finnish Academy of
72
SKS KRA, Sylvi Sääski 1944: pp. 4124–449, a work report on research on Ingrians
in Finland, summer 1944.
73
426 tenho pimiä
Science and Letters, the physicians’ society Duodecim and the Kalevala
Society. The work plan presented to the Ministry of Education located
the highest hopes within the field of linguistics. The focus was on
research on Finno-Ugric peoples. High expectations lay also in the
fields of ethnology, folk poetry and sociology. The intention of the
Finno-Ugric Society was to send a dozen scholarship students to col-
lect from the prisoners-of-war samples of Finno-Ugric languages
as well as other languages important for the research. The linguistic
work was also linked with collecting folk poetry material, ethnological
and sociological research as well as collecting and recording folk
melodies.74
Due to practical reasons the committee suggested that the Finno-
Ugric prisoners-of-war to be interviewed should be placed into a sepa-
rate camp planned for research purposes. However, the proposal to
establish the camp was turned down by the military officials. The com-
mittee referred to the acute nature of the research opportunities and
applied for a 100,000 mark grant from the Ministry of Education.75
Having familiarized itself with the plans, the Finnish Academic Central
Board (Tieteellinen keskuslautakunta) announced its agreement with
the idea that “this rare opportunity should be made use of as carefully
as possible.” On 15 June 1942, minister of education Antti Kukkonen
gave the Finnish State Treasury an order to give the planned grant to
the Finno-Ugric Society.76
Not all the prisoners-of-war were located in prison camps adminis-
tered by the home troops. They were also used in the service of various
army units on the front. Therefore the committee approached the
Finnish High Command in July 1942 to inquire whether there were
interesting representatives of various nationalities to be found else-
where for interview purposes. At the same time the authorities were
asked to find out about the ability of the possible representatives to
speak their mother tongue.77 Occasionally, interesting prisoners-of-
war were transferred from camps to prisons to be interviewed. Such
linguistic research was conducted among others in the Helsinki Central
74
KA, Ministry of Education Archives (OPMA), a committee statement to the
Ministry of Education about the prisoner-of-war investigations, 21 May 1942.
75
Ibidem.
76
KA, OPMA, an announcement of the Finnish Academic Central Board to the
Ministry of Education, 26 May 1942; KA, OPMA, an order by the Ministry of Education
to the Finnish State Treasury, 15 June 1942.
77
Pimiä, Sotasaalista Itä-Karjalasta, p. 208.
Prison and the Mikkeli Provincial Prison. The Finno-Ugric Society had
already in December 1941 decided to invite Dr. Jeno Juhasz, a
Hungarian scholar of Finno-Ugric languages, to travel to Finland to
conduct linguistic research among the prisoners-of-war.78
Just as they had been in Eastern Karelia, the researchers working
with the prisoners-of-war were disappointed concerning the “national”
condition and cultural identity of the Finnic peoples. During the
long Russian pressure the local home dialects had suffered badly. The
everyday language was Russian, without exception. Some children of
Karelian parents could not speak the family’s language at all. Only
some could read Finnish texts—mainly those who had spent some
time attending Finnish schools. So, it is no wonder that, for example,
young Finnic Mordvinian prisoners-of-war from Siberia were
reproached for knowing only obscene songs translated from Russian to
Mordvinian. In the technical research sense, however, the prison camp
circumstances offered researchers unprecedented benefits. A prisoner-
of-war as a language guide did not get paid, and furthermore the travel
and accommodation expenses were minimized. The informants were
always available. As a new phenomenon it became possible to inter-
view men from different regions one after another concerning the
same topic and thereby to increase understanding of the issue at hand.79
It was only natural that those who were forced to assess the possible
future consequences of their words and actions most carefully were the
ones who took the most suspicious attitude towards the flurry of ques-
tions from the researchers. The prisoners-of-war really needed to con-
template what it was wise to tell Finnish authorities without being later
branded as too enthusiastic a collaborator. Was it generally wise to
cooperate with the researchers at all? Would it yield the interviewee
some immediate benefit, for example more rations during the inter-
views? And how about after the war: would a prisoner-of-war who had
worked in the service of scholarship be a “marked man” like the other
collaborators? On the other hand, prisoners-of-war understood that
stubbornness towards the Finns carried its own risks. A prisoner-of-
war in Finland often found himself between a rock and a hard place;
his situation was far from simple. Antti Kujala has researched the
deaths of Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finland, and according to him a
78
Archives of the Finno-Ugric Society, minutes of a meeting on 17 December 1941.
79
Aarni Penttilä, “Suomenheimoiset sotavangit kielenoppaina,” Virittäjä 1942,
pp. 150–2.
428 tenho pimiä
prisoner-of-war always had to bear in mind that, with bad luck, refusal
to cooperate could have fatal consequences.80
***
From the perspective of stabilizing the Finnish occupation of Eastern
Karelia, it was important that the human resources of the area could
be organized expressly in the manner defined by the occupier. In this
work the researchers occupied a prime position—they made an inven-
tory of the occupied area’s human totality and sorted through
details “representing the original Finnic way of life.” The Soviet
kolkhozes the researchers and military officials encountered were an
affront to the idyllic image that the apostles of the Finnic utopia had
burdensomely constructed. The Karelian outbuildings containing
“factory-produced rags” did not fit the picture either. Nevertheless,
local descriptions created in the atmosphere of the researchers’ nation-
alist fervor framed the occupied area in gold, especially during the
early stages of the Continuation War. Walking at dusk in the autumn of
1941 to buy Eastern Karelian stamps at the barracks area of Repola,
Helmi Helminen wrote in her diary that even the atmosphere in the
occupied area was more artistic than in Finland.81
In the final analysis, the project to save Eastern Karelian cultural
heritage was a disappointment. The Finns coming to the occupied
area encountered fewer original inhabitants than they had hoped.
Furthermore, the impact of Russian culture on the Finnic population
had proven to be even stronger than had initially been suspected.
While mapping the mood of the population in areas occupied by
Finland, the researchers found out that the occupied peoples did not
always look kindly on their occupiers. From the point of view of mis-
sionary work on behalf of the Finnic ideology, the Bolshevik era had
already changed too many things, and finally the only opportunity for
the ethnologists and linguists who were anchored to the framework of
the Finnic idea was to save the last existing remnants.
The younger Eastern Karelian and Ingrian generation the research-
ers met often had only a shallow contact with their “own” cultural her-
itage. From the perspective of tradition collecting, prominent figures
were hard to find, and a significant share of a researcher’s success in the
80
dassa (Helsinki, 2008), p. 142.
81
SKM: KTKKA, 957 Helminen, 25 October 1941.
fieldwork was based on his/her ability to locate precisely the “right”

type of interviewees. Also the researchers’ personal experience of
the occupied area as a versatile human whole happened in a very nar-
row milieu. The research was organized largely by terms defined by
the area’s local Finnish administration and within a framework it
approved. The local administration and its officials, soldiers and volun-
tary workers formed a “colonial community” to which the researchers
also belonged.
After the war the memory of scholarly work in Eastern Karelia was
forced to adapt to the changed political and cultural circumstances.
After World War II in Germany the scholars liked to see themselves as
actors who had passively resisted the National Socialist system and had
suffered from sparse opportunities but had nevertheless refused to give
up their scholarly principles. The Nazi-organized pseudo-research was
seen as appealing only to a few adventurers who had lost their power
of judgment. In Finland, one of the scholars marked with this brand
was Yrjö von Grönhagen who had worked in the infamous Ahnenerbe
Institute for ancient studies led by Heinrich Himmler. In the mid-
1950s, for example, prominent Finnish ethnologist Kustaa Vilkuna
strongly criticized von Grönhagen’s scholarly activities.82 Contemporary
researchers told the history of Finnish ethnology during the wartime
era as a heroic tale, the content of which has for long been crystallized
as follows: during the war the courageous Finnish researchers had the
chance of working in the occupied area among Finnic people who
heartily welcomed them. For example, the book Pioneers: The History
of Finnish Ethnology (1992), recounting the early times of Finnish eth-
nology, describes researcher Tyyni Vahter’s activities in Eastern Karelia
during the war as follows:
Like certain other Finnish ethnologists and folklorists Tyyni Vahter had
an opportunity to visit Soviet Karelia and conduct research among the
Karelians, Veps and Ludic population during the Second World War in
the 1940:s. Seldom has the relationship between the population and
scholars from the “enemy” country been as cordial as those between the
Finns and the Karelians of Soviet Karelia.83
For the professional, research is, in addition to a scholarly passion,
also a livelihood. While analyzing academic activities during World
82
Pimiä, “German Folk Culture Research,” p. 18
83
Toini-Inkeri Kaukonen, “Four Women Ethnologists,” in Matti Räsänen, ed.,
Pioneers: The History of Finnish Ethnology (Helsinki, 1992), p. 174.
430 tenho pimiä
War II it is impossible to draw a clear line between opportunism and

scholarly ambition. Except for a few extreme cases, most researchers
seemed motivated by a mix of both, with opportunism driving some
more than others, and scholarly ambition foremost in the minds of
others. Both individual situations and external factors exert varying
influences. Many of the stereotypes fished out of the waste bin of
linguistic and cultural research in support of Nazi race theories were
outdated already in their own time. Finally only a few scholars
thought, for example, that language, race and culture could be unprob-
lematically equated. Despite such problems, many researchers were
nevertheless ready to stretch their scholarly approach in the direction
the establishment wanted. Both ethnologists and linguists seemed to
be driven by the same motives: the wish to get resources for their own
research and the field of scholarship they represented. This opportun-
istic attitude helped the researchers also to update their profiles after
World War II was over. In the end, even scholars proved to be mere
human beings who tried to benefit from the opportunities the given
social order offered.
However, the Finnish researchers cannot be branded as puppets
who simply followed the political and ideological trends of their time.
Finland was not a totalitarian state before the war or during it.
Scholarship was not harnessed to serve expansionist politics and ideol-
ogy as blatantly as it was in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless this chapter has hopefully been able to show that even in
a democratic nation-state, national interests exert pressures on schol-
arship and tether it to factors other than academic aspirations and
a pure quest for knowledge. Finnish researchers were not only instru-
ments of the Greater Finland policy but its active agents and
practitioners.
When the war ended, the general mood in society was troubled by
defeat and fear. The common mindset was unavoidably discernible
in research and among those scholars who had just a little earlier been
creating Greater Finland. With radical shifts in foreign policy, the
collections so arduously gathered from the occupied area no longer
carried the weighty national significance they originally did. When
the Greater Finland project was buried, the research lost its salience as
that ideology’s primary evidence. In the worst case the ethnological
relics, folk poetry records and Eastern Karelian icons that had come
to Finland started to seem more like proof of guilt than grandeur.
It is no wonder, then, that silence shrouded their existence for decades
to come. The situation concerning World War II and the Finnish

expansion during it has however gradually turned in a new direction.
In the spring of 2008, the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki opened an
exhibition on Soviet Karelia. That exhibition for the first time presented
the results of the ethnological work conducted by Finnish researchers
during the Continuation War in Eastern Karelia and explained how the
idea of Greater Finland and the ideological connection of Finnic peo-
ples influenced the ethnological recording and collecting work done
during that momentous time.84
84
See the website of the Finnish Museum of Cultures, www.nba.fi/en/karelia,
accessed 3 May 2010. Among the exhibited items there were relics that Helmi Helminen
had collected from Repola’s Haukkasaari and Sakari Pälsi from the villages of the
Alexander-Svirsky monastery. The exhibition also presented a publication containing
Helminen’s previously unpublished diary from Repola during the Continuation War.
PART FOUR
WARS OF MEMORY
CHAPTER TEN
SHIFTING IMAGES OF “OUR WARS”

FINNISH MEMORY CULTURE OF WORLD WAR II
Tiina Kinnunen & Markku Jokisipilä
You could hear the old General’s shaky voice all the more often and in all
the more surprising contexts: he was driven around to speak to school
children and youth, they even took him to a hockey arena locker room
when the national team was playing against Sweden. He told the young-
sters about sacrifice and heroes, of men, who knew how to die—men
who weren’t lambs.1
This notion by a Finnish journalist of the last two decades’ memory

production related to Finnish history in World War II is felicitous.
The general in question is Adolf Ehrnrooth (1905–2004), who was
from the collapse of the Soviet Union until his death assiduous in
propagating an image of bravery and self-sacrifice of the Finnish com-
batants, who clinched a victory in terms of preventing the Red Army
from occupying Finland in 1940 and 1944, and, thus, safeguarded
Finland’s independence. This legacy of national pride and determina-
tion should be cherished by present and future Finnish generations.
The prominent role reserved for General Ehrnrooth in contemporary
Finnish publicity indicates that World War II is still strongly present
in the Finnish collective memory. In the field of public history cul-
ture the wars of 1939–44 are remembered and both the fallen soldiers
and the still-living war veterans are commemorated in various ways.
The memory of war is preserved—and reproduced—through a variety
of publications, memorial days, cultural events, public speeches and
visits to important memorial sites, especially the military cemeteries
called “Hero’s Cemeteries” in Finnish.
Finns can be said to have a close relationship with the past of their
nation first and foremost through the memory of the Winter War
1
Ilkka Malmberg, Tuntemattomat sotilaat (Helsinki, 2007), p. 191, all the transla-
tions here and hereafter by Markku Jokisipilä.
436 tiina kinnunen & markku jokisipilä
(1939–40) and the Continuation War (1941–44). Public commemora-

tion of war today is dominated by patriotic sentiment, symbolized and
propagated by figures like Adolf Ehrnrooth, and in this spirit the wars
of 1939–44 are often held up as the true existential moment of the
nation. The tendency to give the wars predominantly positive mean-
ings strengthened in a remarkable way after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and the consequent patriotic discourse still dominates today.
This change in the Finnish memory landscape at the end of the 1980s
and during the 1990s can be defined as a “neo-patriotic turn.”2 Contrary
to the central role given to these two wars fought against the Soviet
Union, the Lapland War (1944–45) against Germany, Finland’s ally in
1941–44, stands on the margins of today’s memory production.
In the present Finnish memory culture of war, individual memories
and public representations mostly deal with “national experiences”;
past events made meaningful by their nationally relevant character.
The destruction and suffering of World War II, the Holocaust included,
is recognized and commemorated, but the “Finnish wars,” on which
the memory production centers, are predominantly seen as separate
from the other theaters and phenomena of World War II. The national
paradigm of the Finnish memory culture of war is not, however, excep-
tional. In 2003, Sebastian Conrad pointed to the fact that at a time
when professional historians are beginning to write transnational and
comparative works, the public memory still centers on the nation in
question.3 The nations themselves are partly produced through such
commemorative practices.
National collection projects of oral history, for instance, reveal the
key importance of war in Finnish family narratives. Having had one of
the highest mobilization percentages in World War II, most families
in Finland were directly affected by war. Fathers, husbands, brothers
and sons were either at the front or in other war-related services.
Respectively, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters worked in various
auxiliary services for the Army, or were involved in running the war
economy. In many families’ and individuals’ lives the three wars of
1939–45 left irreversible marks: out of a population of 3.7 million in
2
See e.g. Vesa Vares, “Kuitenkin me voitimme! Uuspatrioottiset tulkinnat talvi- ja
jatkosodasta suomalaisissa populääriesityksissä,” in Markku Jokisipilä, ed., Sodan
totuudet: Yksi suomalainen vastaa 5.7 ryssää (Helsinki, 2007).
3
Sebastian Conrad, “Entangled Memories: Versions of the Past in Germany and
Japan, 1945–2001,” Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003): 1, p. 85.
shifting images of “our wars” 437
1939, over 90,000 soldiers fell; 94,000 were disabled for life; 55,000
children were orphaned and 30,000 women widowed. In addition,
numerous families were affected by either the temporary or permanent
loss of their homes. In 1944 over 400,000 Finnish Karelian evacuees
had to be resettled after their home regions were annexed by the Soviet
Union.
Throughout the postwar decades, reminiscences of war were handed
down to the next generations inside the Finnish families, even though
the official, institutional memory4 of the Cold War era was more con-
fined, being adapted to the realpolitik of Finnish-Soviet relations and
geopolitics. In the public sphere, beyond the official level, there was,
however, an abundance of representations of war.5 As a rich body of
international research reveals, in memory production the private and
the public spheres of life are in many ways interrelated and not mutu-
ally exclusive.6 In this chapter the emphasis is not, however, on this
interrelationship of private and public, but instead on those represen-
tations of the Finnish wartime, which have gained access to the public
sphere. In our reading, the public memory encompasses published,
non-academic representations of the past, such as novels, popular his-
tory books, films, exhibitions and theater plays.7 In addition, the more
institutional level of memory, presented for instance in the political
speeches and memoirs of Finnish state representatives, is included.
4
By this we mean the efforts of “political elites, their supporters, and their oppo-
nents to construct meanings of the past and propagate them more widely or impose
them on other members of the society,” as Richard Ned Lebow defines it in his article
“The Memory of Politics in Postwar Europe,” in Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner &
Claudio Fogu, eds., The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Durham, NC, 2006),
p. 13.
5
E.g. Hannu Rautkallio, “Politik und Volk—die zwei Seiten Finnlands,” in Monika
Flacke, ed., Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen, Vol. 1 (Berlin, 2004);
Markku Jokisipilä, “Finnish History Culture and the Second World War,” in Bernd
Wegner, Oliver von Wrochem & Daniel Schümmer, eds., Finnland und Deutschland:
Studien zur Geschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 2009).
6
E.g. Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur
und Geschichtspolitik (Munich, 2006).
7
We understand and use the concept of “public memory” in the way Ludmila
Jordanova uses the concept of “public history” in Ludmila Jordanova, History in
Practice (London, 2000), pp. 141–55. In her discussion “public” refers to “for a mass
audience,” “popular,” “non-specialist,” “of concern to an entire polity,” or “available to
see,” p. 149. Concerning the conceptualization of public memory / history, see also
Katharine Hodgkin & Susannah Radstone, “Introduction: Contested Pasts,” in idem,
eds., Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (London, 2002); Bernard Eric Jensen,
“Usable Pasts: Comparing Approaches to Popular and Public History,” in Paul Ashton &
Hilda Kean, eds., People and Their Pasts: Public History Today (Basingstoke, 2009).
The wide-ranging academic research into the years of 1939–45, which

has been discussed in detail in the introductory chapter by Ville
Kivimäki, is only referred to if it is of considerable relevance from
the viewpoint of public representations. Our discussion addresses
the following questions: Whose voices have dominated and whose
experiences have been marginalized in the public memory culture of
war? What kind of images of the Finnish nation are crafted through the
representations of war? Our analysis is qualitative, not quantitative,
and due to its emphasis on the representations as such, it does not dis-
cuss in detail how the ordinary Finnish people have received and used
these representations.8
Despite the patriotic overtones, which now seem to have dominated
the Finnish memory production of the last two decades, there have
been, through the whole postwar period until today, notable dissenting
voices in consigning the meanings of war. The interpretation, empha-
sized in several studies internationally, that memory production is
inherently political, and, consequently, it can be analyzed from the
perspective of a dialectic of conflict and consensus, influences both
our present discussion and the current research into the Finnish mem-
ory culture of war more generally.9 Certainly, there are patterns of con-
tinuity over time, but also periods of clearly visible shifts and turns,
when the prevailing master narrative is contested and counter-images
are created. Accordingly, this chapter discusses the most relevant
Finnish memory conflicts between the hegemonic and the challenging
interpretations of war from the 1940s until today. In this respect, the
following question is addressed: How do these periods of change come
about, and how are they related, e.g., to changes in politics, genera-
tional relations and gender issues?
In the first section of the chapter we discuss the Finnish memory
culture of the wartime that preceded the neo-patriotic turn, which
8
On the importance of analyzing how people use history in their everyday life, see
e.g. Roy Rosenzweig & David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History
in American Life (New York, 1998).
9
Claudio Fogu & Wulf Kansteiner, “The Politics of Memory and the Poetics of
History,” in Lebow, Kansteiner & Fogu, Politics of Memory, p. 292; Sylvia Paletschek &
Sylvia Schraut, “Introduction: Gender and Memory Culture in Europe,” in idem, eds.,
The Gender of Memory: Cultures of Remembrance in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-
Century Europe (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), pp. 8–10; on previous Finnish research,
see, e.g., Tiina Kinnunen, “Finnische Kriegserinnerung,” in Kerstin von Lingen,
ed., Kriegserfahrung und nationale Identität in Europa nach 1945: Erinnerung,
Säuberungsprozesse und nationales Gedächtnis (Paderborn, 2009).
took place at the turn of the 1980s to the 1990s. The aim is to give gen-
eral outlines of the continuities and changes during this period of time
and thus a context against which the neo-patriotic turn can be inter-
preted. One of the arguments of the neo-patriotic discourse is that the
period from the end of the war until the collapse of the Soviet Union
was that of an “imposed silence” or alternatively of “the violation of the
values” which the war veterans had defended in 1939–45 and saved for
future generations.10 These arguments will be taken for critical obser-
vation. In the second section of the chapter the neo-patriotic turn is
discussed in detail. Finally in the third section the focus is on the limi-
tations of neo-patriotism and on the new approaches that have the
potential to break the Finnish “memory consensus” prevailing today.
I. Representations of War during the Postwar Years
Patriotic Memory Landscape from the 1940s until the 1960s

In postwar Finland, there was no single shared meaning given to the
war, but, on the whole, the patriotic narrative of the past outlived the
war’s outcome and continued to influence the popular understanding
of Finnish history. The political ramifications of the Finnish-Soviet
armistice in 1944, however, led to a division of the memory culture
into the official and the popular discourses.11 The new, future-oriented
Finnish foreign policy built on necessary political realism, and, accord-
ingly, the official, state-level memory production was repentantly silent
about the war. The Soviet Union had to be assured that in future the
relations between the two countries would be based on mutual coop-
eration and trust. Ordinary people, however, were not—and could not
be, given the impact of war on everyday life and especially the losses
and traumatic experiences caused by the war—forgetful. For them, the
country’s 600 or more Hero’s Cemeteries quickly became important
sites of personal mourning and remembrance. In addition, the ceme-
teries were also central places for collective remembrance both locally
10
Cf. “Foreword,” in Osmo Jussila, Seppo Hentilä & Jukka Nevakivi, From Grand
Duchy to a Modern State: A Political History of Finland since 1809 (London, 1999),
p. xiii.
11
Petri J. Raivo, “ ‘This Is Where They Fought’: Finnish War Landscapes as
National Heritage,” in Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson & Michael Roper, eds.,
Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory (New Brunswick, NJ, 2006).
and nationally due to the fact that public rituals were performed there
on various annual commemorative days, for instance on the Memorial
Day for the Fallen, Independence Day and Christmas.12 The respectful
attitude towards the sacrifices of the fallen was embedded in these sites
and outlasted the shifting political currents in postwar Finnish society.
Even today, for instance, processions of students in university towns
head to the Hero’s Cemeteries on every Independence Day to pay trib-
ute to the sacrifices of the fallen.
Although it has been common in Finland to highlight the autumn of
1944 as a definite break with the prewar past, in many respects the
changes were only superficial. The sharpest expressions of chauvinism
were censored from public discussion, and in politics a general right-
wing retreat took place, but under the politically correct surface the
prewar attitudes of nationalism and anti-communism were largely sus-
tained. For instance, there was a high level of continuity in the state
bureaucracy, schools and universities even if the radical left pushed for
political purges.13 The majority of academic historians clung to nation-
alist versions of history. During the war they had contributed to war
propaganda with the aim of legitimizing, for instance, the occupation
of Soviet Eastern Karelia. In 1949 a group of conservative historians led
by Professor Arvi Korhonen published a compilation entitled Suomen
historian käsikirja (“Handbook of Finnish History”), which promoted
a proud nationalist version of Finnish history.14
During the immediate postwar years there was a relative silence
among ordinary people about the war experiences, because of the
mental tiredness and the temporal proximity of the violent events.
At the same time, however, leading wartime politicians gained the pos-
sibility of breaking the path of historical interpretations with their
memoirs and the defense speeches in the Finnish War Guilt Trials of
1945–46. These speeches, especially that of former president Risto Ryti,
12
Ville Kivimäki, “Between Defeat and Victory: Finnish Memory Culture of the
Second World War,” presentation at the seminar Erfahrungen der Ostfront, Freiburg
im Breisgau, 16 October 2009 (to be published later).
13
E.g. Jukka Rantala, Sopimaton lasten kasvattajaksi! Opettajiin kohdistuneet
poliittiset puhdistuspyrkimykset Suomessa 1944–1948 (Helsinki, 1997).
14
E.g. Pekka Ahtiainen & Jukka Tervonen, “A Journey into Finnish Historiography
from the End of the 19th Century to the Present Day,” in Frank Meyer & Jan Elvind
Myhre, eds., Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century (Oslo, 2000); Henrik Meinander,
“Sharp Trends, Soft Turnings: Remarks on Finnish Historical Research in the Twentieth
Century,” in Meyer & Myhre, Nordic Historiography.
were not only extensively cited and discussed in the Finnish newspa-
pers, but also promptly published as special editions.15 The accused
naturally examined Finland’s role in World War II in a purposefully
sanctifying and purifying manner, thus constructing a backbone of
nationalist interpretation of war for decades to come, as the relevant
archival material became available for researchers only much later.
It is depictive of the Finnish postwar atmosphere that when prominent
author Olavi Paavolainen, who had served in the information and
propaganda troops during the war, published his critical first-person
account of the war years in 1946, he was largely dismissed in public as
an unpatriotic opportunist and mudslinger.16
Furthermore, the patriotic version of Finnish history got its flagship
interpretation in 1951, when the memoirs of Marshal Mannerheim,
who had passed away only a couple of months earlier, were published.
Although the manuscript underwent a process of foreign political
self-censorship, the basic tone of the memoirs remained defiantly
nationalistic and anti-Bolshevist. Also many other high-level accounts
of the war years were published during the 1950s, among others by
Väinö Tanner. Tanner was a leading social democrat, wartime foreign
minister and minister of trade and industry. He was one of the con-
victed politicians in the War Guilt Trials, too. Juho Niukkanen, the
defense minister of the Winter War, also took up his pen. In 1956
General K.L. Oesch, commander of the Finnish troops on the Karelian
Isthmus in the summer of 1944, published his account of the stopping
of the Soviet offensive, first coining the term “defensive victory.”
General Erik Heinrichs, Mannerheim’s chief of staff and closest aide
during the war years, published his two-volume biography of the
Marshal in 1957 and 1959.17 All of these accounts examined the war
manifestly from a nationalist point of view, thus showing the vague-
ness of the present neo-patriotic claims of any “imposed silence” on
war-related issues in postwar Finland.
15
Sotasyyllisyysoikeudenkäynnin asiakirjoja, Vols. 1–3 (Helsinki, 1945–46).
16
Olavi Paavolainen, Synkkä yksinpuhelu: Päiväkirjan lehtiä vuosilta 1941–1944,
Vols. 1–2 (Porvoo, 1946).
17
Arvi Korhonen, ed., Suomen historian käsikirja, Vol. II (Porvoo, 1949), pp. 553–
664; C.G.E. Mannerheim, The Memoirs of Marshal Mannerheim (London, 1953); Väinö
Tanner, Olin ulkoministerinä talvisodan aikana (Helsinki, 1951); idem, Suomen tie rau-
haan 1943–44 (Helsinki, 1952); Juho Niukkanen, Talvisodan puolustusministeri kertoo
(Porvoo, 1951); K.L. Oesch, Suomen kohtalon ratkaisu Kannaksella v. 1944 (Helsinki,
1956); Erik Heinrichs, Mannerheim Suomen kohtaloissa, Vols. 1–2 (Helsinki, 1957–59).
After the publication of the handbook on Finnish history in 1949,

it took some ten years before academic historians made themselves
heard again. The so-called “driftwood debate” extended into an inter-
national one, whereby Finnish historians tried to maintain the wartime
narrative of a Finnish Sonderweg in World War II. The debate was
ignited in 1957 by American Professor C.L. Lundin, who stressed
Finland’s own responsibility for the two wars against the Soviet Union.
In 1961 Professor Arvi Korhonen, one of the most prominent Finnish
historians of the time, replied to this by developing what later became
known as “the driftwood theory,” according to which the great powers
had forcibly dragged innocent Finland to the war “like a rushing stream
captures a piece of driftwood.” His foreign colleagues Anthony Upton
and Hans Peter Krosby, who, from their non-nationalistic point of
departure, maintained that the Finns had willingly sought alliance with
Hitler’s Germany in 1940–41 to maximize their own political and mili-
tary gains, contested Korhonen’s interpretation. During the ensuing
decades the discussion about the nature and aims of Finnish participa-
tion in Operation Barbarossa has produced hundreds of contributions
and the debate is still going on with varying intensity.18
War Veterans Rewrite the Narrative of War

Soon after the war the first signs of the memory conflict regarding the
years 1939–44—and especially the Continuation War—emerged. Many
war veterans, embittered by their harsh experiences at the front, blamed
the previously dominant values of right-wing nationalism for the war
and defeat. Many expressed their disillusionment by voting for the
communist-dominated Finnish People’s Democratic League, which in
the March 1945 elections earned 49 seats and 23.5 percent of the total
votes.19 In addition, many of these disenchanted veterans felt that their
grassroots experience of war had largely been neglected in the postwar
accounts by leading politicians and historians. Seen against this collec-
tive mentality, it is no surprise that Väinö Linna’s novel Tuntematon
sotilas (The Unknown Soldier), published in 1954, resonated strongly
with the majority of Finnish veterans. Linna (1920–1992) himself had
18
Ilkka Herlin, “Suomi-neidon menetetty kunnia,” in Päiviö Tommila, ed.,
Historiantutkijan muotokuva (Helsinki, 1998), pp. 199–238; Timo Soikkanen, “Objekti
vai subjekti? Taistelu jatkosodan synnystä,” in Jokisipilä, Sodan totuudet, pp. 106–13.
19
Mikko Majander, Pohjoismaa vai kansandemokratia? Sosiaalidemokraatit, kom-
munistit ja Suomen kansainvälinen asema 1944–1951 (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 2–15.
served in the war as a non-commissioned officer in a machine gun

company. In his novel he described a platoon of young conscripts
and their experiences from the summer of 1941 until the autumn of
1944.
The novel offered both a powerful alternative interpretation to the
bird’s-eye view of the politicians and military commanders and a
seemingly realistic gallery of figures to identify with. Linna criticized
idealistic nationalism and militarism, which according to him resulted
in war bigotry, especially through an unembellished cast of rank-and-
file characters. His soldiers were not superhuman war heroes, who
willingly sacrificed their lives for the nation, but ordinary fallible men
of flesh and blood with their shortcomings and peculiarities.20 The
Unknown Soldier contested the national romantic visions of war,
which were cultivated in prewar and wartime Finland, by contrasting
them with the contradictory, chaotic and random realities of the
trenches. Consequently, the novel launched a heated “literary war,” in
which different groups that felt themselves dishonored attacked the
allegedly untrue representation of war by Linna, but also his tearing-
down of the patriotic-conservative value system centered on the slogan
“Home, Religion and Fatherland.”
However, in retrospect the novel can be interpreted as having con-
structed new ideals, albeit conflicting with the dominant prewar ones,
and even myths. Linna emphasized the human heroism of common
soldiers and also included the working class and the Reds, who had
been defeated in the Civil War of 1918 and since then treated as “unpat-
riotic traitors,”21 into the narrative of war and, consequently, into the
narrative of the Finnish nation at large. A central protagonist and the
greatest hero of the novel, Lieutenant Vilho Koskela, from a Red family,
personified “all the good qualities” Linna saw in the Finnish people,
among others the sense of responsibility and unpretentious bravery.22
Neither did Linna himself refuse the core of war’s national importance;
the last pages of the novel underline that Finland remained independ-
ent due to the stamina of those “good men” of the frontlines.23
20
Yrjö Varpio, Väinö Linnan elämä (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 340–75; N.-B. Stormbom,
“Väinö Linna,” in Väinö Linna, The Unknown Soldier, English ed. (Helsinki, 2008),
pp. v–xiv.
21
Anne Heimo & Ulla-Maija Peltonen, “Memories and Histories, Public and
Private: After the Finnish Civil War,” in Hodgkin & Radstone, Contested Pasts, p. 43.
22
Varpio, Väinö Linnan elämä, p. 340; Kivimäki, “Between Defeat and Victory.”
23
Linna, The Unknown Soldier, p. 310.
The controversies around The Unknown Soldier in the mid-1950s

faded away quite soon, and for decades until today the novel, together
with the movie version directed by Edvin Laine in 1955, has greatly
shaped the collective Finnish memory of war. With 700,000 copies sold
the novel currently ranks fourth among the all-time Finnish bestsellers.
One peculiar feature of the novel, and presumably the reason for its
popularity through shifting political climates, is that it can be read
from such different perspectives, from patriotism to pacifism. For
instance, the current neo-patriotic views of the Finnish youth, which
developed in the 1990s in accordance with the general turn in the
memory landscape, draw strongly on Linna’s novel.24 In this context
Linna’s sharp criticism of the prewar nationalistic pathos is largely for-
gotten, but patriotic interpretations were also strongly linked to the
novel during the previous decades. On the other hand, in 1985 director
Rauni Mollberg filmed a second version of the novel, which, mirroring
the anti-war trends of the time, stressed the vanity of soldiers’ sacrifices
and the pacifism of Linna’s work. Among many war veterans, neverthe-
less, this way of depicting their war experiences was sharply rejected.
The Unknown Soldier has been praised by literary critics in Finland
and many other countries not only as a fiction-document of war, but
also as a great literary work of art. Besides Linna’s work and some other,
literally worthy war novels, male war experiences have been dwelt
upon in reality-based military fiction of less literary value, which in the
course of the 1950s and 1960s became a permanent fixture of Finnish
written popular culture. Quite a number of the authors attracted a loyal
readership, presumably many war veterans, and the war novelists
themselves were extremely productive, publishing a new book almost
every year. For example Onni Palaste, Niilo Lauttamus and Reino
Lehväslaiho alone published 84 titles from 1957 to 2009. Their books
were not bestsellers, but nevertheless usually sold between 10,000 and
30,000 copies; considerably more than even the most commercially
successful scholarly studies of war.
The literary genre of war has presented a mix of subjective auto-
biographical elements, semi-documentary approach and historical
fiction. Through their work the writers turned into amateur historians,
or at least their works were usually evaluated by their perceived
24
Sirkka Ahonen, Historiaton sukupolvi? Historian vastaanotto ja historiallisen
identiteetin rakentuminen 1990-luvun nuorison keskuudessa (Helsinki, 1998), p. 185.
“authenticity.” Many of the war novels can also be placed in the cate-
gory “guy talk,” defined by Marianna Torgovnick as the wartime equiv-
alent of big fish stories. Such fiction was written by men who had been
qualified for the task by their personal first-hand knowledge of the
frontline realities. These books described, often in a rather explicit and
even vulgar manner, the experiences of either the elite Finnish long-
range reconnaissance troops behind the enemy lines or the ordinary
soldiers in fierce battles.25 This kind of guy talk, as Torgovnick writes,
does not favor questions or ambiguities in the conduct of war.26 The
majority of the Finnish military fiction approached the war—and still
does—from a particularly nationalist and glorifying perspective,
which together with their frequent anti-Russian attitude and anti-
communism was a major factor in their popularity. However, among
the novels there are amazingly multifaceted and imaginative ones,
like Onni Palaste’s first-person narrative of a Finnish prisoner-of-war
turned into a Red Army spy and saboteur.27
The war efforts were recalled not only in the pages of literary
works, but also through various activities by war veterans’ associations.
These (memory) communities mushroomed around the country in
the 1960s, and a corresponding female association was founded in the
1980s. Before that, there had been women’s auxiliary groups affili-
ated to men’s associations. Crafting a common identity was, however,
a difficult undertaking due to the fact that the veterans were often
divided politically and ideologically. This resulted in two national
veteran unions, partly competing with each other. One of the major
efforts to uphold a distinctive war veteran identity and related vet-
eran culture was the magazine Kansa taisteli—miehet kertovat (“The
People Fought—Men Tell about It”), which was published from 1956
until 1986. It provided a forum for the battle memories of the veter-
ans at a time of official silence. Through its editors-in-chief the
magazine had a strong connection to the wartime military leadership.
As some of the writers were professional historians with a scholarly
view and some complete amateurs reminiscing about their personal
25
Juhani Niemi, Viime sotien kirjat (Helsinki, 1998); Kari-Otso Nevaluoma, ed.,
Kotimaisia sotakirjailijoita (Helsinki, 2001).
26
Marianna Torgovnick, The War Complex: World War II in Our Time (Chicago,
2005), pp. 2–3.
27
Anna-Stina Nykänen, “Kansa taisteli, kirjat kertovat,” Helsingin Sanomat,
1 December 2002; Onni Palaste, Minä desantti (Porvoo, 1969).
experiences, the thematic and qualitative variation of the stories was

huge. This gap notwithstanding, the publication appealed to vast num-
bers of veterans. The demand took the editors by surprise, as the first
edition of 30,000 copies quickly sold out. In 1958 the publication fre-
quency was increased from four to twelve numbers a year, and the
print run was gradually built up to the high point of nearly 80,000
copies in 1967. At the time when the circulation shrank to under 30,000
and the magazine folded in 1986, about 3,500 stories by hundreds of
writers had been published in 350 numbers. These figures speak for
themselves: during a period of three decades, Kansa taisteli played a
central role in the Finnish memory production related to (male) war
experiences.28
The Memory Conflict of the 1960s and 1970s

Corresponding with the transnational currents, the Finnish 1960s and
1970s ushered in a memory conflict of the meanings of war. Even if The
Unknown Soldier had broken the “memory peace,” which still in the
1950s, under the surface of foreign political correctness, cherished
patriotic wartime values, Linna’s novel could be and largely was read
through national lenses. The 1960s, still, began in a patriotic climate,
exemplified, for instance, by the large-scale celebration and commem-
oration at the unveiling of Marshal Mannerheim’s statue in the center
of Helsinki. But relatively soon dissenting voices made themselves
heard. As in the rest of the Western world, the politicized youth radi-
calism with its generational revolt promoted pronouncedly pacifist
values.29 The meaning of the sacrifices made in 1939–45 was seriously
called into question, for instance, in author Paavo Rintala’s (1930–
1999) literary production. The novel Sissiluutnantti (“The Commando
Lieutenant”) of this Tolstoyan pacifist, published in 1963, launched the
first of the great “literary wars” of the 1960s, in which the generation of
wartime children challenged both the established literary conventions
and the patriotic heritage of their parents’ generation.
28
Kaarle Sulamaa, “ ‘Himmetä ei muistot koskaan saa’: Veteraanien järjestäyty-
minen ja muutokset muistamisen mahdollisuuksissa,” in Tiina Kinnunen & Ville
Kivimäki, eds., Ihminen sodassa: Suomalaisten kokemuksia talvi- ja jatkosodasta
(Helsinki, 2006), pp. 298–303; Miska Rantanen, “Jermujournalismin lipunkantaja,”
Helsingin Sanomat, 27 May 2007.
29
Marja Tuominen, “Me kaikki ollaan sotilaitten lapsia”: Sukupolvihegemonian kriisi
1960-luvun suomalaisessa kulttuurissa (Helsinki, 1991), pp. 190–210.
Rintala’s long-time contribution in the field of Finnish history

culture of war is of great significance. In his fiction and documentary
novels he looked at war from a grassroots perspective, whereas the aca-
demic historiography of the time had almost exclusively dealt with the
macro level of diplomacy, politics and the military. In addition, Rintala
touched upon sensitive spots, which in today’s neo-patriotic narrative
have been mostly forgotten. In Pojat (“The Boys”), published in 1958
and based on his own experiences, Rintala described everyday life in
the northern town of Oulu, with thousands of German soldiers during
the Continuation War, from the perspective of children in wartime.
In the absence of their fathers, the Finnish boys admired the Germans
and dreamt of heroic deeds at the front. One of the boys, neverthe-
less, gradually developed a critical attitude towards the war. Both the
disputed Sissiluutnantti and Pojat were filmed by director Mikko
Niskanen. The end of the film Pojat (1962), where one of the boys
runs after a departing train, crying after his mother who is leaving him
for a German soldier, is deeply engraved in the collective memory of
older Finns and belongs to the most recognized cinematic moments
in Finnish movies. In the 1960s Rintala published documentary nov-
els related to World War II, which were based on war veteran inter-
views. Furthermore, his Leningradin kohtalonsinfonia (“Leningrad’s
Symphony of Destiny,” 1968) dealt with the experiences of Leningrad
civilians under siege. Until today, the novel is one of the few examples
in the Finnish memory culture, in which World War II is seen from a
non-national perspective.
Rintala belonged to the oldest age cohort of the postwar critics
of the Finnish wartime past, and in the late 1960s and 1970s he was
followed by a wave of youth radicals, many of whom joined the
extreme left wing of the Finnish Communist Party. They warmly
accepted the official foreign political line personified by President
Urho Kekkonen, who firmly directed the Finnish policy to appease
the Soviet Union during his long term of office in 1956–82. In this
climate of “Finlandization”30 the Soviet “truth” of World War II was
30
“Finlandization” has been defined as the influence that one powerful country may
have on the policies of a smaller neighboring country. It originated in West German
political debate of the late 1960s and the 1970s, and has been commonly used in refer-
ence to Finland’s relation to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. According to the
Finnish perception, the unfortunate term revealed an inability to understand the dif-
ficulties faced by a small nation in its attempts to preserve sovereignty under heavy
pressure from a neighboring superpower.
approved of and disseminated by journalists and prominent figures in

the leftist cultural circles, which were under a strong influence of dog-
matic Marxism-Leninism. Among other things, the true nature of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet invasion, which started the
Winter War, was replaced by an interpretation pointing out Finland’s
own guilt and active role in initiating the war. Supported by Kekkonen,
who did not have a communist background himself, but instead came
from the centrist Agrarian League, these critical voices produced com-
ments on the “Finnish crusade of 1939–44” as a lesson of what happens
when foreign policy is erroneous and quixotic. As the view of the Soviet
Union as the “guardian of world peace”—as the case was presented by
Moscow propagandists—was disseminated in Finnish publicity, many
war veterans felt that their wartime sacrifices were being desecrated.31
Even if the young leftist critics of the wartime value system and the
war itself were loud, their opponents did not hold back. The memory
conflict produced a whole range of counter-interpretations challenging
the critical views. Among other things, the anniversaries of war were
continuously and keenly honored by various associations, organiza-
tions, communities and even the Finnish public at large. The produc-
tion of war fiction, which started in the 1950s, continued so that in the
1970s every sixth published literary work of fictional art was related to
war.32 Nationalistically colored interpretations by both academic and
amateur historians made themselves heard, when the critical accounts
by officer and military historian Helge Seppälä of the Finnish occupa-
tion of Eastern Karelia were published. On the other hand, as the posi-
tive reception of Antti Laine’s research on the Finnish occupation also
showed, there was not only the refusal, but also the ability to critically
discuss Finland’s role as an occupier.33
The movie industry was not silent, either, although films deal-
ing exclusively with war were rare. From 1945 to 1991 the war
years were depicted in varying depths in at least 50 Finnish movies.
31
Timo Vihavainen, Kansakunta rähmällään: Suomettumisen lyhyt historia
(Helsinki, 1991); Erkki Berndtson, “Finlandization: Paradoxes of External and Internal
Dynamics,” Government and Opposition 26 (1991): 1, pp. 21–33.
32
Markku Soikkeli, “Alpo Ruuth,” in Nevaluoma, Kotimaisia sotakirjailijoita, p. 199;
see also Niemi, Viime sotien kirjat, pp. 11–2.
33
laisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982); Helge Seppälä, Suomi hyök-
kääjänä 1941 (Helsinki, 1984); idem, Suomi miehittäjänä 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1989).
Interview with Antti Laine, 20 July 2010.
Although no statistics are available, it can be fairly assumed that the

amount of war-related theater plays was even higher. In television the
broadcasting of a ten-episode dramatized document Sodan ja rauhan
miehet (“Men of War and Peace”) at the turn of 1978 to 1979 created
a huge public reaction for and against the representation. This drama-
tization of the development in Finland’s international position and
political decision-making from the last years of the 1930s to the
beginning of the Continuation War was based on a thorough histori-
cal research and consultation of leading historians, and it did not
conform to a Soviet interpretation of the outbreak of the Winter War.
Consequently, it was condemned by the Soviet ambassador as “dis-
graceful,” and severely criticized also by Finnish communists.34
Also scholarly research produced, often in a subtle and sophisticated
manner, nationalistically colored interpretations of the past. In the
1980s the atmosphere became less charged, producing some of the fin-
est scholarly studies on war, such as Mauno Jokipii’s Jatkosodan synty
(“The Origins of the Continuation War”), published in 1987.35 Maybe
the best testimony against the present claims of “officially sanctioned
denial” of the wartime past is the abundance of state-funded historical
research from the 1950s onwards. The Office of Military History under
the Finnish General Staff published an 11-volume history of the
Continuation War in 1951–75, which was followed by a four-volume
history of the Winter War in 1977–81. In addition, in 1974 the Finnish
Ministry of Education launched a ten-year project “Finland in the
Second World War.” Furthermore, in 1988–94 an updated six-volume
history of the Continuation War was published. These studies rarely
reflected the realities of foreign policy in the “Finlandization” period,
quite the contrary: some historians could be justly criticized for assum-
ing the role of intellectual defenders of the decisions and actions of
wartime Finland.36 All in all, the postwar decades preceding the “neo-
patriotic turn” of the 1990s should be characterized as a period of
simultaneous phenomena of memory conflicts, contested meanings
34
Jukka Tarkka, “Sodan ja rauhan miehet lehdistössä,” in Yleisradion vuosikirja
1978–1979 (Helsinki, 1979), pp. 9–10.
35
Mauno Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty: Tutkimuksia Suomen ja Saksan sotilaallisesta
yhteistyöstä 1940–41 (Helsinki, 1987).
36
For the Continuation War, Suomen sota 1941–1945, Vols. 1–11 (Helsinki, 1951–
75), and the updated edition Jatkosodan historia, Vols. 1–6 (Porvoo, 1988–94). For the
Winter War, Talvisodan historia, Vols. 1–4 (Porvoo, 1977–79); furthermore for the
whole World War II in Finland, Kansakunta sodassa, Vols. 1–3 (Helsinki, 1989–92).
and continuing patriotic heritage regarding the past wars of 1939–45

rather than as a period of hegemonic youth radicalism and pro-Soviet
self-censorship.
II. Neo-Patriotic Memory Culture of War
Content and Motivations of the Neo-Patriotic Turn

Like every national memory culture, the Finnish one is functional,
constructing “useful” meaning at given points in time. In addition, the
respective cultures are affected by events and developments across
national borders. The reform program launched in the Soviet Union by
Mikhail Gorbachev after 1986 also encouraged Finns to reinterpret
Finnish-Soviet relations, especially the years of 1939–44.37 The political
transition following the collapse of the communist regimes in Central
and Eastern Europe from 1989 onwards reconstructed the memory
production in the respective countries. Even if Finland remained a
Western democracy after World War II and thus did not come under
direct Soviet rule, the breakdown of its mighty neighbor also affected
Finnish society in various ways, not least its memory culture of the war
years. At this moment great numbers of Finns became interested in—
and even obsessed with—the Finnish wars against the Soviet Union.
Instead of any critical reassessment they mainly clung to a patriotic,
even nationalistic interpretation of 1939–44. In 1989 the 50th anniver-
sary of the outbreak of the Winter War was widely commemorated.
The commemorations culminated in the premiere of the epic film
Talvisota (“The Winter War”), based on a novel with the same title by
Antti Tuuri in 1984 and directed by Pekka Parikka, on 30 November
1989, which was the date of the Soviet invasion in 1939. Both the film
and the consequent TV-series gained vast audiences.
In retrospect, the changes in the Finnish memory landscape at
the turn of the 1980s to the 1990s can be defined as a neo-patriotic
turn. By this we mean the public renaissance of the pronouncedly
nationalist attitudes and representations that began to dominate the
public memory of the Finnish wartime. The neo-patriotic discourse
builds on the constructed conception of wartime Finland as “unified
37
On the influence of the 1980s reforms on the Soviet and Russian history culture,
see Catherine Merridale, “Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia,” Journal of
Contemporary History 38 (2003): 1.
and unique.” This idea has been central to Finnish nationalist history
writing and memory production since the emergence of the nationalist
movement in the mid-nineteenth century.38 The nationalist interpreta-
tion of wartime, shared now by a growing number of Finns and espe-
cially by the war veterans’ generation, had during the postwar decades
been bubbling under the surface, but it had not dominated the public
discourse of Finnishness to the same extent as it came to from the
1990s onwards.
In the neo-patriotic discourse the wartime is idealized and romanti-
cized. The Winter War and the Continuation War are held up as
embodiments of the best qualities of Finnishness: the will to sacrifice
oneself for the common good, national solidarity, determination and
“never-say-die” craving for a sovereign democratic state. These
(alleged) values of the war generation are heralded as something not
diluted by selfishness, materialism, immorality and other modern-day
plagues. As an important part of the neo-patriotic memory culture,
veterans’ associations are active in looking for ways to delegate this
heritage of theirs to future generations.39
The commemoration of the outbreak of the Winter War in 1989
marked a comeback of 1939–40 in the public memory. During the later
anniversaries in 1999–2000 and in 2009–10 the Winter War was again
strongly visible in public commemorations. There are several reasons
for the earlier dominance of the Continuation War in the war narrative
before the collapse of the Soviet Union. First of all, the long Continua-
tion War had left a stronger imprint on the Finnish everyday war expe-
riences than the preceding, short Winter War. Väinö Linna’s The
Unknown Soldier from 1954, which became the canonized version of
Finnish soldiers’ war experience, dealt only with the years 1941–44.
In addition, in the Soviet narrative, which partly influenced the Finnish
one, the embarrassing Winter War was obviously marginalized as a
“border conflict.” It was not until the autumn of 1989 that Soviet histo-
rians fully recognized the war and acknowledged the Soviet guilt in it.40
38
Päiviö Tommila, “Historia,” in Suomen tieteen historia, Vol. 2 (Helsinki, 2000),
pp. 66–92.
39
Henrik Meinander, “Pelinappula vai riskipeluri? Tulkintoja Suomesta toisen
maailmansodan aikana,” Tieteessä tapahtuu (2003): 3, pp. 27–30; Pia Olsson,
“Veteraanisukupolven arvot: Tutkimuksen haasteita,” seminar presentation,
16 November 2006, available online at www.tammenlehva.fi/tiedostot/page_id_160/
Alustus.Olsson.rtf, accessed 20 March 2010.
40
“Foreword,” in Jussila, Hentilä & Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, p. xii–xiii.
Recently in 2009, the results of an opinion poll on the Finnish attitudes

towards the Winter War showed the lasting effect of the neo-patriotic
turn: among the interviewees of 2009, the memory of the Winter
War was more important than it had been among those who were
questioned 20 years earlier.41 From the viewpoint of a neo-patriotic
discourse the Winter War is a “perfect” war, because it offers so many
of the ingredients needed in the romanticized narrative of a unified
and pure nation, being left at the mercy of an aggressor. This narra-
tive is exemplified, among others, by the name of the exhibition, open
in 2009–10, at the War Museum in Helsinki: Talvisota—70 vuotta
kunniamme päivistä (“The Winter War—70 Years Since the Days of
Our Honor”).
In military terms Finland lost both the Winter War and the
Continuation War, but this fact was soon redesigned into the concept
of a defensive victory in the postwar mentality. In retrospect, this inter-
pretation can be seen as functional, giving meaning to the hard years at
the front and on the home front. Along the neo-patriotic turn, the wars
are with new vigor remembered as heroic defensive victories. In addi-
tion, although Finland lost considerable parts of its territory and had
to accommodate the Soviet Union by complying with the harsh regula-
tions of the peace treaties in March 1940 and September 1944, the
memory of these wars is cherished as the most important collective
experience of the nation. The neo-patriotic narrative underlines that
besides Moscow and London, Helsinki was the only unoccupied capi-
tal in war-waging Europe. Even if the concept of defensive victory is a
distortion of the experienced historical reality in 1944, it is, however,
an indisputable fact that quite exceptionally among the European
countries Finland was never occupied either by the Soviet or the
German Army. In addition, the strong contemporary emphasis put on
the idea of Finland being victorious can be seen as reflecting the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union. So, the argument goes, in the end the wars
can be seen in terms of Finland’s “final victory” in 1991. Consequently,
in public commemoration the wars of 1939–44 are celebrated as the
cornerstone of national independence.
The patriotic eruption in the early 1990s was motivated by the argu-
ment that before the political transition caused by the end of the Cold
War—and especially during Urho Kekkonen’s long presidency—the
41
Kivimäki, “Between Defeat and Victory.”
“truthful” memory of the years 1939–44 had been suppressed. Instead,

according to the argument, because of the primacy of Soviet-friendly
foreign policy, distorted narratives generating national self-flagellation
had dominated the public discourse. In these comments “truthful”
invariably means an exclusively nationalist way of looking at Finland’s
past and present. As part of the neo-patriotic paradigm, the postwar
generations are accused of symbolic violations, especially in the 1960s
and 1970s, of the sacrifices made by the war veterans. As a manifesta-
tion of the new nationalist wave, there have been public demands to
officially nullify the verdicts of the War Guilt Trials in 1946 as an apol-
ogy, first, to the eight sentenced politicians and, second, to the war
generation at large, whom the trials allegedly collectively affronted and
traumatized.42
Research into public history and memory, which encompasses anal-
ysis of the present uses of the past at given points in time, demonstrates
the complex ways in which people use the past in order to make sense
of their lives at present and to navigate the future.43 Drawing on these
studies we can conclude that the neo-patriotic turn not only resulted
from the deeply felt need to correct the allegedly untruthful represen-
tations of the wars of 1939–44, but also from contemporary needs
related to other issues than rewriting the past. The idealized interpreta-
tion of the harmony and solidarity in wartime Finland responded to
the insecurities felt by many Finns in the early 1990s. Coinciding with
the end of the Soviet Union, the Finnish national economy took a
heavy blow, resulting in record high unemployment. At the same time
Finnish foreign policy had to be redefined to fit the changing contexts
of post-communist Europe. In this situation, both ordinary people and
politicians looked into the past in their search for emotional trust and
political arguments. Consequently, the politicians drew analogies with
the wartime when calling for a national consensus in the midst of an
economic crisis and in the debates about Finland’s membership of the
European Union and possibly also of NATO.
42
Henrik Meinander, “Sota, syyllisyys ja historian oikeudenkäynti,” in Tommila,
Historiantutkijan muotokuva; Jukka Lindstedt & Stiina Löytömäki, Sotasyyl-
lisyysoikeudenkäynti, Selvityksiä ja ohjeita 22/2010 (Helsinki, 2010), available at the
website www.om.fi/1266333593848, accessed 20 March 2010.
43
Rosenzweig & Thelen, Presence of the Past, p. 37; Hilda Kean & Paul Ashton,
“Introduction: People and Their Pasts and Public History Today,” in Ashton & Kean,
People and Their Pasts, p. 4.
Finnish Neo-Patriotism in a European Context

European comparison shows that there are remarkable similarities
in the ways in which the legacy of World War II has been coped with
within different nations, but also important differences, especially in
terms of timing. In the immediate postwar period almost everywhere
governments, social groups and individuals created patterns of mem-
ory to sweep traumatic experiences under the rug. The needs, both
political and psychological, of the wartime generation prevented criti-
cal discussion of the recent past. In Central and Eastern European
countries the communist narrative, imposed along the Soviet hegem-
ony and underlining the anti-fascist resistance, began to dominate.
Also, in the Western European countries, which had been occupied
by Germany, the myth of collective resistance and victimhood
was cherished while the troublesome issues of collaboration and co-
responsibility were downplayed.44 For postwar Finland, creating peace-
ful relations with the Soviet Union was of prime importance. Under
these circumstances, official silence about the wartime past can be seen
as necessary political realism.
When Richard Ned Lebow writes that “more than half a century has
elapsed since the end of World War II, and almost every country has
undergone some kind of wrenching public debate about its role(s) in
that conflict and the atrocities for which its government or nationals
were responsible,”45 we argue that in this respect Finland lags behind
many other European countries. The Cold War blessed the national
practices of silencing conflicting memories and critical voices, whereas
the end of the confrontation between Eastern and Western blocs con-
tributed to a reconsideration of wartime issues. In the Federal Republic
of Germany the critical assessment of the past was under way from
the 1960s, and slowly but resolutely the Nazi crimes became a focal
point of postwar West German identity. Western European countries,
which had been occupied by Germany, came to terms much more
slowly with their co-responsibilities in the Holocaust. In Central and
Eastern European post-communist countries, the commitment to
newly gained democracy resulted in confronting the wartime, besides
the postwar period of Soviet rule. Consequently, collaboration under
44
See e.g. Richard J. Golsan, “The Legacy of World War II in France: Mapping the
Discourses of Memory,” in Lebow, Kansteiner & Fogu, Politics of Memory.
45
Lebow, “The Memory of Politics,” p. 21.
the German occupation and participation in the Holocaust had to be

dismantled.46 Yet in these countries the Finnish neo-patriotism cer-
tainly has it equivalents—many of them much more radical in nature—
in emerging nationalist views of the wartime and interwar past.
As far as Finland is concerned, the occupation of Soviet Eastern
Karelia in particular and the close relationship with the Third Reich,
including Finland’s role in the Holocaust, have been sensitive spots in
the collective memory throughout the postwar period until today.
In current academic research they are subjected to critical assessment,
as demonstrated in this volume, whereas the public memory produc-
tion skates around the subjects. The neo-patriotic narrative clings to
the interpretation of an unprovoked double aggression by the Soviet
Union in 1939 and 1941. This interpretation does not hold true for the
beginning of the Continuation War. Instead, it redesigns June 1941
into a new tragedy passed on the innocent Finnish nation, and the fol-
lowing war into a defensive undertaking, separate from Hitler’s war
aims in the east. In this narrative Finland was only a Waffenbruder and
the Continuation War a legitimate extension of the Winter War, which
Finland indisputably fought alone. The alleged independence of the
Finnish war effort vis-à-vis German war aims is reflected in the differ-
ence made between “the good Germans” fighting alongside the Finnish
Army and “the evil Nazis” responsible for the destruction and war
crimes elsewhere.47 Consequently, the Lapland War (1944–45) to drive
off German troops does not fit into the coherent narrative of Finland
fighting for its freedom and independence with pure means. When the
National Veterans’ Day is celebrated on every 27 April, only a few peo-
ple notice that the date was chosen as the day when the Lapland War
ended in 1945.
The neo-patriotic turn did not encourage the nation to confront
the true nature of Finland’s relationship with Germany and its con-
sequences, on the contrary. Also the institutional memory of war has
since the collapse of the Soviet Union cherished the neo-patriotic
46
See e.g. Ene Kõresaar, Kristin Kuutma & Epp Lauk, “The Twentieth Century as a
Realm of Memory,” in idem, eds., The Burden of Remembering: Recollections &
Representations of the 20th Century (Helsinki, 2009), p. 25.
47
Kivimäki, “Between Defeat and Victory.” In the field of public history the differ-
ence between the “good” and “evil” Germans was presented, e.g., in Jussi Talvi’s novel
Ystäviä ja vihollisia (Helsinki, 1954), which translates as “Friends and Enemies.” Talvi
described the brotherhood-in-arms of the Finnish and German troops against the
Soviet Union and the consequent Lapland War between the former allies.
interpretation. In 2005, President Tarja Halonen gave a deliberately

concise portrayal of Finland’s role in World War II to a prestigious
foreign audience in Paris without saying a word about Finnish coop-
eration with Hitler or the offensive warfare of the Continuation War.
Instead, the stress was laid on the concept of a defensive victory:
In late summer 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union agreed on a division
of Europe into spheres of influence. The following winter Finland had to
fight off an attack by the Red Army in order to preserve her independ-
ence and avoid being occupied by the Soviet Union. We had to do this
alone, without significant outside help. Five years later, in the summer of
1944, we again managed to stop the Red Army’s attempts to conquer
Finland. Our country was not occupied at any stage, during or after the
war. We lost part of our territory, but we achieved a defensive victory.48
An example par excellence of the deep political and psychological need
of many Finns to hold on to the concept of a separate war stems from
as late as the late 1990s. The Ministry of Education granted resources
for a Finnish memorial to be erected in Ukraine. It was to commemo-
rate the Finnish Waffen-SS battalion that according to the dominant
view of the veterans themselves had fought for Finland’s independence
on the German Eastern Front. Due to the protests from Finland and
abroad, the initiator of the memorial, a Finnish organization for com-
memorating the fallen soldiers, stopped the project. According to its
statement this happened because the memorial could be seen as belit-
tling the persecution of Jews.49
In 2008, when Oula Silvennoinen’s dissertation was published,
the debate about the concept of a separate war entered a new phase.50
The work explicitly linked Finland to the Holocaust with the revela-
tion of German “Einsatzkommando Finnland” operating in Lapland.
A group of academic historians was invited by President Halonen to
reflect upon the Finnish-German relationship, which reveals how
important the wartime still is in terms of national identity. Today aca-
demic historians largely subscribe to Finland’s alliance with Germany,
48
Speech by President Tarja Halonen at the French Institute of International
Relations (IFRI), 1 March 2005, website of the President of the Republic of Finland,
http://www.presidentti.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=33673
&intSubArtID=14905, accessed 15 January 2010.
49
Claudius Technau, “Debatte um Finnen in Hitlers Waffen-SS,” Berliner Zeitung,
27 May 1999.
50
yhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
but with seemingly little effect on the public consciousness on the

matter.51 Author Sirpa Kähkönen is one of the few dissenting voices
outside the academic community who have broken the dominating
memory consensus on war. In her novels and other writings she exam-
ines the influence of fascist ideas on Finnish society and mentality
before and during World War II. Thus she has called for a thorough
debate on Finland’s relations to Nazi Germany and on the extent of
Finnish co-responsibility in the destruction brought on the continent
in World War II—issues that are fundamentally provocative from the
perspective of the neo-patriotic narrative.52 For Kähkönen, the center-
ing of the public memory production on the narratives of the Winter
War and the Continuation War as “Finnish wars,” separate from their
European dimension, has led to a dead end.
The Finnish neo-patriotic master narrative of war is a combination
of seemingly contradictory elements. Finland is represented at the
same time as a victim and a victor, and despite the suffering the war is
seen as something inherently positive. The emphasis on victory and
the war’s positive sides connects Finland rather to the commemorative
cultures of the victorious Allied nations than to its one-time partners
in the defeated German coalition. The Finnish narrative has a lot in
common with the British concept of World War II as “the good war,”
the American veneration of those who fought in the war as “the great-
est generation,” and the Soviet / Russian notion of the “Great Patriotic
War.”53 In Finland, patriotism is expressed through military parades
both on Independence Day and on the Flag Day of the Finnish Defence
Forces.
Both in the Soviet Union, since the 1960s, and in contempo-
rary Russia, the Great Patriotic War is the focus for patriotism.
Corresponding to the Finnish master narrative of the war, World
War II is seen from the perspective of suffering, courage and sacrifice.
In the Soviet narrative, Finland was seen as the aggressor in 1939 and
it was not before the collapse of the Soviet Union that the Stalinist
51
The most influential Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat organized a question-
ing among the Finnish history professors: 16 out of 28 definitely rejected the thesis of
a separate war; Esa Mäkinen, “Historian professorit hautaavat pitkät kiistat,” Helsingin
Sanomat, 19 October 2008.
52
E.g. Sirpa Kähkönen, “Suomen tie jatkosotaan,” in Kinnunen & Kivimäki,
Ihminen sodassa.
53
Markku Jokisipilä, “Toinen maailmansota ihmiskunnan kollektiivisessa muis-
tissa,” in Jokisipilä, Sodan totuudet.
responsibility for the war was acknowledged. The development is not,

however, linear. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Finns
began increasingly to cling onto a patriotic interpretation of the years
1939–44, on the Soviet and Russian side there was openness for critical
reassessment of the past, but during recent years a new nationalist
wave of commemoration has captured the memory culture.54
Neo-Patriotic History Culture

The neo-patriotic turn has produced a whole range of representations,
for instance, in the form of novels, popular history books, movies, doc-
umentaries, theater plays, TV series, exhibitions and websites. Finland
fights also on opera stages and in comic strips. In addition, there has
been a boom in war memorials: about half of the memorials outside
the Hero’s Cemeteries have been erected after 1975, and more than
30 percent between 1985–95.55 Beside the new productions, there are
some representations from earlier decades that still resonate with many
Finns in the twenty-first century. Väinö Linna’s The Unknown Soldier,
now commonly read as an epic story of war, belongs to the core of liter-
ary canon taught at Finnish schools, and Edvin Laine’s film of the novel
(1955) is shown on television on every Independence Day. Throughout
the postwar period there had been a persistent popular supply for nar-
ratives of the years 1939–44/45. As has been discussed previously in
this chapter, despite the close relationship with the Soviet Union, Finns
were never repressed from recalling the war and these reminiscences
also had access to the public sphere. During the Cold War years well
over a thousand fiction and non-fiction books on the Winter War,
Continuation War and Lapland War were published, not to mention
newspaper and magazine stories. Only at the highest official level and
especially in communication with the Soviet representatives were war-
related issues avoided.
Compared to the pre-1990s, nevertheless, the commemoration of
1939–44 has greatly increased in public visibility. Anniversaries espe-
cially give reason for special commemorations on the national level.
The celebrations connected to the Winter War have already been
pointed out. The year 2004 can be said to have offered a true firework
54
Merridale, “Redesigning History.”
55
Raivo, “This Is Where They Fought,” p. 158.
Fig. 10.1. Väinö Linna (1920–1992) in 1989. His novel The Unknown Soldier with its
two film versions and several theater plays has shaped the Finnish memory and under-
standing of World War II in profound ways. Photo: Irmeli Jung (WSOY Photo
Archives).
Fig. 10.2. Patriotic heritage of war in 2010. The statue of Marshal Mannerheim in
Helsinki on his birthday, 4 June, which is also the annual Flag Day of the Finnish
Defence Forces. Photo: Tero Leponiemi.
of heroic mythology, littered with various official and semi-official

commemoration ceremonies for the halting of the Soviet offensive on
the Karelian Isthmus 60 years earlier. The great battles of Tali-Ihantala,
Vuosalmi, the Bay of Vyborg and Ilomantsi were revisited in countless
television and radio documentaries, newspaper and magazine articles,
newly established websites and public speeches.
The most significant change relates, however, to the institutional
level of memory, which in the early 1990s started to publicly subscribe
to the nationalist narrative. As a result, for instance, groups or persons
that were considered ignored in postwar society were officially reha-
bilitated. An apology was directed to the families of those eight politi-
cians who had been sentenced in the War Guilt Trials. In 1991 the
highest representatives of the state honored a celebration for the com-
memoration of the women’s Lotta Svärd Organization, dissolved and
banned in 1944 due to Soviet pressure. It was the first time since 1944
that the members of the Lotta Svärd were officially acknowledged for
their contribution on the home front and behind the frontlines.56 Most
prominently the neo-patriotic turn ushered in a cult-like respect for
the elderly war veterans. They had been paid tribute to also before,
especially on the yearly Independence Day celebrations on 6 December,
but this relatively modest recognition for their sacrifices was now sur-
passed in terms of both quantity and superlatives. President Mauno
Koivisto, elected in 1982 after Urho Kekkonen and a war veteran
himself, contributed remarkably to the public esteem of the veterans.
From 1987 onwards, the National Veterans’ Day has been celebrated
annually.57 As part of this high regard veterans are lauded as honorary
citizens and their one-time sacrifices are elevated as a moral paragon
for the later generations to honor and to follow. Also women are
included in the public commemoration, reflecting the increasing atten-
tion to women in Finnish history writing. Women’s wartime work on
the home front and their unarmed service for the Finnish Army have
been elevated to equal status with men’s efforts as combatants.
In practice, the veterans, both male and female, have been given
opportunities to pass their legacy on to the next generations through,
56
Tiina Kinnunen, Kiitetyt ja parjatut: Lotat sotien jälkeen (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 226,
231–3.
57
Sulamaa, “Himmetä ei muistot koskaan saa,” p. 304.
for instance, school visits. The narratives of war are transmitted also
inside families. In her study on the historical consciousness of the
Finnish youth, conducted in the mid-1990s, Sirkka Ahonen noticed
that only a few grandparents had refused to talk about their war
experiences to their offspring. Further, she pointed out that the neo-
patriotic discourse resonated widely among the Finnish youth, the
grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the wartime generation. The
wars of 1939–44 were seen in a positive light and only in a very few
cases did any inherited anti-war attitudes appear among the young
interviewees.58 The communicative gap in terms of war-related issues
that existed between the veterans and their children especially in the
1960s and 1970s was by the 1990s at the latest replaced by a genera-
tional memory consensus emphasizing unreserved admiration of the
wartime efforts. Ahonen’s study indicated that the nationalist vocabu-
lary dominating the public discourse of the wartime has been well
adopted by the youth. Conflicting issues like the alliance with Germany,
challenging the idealized image of Finland as a young David fighting
the ruthless Goliath, were not reflected upon. The martial virtues of the
Finnish soldiers were emphasized together with all the hardships and
suffering they had endured. Also women appear in the narrative of
war, mostly reflecting the myth of a strong Nordic woman.
Besides the commemoration of war that collectively includes the
whole wartime generation, there are some individuals related to the
years 1939–44 that have become objects of special celebration. In 2004,
when the battles to halt the Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus in
1944 were commemorated, the Finnish national broadcasting com-
pany YLE organized a popular vote on the Greatest Finns (Suuret
suomalaiset), based on the format licensed from the BBC, to determine
whom the general public considered to be the greatest Finns in the
nation’s past. Results of the second decisive round of voting showed
that the voters had been receptive of the preceding defensive victory
hype. The show attracted huge attention, and the wartime leaders took
a double victory on the vote. Marshal Mannerheim, whose unique but
at the same time complex standing as a national icon will be discussed
later, was elected the Greatest Finn with 104,244 votes and President
Risto Ryti came second with 80,790 votes. Urho Kekkonen, Finland’s
president for 26 years, five-time prime minister and the key person of
58
Ahonen, Historiaton sukupolvi, p. 185.
the postwar foreign policy that enabled the astonishingly speedy build-
ing of a Nordic welfare state after World War II, finished third with
57,346 votes. The defeat of Kekkonen by Ryti, who held the presidency
for less than four years and served twice as prime minister, delivered an
obvious history political message. Kekkonen had served as the minis-
ter of justice during the War Guilt Trials, in which Ryti and seven other
central wartime politicians were sentenced to imprisonment for the
malfeasance in office. President Kekkonen on several occasions used
wartime foreign policy, led by Ryti, as a warning example of what
happens, when a small country tries to deny the geopolitical realities
affecting its position.59
Maybe the most striking feature of the vote, however, was the fourth
place of General Adolf Ehrnrooth, who had definitely become an icon
of neo-patriotism in the 1990s, but whose position, influence and stat-
ure came nowhere close to those of the other nine finalists. People
voted for Ehrnrooth, who had passed away in February 2004, mainly
for two reasons: firstly to express their gratitude and appreciation to
war veterans, whose leading figure he had been for a long time, and
secondly because he had been the most clamorous, explicit and defiant
proponent of the nationalist interpretation of World War II. In people’s
minds in 2004, Ehrnrooth was one of those who had stopped the Red
Army both in 1939–40 and 1944, and he had not shied away from dis-
cussing it proudly even during the times of deepest Finlandization.60
Thus both Ryti’s and Ehrnrooth’s success in the vote can be seen as a
belated protest against the alleged official silence and denial of the
truth regarding the wartime during Kekkonen’s presidency.
Memory production is based on selection and silencing of elements
of the past that do not fit into prevailing narratives. Compared to the
Finnish prewar and wartime rhetoric, which openly conveyed con-
tempt for and hatred of the Russians and the Soviet Union,61 today’s
neo-patriotic public language is usually cleansed of this heritage,
although chauvinist and racist expressions are certainly to be found in
more private and anonymous instances. The neo-patriotic atmosphere
59
For more details on the vote, see the book Suuret suomalaiset (Helsinki, 2004) and
the website http://yle.fi/suuretsuomalaiset, accessed 4 March 2010.
60
Adolf Ehrnrooth & Marja-Liisa Lehtonen, Kenraalin testamentti (Porvoo, 1994).
61
E.g. Heikki Luostarinen, Perivihollinen: Suomen oikeistolehdistön Neuvostoliittoa
koskeva viholliskuva sodassa 1941–1944; tausta ja sisältö (Tampere, 1986); Sinikka
Wunsch, Punainen uhka: Neuvostoliiton kuva johtavassa suomalaisessa sanomalehdis-
tössä maaliskuusta 1938 talvisodan päättymiseen maaliskuussa 1940 (Rovaniemi, 2004).
has also allowed cult-like admiration for figures with overtly militaris-
tic habitus. One of them is Lauri Törni, former Finnish SS-volunteer.
During the Continuation War he became famous as a commander of
an infantry unit, which fought deep behind the enemy lines. He was
decorated with the Mannerheim Cross, the highest Finnish medal of
honor during World War II. In early 1945 he went to Germany for
saboteur training for the case that Finland would be occupied by the
Soviet Union. For this he was sentenced to prison for six years. He was
pardoned in 1948, after which he escaped to Sweden and then to the
United States. There he joined the U.S. Army and took the name Larry
Thorne. He took part in the Vietnam War and disappeared there in
1965. In the above-mentioned vote Suuret Suomalaiset Törni reached
the 52nd place, and among other things he was characterized as “one of
the greatest war heroes in Finnish history.”62 Later in a vote organized
by the magazine Suomen Sotilas (“Finnish Soldier”) in 2006, he was
elected “the most courageous” of the 191 men who were decorated
with the Mannerheim Cross.
Shifting Images of Finland at War

Our research into the public memory of the Finnish wars 1939–45
has been informed by the concept of history politics, which Jeremy
Black has formulated as follows, “changes in the public usage of history
are crucial to the general understanding of the past, and […] these
developments stem largely from current political shifts and pres-
sures.”63 In the previous parts of this chapter we have discussed the
neo-patriotic dominance in the Finnish memory production of war
since the late 1980s and the early 1990s as opposed to previous dec-
ades, which were much more shaped by a memory conflict between
diverse interpretations. In the following we will, based on three exam-
ples, elaborate on how representations of the same object change over
time and how these changes relate to political shifts. The aim of the
discussion is to make our interpretation of the neo-patriotic turn more
concrete. First, attention is paid to the official depictions of the past by
Finnish state representatives. Secondly, we discuss the shifting public
images of the women’s organization Lotta Svärd. Our last example
focuses on Marshal Mannerheim.
62
Website http://yle.fi/suuretsuomalaiset, accessed 24 September 2010.
63
Jeremy Black, Using History (London, 2005), p. 2.
It has been stated that in countries forging new identities the role
of the state in the field of historical culture is central.64 In Finland, the
need to rebuild relations with the Soviet Union after 1944 demanded
a change in historical consciousness, at least on the official level.
Consequently, President Kekkonen actively expressed his interpreta-
tions on the wartime past. He challenged the pronouncedly nationalist
views offered by his colleagues in the War Guilt Trials, mainly to vindi-
cate the basic principles of his “peace-seeking policy of neutrality.”
Furthermore, he participated in the so-called “driftwood debate,” criti-
cizing the idea of Finland’s non-responsibility for the outbreak of the
Continuation War. Perhaps the most famous example of his non-
nationalist interpretations was delivered in his speech for the 25th
anniversary of the Finnish-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation
and Mutual Assistance in 1973, in which he criticized Finnish interpre-
tations of the history of World War II and claimed that the Finnish
leadership had had unjustified mistrust towards the Soviet aims in the
negotiations before the Winter War. The speech, which aroused a lot of
criticism among Finnish historians, was pointedly sympathetic towards
the Soviet Union:
The tension-filled international situation that had taken hold of Europe
because of Hitler’s aggressive politics gave the Soviet Union a legitimate
reason to propose a mutual assistance pact to Finland. During the dis-
cussions that continued into the first months of 1939, the Soviet Union
proposed several alternatives to acquire guarantees against German
invasion through the territory of Finland. All these alternatives were
based on limited defense agreement, whose form was left for Finns to
plan and propose. The Soviet Union was hoping for serious negotiations
and was willing to hear the motions and counterproposals of the Finns,
who however chose not to present them.65
Kekkonen’s interpretation was a radical departure from the dominant
interpretation among vast numbers of Finns, both professional histori-
ans and others, which put the blame for the Winter War solely on the
Soviet Union and justified the Continuation War with the outcome
of the former. This view had not been affected by either Kekkonen’s
or leftist interpreters’ efforts. The representation of Finland being the
64
Kean and Ashton, “Introduction: People and Their Pasts,” p. 8.
65
Speech by President Urho Kekkonen at the 25th anniversary of the Treaty of
Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, 4 April 1973, Ulkopoliittisia lausun-
toja ja asiakirjoja (Helsinki, 1973), pp. 94–9.
victim outlived the political pressures and began to dominate the neo-
patriotic memory production in the 1990s. The following example
shows how after the collapse of the Soviet Union history was rewritten
also on the official level. On National Veterans’ Day, 27 April 1995,
President Martti Ahtisaari, a social democrat and later Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, examined Finnish wartime history in his first order of
the day as the commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defense Forces:
Finland was the only war-waging country on the European continent
that managed to avoid the horrors of occupation. It was also the only
country that survived the war with its shield intact—the only one that
has nothing to hide or to be ashamed of, but plenty to commemorate
with pride. Our small northern nation preserved its independence with
its democratic system of government operational and its people free.66
Interestingly Ahtisaari seems to suggest that unlike Finland, even the
victorious Allied nations had some morally dubious features in their
war contribution. In 2008 former prime minister Paavo Lipponen, also
a social democrat, went even a step further in his book Järki voittaa
(“Reason Prevails”):
Finland’s wartime policies withstand international comparison. We do
not have to offer apologies to any other state. Western critics should
answer to this: when will they acknowledge the enormous and unforgiv-
able shame they inflicted upon themselves by succumbing to Nazi
Germany when it still could have been overcome, by turning their backs
on the persecution of Jews, and by abandoning small nations to confront
totalitarianism without protection?67
Lipponen’s interest in World War II deserves a closer look. He can be
criticized for his alleged neo-patriotic views, but, on the other hand, he
has been active in commemorating the Holocaust and calling attention
to Finland’s co-responsibility, as shown in the last chapter of this vol-
ume. In addition, Lipponen has called for a critical assessment of the
extermination of the European Roma population in the Final Solution,
as discussed later in this chapter. In terms of history politics, Lipponen’s
biography is of interest. His shifting attitudes result not only from the
end of the Cold War, but also from the symbolic reconciliation between
generations. Wartime children have become interested in their parents’
wartime experiences, which they had mercilessly ignored during their
66
Helsingin Sanomat, 27 April 1995.
67
Paavo Lipponen, Järki voittaa (Helsinki, 2008), p. 116.
radical years in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time Lipponen was a
committed left-wing social democrat with critical comments on the
wartime past, for instance on the women’s organization Lotta Svärd.
As a sign of his personal history political turn in the 1990s Lipponen,
then acting prime minister, proudly presented his foreign colleagues a
film show cherishing the battle of Tali-Ihantala in the summer of 1944.
In addition, Lipponen is now prominent in the veterans’ organizations,
whose aim in the twenty-first century is to preserve the patriotic legacy
of the wartime generations.
One significant change shaping the Finnish memory production
of war since the 1980s is the increasing attention given to women’s
experiences. Thanks to the realization that female experiences are
worth interweaving into the national narrative, their wartime diaries
and collections of letters as well as life stories and memoirs have been
published. In addition, theater plays, films and documentaries dealing
with women’s lives have extended the concept of wartime agency.
However, the interest has been somewhat biased due to the fact that
public recognition has predominantly focused on the activities of
“patriotic women.” Former members of the Lotta Svärd Organization
have particularly been in the limelight of national commemorations
and memory production since the early 1990s.68
The reason for the lottas’ hegemonic role is partly to be found in the
organization’s dramatic history, which is intimately connected with
the history of independent Finland. The Lotta Svärd was established
in 1921 largely by those women who had supported the White Army in
the Finnish Civil War of 1918. During the years 1939–44, the members’
voluntary contribution was essential both near the battlefields and
on the home front. In 1944, when the organization was dissolved due
to its allegedly fascist nature, it had over 200,000 members. For both
the Soviet Union and the Finnish communists, the Lotta Svärd was one
of the protagonists of Finnish nationalist conservatism and fascism,
and, consequently, its memory had to be excluded from the narrative
of democratic Finland. The exclusion of the lottas did not succeed
completely, but their postwar representations did not make the former
members feel flattered—on the contrary. From the 1950s until the
1980s the dominant public image of a lotta was that of a sexually loose
68
Tiina Kinnunen, “Gender and Politics: Patriotic Women in Finnish Public
Memory after 1944,” in Paletschek & Schraut, Gender of Memory.
woman. In particular, the depictions in Linna’s The Unknown Soldier

and Paavo Rintala’s Sissiluutnantti engendered a sense of humilia-
tion in the former members, who in fact had been subjected to strict
regulations in terms of sexual morality and whose work had been
indispensable to the war effort. These depictions launched heated pub-
lic debates. Linna’s and Rintala’s decision to choose a “spoiled” member
of the Lotta Svärd as their target can be seen as an instrument to depict
the moral bankruptcy of national romantic ideals and thus the basis
of the dominant value system in prewar and wartime Finland. The
fact that the lotta representations conveyed important meanings of
Finnishness, which were contested and renegotiated in the postwar
period, explains the public rage. From the lottas’ point of view this
memory conflict also produced positive counter-images to those of
Linna’s and Rintala’s, but they did not dominate until the neo-patriotic
turn paved the way for a radical change.
The film Lupaus (“The Promise”) directed by Ilkka Vanne, which
had its premiere in 2005, can be seen as the culmination of the renais-
sance in lotta representations. It tells, in a glorifying tone, the story of
two sisters, patriotic young lottas serving their nation behind the lines.
The image of hard work, moral decency and non-political agency, which
is propagated in the film and in other lotta images since the early 1990s
has to be seen, on the one hand, as a response to the earlier defaming
depictions and, on the other hand, as a reflection of and a contribution
to the neo-patriotic turn of the Finnish memory production on the
whole. The nationalist sentiment, which dominates in Lupaus, becomes
very clear when the depiction is compared to the second movie drama-
tization of The Unknown Soldier, directed by Rauni Mollberg in 1985.
In this latter film the lotta—and through her the Finnish nation—is
morally fallen and worn out by the war. In Lupaus, the pure, innocent
nation is embodied by its pure, innocent daughters. The victimhood
of Finland is symbolized by the death of one of the sisters.69 All the
69
A rich body of research on gender and nation points out how in national dis-
courses and images women often symbolize the nation. In Finland Johanna Valenius
has analyzed how the imaginary “Finnish Maid” was used to construct the Finnish
nation on the verge of the twentieth century; Johanna Valenius, Undressing the Maid:
Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Construction of the Finnish Nation (Helsinki,
2004). For a transnational discussion on the topic, see e.g. Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann &
Catharine Hall, eds., Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long
Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2000).
disturbing elements, for instance Finland’s relationship with Germany,

are excluded. Historically speaking, the lottas took also care of the
German soldiers deployed in Finland, and the leaders of the organiza-
tion maintained contacts with the Nazi female establishment. The only
comment on the Finnish-German relations in Lupaus is by the young
woman’s father, who assures that Germany will help Finland to correct
the injustices of the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940. The separate
war thesis could not be articulated in more distinct terms.70
The high esteem Marshal Mannerheim enjoyed during the Winter
War and the Continuation War did not fade in the politically tumul-
tuous postwar years, even if he was severely criticized in the leftist
press. In the 1950s and the early 1960s, the patriotism, which thrived
under the official political surface, was expressed first through the
great public commemorations and mourning at his funeral in 1951 and
then at the unveiling of his equestrian statue in 1960. In his speech
on the latter occasion President Kekkonen stressed that the statue was
a monument to the memory of all those Finns who had sacrificed
their lives for the country, but this interpretation is not engraved in the
public memory.71 In today’s memory production, Mannerheim has a
unique standing as the icon of Finnish nationalism and as the great-
est champion of national history. Often it seems that even profes-
sional historians are applying a different, more respectful and less
critical, set of standards when writing about him. The admiration that
does not give room for dissenting views is exemplified by the debate,
which arose in 2008, when the animated short movie Uralin Perhonen
(“The Butterfly from the Urals”) by Katariina Lillqvist was shown on
Finnish television. In the movie, which focused on Mannerheim’s role
as the commander-in-chief of the White troops in 1918, Mannerheim,
depicted as a centaur-like character, was portrayed having a homo-
sexual relationship with his male servant, a young Kyrgyz man.
Despite the artistic and fictional approach of the movie many took it
70
Kinnunen, “Finnische Kriegserinnerung,” pp. 361–3; Tiina Kinnunen, “Die
‘Lotta’ als Verkörperung der Nation: Transformationen des nationalen Selbstbildes
in der finnischen Nachkriegszeit,” in Wegner, von Wrochem & Schümmer, Finnland
und Deutschland.
71
Ulla-Maija Peltonen, “Yhdistävä ja erottava sankaruus: C.G.E. Mannerheim,” in
Ulla-Maija Peltonen & Ilona Kemppainen, eds., Kirjoituksia sankaruudesta (Helsinki,
2010).
literally and found any hints about Mannerheim’s sexual orientation

offensive.72
The ensuing debate was at the same time absurd and revealing.
Seemingly it centered on Mannerheim’s sexual orientation, but actually
it was about different meanings of Finnishness and national values.
Thus it reminded of the heated debates about the lottas’ sexual behav-
ior, which, too, had a deeper undercurrent than the mere question of
historical veracity of such claims. Drawing on her research into the
shifting images of Mannerheim, folklorist Ulla-Maija Peltonen has
recently stressed that depictions of Mannerheim are closely linked to
the constructions of Finnish national culture and self-understanding.73
The reception of Uralin perhonen revealed how the legacy of the Civil
War is excluded from the neo-patriotic narration, which conveys a
mythical conception of a unified nation without inner differences or
schisms of any kind. Through her short movie the director wanted to
remind how controversial a figure Mannerheim actually has been
among those Finns who did not subscribe to the values and memories
of the victorious White side of the Civil War. In the early 1960s this
class-bound issue had still been strongly prevailing in the depictions of
Mannerheim. Some of the youth radicals took explicit aim at the iconic
image of Mannerheim by depicting him as the brutal suppressor of the
Finnish working class in 1918, as an anti-Bolshevist Czarist aristocrat
and as Hitler’s willing co-belligerent. For Mannerheim’s admirers and
patriotic Finns such interpretations were a desecration and engendered
a heated debate for and against. In today’s Finland, the plans by Renny
Harlin, the only Finnish director with any success in Hollywood, to
film a movie about the Marshal have also met with a divided reception.
Others fear that Mannerheim’s life will be distorted to a mindless action
spectacle, yet others feel that with a big production film Mannerheim
and Finnish national history will finally get the international attention
that they deserve.74 According to the patriotic view, this should be a
narrative without conflicting elements.
72
Taneli Koponen, “Hägglund Mannerheim-animaatiosta: ‘Puna-armeijan propa-
gandan perillinen,’ ” Aamulehti, 24 February 2008; Pertti Avola, “Uralin perhonen nou-
see kansanperinteestä,” Helsingin Sanomat, 29 February 2008; Jyrki Räikkä, “Katariina
Lillqvist Makes Political Art Out of Puppet Animations,” Helsingin Sanomat, interna-
tional edition, 1 March 2008.
73
Peltonen, “Yhdistävä ja erottava sankaruus.”
74
Website of the forthcoming film www.solarfilms.com/elokuvat/kaikki/
mannerheim/en_GB/productioninfo, accessed 20 March 2010.
III. Today’s Alternative Narratives of War
Limitations of the Neo-Patriotic Narrative

In political terms, the neo-patriotic narrative that has dominated the
Finnish public memory of the years 1939–44 for two decades entails
several problems. It builds on a compensation-seeking and defiant
interpretation of the war years and subordinates everything to the
events of 1939, implicitly and often even explicitly claiming that the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the consequent Soviet invasion of
Finland adequately explain and justify all later Finnish wartime actions
and decisions, including the alliance with Hitler’s Germany, offensive
warfare and the occupation of Eastern Karelia during the Continuation
War. This narrative rests on the twin foundations of the military hero-
ism of ordinary Finnish soldiers and the understanding of Finland’s
war contribution as a morally pure defensive struggle for democracy
against the aggressive, totalitarian Soviet communism.
In terms of memory production, the current situation has a feeling
of ambivalence around it. On the one hand, the recurring anniversaries
are celebrated with ever-growing publicity and devotedness; on the
other hand, scholarly research in particular has grown increasingly
critical of the prevailing nationalist interpretations and has paid atten-
tion to the darker and silenced parts of the wartime. The results have
not (yet), however, contributed to a turn in the realm of public mem-
ory. The dominant non-academic discourse of World War II, instead of
approaching it as a universal human tragedy, emphasizes the national
sacrifice and the pride in Finnish military performance, stressing the
necessity of being deeply grateful to those who contributed to these
achievements, most importantly the rank-and-file war veterans, but
also wartime women and the Finnish leadership. War is paradoxically
seen as a fundamentally positive and indispensable experience, some-
thing that is priceless to the very essence of the nation, making Finland
what it is today. Fulfilling one’s military duties, nowadays in the form of
completing compulsory male military service, has remained an impor-
tant yardstick for Finnish masculinity.75
The neo-patriotic narrative cherishes the endurance and sacrifice of
different groups in war-waging Finland. Tragedies, destruction and
75
Teemu Tallberg, Miesten koulu (Helsinki, 2003).
suffering are outweighed by the exceptional phenomena that were

created by the war and at the same time necessary to survive it: unwa-
vering national unity, will to sacrifice and a sense of a shared com-
mon purpose. Suffering comes forth in these representations, yet it is
not purposeless, but instead interwoven with the sacrifice for the
nation. This way of dealing with suffering revives the wartime rheto-
ric related to the fallen soldiers and women who died working in the
military service.76 Through the fate of children in the midst of war
and other Finnish civilian groups, such as the Karelian evacuees,
seemingly meaningless suffering is indeed conceptualized, but we
argue that in both political and moral terms such a memory, which
is confined to national victimhood alone, is problematic. In a post-
patriotic narrative, one’s own suffering is seen in relation to the
suffering of others across the national borders.77 Furthermore, the suf-
fering inflicted actively on others cannot be ignored. In other words,
the myth of pure victimhood of one’s nation has to be replaced with
the recognition of one’s co-responsibility. Before the collapse of the
Soviet Union narratives of Soviet violence towards the Finnish civil-
ian population could not be publicly recalled. So, for instance, the trag-
edy in Elisenvaara in Eastern Finland in June 1944, when over 100
evacuated Finnish civilians were killed in a Soviet air raid on the
evacuation trains, only came into the public commemoration in the
post-Soviet era.78
Such a commemoration of Finnish suffering should not, however,
exclude critical assessment of, for instance, the treatment of the Russian
population during the Finnish occupation of Eastern Karelia in
1941–44. Author Marja-Leena Mikkola has raised this question in her
work, published in 2004, in which the Russians who were interned in
76
sodan aikana (Helsinki, 2006), pp. 261–4.
77
In this respect there are some modest attempts developing. Among the organiza-
tion for the Karelian evacuee children (“the society for Children Displaced by War”;
for more information, see www.evakkolapset.fi/english.htm) there is an interest in
placing the fate of Finnish Karelian evacuees in the larger European context of mass
deportations, for instance from the Eastern and Central Europe in the last phase of
World War II. In 2006, the society organized a journey to the exhibition Erzwungene
Wege—Flucht und Vertreibung in Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts in Berlin. However, this
orientation can be seen also as problematic since the German organizer of the exhibi-
tion, Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (“Center against Expulsions”), is a subject of great
political controversy.
78
Erkki Rahkola & Carl-Fredrik Geust, Vaiettu Elisenvaaran pommitus—
Evakkohelvetti 20. kesäkuuta 1944 (Helsinki, 2008).
the Finnish concentration or transit camps made themselves heard.79

Mikkola’s approach to give voice to those affected by Finnish violence
has not, however, resonated widely among the Finns. The occupation,
with its ideological background and everyday practices, has been dis-
mantled by academic researchers, but neither academic nor popular
representations have been able to profoundly change the Finnish col-
lective consciousness (or the lack of it) regarding the issue.
Also the neo-patriotic claims of imposed silence and national self-
accusations as signs of the Soviet influence on the Finnish memory
production, which grew loud after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
seem heavily exaggerated and thus in need of reconsideration. The
concept of “truthful” memory of war, allegedly suppressed for decades
until the collapse of the Soviet Union, implies that a “true” narrative
is (or should be) uncontested and shared by the whole nation.
Consequently, those who do not agree are the national outsiders. This
view resembles the conservative or right-wing nationalist agenda in
the post-1918 era, when the conflicting memories of the Civil War
were excluded from the national memory.80
The division made between the dark postwar past, when the “true”
memory was suppressed, and the present, when the “truth” prevails,
distorts the history of Finnish memory production. This division is
contradicted by the fact, already mentioned above, that representa-
tions of war were abundant in the public sphere throughout the
postwar decades. In addition, the treatments were rarely hostile from
the patriotic point of view, as we have shown. On the other hand,
one has to recognize the serious intentions behind the argument about
the imposed silence. Undoubtedly, there were patterns of suppres-
sion in the period of Soviet influence, and, consequently, more liber-
ated discussion became possible afterwards. Eeva Peltonen, a Finnish
sociologist from the radical postwar generation, who in the 1990s
worked on women’s reminiscences of war, has called for a sensitive
dealing with people’s need to recall the wartime experiences. Contrary
to many of the old radicals, she could not perceive the patriotic turn
of the 1990s only as a revival of primitive nationalism. Instead,
she thought that the eruption of patriotic values could indeed be a
79
Marja-Leena Mikkola, Menetetty lapsuus—Suomalaismiehittäjien vankeudessa
1941–44 (Helsinki, 2004).
80
E.g. Heimo & Peltonen, “Memories and Histories,” pp. 44–5.
symptom that something important had been suppressed in postwar

Finland.81
The interpretation of many war veterans of the climate of the 1960s
and 1970s exemplifies how memory of the past relates to the given
point of time when it is articulated. At that time many war veterans
certainly experienced a humiliation of their wartime efforts. It grew
out of the official political silence regarding the wars and the seem-
ing ingratitude shown by contemporary youth. These confrontations
engendered bitterness and a need for compensation that today, in
the context of the neo-patriotic climate with its cherishing of the war as
the foundation of Finland’s independence, distort the discussions
on the wars. In today’s narrative it is often forgotten that the late 1960s
and the 1970s were also the period of war veterans’ active and influen-
tial role in Finnish politics; a period when the infrastructure for veter-
ans’ social benefits, pensions and physical rehabilitation was created.
For example in the parliament elected in 1970, no fewer than 43 out of
200 seats were held by members of one of the war veteran unions, and
altogether 70 MPs joined the “war veteran club” of the parliament.82
The Memory Boom as a Basis for Alternative Narratives

In the field of Finnish historical culture there are, however, also signals
about post-nationalist approaches, even though their ability to rewrite
the master narrative should not be overemphasized. In April 2010
an international gathering entitled The Forgotten Genocide, including a
scholarly seminar on the extermination of European Roma in the Final
Solution, was organized in Helsinki. The gathering was organized by a
network of scholarly, cultural and political institutions and protected by
President Tarja Halonen. The aim of this gathering was to commemo-
rate the Roma who fell victim to the Nazi genocide and to develop
transnational research on this scarcely examined subject. It has been
estimated that almost half of the European Roma were killed during
World War II. In his opening words former prime minister Paavo
Lipponen stressed that the genocide of the Roma has to be integrated
81
Eeva Peltonen, “Naisten viime sodat vuosikymmenten takaa,” in Riikka Raitis &
Elina Haavio-Mannila, eds., Naisten aseet: Suomalaisena naisena talvi- ja jatkosodassa
(Helsinki, 1993), p. 352.
82
Kaarle Sulamaa, Veteraania ei jätetä: Suomen Sotaveteraaniliitto 1957–2007
(Helsinki, 2007), pp. 43–63; Sulamaa, “Himmetä ei muistot koskaan saa”; cf. Kivimäki,
“Between Defeat and Victory.”
into the global narrative of the Holocaust.83 The persecution of Roma

in postwar and contemporary Europe accentuates the history political
dimension of this genocidal past.
New approaches to the wartime past draw much on the last decades’
memory boom, a transnational phenomenon molding the history cul-
tures near and far. Also in Finland individuals and memory communi-
ties have been emboldened by the public interest in war-related
experiences, but also other factors, especially ageing, have contributed
to people’s growing willingness to reveal stories about their lives during
the years of war. In the immediate postwar decades important figures
from military and political circles published their memoirs, in need of
justifying the decisions made in wartime. In the course of the recent
memory boom, voices of new groups, representing “ordinary people”
and mostly civilians, have made themselves heard. The following
groups, among others, are included: the Finnish Karelian evacuees, the
victims of the Soviet partisan attacks, war orphans, children who were
sent to Sweden and women, especially those who had served in the
Lotta Svärd. Dedicated scholars have also paid attention to the experi-
ences of homosexuals at the front.84
The Finnish Jews have not been especially active in creating a dis-
tinct memory community of their own, as Antero Holmila points out
in the last chapter of this volume. In the twenty-first century the first
public representations of the Finnish Roma at war have emerged. The
aim of a travelling exhibition entitled Isämme sodassa—meidänkin
isänmaamme (“Our Fathers at War—Finland Is Also Our Fatherland”),
initiated by Pertti Palm, is to show that Roma also made sacrifices to
protect the country. The exhibition is based on interviews made by
Palm, a social worker by profession. This project has shown how his-
tory has been, and still is, “a social form of knowledge, the work in any
given instance, of a thousand different hands,” as Raphael Samuel has
argued.85 Thanks to the exhibition and information provided by pre-
liminary academic research into the Roma history at war, we know
now that in 1939 around 6,500 Roma lived in Finland and in 1939–44
83
Website www.drom.fi/unohdettukansanmurha/lipponen.pdf, accessed 28 June
2010.
84
E.g. Kati Mustola, “Homoseksuaalisuus ja sota: Kahden veteraanin tarinat,” in
Kinnunen & Kivimäki, Ihminen sodassa.
85
Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture
(London, 1994), p. 8; Kari Vilkko, “Kirkolla on mahdollisuus edelleen parantaa
romanien asemaa,” Suurella sydämellä 1/2007, p. 5.
around 1,000 Roma men served in the Army. As in the case of the
Finnish Jews, the Finnish Roma were not handed over to the Germans.
Instead, there were plans, made by Finnish authorities, to build con-
centration camps in Finland to gather the non-combatant Roma popu-
lation there.86
Since the early 1990s, more and more public representations of the
Finnish wars of 1939–44 draw on the personal reminiscences of ordi-
nary people. Thanks to the memory boom, the public memory has
gained in extent and depth. It has become more detailed and also more
fragmented. Among the most impressive representations emerging in
recent years we want to refer to a film entitled Mother of Mine, directed
by Klaus Härö and premiered in 2005. The film has been rewarded at
several film festivals at home and abroad, which indicates both its
artistic value and its ability to reflect upon war experiences across
national borders. The film is based on a novel written by Heikki
Hietamies.87 In his work the author deals with his own painful experi-
ences as a so-called “war child” in Sweden and then back at home in
Finland. The topic has resonated with a large number of Finns since
about 80,000 Finnish children were sent away during the wartime,
mostly to Sweden. Naturally, there are a variety of experiences and
memories involved in their fate, not all of them being negative.88
The film Mother of Mine indicates how the memory production is
turning to the generation who experienced the war as children and
youth as the adult wartime generation is passing away. Since the 1990s
different memory communities for the children’s generation have been
established, among others for the war orphans, the war children and
the Karelian evacuee children.89 Some children could experience the
fate of all these categories. Within these groups, the traumas caused by
the loss of fathers and eventually also their mothers and homes are
articulated and shared with one’s equals. In many cases the losses,
which often have been suppressed for decades, have had long-lasting
negative effects. Päivy Penttinen, who has collected the reminiscences
86
Panu Pulma, “Romanit Suur-Suomen rakennustyössä,” presentation at the semi-
nar Romanien holokausti (“The Holocaust of the Roma Population”), Helsinki, 8 April
2010.
87
Heikki Hietamies, Äideistä parhain (Helsinki, 1992).
88
Jenni Kirves, “Sotalasten siirretty lapsuus,” in Sodassa koettua, Vol. 1: Haavoitettu
lapsuus, ed. Sari Näre et al. (Helsinki, 2007).
89
Atte Oksanen, “Evakkolasten kadotettu koti,” in Sodassa koettua, Vol. 1; Sari
Näre, “Sotaorpojen mykkä ikävä,” in ibidem.
of war orphans, has written that the psychological effects more than
anything else seem to dominate war orphans’ collective memory.90 For
many, writing, either for folklore collections or with the aim of pub-
lishing one’s reminiscences, functions as a route to the therapeutic
catharsis of traumatic emotions.
During the war Finnish women especially were expected to symbol-
ize the collective honor and purity of the nation. Thus the alleged
enthusiasm of Finnish women for the German soldiers stationed in
Finland caused alarmist reactions among both Finnish soldiers and
civilians.91 In postwar Finland the image of these “women of the
Germans” was coined with moral contempt. They were instrumental in
symbolizing the morally troublesome nature of the Finnish-German
alliance during the Continuation War, as Finnish women and espe-
cially the mothers have been important icons for the whole nation in
the cultural imagery. As already pointed out, the Finnish cooperation
with Hitler’s Germany was too sensitive a spot to be openly dealt with
in the postwar memory politics; accordingly, the topic was thus
approached indirectly.92 Until recent years the stories of these allegedly
immoral and unpatriotic women and their children were rarely heard.
In general, women and children were excluded from the master narra-
tive of the nation at war, but the women with intimate relations with
German soldiers were especially vulnerable. First, due to their “erotic
fraternization” they had not fulfilled the requirement of sexual purity
imposed on women. Secondly, and what was even more sensitive, in
postwar Finland they and their children were reminders of the shared
Finnish-German past in 1941–44.93 In her documentary film Auf
Wiedersehen Finnland (“Good-Bye Finland,” 2010), director Virpi
Suutari gives voice to those Finnish women, who left Finland together
with the German soldiers in 1944, many of whom were so traumatized
that they had drawn a veil over their experiences for decades.
90
Päivy Penttinen, Olethan minulle isä: Suomen sotien 1939–1945 sotaorpojen
elämää (Hyvinkää, 2004), p. 215. Among the numerous publications of wartime chil-
dren’s experiences we want to pay special attention to journalist Irja Wendisch’s work
Salatut lapset: Saksalaissotilaiden lapset Suomessa (Helsinki, 2006). The work is based
on the life stories of those Finnish children whose fathers are German soldiers.
91
Anu Heiskanen, “A Useless War Memory: Erotic Fraternization, German Soldiers
and Gender in Finland,” in Paletschek & Schraut, Gender of Memory.
92
Cf. Guido Vitiello, “Deutschland, bleiche Mutter: Allegories of Germany in Post-
Nazi Cinema,” in Paletschek & Schraut, Gender of Memory.
93
Heiskanen, “Useless War Memory.”
In addition to the group of “Germans’ women” and their children

with “useless war memories,” as Anu Heiskanen has summarized,94
there were women and their children who were even more stigmatized
and silenced, namely those who had had relations with the Soviet
prisoners-of-war. In the national interpretation, through these con-
tacts the enemy was let into the nation and, consequently, any intimate
relations were strongly forbidden.95 In the public memory of postwar
Finland, despite the political turn in foreign relations, such an intimacy
between Finnish women and the Soviet prisoners-of-war has until
today remained a taboo. In 2010 a research project was launched by the
Finnish National Archives with the aim of documenting the history of
the Finnish children of the Soviet prisoners-of-war and all the other
children born out of relations between Finnish women and foreign
soldiers. In addition, information is sought on the children of Finnish
soldiers born between 1942 and 1945 to women from the areas occu-
pied by Finland in 1941–44.96
Next to the issues regarding the above-mentioned specific groups
of children, the present interest of the wartime children and their
own children in the history and experiences of 1939–45 should not be
seen only as a demonstration of exclusive neo-patriotism and identity
politics. There is also a keen and sincere need to find generational rec-
onciliation and mutual understanding after the earlier politicized
memory conflicts. In their efforts to give meaning to their life, the war-
time children now reflect upon their growing-up in postwar Finland,
where their parents reconstructed the country and at the same time
tried to cope with often deeply felt war-related problems. As part of
the neo-patriotic narrative of war, postwar Finland is depicted from
the perspective of heroic reconstruction. But in family stories and
94
Ibidem.
95
Noora Wilms, “ ‘The Condemned Women’: Memories of the Relationships
between Finnish Women and Soviet Prisoners of War,” in Joni Virkkunen, Pirjo
Uimonen and Olga Davydova, eds., Ethnosexual Processes: Realities, Stereotypes and
Narratives (Jyväskylä, 2010).
96
In the research project “Children of Foreign Soldiers in Finland, 1940–48,” the
following groups are addressed: the children of German soldiers born between 1941
and 1946; the children of foreign volunteers born between 1940 and 1945; the chil-
dren of Soviet soldiers and prisoners-of-war born between 1942 and 1945; and the
children of members of the Allied Control Commission born between 1945 and 1948.
On the sexual relations between Finnish soldiers and local women in Eastern Karelia,
see Marjo Koponen, “Sexual Relations between Finnish Occupying Soldiers and Local
Women in Eastern Karelia during the Second World War,” in Virkkunen, Uimonen
and Davydova, Ethnosexual Processes.
personal life histories there can be room also for more vulnerable and
difficult narratives. This personal level of the Finnish memory culture
has not been the focus of our presentation, but it is important to
remember that the phenomenon of neo-patriotism—dominant in the
public sphere—is far from all-encompassing and monolithic in shap-
ing the memories of war.
But in the public memory production the post-nationalist approach
is by no means self-evident, either. Thus, the public interest in ordi-
nary peoples’ war experiences and the need of different groups and
individuals to unfold their life stories can be seen as a welcome phe-
nomenon, because it makes the national memory community more
democratic and heterogeneous. On the other hand, we have to pose the
critical question, whether the new narratives are able to contribute to
the breaking of the patriotic memory consensus, which builds on a
myth of a unified and pure nation without differences of gender, eth-
nicity, social hierarchies or political commitments, and without moral
problems. Or does the democratization of memory production con-
versely only reinforce the illusory notion of a shared Finnishness still
dependent on the wartime past by integrating more and more experi-
ences of individuals and groups into the national narrative?
There is a rich body of research, drawing on Maurice Halbwachs’
authoritative scholarship, underlining the social character of individ-
ual memory. Our interpretations are also informed by the view that the
personal accounts of the past are inseparably interwoven with prevail-
ing cultural and political meanings given to the past. Consequently,
present personal reminiscences of war have to be seen in relation to the
neo-patriotic climate of the last two decades. It is, however, oversimpli-
fied to perceive these reminiscences, published in recent years or
recorded for archival use, as only reflecting the hegemonic patriotic
discourse. Without any doubt, the majority of these reminiscences do
adjust to this master narrative, but there are also conflicting aspects.
In her research on the oral histories of Finnish families, based on a
collection recorded by the Finnish Literature Society in 1997, Pauliina
Latvala points to tensions between personal experiences of war and the
images presented to the public. The conflicts are related, for instance,
to heroism, which is a central ingredient of the recent public discourse
on the Finnish wartime:
The cultural discourse on heroism is often in conflict with the per-
sonal experiences of the front. In the collection, the experiences,
the critical or variant opinions, the confessions and disappointments of
people sidelined in the official military histories receive a voice. Men

write of the ordinary, human war, where action was not necessarily
heroic.97
***
In this chapter we have focused on the Finnish memory culture of
World War II from the 1940s until today, with the strongest focus on
the present phenomenon of neo-patriotism. According to our inter-
pretation, the (neo-)patriotic culture, which gained strength in a
remarkable way after the collapse of the Soviet Union, still dominates
today, but the new post-nationalist approaches have gradually become
visible, merging with the prevailing memory boom. In comparison
with the current neo-patriotic culture, the time before the collapse of
the Soviet Union can be characterized as a period of memory conflicts.
We have pointed out that a closer look at the representations of war-
time produced before the 1990s challenges the neo-patriotic claim of
an “imposed silence” in public commemorations before the late 1980s.
Patriotic interpretations survived the war, but before the renaissance of
patriotic values in the 1990s they were also challenged, especially by
pacifist and leftist narratives of the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless,
along the neo-patriotic turn, recalling the war became acceptable at
every level of society and the memory of war grew to an integral part
of defining the national identity of different groups of Finns.
In international comparison, there are differences in collective
national memories as far as the treatment of experiences and war
responsibilities in relation to World War II are concerned. As a rule,
these differences result from the outcome of war. The German term
Vergangenheitsbewältigung exemplifies an ability of collective learning
resulting from many years’ critical assessment of the past. Conversely,
the commemorative cultures of the victorious Allied nations underline
the heroic elements of war. As shown in this chapter, despite the out-
come of war, the prevailing Finnish master narrative of war fits into an
Allied pattern of remembering the war. “Our” years of war, as they are
defined, are predominantly seen as something inherently positive
despite all the sorrow involved. In such patriotic representations the
war is, on the one hand, connected to heroism, the will to sacrifice and
97
Pauliina Latvala, Katse menneisyyteen: Folkloristinen tutkimus suvun muistitie-
dosta (Helsinki, 2005), p. 278.
national solidarity, and, on the other hand, any hints of a stain on the
pure image of Finland at war are downplayed. These two poles are nat-
urally and inevitably interrelated.
To some extent the neo-patriotic wave that followed the collapse of
the Soviet Union has to be seen as a sound reaction against the silenc-
ing of several experiences and the production of biased interpretations
of war during the postwar decades. Yet the neo-patriotic narrative has
in many respects gone to the other extreme. There are some interpreta-
tions that are not only selective but also clearly ahistorical, like the the-
sis of a separate war and the idea that the Continuation War was purely
a defensive conflict. Even if professional historians have repeatedly
corrected such views, it is a slow process to revise the large field of his-
tory culture. The obvious reason for this is that the memory produc-
tion is tightly interwoven with national identity politics, and it is not
primarily shaped and influenced by academic research. From the view-
point of identity politics it is a current problem that the present Finnish
memory production is so much centered on narrating Finland and the
Finns as a united, faultless nation that conflicting memories and inter-
pretations have made it difficult to make themselves heard. Differences
related to class, gender and ethnicity, among others, are tolerated only
if they can be integrated into a shared pattern of national experience.
What Pia Olsson has stated in regard to the neo-patriotic lotta depic-
tions is valid for the problem of present Finnish memory production
in general: “the [neo-patriotic] change has meant the reappearance of
the image of the lotta formed during the wartime, which allows few
faults.”98
Only the willingness for a critical reassessment of the past creates
a sound basis for memory production. Consequently, we argue
that this attitude—largely characteristic of today’s Finnish historical
profession—has to be adopted also in the public memory production,
even if this is more difficult than any paradigm changes in scholarship.
For this endeavor, revisiting the memory conflicts of the Finnish post-
war decades before the neo-patriotic turn is useful. Admittedly, the
critical narratives, associated with generational schisms and
Finlandization, were often merciless towards the wartime generation
in general and the political leaders in particular. In addition, they were
98
Pia Olsson, “To Toil and To Survive: Wartime Memories of Finnish Women,”
Human Affairs 12 (2002): 2, p. 131.
gender-biased. Yet they did not cherish today’s mythical conception of

the wartime Finnish nation without any faults and class differences. In
post-modern Finland, other social and cultural differences also have to
be acknowledged.
Being part of the European community includes membership of
the European memory community. This is a challenge for the Finnish
neo-patriotic paradigm, which is permeated by a strong emphasis on
Finland fighting only for its national survival with pure means. National
paradigms are important and will inevitably survive, but in the future
memory production Finland’s wars have to be narrated in relation to
the larger context of World War II in Europe.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“KARELIA ISSUE”
THE POLITICS AND MEMORY OF KARELIA IN FINLAND
Outi Fingerroos
For a foreign reader, the central place of Karelia in the Finnish memory
culture may seem surprising. Unlike any other region, the Karelian
borderland between Finland and Russia, with its varying cultural
meanings and geographical borders, has been in focus when defining
Finnishness as an identity and nationality. Ever since the Finnish
national champion Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) collected traditional
oral poetry in Karelia and composed them into the national epic
Kalevala in 1849, Karelia has been a source of inspiration for Finnish
nationalism and culture. In World War II, all the major battles between
Finland and the Soviet Union took place in Finnish Karelia and in
Soviet Eastern Karelia, which has further emphasized the significance
of Karelia in the Finnish memory culture. Today, the “Karelia issue” is
mostly referring to the question of the areas annexed by the Soviet
Union in World War II and to the memories of this “lost Karelia”
among the Finns.
The two different Karelias under discussion may be confusing.
For the sake of clarity, I will use the umbrella term “Finnish Karelia” to
refer to those Karelian regions, which were a part of Finland before
World War II. The borders of Finland had been confirmed in 1920 by
the Treaty of Tartu after the nation had achieved its independence
from Soviet Russia in 1917. Finnish Karelia included the Karelian
Isthmus and the Ladoga Karelia, with the city of Vyborg as the heart
of the region. These areas were annexed by the Soviet Union after
the Winter War in 1940, recaptured by the Finns in 1941, and then
lost again in 1944.1 The prewar population of Finnish Karelia was
ethnically Finnish; they spoke Finnish with a Karelian dialect and
1
Part of Finnish Karelia is still inside the contemporary Finnish borders in Eastern
and Southeastern Finland, with the towns of Joensuu and Lappeenranta as the main
centers.
484 outi fingerroos
understood themselves to be just as Finnish as the rest of the country.

In 1939–40, the whole population of Finnish Karelia, over 400,000
Finns, was evacuated and resettled inside the new Finnish borders.
The majority of these exiles, the so-called “Karelian evacuees” (in
Finnish evakko) returned to their homes during the Continuation War
and were thus re-evacuated in 1944. After that, the Karelian evacuees
established new homes all over Finland. Nevertheless, despite losing
their original Finnish Karelian home region, many of the evacuees and
their descendants have upheld a distinctive Karelian identity and tradi-
tion until today.
“Eastern Karelia,” instead, has never been a part of Finland. With no
unambiguous borders, it refers roughly to the large areas east of Finland
between Lake Ladoga, River Svir, Lake Onega and the White Sea. The
area is further divided into Olonets (Aunus) Karelia in the south and
Dvina (Viena) Karelia in the north. The Karelian population of Eastern
Karelia is not Finnish, but an ethnic people in its own right, speaking
the Finnic language of Karelian. Demographically, the area has been a
mixed region of ethnic Karelians and Russians, plus some smaller
Finnic peoples. During the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of Russians
and other non-Finnic nationalities of the Soviet Union were resettled
in Eastern Karelia, thus making the Karelians a minority in the area. In
1923, Eastern Karelia as a part of the Soviet Union formed the Karelian
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic; today, the Republic of Karelia is
a federal district of Russia with Petrozavodsk as the capital city. During
the Continuation War in 1941–44, Finland occupied most of Eastern
Karelia for over two and a half years.
Consequently, there are two different topics when looking at the
Karelias: the expansive idea in prewar and wartime Finland to attach
Eastern Karelia to Finland, defined as the ideology of Greater Finland;
and the experience of losing Finnish Karelia in 1940 and again in 1944,
the memory of which is still a current issue in contemporary Finland.
Naturally, the question of creating Greater Finland by incorporating
Eastern Karelia has not been on any political agenda after 1944.2
“Karelianism,” a broad term referring to the keen Finnish public,
political, artistic and academic interest in Karelia and the Karelians,
2
On the Finnish occupation of Eastern Karelia, see the chapters by Oula
Silvennoinen and Tenho Pimiä in this book. The most important study on the subject
is still Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot: Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema
suomalaisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1982).
“karelia issue” 485
has turned out to be a phenomenon that has lasted over a century,

although with various phases and focuses. Throughout these shifting
phases, Karelia has been created anew both by scholarly construction
and by imagining and fantasizing. The geographical focus, including
the question to whom Karelia belongs, has shifted from Eastern Karelia
to the Karelian Isthmus reflecting the geopolitical realities. The territo-
rial losses to the Soviet Union in World War II that were sealed in the
Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 engraved the concepts of “Karelian evacuee,”
“the ceded Karelia” and “the lost Karelia” into the Finnish collective
memory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the memories
of those Finns, who lost their homes due to war, and the images of
Karelia gained new significance in the Finnish memory culture. In
political terms, the Karelia issue is today centered on the question of
restituting those parts of Karelia, which were lost to the Soviet Union
in 1944. Interestingly, although Finland also lost the Ladoga Karelia,
the present discussions of Karelia belonging to Finland focus mostly
on the Karelian Isthmus and the city of Vyborg.
The following chapter3 is divided into two sections. The first section,
dealing with the history and politics of the Karelia issue, starts with a
short introduction to the history of Karelianism and the Karelias in
Finnish history. It will be followed by a discussion on the politics of the
Karelia issue. In my reading, the discussion, in past and present, on this
issue comprises of three phases: The first one encompasses the period
before 1944, when the cultural myth of Karelia as the cradle of Finnish
culture was powerfully cherished and the political aspirations to incor-
porate Eastern Karelia into Finland led to an occupation of the area in
1941–44. In the second phase, after the defeat of Finland in the
Continuation War, the idea of Karelia focused on the Finnish areas,
which were lost as a result of the defeat. The restitution of this territory
was debated in the Finnish public sphere, but due to geopolitical reali-
ties, it never came close to realization. The collapse of the Soviet Union
started the third phase of the Karelia issue with the opening up of the
Finnish-Russian border and with the intensification of the debate on
the restitution of the lost Finnish Karelia.
3
This chapter is based on two of my research projects: Karelia as a Place of Memories
and Utopias (2005–08) and Strangers from the East—Narratives of Karelian Exiles and
Re-immigrants from Russia Regarding Their Integration in Finland (2009–12), both
funded by the Academy of Finland. See also Outi Fingerroos, “Karelia: A Place of
Memories and Utopias,” Oral Tradition Journal 23 (2008): 2, pp. 235–54.
486 outi fingerroos
In the second section of the chapter, dealing with the Karelia of

memories, the memory culture of the Finnish Karelian evacuees and
their desire to return to Karelia after World War II are reflected upon.
In addition to general remarks, I will offer an in-depth analysis of one
Karelian evacuee, Sirkka Pöysti, who fulfilled her dream of going back
home by renting land and building a cottage close to the house where
she had spent her childhood. In this analysis, “place” and “utopia” are
central concepts. The first and second sections of the chapter cohere
into interplay between memory, politics and history.
I. The Ideology and Politics of Karelia
Eastern Karelia in the Finnish Cultural and Political Imaginary

In its most specific sense the term “Karelianism” refers to the idealistic
interest taken by Finnish scholars and artists in Karelia—particularly
in the Dvina and Olonets regions of Eastern Karelia—in the latter part
of the nineteenth century. It reflected the national romantic sentiment
prevailing at that time in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in
the Russian Empire. Kalevala, the Finnish national epic compiled by
Elias Lönnrot, was the main source of inspiration for this cultural
Karelianism, and the living roots of ancient Finnishness were imagined
to be located in Karelia. Karelianism first became an object of scholarly
research in 1973 with the publication of Hannes Sihvo’s doctoral dis-
sertation entitled Karjalan kuva (“The Image of Karelia”). In this work,
Sihvo offered the tools for a critical assessment of the concept of
Karelianism. He defined it as an extensive cultural and political phe-
nomenon, which has also transformed since its appearance in the
nineteenth century. In other words, Karelianism, like other ideologies,
has its pre-classical and classical forms.4
Even if the phenomenon of Karelianism goes back to the nineteenth
century, the word itself was first used in 1939 by Yrjö Hirn, professor of
esthetics and literature. He referred to the Finnish artists of the early
twentieth century as “the Karelianists” and Kalevala romantics. Among
these figures were, for example, painters Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Pekka
Halonen and Eero Järnefelt, authors Eino Leino and Juhani Aho, and
4
Hannes Sihvo, Karjalan kuva: Karelianismin taustaa ja vaiheita autonomian
aikana, 1973, rev. ed. (Helsinki, 2003), pp. 8–9, 11, 406–7.
composer Jean Sibelius. Today they are all canonized protagonists of

Finnish culture.5
The enthusiasm for Karelia was not only limited to a cultural sphere.
Instead, political aspirations became intertwined with cultural inter-
ests. Early political Karelianism strove to promote the interests of the
autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Later, the objectives of political
Karelianism became more radical with the birth of the idea of an inde-
pendent Finland, separate from Russia as a nation and a state. This
nationalist radicalization was accompanied with the idea of creating
Greater Finland, including Eastern Karelia.6
August Vilhelm Ervasti (1845–1900), a Finnish journalist and
explorer, can be defined as one of the first Karelianists. In the summer
of 1897 he made an expedition into the villages of Dvina Karelia and
recorded his observations for a later publication. His travel account
constitutes the first record of observations of the Karelians and Karelia
written by a Finn. In his travel journal, he relates:
All persons desire to see and learn about their mother country, and for
many years I have regarded Russian Karelia as part of our mother coun-
try of Finland, although we usually consider our mother country to be
only the Grand Duchy of Finland. Since I had travelled almost every-
where in the Grand Duchy of Finland (except Lapland), but Russian
Karelia was still as unknown to me as to all of us living on this side, I had
to go and visit it so that I might become familiar with the whole breadth
of Finland.7
From an ideological point of view, Ervasti is an important figure,
because in his travel account he constructed something that can be
defined as a prototype of the Karelia issue, and he further outlined a
practical and ideological scheme to help the (Eastern) Karelians.8 He
wrote about an independent “new Finland” that Eastern, in other
words Russian, Karelia could be a part of.9 Ervasti’s ideas provided an
ideological basis for many contemporary and future Karelianists.
5
Yrjö Hirn, Matkamiehia ja tietäjiä (Helsinki, 1939), pp. 207–8.
6
Osmo Jussila, “Finland as a Grand Duchy, 1809–1917,” in Osmo Jussila et al., From
Grand Duchy to a Modern State: A Political History of Finland since 1809 (London,
1999), pp. 56–60, 87–91.
7
August Wilhelm Ervasti, Muistelmia matkalta Venäjän Karjalassa 1879, 3rd rev.
ed. (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 14–5. All the translations here and hereafter by Outi
Fingerroos.
8
Pekka Laaksonen, “Lukijalle,” in Ervasti, Muistelmia matkalta, pp. 7–9.
9
Ervasti, Muistelmia matkalta, p. 15.
488 outi fingerroos
Collectors of folk poetry, writers and artists followed in his tracks to

the east.
In 1921, after Finnish independence, there appeared an interesting
little book entitled Karjalan kysymys vuosina 1917–1920 (“The Karelia
Issue, 1917–1920”). According to the writer, political activist and polit-
ical scientist Y.O. Ruuth, the Karelia issue was specifically a political
one:
Thus the Karelia issue, like all political questions, is at the same time both
cultural and economic, and both these aspects are mutually interdepend-
ent. Civilization does not bloom without economic resources, neither
does the wealth of the nation flourish without spiritual vigor and strength
of will.10
Ruuth’s book was a manifestation of the fact that the idea of Greater
Finland was transforming into a concrete political plan. For those
activists who dreamed of Greater Finland, the Karelia issue encom-
passed the unification of Eastern Karelia with the rest of Finland. In
1921, the same year as the book was published, Finnish activists
engaged in an uprising of Eastern Karelians against the Bolshevik rule.
Already in 1918, during the Finnish Civil War and concomitant with
the turmoil in revolutionary Russia, “White” Finnish volunteer troops
had pushed into Eastern Karelia. Both attempts to “free” Eastern
Karelia nevertheless failed.
The initial lack of success in incorporating Eastern Karelia into
Finland proper did not lead to a dismissal of the issue. During the
1920s and 1930s both the political idea of creating Greater Finland and
the general interest in the culture and welfare of the Finnic peoples,
most importantly the Karelians living east of the new Finnish borders,
flourished. There were a multitude of different associations and initia-
tives to cherish these ideas. Probably the most influential was the
Academic Karelia Society (AKS), which brought together the Finnish
university students with strong nationalist and expansionist aspira-
tions. AKS was not just any student association: it became a major
ideological force among young Finnish university graduates, and its
(former) members were to occupy leading positions for a long time yet
in postwar Finland. Groups of Eastern Karelians had escaped to
Finland after the abortive attempts to topple the new Bolshevik rule,
and their refugee organizations were also active in keeping the issue of
10
Y.O. Ruuth, Karjalan kysymys vuosina 1917–1920: Katsaus Karjala-kysymyksen
poliittiseen luonteeseen (Jyväskylä, 1921), p. 18.
Eastern Karelia on the agenda. It is difficult to estimate the true public

support for any version of Greater Finland among the Finns; yet the
Karelia issue was definitely a highly relevant subject for Finnish nation-
alism in the 1920s and 1930s.11 This was not, of course, changed by the
Winter War, which only made it easier to experience the Soviets as
unscrupulous oppressors of smaller peoples.
The blueprint for Greater Finland was finally put into practice dur-
ing the Continuation War, when Finland occupied most of Eastern
Karelia. On 10 July 1941, the commander-in-chief of the Finnish Army,
Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim, issued an order of the day, which has
become to be known as his “Scabbard Order.” In Mannerheim’s mind—
as well as in many enthusiastic minds of the Finnish nationalists in
1941—there gleamed the grandiose idea of Greater Finland and the
Eastern Karelian people unified with the Finnish people. In this cele-
brated order of the day, issued on the same day as Finland launched its
offensive to the east, Mannerheim referred to a pledge he had made
during the Civil War in February 1918 proclaiming:12
In the War of Liberation in 1918 I said to the Karelians of Finland and
Eastern Karelia that I would not put my sword back in its scabbard before
Finland and Eastern Karelia were free. The freedom of Karelia and a great
Finland are glimmering in front of us in the enormous avalanche of
world historic events. May the Providence that directs the fate of nations
allow the Finnish Army to fulfill my pledge to the Karelian people.
Soldiers! The earth on which you are about to tread is holy land soaked
with the blood and suffering of our people. Your victory will liberate
Karelia, your deeds will create a great and happy future for Finland.13
Already at the time, the Scabbard Order was criticized for being an
overreaching and autocratic gesture. It caused offence among those
Finns who did not endorse the expansionist ideology and aims of war.
For them, the crossing of the 1939 border represented a militaristic
adventure: a war to recapture the areas lost in 1940 would have suf-
ficed. Nevertheless, for over two and a half years in 1941–44, the dream
of Greater Finland became reality, as the Finnish Army occupied
11
Toivo Nygård, Suur-Suomi vai lähiheimolaisten auttaminen: Aatteellinen heimo-
työ itsenäisessä Suomessa (Helsinki, 1978); Risto Alapuro, Akateeminen Karjala-Seura:
Ylioppilasliike ja kansa 1920- ja 1930-luvuilla (Porvoo, 1973).
12
Seppo Hentilä, “From Independence to the End of the Continuation War 1917–
1944,” in Jussila et al., From Grand Duchy, p. 201.
13
Einari Kaskimies, Puhtain asein: Suomen marsalkan päiväkäskyjä vuosilta 1918–
1944 (Helsinki, 1970), p. 120.
490 outi fingerroos
Eastern Karelia. Many Finns, especially the members of the AKS and
people with right-wing orientation, welcomed the conquest with great
enthusiasm. Yet the social and cultural condition of the occupied
Eastern Karelia turned out to be a disappointment, and the consequent
setbacks on the Eastern Front in 1942–43 made the fate of Greater
Finland seem more and more insecure. Finally the Finns withdrew
from Eastern Karelia with great haste in June 1944: the experiment of
Greater Finland became merely a rather troublesome memory over-
shadowed by the new political realities of the postwar.
Even if the Finnish postwar memory culture on Karelia has conse-
quently focused, on the one hand, on the experiences of the Finnish
Karelian evacuees, and, on the other hand, on the wider meanings of
the loss of Finnish Karelia, the memory of Eastern Karelia has not
passed into total oblivion. It is a somewhat sensitive spot, but there are
patterns of memory that allow ignoring the dark legacy of the Finnish
occupation and that, instead, emphasize the good things the “Finnish
years” in Eastern Karelia brought to the local Karelian population. For
example, in oral history accounts, Finnish women who worked in
occupied Eastern Karelia recall those days seemingly without any
moral burdens. Clinging to the wartime discourse and excluding the
critical assessments emerging in the postwar history writing, they see
themselves and the Finnish Army as liberators, not as occupiers.14 It is
probably true that the Finnish occupation improved the situation of
the Finnic Karelian population in Eastern Karelia, who had suffered
greatly during Stalin’s regime; yet the harsh fate of the Russian popula-
tion under Finnish rule is pushed out of the reminiscences.
The Karelia Issue in Postwar Finnish Politics

The outcome of the Continuation War was a defeat for Finland. Due to
the terms of the armistice, signed in Moscow on 19 September 1944,
Finland lost about 12 percent of its territory, 30 percent of its energy
sources, 22 percent of forest reserves and 20 percent of the railway
lines. In particular, the loss of the relatively densely populated Karelian
Isthmus and the city of Vyborg to the Soviet Union was in many ways
a crushing blow to Finland. Economically, the Isthmus was one of
the cornerstones of the nation and also in other terms one of the most
vigorous regions in the country. In addition to the material losses,
14
E.g. Jenny Lahti, Lottana Aunuksen radiossa, ed. by Olavi Vaittinen (Jyväskylä,
1996).
the resettlement of the Karelian evacuees presented a demanding chal-

lenge. Virtually the entire population of the ceded regions moved to
Finland within its new borders. The resettlement of over 400,000 peo-
ple was not only economically burdensome, but also psychologically a
difficult process. The evacuees had lost their homes, and the Finns in
the rest of Finland had to adjust to the newcomers with often strange
habits and dialect and in some cases with a different (Orthodox)
religion.
Especially in the immediate postwar period the yearning of the
Karelian evacuees to get back home was strong, and it was also seen as
an open and realistic option. Before the final peace terms were con-
firmed in 1947 the evacuees and many other Finns cherished a hope
that the border question would be reconsidered to their benefit.
Politicians representing the Karelian evacuees initiated discussions
about restitution as early as the summer of 1945, and the Finnish
Karelian League (Karjalan Liitto), a non-governmental organization
established after the Winter War in 1940 to further the cause of the
Karelian evacuees, actively propagated the issue.15
The Finnish government also repeatedly took issue with the restitu-
tion of the Karelian Isthmus. It approached the question of reconsider-
ing the Finnish-Soviet borderline immediately in the autumn of 1945,
when the foreign ministers of the Allied Powers met for discussions in
London. However, the Finns were urged to quell any zeal regarding the
lost regions of Finnish Karelia. The same happened when Finnish
prime minister Mauno Pekkala travelled to Moscow in April 1946 to
negotiate the final peace terms. This time the discussion of restitution
of territories was firmly dismissed by Stalin himself.16
The Paris Peace Treaty was drawn up under the direction of particu-
larly the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and consequently the small
nations that had been engaged in the war were obliged to accept the
solutions imposed on them at the negotiating table. Although the
Finnish president and government instructed the Finnish delegation
travelling to Paris to exert their best efforts in order to get back the city
of Vyborg, the outcome of the negotiations was unfavorable for Finland.
The Soviet Union, concerned about the security of Leningrad, strongly
15
Pekka Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin—palautuskeskustelun vaiheet sotavuosista
2000-luvulle,” in Viipurin läänin historia, Vol. 6: Karjala itärajan varjossa, eds. Yrjö
Kaukiainen & Jouko Nurmiainen (Lappeenranta, 2009), pp. 495–6.
16
Ibidem, p. 498.
492 outi fingerroos
rejected any revision of the 1944 borderline.17 Thus the loss of Karelian
Isthmus as well as Ladoga Karelia was confirmed in 1947, and the evac-
uees lost their homes for good.
On 6 April 1948, Finland and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of
Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. Together with the
Paris Peace Treaty, this agreement defined the principles of the rela-
tions between the two countries until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The revision of the border in Karelia was not among the issues, when
the cooperation treaty was drafted. The following years saw signs of
rapprochement between Finland and the Soviet Union so that on his
visit to Moscow in September 1955 President J.K. Paasikivi managed to
negotiate the immediate restitution of Porkkala Peninsula next to
Helsinki, which the Finns had been forced to lease to the Soviet Union
as a naval base in 1944. However, no positive results regarding Karelia
could be reached.18
The efforts were continued by Paasikivi’s successor Urho Kekkonen.
Already as prime minister and then during his long office as president
in 1956–82 he tried to further the cause of restitution, however taking
care not to jeopardize his good relations with Moscow. In his memoirs,
Max Jakobson, a leading Finnish diplomat at the time, stated that the
restitution of Karelia was a downright obsession with Kekkonen, and
although he did not speak of the matter in public, he returned to it time
and time again in private discussions.19 For instance, in the early 1960s
Kekkonen was in frequent contact with Nikita Khrushchev on the bor-
der question, and he was especially keen on the restitution of Vyborg.
The late 1960s saw the revival of an idea to exchange the area around
Vyborg with northernmost Finnish Lapland. This scenario had flour-
ished already during the immediate postwar years. Kekkonen also
introduced the idea of Finland officially recognizing the state of the
German Democratic Republic as a reciprocal favor for getting Vyborg
back. However, in the end, he was not successful in any of these efforts.20
Until the 1970s the issue of restitution of the ceded areas was also
discussed in the Finnish public sphere, albeit those responsible for for-
eign relations every now and then tried to restrain utterances, which
Moscow could perceive as signs of Finnish revanchism. In particular,
17
18
19
Max Jakobson, Tilinpäätös, Vol. 3 (Helsinki, 2003), p. 197.
20
Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin,” pp. 508–9.
the Karelians’ own organ Karjala actively wrote about the possibility of
the lost regions being restored to Finland. For example in June 1956,
after the restitution of Porkkala, there were several reports in the paper
about the rumors based on high-level leaks in Helsinki and Stockholm
regarding the restitution of Karelia. However, the Soviet Union quickly
put a stop to this kind of speculation in the Karelians’ paper.21 From the
1970s onwards until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the issue of resti-
tution disappeared from public discussion. In Moscow, the political
climate stiffened during the Brezhnev era, which consequently led to
increased self-censorship in Finland concerning Finnish-Soviet rela-
tions.22 It was obvious that any serious political attempts on the part of
the Finns to reopen the Karelia issue might only lead to diplomatic
trouble.
The Karelia Issue in the Post-Soviet Period

In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Karelia issue entered
its third phase. Close to Finland, the regained independence of the
Baltic States redrew national borders. As a sign of the new history poli-
tics, the new Russian leadership acknowledged the Soviet role as an
aggressor against Finland in 1939. Finland’s territorial losses were
defined as an example of Stalin’s totalitarian policy.23 After such a radi-
cal political turn in Russia, a small Finnish group of descendants of the
Karelian evacuees started to demand property rights over the farms
and lands their families had owned in Karelia before the war. More
than one hundred petitions have been sent to the Russian government
with the aim that the prewar property rights would be restored.24 These
petitioners have not required any border revisions, whereas other
groups, encouraged in the 1990s by the seeming weakness of the earlier
superpower, more vociferously than for decades began to discuss the
possibility of the restitution of the ceded areas.
The Finnish government no longer attempted to stifle the public
debate, although in its own statements it adopted a neutral stance
and, consequently, did not make any attempts to reopen the border
question. In 1992, a new treaty on mutual relations was signed to
21
Karjala, 31 May, 10 June and 21 June 1956.
22
Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin,” pp. 513–4.
23
“Foreword,” in Jussila et al, From Grand Duchy, pp. xii–xiii.
24
Kimmo Katajala, “Finland-Russia,” in Peter Calvert, ed., Border and Territorial
Disputes of the World, 4th ed. (London, 2004), p. 295.
494 outi fingerroos
replace the outdated Finnish-Soviet treaty from 1948: it did not include
any territorial changes. Much was expected especially of Finnish
President and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who
was elected in 1994, because he came from a Karelian evacuee family
and had participated in events organized by the Karelian League.
However, he did not fill these expectations of taking the Karelia issue
on his political agenda. The various hopes and claims for restitution of
the ceded areas, especially the Karelian Isthmus and/or Vyborg, were
not seen by the Finnish government as well grounded and wise, neither
politically nor economically. In 1995, Finland became a member of the
European Union and Finland’s border with Russia, without any revi-
sions, was seen officially considered as signed and sealed through the
EU membership. A decisive factor in Finland’s decision not to push the
question was the Russian Federation’s critical stance towards any bor-
der changes.25
This third wave of the Karelia issue gave birth to public proclama-
tions and calculations supporting the restitution. They were made both
by private persons and diverse organizations. The active proponents
were supported by a couple of academic historians, who conducted
politically motivated research on the Karelia issue. The reception
of these revisionist studies has been mixed and in academic circles
almost completely unfavorable. All in all, the restitution of Karelia as a
political program is limited to the activities of small, albeit vociferous
groups, striking a chord with a few politicians coming from an evacuee
background.
One of the academic historians who has engaged in the Karelia issue
is Pentti Virrankoski, professor emeritus of Finnish history at the
University of Turku. In 1994, he published a book entitled Karjala
takaisin—Suhteet Venäjään terveiksi (“Getting Karelia Back—Putting
Our Relations with Russia Right”), in which he writes about the injus-
tice suffered by Finland and the Karelians in World War II. In
Virrankoski’s opinion, the Soviet Union was guilty of starting a coloni-
alist war of aggression and seizing territories that belonged to Finland.26
He writes:
In order that the meaning should be clear, I have called things by their
true names, which may appear crass. However, it is a pure distortion of
25
Katajala, “Finland-Russia,” pp. 295–6; Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin,” pp. 515–8.
26
Pentti Virrankoski, Karjala takaisin—Suhteet Venäjään terveiksi (Lappeenranta,
1994), pp. 9, 40.
the facts to talk, for example, of “the areas ceded by Finland” as if we had
surrendered them voluntarily. The correct expression is “the areas seized
from Finland.” However, it is not my intention to sow hatred; Stalin, his
henchmen and his successors have done enough of that. On the contrary,
I would like to point the way to a true reconciliation. This will never be
achieved by presenting the Russians with demands; hence there is even
greater reason to appeal to their sense of justice and common sense.27
This work was a political pamphlet in the true sense of the word, and it
was seen as controversial in scholarly circles. Virrankoski not only
argued from the viewpoint of justice versus injustice, but he also saw
the restitution of the Karelian Isthmus to be economically profitable
and thus an opportunity not only for the economy of Finland but also
that of St. Petersburg. He was strongly of the opinion that the former
prosperity of Karelia can be revived only through Finnish endeavor.28
All in all, Virrankoski advanced a win-win argument to justify restitu-
tion measures. But as far as the Russian population now living in the
area was concerned, he proposed their displacement:
They are better off in their own country than in a Vyborg or a Sortavala
stolen from Finland. And if mighty Russia cannot take care of them as
little Finland took care of the Karelians, then that is not our fault.29
Another Finnish historian who has actively propagated the restora-
tion of Karelia is Jukka Seppinen. Since 1995, he has dealt with the
causes and effects of the loss of Karelia in several works.30 The recep-
tion of them has been mixed, because, like Virrankoski, he writes in
a polemical style and with explicit political aims. His best-known
work is entitled Menetetty Karjala? Karjala-kysymys Suomen politii-
kassa 1940–2000 (“The Lost Karelia? The Karelia Issue in Finnish
Politics, 1940–2000”). Among other things, he makes the controversial
claim that after World War II the whole Finnish nation would have
unanimously supported the repossession of Karelia. Further, he argues
that the loss of the region had a negative influence on Finnish politics
throughout the postwar period.31
27
Ibidem, p. 7.
28
Ibidem, pp. 46–9.
29
Ibidem, p. 49.
30
Jukka Seppinen, Kannas tässä ja nyt (Lappeenranta, 1995); idem, Kohti Karjalaa:
Pakkoluovutettu Karjala tänään ja huomenna (Lappeenranta, 1998); idem, Menetetty
Karjala? Karjala-kysymys Suomen politiikassa 1940–2000 (Helsinki, 2006); idem,
Vaaran vuodet? Suomen selviytymisstrategia 1944–50 (Helsinki, 2008).
31
Seppinen, Menetetty Karjala, p. 8, passim.
496 outi fingerroos
After the turn of the twenty-first century, the Karelian League, with
which Seppinen collaborated in the 1990s, has kept him at arm’s length.
Instead, Seppinen’s ideas were adopted by a more radical organization,
ProKarelia, founded in 1999 to work for the restitution of Karelia. The
Karelian League, instead, chose rather to follow the official line of
Finnish foreign policy over the restitution of Karelia.32 As mentioned
above, the League had been founded in 1940 to defend the interests of
the more than 400,000 Karelian evacuees regarding their resettlement
and compensation for their lost property. Until the 1960s, the League
also spoke out in public in favor of the restitution of Karelia. After that,
it had to adjust to the public silence. With the emergence of the public
debate in the 1990s, the Karelian League had to address the Karelia
issue with an altogether new intensity. Radical demands have been
avoided; instead, the League collaborates with the leaders of Finnish
foreign policy in monitoring the situation in Russia closely. If the polit-
ical situation in Russia regarding the restitution issue should become
favorable and both sides were prepared to countenance it, it is the
League’s hope that Finland would then initiate negotiations.33
In 2005, the General Meeting of the League adopted a “Karelia
Action Program,” according to which the Karelia issue is to be under-
stood broadly, and the essential point is to preserve the Finnish Karelian
identity among those Finns with Karelian roots and, further, to culti-
vate the Karelian culture and way of life. In addition, information about
Karelia is to be circulated in Finnish society. In summertime, mass
meetings arranged by the League for evacuees and their offspring serve
the aim of identity politics over generations.34 Especially in the early
1990s, when the ceded areas could be visited again, the evacuees and
their descendants made pilgrimages organized by the League and other
organizations to their lost homes and home regions, which through
this activity became important sites of memory.35 This opportunity to
visit former home regions helped to ease the traumatic feelings caused
by the loss. It can be assumed that among most evacuees the regular
visits have not intensified the hopes of future border changes, on the
32
Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin,” p. 519.
33
Kauko Sipponen, “Karjalan kysymys,” in Terhi Willman, ed., Karjalasta on kysy-
mys: Karjalan Liitto 1940–2010 (Helsinki, 2010), pp. 133–52.
34
Website www.karjalanliitto.fi, accessed 20 June 2010.
35
Pekka Nevalainen, “Luovutettu Karjala Neuvostoliiton kuoltua,” in Viipurin
läänin historia, Vol. 6, pp. 464–5.
contrary. In addition to the activities among the Finns, the Karelian

League participates as a non-governmental organization in cross-
border cooperation with the Russians. On the Russian side of the bor-
der, it, among other things, disseminates information about the Finnish
past of Karelia. As practical projects, old devastated Finnish cemeteries
are restored and memorials are erected at significant cultural sites.
These activities are carried out also by other organizations.36
The reason behind the Karelian League’s politically neutral attitude,
conspicuously expressed in public, lies in its desire to clearly distance
itself from a number of associations campaigning for the restitution of
Karelia, such as ProKarelia, Aluepalautus (“Restitution”), Tarton Rauha
(“Tartu Peace [of 1920]”) and Karelia Klubi, which emerged as a result
of the free public debate in the 1990s. These organizations form a net-
work, and their activities have very similar objectives. First of all, their
goal is the restitution, in accordance with the 1939 border, of the ter-
ritories that Finland was forced to surrender. In addition, the goals
include the dissemination of information to the signatory countries of
the Paris Peace Treaty regarding the alleged injustice imposed on
Finland in 1939–44, active measures to repair environmental damage
in Karelia and to support its economy, launching research into issues
concerning Karelia and the promotion of the network members’ com-
mon interests.37 The organizations also maintain a public appeal on the
Internet for the restitution of Karelia and the other Finnish territories
ceded to the Soviet Union.
ProKarelia is the largest and most prominent of these organizations.
It describes itself as an independent citizens’ association and defines its
purpose as follows:
The restitution to Finland and the European Union of the areas of Finnish
Karelia, Petsamo [Pechenga] and Salla and of certain islands on the Gulf
of Finland ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland under duress. At the
same time, ProKarelia promotes the preservation and dissemination of
Karelian culture. We call this mission the Karelia issue.38
The book Karjalan palautus (“The Restitution of Karelia”) by Veikko
Saksi, published in 2005, is the official manifesto of ProKarelia. In the
36
Sipponen, “Karjalan kysymys,” p. 140; Petri Raivo, “Unohdettu ja muistettu
suomalainen Karjala,” in Outi Fingerroos & Jaana Loipponen, eds., Nykytulkintojen
Karjala (Jyväskylä, 2007), pp. 66–70.
37
Nevalainen, “Karjala takaisin,” pp. 514, 518–9.
38
Website www.prokarelia.net, accessed 20 June 2010.
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preface, Saksi, one of the leading figures of the movement, defines the
book as “a general account” of the restitution issue and as an exposition
of ProKarelia’s stance on “open matters.” By this Saksi means the acts of
aggression and crimes committed by Soviet totalitarianism, which he
believes should be acknowledged when building a new relationship
with Russia. According to Saksi, the postwar actions of the Soviet
Union were experienced with such deep bitterness that about 40 per-
cent of Finns support the restitution of Karelia today. Saksi denounces
the political leadership of Finland for shying away from an open debate
on war-related issues. All in all, Saksi’s arguments are vague and from
the viewpoint of Finland’s foreign policy unrealistic, as he requires that
Finland has to search for support in the European Union and the
United States before taking up negotiations with Russia.39
Previously in this chapter, Y.O. Ruuth’s book Karjalan kysymys
vuosina 1917–1920, published in 1921, was referred to. In this work the
Karelia issue was seen in political, cultural and economic terms: it
included the idea that the incorporation of Eastern Karelia into Finland
proper would enrich the Finnish economy as well as the Finnish cul-
ture. Finland had a calling in Eastern Karelia to raise the areas from
their backwardness and, at the same time, find a living connection to
the Finnish roots and past. When this 90-year-old text is compared
with the message of Veikko Saksi’s book Karjalan palautus, one finds
an astonishing similarity in the rhetoric used. Both address the issue
from the perspective of an advantage—economic, cultural and politi-
cal. The message for the reader is clear: Finland has a “mission” in
Karelia and, consequently, Karelia belongs to Finland. The historico-
political narrative of Finland’s mission in Karelia has thus been
revived—even if over a century has passed and the geographical
focus has shifted from Eastern Karelia to the Karelian Isthmus. In
Y.O. Ruuth’s utopia, the Karelia issue was a cultural, economic and
political challenge that could not be solved without a shared vision by
the Finns. Veikko Saksi’s utopia is also political: Finland is morally jus-
tified in demanding a solution to the Karelia issue. This will happen
when the territories are returned and various compensations are paid,
and only then will “the heavy baggage of history” be unloaded:
The basis of this plan for the restitution of Karelia consists of both
moral and ethical goals and pure considerations of advantage. The most
39
Veikko Saksi, Karjalan palautus (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 10–1; Nevalainen, “Karjala
takaisin,” p. 520.
important thing is for Finland and Russia to begin together to examine

dispassionately the heavy baggage of history existing between them. The
moral and ethical tensions will be relaxed, when the territories that were
annexed under false pretences are returned and compensation for the
destruction that has been caused and the expenses incurred by Finland
are settled.40
Political Karelias: Concluding Remarks

The discussions above show that the Karelias that lie across the border
have played a central role in Finnish nationalism and they have been
politically charged places of various interests and aspirations. I argue
further that even today Karelia occupies an important place in Finnish
minds, when the Finns define their contemporary national identity.
Karelia is in many ways remote—geographically, culturally and eco-
nomically—and is therefore reminiscent of a fantasy. In fact, Karelia
across the border is an imagined place: an abstract utopia, with which
Finland—as a burgeoning nation, suffering from what Benedict
Anderson calls “the elephantiasis of the dynastic states”41—has obsessed
itself from the late nineteenth century onwards.
In the first phase of the Karelia issue, the cultural imagination and
related political plans centered on Eastern Karelia, which afforded a
place that the Finnish cultural elite could draw on in its search for a
mythical past of the nation. Mannerheim’s “Scabbard Order” and the
consequent Finnish occupation of Eastern Karelia in 1941–44 was a
climactic turning point between the first and second phases of the
Karelia issue. Following the commander-in-chief ’s high-handed act of
bravado, Eastern Karelia and Finland were for a moment mighty and
united. As Eastern Karelia together with Finnish Karelia were lost for
good in 1944, the Karelia issue passed into its second phase, shifting its
focus from Eastern Karelia to the Karelian Isthmus. The postwar hopes
of returning to their homes in Karelia were strong among the Finnish
Karelian evacuees, and at times it even seemed that there might be a
chance for political progress in this regard. But by the 1970s at the lat-
est the issue was deep-frozen in any serious public or political discus-
sions. As time passed on, the Karelia of the evacuees was becoming
more and more a place of strong but remote memories than a concrete
home to which one could still return.
40
Saksi, Karjalan palautus, p. 152.
41
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, 2006), p. 83.
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Now, during and after the 1990s, the Karelia issue has entered its
third phase. The abstract ideas created by those individuals and organi-
zations who propagate border changes and the restitution of the areas
lost in 1944 fulfill the criteria for the definition of a utopia, for Finland
is believed to have a mission in Karelia, which as a place, nevertheless,
is rather a recreation of imagination and fiction than an area under-
stood according to current realities. In a way, the Karelia issue has
come full circle over the century. In the abstract utopias of those
who campaign for the restitution of Karelia, Finland is still justified—
culturally, politically and economically—in demanding the territory
across the border.
The different utopias of Karelia have the common feature of “bypass-
ing an existing society with societies that are mainly imagined and cre-
ated in the mind.”42 In the 1930s and the 1940s the Finns were not
asked about their support for the abstract utopias of Greater Finland
that were offered to them. In the twenty-first century we know that the
utopias disseminated by the proponents of the restoration of Karelia do
not find favor among the majority of the Finnish population. The lead-
ing Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat ordered a Gallup poll
in the mid-2000s on the Finns’ opinion about the restoration of Finnish
Karelia. The result clearly showed that the majority of Finns were not
in favor of it: 62 percent of the respondents considered that the restitu-
tion of Karelia was “absolutely or highly undesirable.” Those who had
roots in Karelia took a slightly more positive attitude than the rest of
the population. However, even the majority of them were unfavorable
or guarded concerning the restitution.43 In the early 1990s, according
to an opinion poll, 60 percent of respondents had thought that the
Finnish government should take up the issue with Russia.44 Thus, the
popularity of regaining Karelia seems to be diminishing.
It seems that the abstract utopias of the restitution of Karelia have
little to offer ordinary people in their everyday life, and neither do they
offer a solution for the evacuees for whom the loss of Karelia was a
personal blow, but who cannot conceive of returning there. The utopias
have more to do with history politics than with political realism or
42
Keijo Rahkonen & Esa Sironen, eds., Ernst Bloch—Utopia, luonto, uskonto:
Johdatusta Blochin ajatteluun (Helsinki, 1985), pp. 26–7.
43
Riitta Vainio, “Selvä enemmistö ei halua Karjalaa takaisin,” Helsingin Sanomat,
21 August 2005.
44
Katajala, “Finland-Russia,” pp. 295–6.
people’s everyday needs and dreams. The building of national identities

and historical interpretations are strongly intertwined in the century-
long narrative of the Karelia issue. Due to this interrelationship the
utopia can be placed in the framework of history politics. Jürgen
Habermas has used the concept of Geschichtspolitik in connection with
what he regarded as conservative historians who used their positions
and expertise for political ends.45 Accordingly, Finnish historian Seppo
Hentilä uses the concept in reference to a deliberate exploitation of the
past that is bound up with political interests.46 One can regard those
campaigning for the restitution of Karelia as utopian idealists, who
deliberately use the past to further their political objectives. And for
them the answer is: Karelia belongs to Finland.
II. Memories of Karelia
The Finnish Karelian Memory Community

The loss of Finnish Karelia to the Soviet Union marked the end of
the Finnish settlement in the area. Besides the abstract political utopias
dealt with in the previous section, Karelia has existed and exists in the
form of concrete memories and dreams. The lost Karelia has become
a place in memory and a utopia for the Karelian evacuees; a place
preserved in their narratives and hopes. The memories of Karelia that
are located in the minds of the Karelian evacuees are fundamentally
different from the abstract national and political utopias, for they are
intimately connected with the people’s experience of losing a place.
In their memories, the evacuees not only recall their life in prewar
Karelia, but also how they were evacuated and resettled, often twice or
thrice. These memories are intertwined with dreams of returning
home, even if this dream does not always convey the idea of getting
Karelia back, as pointed out above. The memories are personal, but
at the same time shared by millions who lost their homes and their
45
Jürgen Habermas, Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (Frankfurt am Main, 1987),
pp. 137–48.
46
Seppo Hentilä, “Historiapolitiikka—Holocaust ja historian julkinen käyttö,” in
Jorma Kalela & Ilari Lindroos, eds., Jokapäiväinen historia (Helsinki, 2001), pp. 32–3.
On the political use of history in the debate on the Karelia issue, see Markku
Kangaspuro, “Salaista kaupankäyntiä Karjalalla,” in Outi Fingerroos & Maunu
Häyrynen, eds., Takaisin Karjalaan (forthcoming 2011).
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property during and after World War II. In postwar Finland, around
410,000 Karelian evacuees were resettled in different parts of the
country.47
In the memories of the Karelian evacuees, the lost Karelia is as a rule
narrated as a place of harmony. Elina Karjalainen, a Finnish author
born in Vyborg, writes about her childhood in her memoirs entitled
Isän tyttö (“Father’s Girl,” 1999). She describes small details of her
childhood in Vyborg that were important to her: a stairway with a big
window that had numerous colored panes of glass. Looking through
the panes, the world turned yellow, blue, red and green in turn.
Childhood memories color the past: images emerge out of the mist and
are sharpened along the way. The home in Karelia appears, indeed, as
an idyllic world of happy people, for in the landscape of childhood “the
sun is so warm and bright” that the wild beasts in the shadows recede
and are forgotten. Can a person choose between remembering and for-
getting? Does a person exist in order to remember? The writer gives an
unambiguous answer to her own questions: “I have written this book
so that I shall not forget.”48
We cannot deny that these nostalgic descriptions of a happy world
may well correspond to a subjective historical reality, but, on the other
hand, they have to be interpreted against the bitter experiences of evac-
uation and resettlement. Thus, they contrast with the often-difficult
everyday encounters with the other Finns and the difficulties the evac-
uees faced in Finland, when a social and cultural boundary emerged
between the evacuees and the local people. “The happy world” of the
past was created as a response to the postwar hardships experienced in
different parts of Finland. When the evacuees were first settled in pri-
vate homes they were in many cases not warmly welcomed. According
to the official resettlement plans (the Rapid Settlement Law in 1940
and the Land Acquisition Law in 1945) the evacuated were, after hav-
ing temporarily lived in private homes, relocated to areas and localities
which resembled their former places of residence as closely as was fea-
sible. To make the new life of the rural Karelian population possible,
Finnish municipalities, parishes and local farmers had to convey land
to them, which caused quite some bitterness and envy.49
47
Fingerroos, “Karelia,” p. 236; Jukka Nevakivi, “From the Continuation War to the
Present,” in Jussila et al, From Grand Duchy, pp. 242–3.
48
Elina Karjalainen, Isän tyttö (Helsinki, 1999), pp. 7–8.
49
Tarja Raninen-Siiskonen, Vieraana omalla maalla: Tutkimus karjalaisen siir-
toväen muistelukerronnasta (Helsinki, 1999), p. 368.
Fig. 11.1. Finnish Karelian evacuees, March 1940. Over 400,000 Karelians lost their
homes first after the Winter War and then, after most had returned to Finnish Karelia
in 1941–44, permanently after the Continuation War. Photo: Finnish Defence Forces
504 outi fingerroos
Fig. 11.2. Kauko Räsänen, Äiti Karjala (“Mother Karelia,” 1993, Lappeenranta), pietà
memorial for the fallen soldiers who have been buried in the ceded Finnish Karelia.
The names of the soldiers are inscribed on a 70-meter wall behind the statue. Photo:
Pirita Reinikainen.
In the 1950s the Karelian evacuees were reluctant to speak about this
unfriendly reception, and it took years and even decades before the
problems could be more openly addressed. According to the memory
narratives, the issue was mentioned only evasively as “problems that
took place in the beginning.” Among other things, Karelian children
had difficulties at school. Also religious problems arose, because the
Orthodox minority among the Finnish Karelians was often conceived
as “Russian.” Many evacuees had the feeling of being intruding others,
“gypsies of the second class.” However, the problems in resettlement
were not similar all over Finland, and for example in towns the
Karelians could be integrated more easily than in the countryside.50
Even if the sore points associated with the forced loss of home and
the consequent resettlement were not openly dealt with in postwar
public discussions, the traumas could be dealt with in fiction. One of
the most influential novels on the topic was Unto Seppänen’s (1904–
1955) Evakko (“The Evacuee”), which was published in the same year
as Väinö Linna’s Tuntematon sotilas (“The Unknown Soldier”), in 1954.
The novel was also filmed, and it premiered in 1956, again concur-
rently with the film based on Linna’s novel. Seppänen’s novel was fol-
lowed by a rich tradition of fiction, mostly written by Karelian female
authors, documentary literature and memoirs.
Due to the stigma of being “the other,” many younger Karelians were
silent about their origin in postwar Finland. Neither were they too
interested in their parents’ memories. This attitude of ignorance of the
wartime past among the postwar youth was not confined to the
Karelian families, but signified a more general generational conflict in
Finnish postwar society.51 On the other hand, in many families memo-
ries about Karelia, evacuation and relocation were passed down to the
next generations, and the Karelian heritage became a fundamental part
of their identity. Especially since the 1990s, as part of the public interest
in ordinary people’s wartime memories, these experiences have gained
greater attention, and they have been published in documentary and
fictional forms. The increased public visibility of the Karelians’ experi-
ences indicates also the new possibility of dealing openly with the
Finnish-Soviet/Russian controversies, the Karelian evacuees being a
living reminder of the Soviet aggression in 1939. The narrators of the
50
Raninen-Siiskonen, Vieraana omalla maalla, pp. 370–3.
51
See e.g. Marja Tuominen, Me kaikki ollaan sotilaitten lapsia: Sukupolvihegemonian
kriisi 1960-luvun suomalaisessa kulttuurissa (Helsinki, 1991).
506 outi fingerroos
1990s had most often experienced the war as children, and thus their
conceptions differ somewhat from those of their parents. For the chil-
dren’s generation Karelia is rather a place of narratives, whereas those
who experienced the exodus as adults have more concrete memories.
But as one knows, stories are always affected by personal and cultural
factors; the past is remembered and narrated in the form the narra-
tor decides to do so, however within the confines of the prevailing
culture.
In today’s Finland, when the Karelian cultural heritage is dis-
cussed in public and the Karelian identity openly displayed, new groups
of people have shown their interest in Karelia. These so-called neo-
Karelians have often grown up in families where the identity has not
been so strongly associated with any specific Karelian heritage, but
these third- or fourth-generation descendants of the Karelian evacuees
have themselves become curious about their Karelian roots. In many
cases, the Internet offers a collective space for individuals seeking his-
torical and cultural points of reference for their identity.52 The genera-
tion of evacuees is passing away, but the descendant neo-Karelians
follow suit with their own emphasis and interests. Thus, Karelia can be
seen as a kind of serial play, being an object of constant recreation in
terms of ideas and images.53
Today the Karelian evacuees and their offspring, the neo-Karelians
included, actively talk about their duty to preserve the Karelian culture
by recording the recollections of the Finnish Karelians. After World
War II, the Finnish Karelians, now often living very scattered in their
new home regions, founded parish associations to uphold their
Karelian traditions and contacts. The objective of their activities is to
collect and record the heritage, history and cultural values of their ear-
lier localities. These associations strive to ensure the preservation and
strengthening of Karelian culture in the future. In addition, their task
is to function as a bond for persons with a Karelian background and for
the friends of Karelia and Karelian culture. The Johannes Parish Society,
for example, organizes an annual midsummer festival, which brings
together Karelian people and their descendants with roots in the parish
52
Kristiina Markkanen, “Nyt tulevat uuskarjalaiset,” Helsingin Sanomat, 13 June
2010; Outi Fingerroos, “Uuskareliaanit Nyky-Karjalassa,” in Fingerroos & Loipponen,
Nykytulkintojen Karjala.
53
See Kaija Heikkinen, “Suomen karjalaisten identiteetti ja sen alueellinen kon-
teksti,” in Pekka Hakamies, ed., Näkökulmia karjalaiseen perinteeseen (Helsinki, 1999).
of Johannes on the Karelian Isthmus to reminisce about the past and

to pass the heritage down to the next generations. In the invitation to
the festival in 2003, the “absent Johannes” is described as a “bridge
to the past”:
The festival has been like a bridge to the past. Our lost homeland with its
memories, the experiences of evacuation, Karelian culture and the work
of past generations have colored the festival in numerous ways over the
decades.
But the purpose of the festival has not just been to look back. It has
also aimed to create a bond between the people of Johannes who are scat-
tered over different parts of Finland. It has made it possible for relatives
and acquaintances to exchange news. And people’s own memories of
their former home parish have been rekindled amidst the common
memories. The bridge also reaches into the future. At the festival, together
we try to see what lies ahead.54
As we can see here, the memories of Karelia are not only reminis-
cences of a past world, but they point towards the future. In the
words of Giorgio Agamben: “We can only have hope where there is
no solace,” and the world would be without solace if we could under-
stand it as it is.55 By this, in my opinion, Agamben means that it is the
lack of solace that produces dreams in people: the hope of something
better. If this were not so, life would cease to be meaningful. Loss and
hope are key concepts that link the Karelian evacuees’ experiential
accounts of a remembered place to their dreams of returning. The
different ways of expressing the absent place are two sides of the expe-
rience: memories located in the past and concrete utopias regarding
one’s own life located in the future. The present is the threshold con-
necting the two.
On the other hand, Viljo Huunonen, a Karelian evacuee who was
born on Uuras Island in the parish of Johannes, admits that the
world has changed a lot since World War II: “If the cession of territory
had never taken place and we still lived in Karelia, we would face
the same kind of problems there as we do elsewhere in Finland.” Even
so, he refuses to abandon his memories and his experience, for such
reasoning does not wipe out the memories of the evacuation and
the old familiar place; his Karelian home and the deep sense of loss.
54
Paavo Väntsi, “Juhlakutsu,” Johannekselainen 2003.
55
Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis, MN, 1993).
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“The wound inflicted by it is so deep in this people that it will take

generations to heal. Will it ever be healed?”56
“I Got My Karelia Back”

It is the beginning of July in 1993. A car stops in the center of a village,
in the yard of a house that used to belong to some relatives. The house
looks the same as it always did; the granary and part of the cowshed are
still there. Lake Alasjärvi, serene and beautiful with its familiar shore,
opens out before my eyes. The name of the village is Kujansuo. I walk a
few steps and see on the other side of the field, high up on the hillside, my
birthplace, my home. I walk through the gate into the field and sit down
on a bank. A trembling cry escapes from deep within my soul, fifty years
of pain and longing.57
This quotation is from a book entitled Sain Karjalan takaisin (“I Got
Karelia Back”), which was published in 2003. The writer, Sirkka Pöysti,
is an evacuee who was born in the parish of Hiitola in 1930 and now
lives in retirement in Helsinki.58 Pöysti has recorded an account of her
return home in this self-published book. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union she rented a piece of land of 1,500 square meters in Hiitola,
which is located on the northwest corner of Lake Ladoga. There she
built a “light summer cabin” in 1995. The house is situated in the village
of Kujansuo in the vicinity of the house where Pöysti was born. There
the “weathers of her own life have found atonement” as she writes in
her book:
My cottage was originally built “summer light” so that it quickly loses
heat. Thus on many a cold spring or autumn night I’ve tried to sleep in
almost freezing temperatures. Well, it steels a healthy person to over-
come setbacks. One enjoys the warmth of high summer best after the
cold nights. The “weathers” of life also change, with times of sorrow and
joy, with periods of success and adversity.59
Sirkka Pöysti was a nine-year-old girl when the Winter War broke out.
Her family set out in darkness across the ice of Lake Alasjärvi into exile
and ended up in Kankaanpää in Southwestern Finland. From there she
and her family moved the following summer to Lappeenranta in
56
Viljo Huunonen, Kuinka olisi jos oltaisiin (Helsinki, 1998), pp. 153–4.
57
Sirkka Pöysti, Sain Karjalan takaisin (Helsinki, 2003), p. 4.
58
University of Jyväskylä, Memory Archives of Central Finland (Keski-Suomen
muistiarkisto, KSMA), an interview with Sirkka Pöysti, 10 February 2007 (CD 09/79);
Fingerroos, “Karelia.”
59
Pöysti, Sain Karjalan takaisin, p. 62.
Southeastern Finland adjacent to the Soviet border, and she began to

attend secondary school. During the Continuation War she returned
to recaptured Kujansuo for the first time in 1942. The buildings of her
home still stood on the hill, and unlike many other Karelian homes the
house survived the wars intact. After her second evacuation in 1944,
Pöysti did not return to the site of her home until the 1990s.60
I interviewed Sirkka Pöysti at her home in Helsinki on 10 February
2007. We talked for several hours about her book and the summer
cabin she had built in Kujansuo. She remained standing the whole
time, staring at the familiar scenery of her original home depicted in a
painting on her living room wall. During the interview, I asked Pöysti
what her Karelia was and how she would define it. She said her feeling
for Karelia was linked to the surroundings. She related how she had
been nearly in a state of shock during her first visit back to her home
region in the early 1990s, when it became possible for the evacuees to
travel to their home regions after the decades of forced absence. The
sensation of home had been very powerful.61 She was able to experi-
ence her return to her former home alone, for the Russian family who
lived there were away in St. Petersburg.
I enjoyed the whole day, happy and blissful. I sort of went to look at eve-
rything, and I stroked the walls and the steps and the door and […] You
see, they’ve all become sort of internalized. Then, of course, you always
see them in your dreams.62
What is surprising in Sirkka Pöysti’s account is the fact that she only
got to know her home village again at a Hiitola Parish Festival, which
was held on the Russian side of the border just a couple of years before
the construction of her cottage was completed. For Pöysti, the sensa-
tion of place was so powerful and violent that she felt compelled to
return again and again to the hill on which her childhood home stood.
After her first visit back, she experienced a dream-like aspiration of
getting her Karelia back that rapidly advanced under its own impetus.
She first heard that building plots could be rented there on a bus jour-
ney back to Finland. The Hiitola Parish Society then began negotia-
tions with the Russian authorities.63 Together with twelve other former
60
KSMA CD 09/79.
61
Ibidem.
62
Ibidem.
63
Ibidem.
510 outi fingerroos
residents of Hiitola, who were keen to rent plots there, Pöysti and the
Hiitola Parish Society submitted official applications to rent plots.
However, Pöysti was the only one who saw the project through and
built herself a home in lost Karelia:
I thought, oh my goodness, do I have to leave this here again? […] So,
then when they started talking about these plots on the bus, well,
I thought, good Lord! They were probably all men who were talking
about it. But why couldn’t a woman, too, rent a plot? And the result was
that it took two years until the cottage was built.64
Pöysti’s project of returning to Karelia proceeded in practice with the
Hiitola Parish Society making initial approaches and then submitting
an enquiry about the plots to the local Hiitola Village Council. The
enquiry was followed by an official application to the Russian authori-
ties, which Pöysti submitted to the Regional Administrative Office of
Lahdenpohja in 1994. The application and building permission were
handled by the Ministry of Construction of the Republic of Karelia in
Petrozavodsk in March 1995. The plot that Pöysti had chosen was
located on the hill where her original home stood, and her “light sum-
mer cabin” was erected on its summit beside the familiar cove, with a
panoramic view over the lake. Pöysti says she is convinced that this
very place had been waiting for her for fifty years.65
The book Sain Karjalan takaisin is composed of Pöysti’s recollec-
tions of how she experienced her return home, of the kinds of cultural
differences and people that she encountered there and of the things
that have happened to her over the years. She is interested in the
Russian history, economy and administration of the place. The house
where she was born is owned by a Russian doctor’s family—the one
that was visiting St. Petersburg at the time of the Hiitola Parish Festival.
Communication between them and Pöysti has clearly been mutually
beneficial, and in her book she describes various encounters: how the
doctor’s family has been in possession of the house for several decades,
and how she took it upon herself to teach them about the Finnish past
of the place:
The doctor’s family, who owns the house where I was born, speak reason-
able English, and communicating with them has been rewarding. The
father of the mistress of the house, Dr Alyona, built a summerhouse on a
64
Ibidem.
65
Pöysti, Sain Karjalan takaisin, pp. 9–10; KSMA CD 09/79.
field between the house of my birth and her uncle’s home. When my
home was abandoned and fell into disrepair, he urged his daughter’s fam-
ily to buy it and renovate it as a dacha for themselves. The master of the
house, Dr Anatoli, always remembers to tell my Finnish visitors when he
meets them: “Sirkka’s father built this house.” To me he says when I visit
them: “This is your home.” I am pleased about the work they have done
to preserve the house. They had promised my father to repair the build-
ing as well as they possibly could, and they have kept their promise. The
renovations took over ten years, because it was difficult to get building
materials and there was a scarcity of both money and supplies. The
daughters and their families also enjoy visiting the house and the sur-
roundings on their holidays, but they are much more possessive than
their parents. Whenever the family recall the past of the house, they
quickly remind them: “This is our house. We have bought it.” Generally,
Russian young people are fairly ignorant of the past of Karelia. The situ-
ation could only improve with a rewriting of history.66
In her book, Pöysti places the past and future of the place in a dialogue
and forces her readers, above all the Karelian evacuees, to conduct self-
examination concerning the ownership of the place. Her principle was
to build a piece of Karelia out of Karelia itself by using local materials
and taking advantage of local conditions.67 Although every path, rock
and tree in her yard have engraved themselves bitterly on her memory,
she writes openly and happily about the overwhelming hospitality and
friendship she has received in the region of her childhood home. For
example, when they still kept cows, Ivan and Anna, the Russian couple
who keep watch over Pöysti’s house when she is away, continuously
provided her with milk, curds and smetana. In the spring, they shared
the vegetables stored in their cellar, and in the autumn they sent their
beloved neighbor on her way with a prayer for “the protection of the
Heavenly Father.”68 Pöysti succeeds in describing how the present per-
manent and summer residents at Lake Alasjärvi have experienced the
collapse of the Soviet system—in other words, how they now go about
their daily business in the village:
The break-up of the Soviet Union also meant a change in the economic
and social life of Hiitola. There has been no “controlled structural
change,” and the life of the inhabitants has become wretched. The gradual
demise of the sovkhoz has brought unemployment and lowered income.
The people have failed in shifting over from a state-controlled economy
66
67
KSMA CD 09/79.
68
Pöysti, Sain Karjalan takaisin, pp. 21–2.
512 outi fingerroos
to an independent “capitalist” system and in taking responsibility for

running the affairs of their own village.69
Pöysti’s writing offers a lot to Finnish and Russian research into
people’s experiences in the area. Researchers compare different narra-
tives connected to places in memory and make them known to the
reading public. For example, Yekaterina Melnikova, a researcher at the
University of St. Petersburg, has studied how the present inhabitants of
the now-Russian Karelia talk about the region’s past when it belonged
to Finland. For the Russian population of the region rodina, native
country, represents both information about their own roots in the form
of narrative and is a signifier of some kind of incompleteness of their
situation in the former Finnish Karelia. The definition of rodina is a
constant ongoing process for the Russian population of Karelia.70
Finnish folklorist Pekka Hakamies has also written about the people
who during the Soviet period moved or were settled to Karelia, took
over the region and gave new significances to empty place names and
to the remains of Finnish culture. Before the emergence of Finnish
“nostalgia tourism” to Karelia and the trips to their former home
regions by Karelian evacuees, few of the Russian population there had
ever met a Finn. The subsequent encounters have gradually given rise
to interaction, and some of the local people have turned into amateur
historians, seeking archaeological, historical and narrative traces of the
Finns in their localities.71 It is exactly such contacts that Sirkka Pöysti
has observed in Hiitola, and she draws the same conclusions from her
experiences that the researchers have done. She relates in her book as
follows:
Unfortunately, there are many Karelians who have been gripped by old
animosities. Fears, bitterness and suspicion deriving from the past cor-
rode some people’s minds. […] The elderly [Russian] people, who came
after the Finns left, have nostalgic memories of a beautiful and well-kept
Karelia that has gradually fallen into decay. Their experiences and sor-
rows are the same as those of the Finns who want to take their children
and grandchildren to search for their roots in their lost native region.72
69
Ibidem, p. 20.
70
Yekaterina Melnikova, “Recollections of ‘Native Land’ in Oral Tradition of
Russian Settlers to Karelia,” in Pekka Hakamies, ed., Moving in the USSR: Western
Anomalies and Northern Wilderness (Helsinki, 2005), pp. 66–7.
71
Pekka Hakamies, “New Culture on New Territories,” in Hakamies, Moving in the
USSR.
72
I miss my conversations with Marat, in which over the years we’ve

got round to discussing all sorts of things. Among other things, he told
me how for many years his grandfather, professor of history from
St. Petersburg who died in 1993, spent his summers at Alasjärvi. But to
start with, he couldn’t understand at all that I had been born and spent
my childhood there, and that both my grandfathers were buried in the
cemetery in Hiitola. It was only when I showed him pictures of my home
and my family taken in the 1930s and I told him about the battles
that were fought there, that he gradually began to get some inkling of the
situation.73
A Pilgrimage to Karelia
When, during our interview, Sirkka Pöysti stood before the painting
depicting Lake Alasjärvi and the house where she was born, she
described in detail the landscape that opened up from it: the lake, the
yard, the neighborhood, the railway line and the main village across
the lake. The landscape reminded her of her journeys to school at dif-
ferent times of the year: when the lake was not frozen over and it was
possible to row across; the time of the spring thaw, when the roads
were damaged by the winter frost and they had to go on foot; and
the wintertime, when they skied across the frozen lake. “I remember
the kind of clothes I wore as well.” The landscape also brings back the
memory of the evacuation across the ice, when the Winter War broke
out. Above all, Pöysti describes the scene as her own mental landscape,
unique of its kind. The landscape of the summer cabin built in the
1990s, on the other hand, is new and not the same as the image of the
house of her birth. “That, the water [i.e. the lake], is so important that
I wouldn’t have built any cottage if there hadn’t been that water there.”74
Analytically speaking, however, the most interesting aspect in
Pöysti’s book is the way how the concepts of place, utopia and memory
are arranged in the narrative. Sirkka Pöysti’s Karelia is located in a
Hiitola of memories, in a place where her original home still stands
and in a landscape that is engraved in her mind forever. The place
draws her to itself, and this constant returning is like a pilgrimage, in
which she seeks peace of mind:
The living room and the bedroom are the same. It was in that little bed-
room that I first saw the light of day. […] The view of the lake from the
73
Ibidem.
74
KSMA CD 09/79.
514 outi fingerroos
bedroom window that delights the eye and the heart imprinted itself
indelibly on my mind, when I was a child. It became the landscape of my
soul, and it has never left me in peace. It constantly draws me to itself,
compelling me to return on a kind of pilgrimage to seek peace of mind.75
Normally, a pilgrimage is understood as a spiritual or religious journey
to a holy place of the religion in question, such as an impressive moun-
tain on which a monastery has been built. It is an ascetic act of piety.
However, in fact, any of us can be an “unknown pilgrim,” as the theo-
logian René Gothóni writes in his journal of his journey to Uranopolis
in Greece.76
Consequently, the journeys to the lost Karelia can be described as
pilgrimages. Especially when Finland’s eastern frontier opened up with
the fall of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, Karelian
evacuees and their descendants travelled to their former home regions
on buses full of like-minded pilgrims and returned to Finland with
their memories and souvenirs collected from the ruins of their former
homes. These trips to the evacuees’ native regions, which are organized
by Karelian parish societies, genealogical associations, the Karelian
League, war veterans’ organizations and numerous travel agents, are
still today, after 20 years, very popular, and for many travelers to Karelia
they are a kind of ritual: an event that takes place every summer and
has assumed traditional forms. For elderly Karelians, these journeys
also offer a verification that the places in their memories still exist
today, and that it is still possible to return there.
The concept of a pilgrimage conveys that Karelia is both a home on
the other side of the border and a utopia in the etymological sense of
ū-topos (literally a “non-place”): it is a place that one briefly visits and
from where one always returns home. In 1992, the Folklore Archives of
the Finnish Literature Society organized a collection project, the theme
of which was “Journeys to Karelia.” Liisa Lehto and Senni Timonen,
researchers at the Folklore Archives, have gone through the collected
material and analyzed their findings in an article published in 1993.
They describe the kind of ritual that the pilgrimage of the Karelian
evacuees has become:
As we approach our destination, emotions intensify—the pilgrim
becomes ever more open to the direct experience of holiness. The features
of the landscape—rocks, trees, springs—radiate a spiritual attraction.
75
76
René Gothóni, Tuntematon pyhiinvaeltaja (Helsinki, 2000), pp. 36–7, 51.
In brushing the rocks, stroking the trees, drinking the water of the
springs and also in touching the objects of the holy place, the pilgrim
achieves an ever more concrete proximity to holiness, a proximity that in
its most extreme form is realized in miracles and visions. A remote place
has now become the center of the world. When they leave, the pilgrims
take with them objects and mementos, in which the holiness resides.77
The concept of a pilgrimage is not only used by researchers, but
Karelians themselves, who participated in the Folklore Archives’ recol-
lection project, also used the description in connection with their trips
to their native regions. Metaphorical expressions with Biblical conno-
tations like “The Holy Land,” “The Promised Land,” “pilgrimage” and
“pilgrim” are common in their usage. The enslavement of the people of
Israel in Egypt was for many informants something that they particu-
larly identified with. One informant describes being in exile by saying
that it lasted 16,685 days and nights and describes the original home in
Karelia as being like Pandora’s box: near but impossible to open.
Another respondent, recalling the return to Karelia, states: “16,000
nights I have waited for this, 16,000 nights I have sat beside the streams
of Babylon.” A third describes being in Karelia as standing “on holy
ground.” For many, the landscape at their destination in Karelia was in
the words of Genesis “without form and void,” like “the morning of
creation.” Many of the acts performed on the journey can also be seen
as sacred rites: swimming, in particular, is often compared to baptism
and splashing one’s face with “Karelian water” to ritual purification.78
The connection between the concepts of “pilgrimage” and “experi-
ential generation” and the experiences of Sirkka Pöysti is immediately
obvious. She is a first-generation Karelian evacuee, and she remembers
well her life on the Karelian Isthmus, the war and the evacuation. She
also speaks of a pilgrimage, but for her returning to Karelia has been
more a personal and concrete journey to her spiritual landscape than a
shared experience. Pöysti’s personal pilgrimage is constantly present,
for its goal opens up anew every day from the window of her summer
cabin:
When I go to Lake Alasjärvi in the spring, the cranes and swans have
already arrived. And we leave at the same time in the autumn, too, the
birds and I. When I look at the flocks of cranes flying south over the lake
77
Liisa Lehto & Senni Timonen, “Kertomus matkasta kotiin: Karjalaiset omilla
maillaan,” in Pekka Laaksonen & Sirkka-Liisa Mettomäki, eds., Kauas on pitkä matka:
Kirjoituksia kahdesta kotiseudusta (Helsinki, 1993), p. 102.
78
Lehto & Timonen, “Kertomus matkasta kotiin,” pp. 92–3.
516 outi fingerroos
at the time of the autumn migration, I wonder which they feel to be their
real home, the warm land of the south or the cold north? I suppose we
humans, too, are like migratory birds: we don’t always know where our
real home is. Even so, the guiding precept of our spiritual mentor, Martin
Luther, is still valid: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to
pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”79
Sirkka Pöysti’s experiential narrative about her home across the border
is exceptional, because it vehemently defies the limits of time and
space—and it is for this reason that I want to end this chapter with her
account of her return to Karelia. Her narrative is unique to the extent
that it forces me to reassess the contents of the theoretical concepts of
“place” and “utopia.” If we start from the notion that utopia is ū-topos,
i.e. a place that does not exist, and we attach to it the connotations of
fantasy-like, planned, ideal and unachieved, Karelia is indeed a utopian
place, an ideal community or world. However, Pöysti has gone beyond
the limits of the definition of ū-topos, for she has succeeded in building
a “light summer cabin” in a place where she is happy:
In August, when the finishing touches were still being put to the build-
ing, I was able to sleep under my own roof. Some of the furniture was
fetched the following spring from a furniture factory in Priozersk, and
some was brought from Lahdenpohja by the local shopkeeper. Seen from
the lake, the gable of the building rising proudly on the summit of the hill
is like an augury of the rebuilding and new rise of Karelia.80
***
The places in memory have been recreated in the recollections of the
Karelian evacuees: the creation takes place in their reminiscences
through writing, telling and imagining. By contrast I found that the
abstract, political utopia of Karelia, which was analyzed in the first sec-
tion of this chapter, was a remote, ideal and non-existent place that
differs from the memorial utopias, bound up as they are with the real
experiences of those who remember; experiences that are manifested
in such things as imagination, a sense of absence and the feelings gen-
erated by the surrender of the territory. In my opinion, Sirkka Pöysti’s
cottage in Hiitola exists both in an actual place and in a utopia. Her
building project blurs the definitions of “place” and “utopia,” because
the cabin, although being a concrete site of living, transcends the
79
Pöysti, Sain Karjalan takaisin, pp. 62–3.
80
Ibidem.
boundaries of real time and place and approaches a utopia situated in

Pöysti’s mental landscape. In her interview, on the other hand, Pöysti
critically dismissed the political utopias of a restoration of Karelia to
Finland, describing them as “fantasy games”: “Look, I think that these
people who want to get Karelia back, they’re playing a kind of game
about what will happen when Karelia is reconquered.”81 In contrast,
Pöysti has fulfilled her own dream and made the lost Karelia into a real
concrete place for herself: “Now, you know, it [my place] was there in
my memory for fifty years, just as it remained there. Well now it has for
the most part been restored.”82
In Pöysti’s book, the abstract utopia of the Karelian evacuees’ return
to Karelia is irrelevant, its time perhaps yet to come. On the other hand,
her own “light summer home” exists in the here-and-now as evidence
of the possibility that Karelia can be rebuilt. She is by no means a typi-
cal Finnish Karelian evacuee, because only a very small number of
people have actually resettled in their former native regions. Instead,
most evacuees make short visits to the sites of memory in Karelia.
Pöysti’s case, albeit not representative, allows a detailed discussion of
utopia and place. For her, Karelia is no longer only an abstract utopia,
for her experience and the partial possession of the place has made it
into an existing concrete place. Moving between the two existing
worlds of present and past, she can freely visit her home in Karelia and
come back from there. For Sirkka Pöysti, this ability to “fly back there
light as a bird” every summer is the reward for her loyalty to the dream
of once returning to Karelia.83
81
KSMA CD 09/79.
82
Ibidem.
83
CHAPTER TWELVE
VARIETIES OF SILENCE
COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN FINLAND
Antero Holmila
For about two decades now, memory studies have globally boomed in
the humanities.1 Frequently, they concern themselves with the events
of World War II from many different perspectives. For example, the
experiences of women, children and minority groups are finally being
examined in Finland and elsewhere. But this is where the trajectories
between Finland and other European countries tend to end. While it
can be said that the Holocaust, the systematic European-wide attempt
to annihilate European Jewry, has become the mainstay of collective
memory studies, the situation is different in Finland. Namely, where
memory studies have often come to evoke nations’ complicity with the
Final Solution, molding the currently burgeoning image of postmod-
ern European identity, the politics of memory in Finland has managed
to keep the issue at arms length. Finnish diplomat and writer Tom
Söderman formulated the Finnish mentality thus:
Finland seems to have an ability to distance itself from anything that feels
uncomfortable […] news about the Holocaust will not grow old. We have
not understood that in Finland, but we labor under a miscomprehension
that everything is forgiven and forgotten. Our trouble is the screen of
silence we are so quick to erect.2
This chapter will sketch out the way in which the collective memory of
the Holocaust has been forged in Finland since 1945. Before moving
1
On the whole, the literature on collective memory and history is so vast that it
cannot be dealt with here. However, for excellent assessments of this trend, see Kerwin
Lee Klein, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,” Representations
69 (2000): 1, pp. 127–50; and Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory:
A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41
(2002): 2, pp. 179–97.
2
Tom Söderman, “Förintelsen—hur stor är vår skuld?” Nya Argus 96 (2003): 8,
p. 143.
520 antero holmila
on, however, a personal caveat is needed. First, the chapter will present
a broad overview of the issues and events where the Holocaust was
discussed in Finland, therefore offering some glimpses into the place of
the Holocaust in Finland’s historical culture. The picture is necessarily
fragmented and incomplete but in many ways it will always remain
so—not least because the tragedy of European Jewry has never attained
a similar level of fascination in Finland as in many other European
countries. Second, the purpose here is not to put forward any meth-
odological theories about “collective memory” as such. Yet I will recog-
nize that a number of issues relating to the term are contested and
problematic. For example, I realize that “collective memory” rests on a
psychological fallacy because, strictly speaking, memory is always an
individual process.3 However, individual memory is always interacting
with many different affiliations, making it socially constructed, as
Maurice Halbwachs pointed out nearly 100 years ago. Thus, it makes
sense not to reject the term outright. More importantly, I hold that
memory (whether individual, collective or public) is not politically
innocent—on the contrary. “Doing politics with memory” is an influ-
ential way of doing politics. Finally, relating to what I have said above,
I am inclined to use the term public or institutional memory rather
than “collective memory.”
Institutional memory refers to the efforts of “political elites, their
supporters and their opponents to construct meanings of the past and
propagate them more widely or impose them on other members of
society.”4 In addition, in light of my sources (newspapers, magazines,
literature etc.), it seems necessary to take into account that the very
nature of my sources makes it sensible to conceptualize the object of
this study as public memory, which also includes the academic presen-
tations of the Holocaust. Further, neither public nor institutional
memory refers to one single shared idea of memory, which is more
apparent under the category of “collective memory.” However, as will
be argued throughout, there is a hegemonic view of the past, which has
dominated Finland’s memory of the Holocaust for a long time. In addi-
tion, institutional and public memory is explicitly linked with studying
3
See e.g. Noa Gedi & Yigal Elam, “Collective memory–what is it?” History &
Memory 8 (1996): 1, pp. 30–50.
4
See e.g. Richard Ned Lebow, “The Memory of Politics in Postwar Europe,” in
Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner & Claudio Fogu, eds., The Politics of Memory in
Postwar Europe (Durham, NC, 2006), p. 13.
varieties of silence 521
the “politics of memory” which seeks to understand how in various

historical contexts “certain historical events” have been represented “in
such a way that these events obtain a wanted significance.”5 In the case
of Finland, “the wanted significance” essentially relates to the (domi-
nant) view that Finland and the Holocaust do not have a shared his-
tory. Finally, the enabling factor for sustaining the argument that
Finland and the Holocaust do not have a shared history relates to the
canonical postwar narrative of “separate war thesis,” which has been
examined in detail previously in this book. Accordingly, Finland’s war
against the Soviet Union in 1941–44 has been understood as largely
independent of Operation Barbarossa and German policies and prac-
tices in the war in the east.
Having said all that, in order to grasp the context in which Finland
has forged its memories of the Holocaust, it is important to start by
examining the experiences of the Finnish Jewry before and during
World War II.
I. At the Edge of Genocide
The Jews in Finland

In 1939 there were about 2,000 Jews living in Finland including approx-
imately 350 Jewish refugees who had managed to reach the country
before the outbreak of World War II. Finnish Jews obtained their citi-
zenship in 1917—very late in comparison to other European countries
(only Romania acted later). Yet it is worth remembering that Finland
had declared its independence from Russia only two weeks earlier and
it was only in conjunction with Finnish independence that full citizen’s
rights could be granted for Jews. Also, unlike in most European coun-
tries where Jews had obtained their civil rights as a result of liberal and
intellectual lobbying, in Finland parliament rather than liberal circles
pushed the emancipation process forward. The Moses’ Disciple Bill
was passed in parliament in December 1917 with 163 votes for and six
against.6 Thereafter, the small Jewish community quietly assimilated
5
Tuija Parvikko, “Memory, History and the Holocaust: Notes on the Problem of
Representation of the Past,” Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and
Conceptual History 8 (2004), p. 189.
6
Hannu Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews
(New York, 1987), p. 27.
522 antero holmila
itself into Finland despite the fact that the rising tide of right-wing
extremism in Finland in the 1920s and 1930s connected Jews with
Bolshevists.7 Nevertheless, as dominant historical wisdom suggests,
anti-Semitism was relatively uncommon in Finland.8 Further, as a
result of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union in
1939–40, in which the Jewish community lost about eight percent of its
members, the Jews themselves—like the non-Jewish majority—felt
that they were fully assimilated into the country; they too had defended
the country with their blood.9
Unlike the Winter War, the Continuation War (1941–44), which
Finland fought as Germany’s ally, would at first glance seem to have
been different for Finnish Jewry who were now Germany’s co-belliger-
ents. Yet, as it seems, participating in the war on the German side was
not such a disquieting concern as one might expect—it only changed in
postwar years when the extent of Nazi racial policy started to unravel.10
As Josef Lefko, a Finnish-Jewish war veteran has mentioned:
We [Finnish Jews] were granted an incomprehensible blessing by our
being able to fight for our freedom and human dignity while our unarmed
brethren of the same faith were destroyed in neighboring Nordic coun-
tries and elsewhere in Europe.11
Finland, unlike other German allies, did not enact any anti-Jewish leg-
islation.12 In this way, Finland’s war on the German side was a peculiar
one even if it was not “separate.” One of the curiosities of the Finnish-
German wartime relationship was a field synagogue at River Svir on
the Finnish frontlines known as Sholka’s Shul, which functioned as a
7
Tapani Harviainen, “The Jews of Finland and World War II,” Washington
Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets Proceedings, e-publication, www.state.gov/www/
regions/eur/holocaust/heaca.pdf, retrieved 14 December 2009, p. 256.
8
For example, Hannu Rautkallio, Suomen juutalaisten aseveljeys (Helsinki, 1989),
pp. 53–65. The extent of Finnish anti-Semitism is going through reassessment. See
e.g. Simo Muir, “Anti-Semitism in the Finnish Academe: Rejection of Israel-Jakob
Schur’s PhD Dissertation at the University of Helsinki (1937) and Åbo Akademi
University (1938),” Scandinavian Journal of History 34 (2009): 2, pp. 135–61.
9
Altogether 260 Jewish men served in the Winter War, 200 in the frontline duties.
For assimilation, see Hannu Rautkallio, “Cast into the Lion’s Den: Finnish Jewish
Soldiers in the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 29 (1994): 1,
pp. 72, 80.
10
Rautkallio, “Cast into the Lion’s Den,” pp. 53–94.
11
Josef Lefko, cited in Rautkallio, “Cast into the Lion’s Den,” p. 53.
12
Petri J. Raivo, “Oblivion Without Guilt: The Holocaust and Memories of the
Second World War in Finland,” in Judith Tydor Baumel & Tova Cohen, eds., Gender,
Place, and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience: Re-placing Ourselves (London,
2003), p. 108.
meeting place for the Jewish soldiers in the Finnish forces. The syna-
gogue was located close to a German infantry division, which was
deployed for some time at River Svir. According to Rony Smolar, whose
father Isak Smolar founded the synagogue, “the Germans didn’t have
anything against the Jewish soldiers practicing their faith, and didn’t
regard the synagogue as a provocation, even though in Germany itself
anything connected to Judaism was destroyed.” Similarly, as Smolar
has explained, there were odd incidents at the Finnish-German front.
For example, “a German soldier, whose home country had sworn to rid
Europe of the Jews, could find himself having to salute a Finnish Jewish
officer.” A Jewish doctor in the Finnish Army occasionally treated
SS-men wounded in Lapland. In a few cases, “Finnish Jewish soldiers
were awarded the German medal of honor for bravery which, however,
they refused to accept.”13
Moving away from the Finnish Jewish experience, the self-congrat-
ulatory view that the war was separate and Jews were saved is impos-
sible to maintain. While in Finland’s historical culture the Finnish
Jewry’s role at war has been embedded into a general separate war nar-
rative (indeed the Finnish Jewry’s experiences were very different from
the experiences of other Jews in the German orbit), it has been much
more difficult to place the experiences of foreign refugee Jews into the
hegemonic understanding of Finland in World War II.14
In November 1942, the Finnish State Police Valpo (Valtiollinen polii-
si), responsible for state security matters, gave eight Jewish refugees
into the hands of the Gestapo who sent them on to Auschwitz. Only
one survived. The action caused public protests in Finland, but it went
ahead. A statement issued by the Finnish Foreign Ministry’s legal
expert held that the matter rested only with the Finnish authorities and
did not violate international law.15 The report, drafted by Erik Castrén,
formed the basis for the subsequent—and dearly held—interpretation
that the extradition was a routine police action, perfectly legal even if
violating the spirit of law. Most of all, as the extradition could be based
13
Rony Smolar, “Uncle Stiller: Between Valpo and Gestapo.” Currently unpublished
manuscript. I wish to thank Rony Smolar for drawing my attention to the work and
letting me use it.
14
Raivo, “Oblivion without Guilt,” pp. 120–1; for a recent examination of the depor-
tation debate, see Antero Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust—A Reassessment,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23 (2009): 3, pp. 413–40.
15
See, for example, Taimi Torvinen, Pakolaiset Suomessa Hitlerin valtakaudella
(Helsinki, 1984), pp. 207–11.
524 antero holmila
Fig. 12.1. An oddity of the war in the east: a rare picture of the small field synagogue
established by the Finnish Jewish soldiers at the River Svir in 1942. Photo: The Jewish
Community of Helsinki.
on institutional legal reasoning (however sketchy), Finnish historians

have overwhelmingly accepted that it was motivated by disciplinary
considerations rather than anti-Semitism, racism or pro-German
attitudes.16 Further, as the eight Jews were sent away together with
16
For example, Hannu Rautkallio has defended this position for decades. For the
latest work, see his The Jews in Finland: Spared from the Holocaust, transl. Eugen
Holman (n.p., 2008). The publication was prepared for The Woodrow Wilson Center’s
conference “Escape from the Holocaust?” 17 June 2008.
Fig. 12.2. Anti-Bolshevist, but not an anti-Semite. Marshal Mannerheim visiting the
Helsinki synagogue on Independence Day to honor the Finnish Jews fallen at the ser-
vice of the Army, 6 December 1944. Photo: The Jewish Community of Helsinki.
526 antero holmila
19 non-Jews, who were also deemed “unwanted persons,” some histo-

rians have taken this as a clear proof that anti-Semitism had nothing to
do with the extradition.17 On the one hand, it is unsurprising that until
very recently this episode has been at the heart of Finnish confronta-
tion with the Holocaust. Yet, on the other, in the mainstream historical
culture it has been treated as a minor and insignificant episode of
Finnish history, in a way that Petri Raivo has wryly characterized as
“oblivion without guilt.”18 How, then, has the Holocaust emerged in
Finland’s public memory?
Early Postwar Confrontation: From 1945 to the 1950s

The foundations for Finland’s confrontation with Nazi criminality were
laid during the 1930s. Although the Finnish press (like the papers in all
democracies) had written about the escalating anti-Jewish discrimina-
tion in Germany from 1933 onwards, it did not offer very detailed
analysis about the Nazi Weltanschauung including anti-Semitism.19
What is more, the press often considered “the Jewish Question” as part
of German domestic politics and therefore best left for the Germans
to work out.20 The same mentality carried on and even strengthened
17
See for example, Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust.
18
Raivo, “Oblivion without Guilt,” p. 120.
19
Increasingly, the dominant argument that there was a wide-scale silence about
the Holocaust in the first postwar decades has come under criticism. In many ways, as
Dan Stone puts it, it is no longer tenable to argue that “there was silence in the postwar
period—just as there had not been in the prewar and wartime years—but only varieties
of selective speech.” See Dan Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford, 2010), p. 3.
Also see Antero Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish
Press, 1945–50 (Basingstoke, 2011); David Bankier & Dan Michman, eds., Holocaust
Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements
(Jerusalem, 2008); Hasia Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews
and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York, 2009); Dalia Ofer,
“The Strength of Remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust During the First
Decade of Israel,” Jewish Social Studies 6 (2000): 2, pp. 24–55; Robert G. Moeller, War
Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, CA,
2001); Alexander Victor Prusin, “ ‘Fascist Criminals to the Gallows!’ The Holocaust and
Soviet War Crimes Trials, December 1945—February 1946,” Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 17 (2003): 1, pp. 1–30; Lawrence Baron, “The Holocaust and American Public
Memory, 1945–1960,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17 (2003): 1, pp. 62–88.
20
Matti H.S. Kinnunen, Suomen lehdistö ja kolmannen valtakunnan juutalaiskysy-
mys v. 1933 ja 1938, unpublished MA thesis (University of Helsinki, 1975), p. 75.
A telling example is the editorial of the leading Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat
in the wake of the Kristallnacht, 17 November 1938.
during the war. From 1941 onwards, when Finland allied itself with the
Nazis, the news about the German-led genocide were actively cen-
sored. For example, when the press in Britain, Sweden and the USA
wrote in the second half of 1942 that Germany’s goal was a total anni-
hilation of European Jewry, the Finnish press was silent. In late 1942,
when the eight Jews were extradited from Finland, the press broke the
silence briefly. But even then, the mass killings of the Jews were not the
main point of discussion. Rather, liberal and leftist circles were con-
cerned about Finland’s reputation as a democracy, which protects vul-
nerable refugees.
The first postwar confrontation with the Holocaust in Finland came
through the press depictions of the liberated concentration camps (not
from Auschwitz, but from Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen) followed
by the International Military Tribunal’s proceedings in Nuremberg.21
On the whole, as Finns had not experienced or witnessed Germany’s
war of extermination, experiences of other nations as well as the
Germans under Hitler’s rule were depicted through the lenses of
Finnish experience.22 In practice, this meant that the liberation of the
camps was portrayed as ordinary unpleasant side effects of war and,
anyway, most Germans had not known about the extent of the cruelty
in the camps. Instead, only a small minority of Finland’s former ally
had been involved in the killings of political prisoners, prisoners-of-
war and Jews. Similarly, in the context of early 1945, the Finns, whether
ordinary citizens or political elites, primarily focused on concrete and
pressing tasks of reconstructing the country, so whatever had hap-
pened to the Jews seemed rather a distant concern—no matter how
horrendous the pictures from the camps seemed.
If the liberation of the camps was given cursory treatment in Finland,
the International Military Tribunal’s trial at Nuremberg between 1945
and 1946 received much more attention. Despite the fact that the dom-
inant view of the Nuremberg Trial argues that the Holocaust was inad-
equately portrayed in the proceedings, the press in Finland gave it an
21
Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust, Chapters 4 and 7.
22
The Lapland War (1944–45), where the Finns were pitted against the Germans,
led to a vast destruction of Lapland’s infrastructure, but had only a small number of
victims. For example, unlike in the case of Eastern Europe, the people were not sum-
marily executed or enslaved, but allowed to evacuate the war zone. Compared with
other countries that were caught between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, it is
obvious that Finland’s lot was very fortunate.
528 antero holmila
important place in press reports from Nuremberg.23 Similarly, in 1945,

a handful of books appeared in Finnish, which dealt with the trial
directly, like Victor Vinde’s Välähdyksiä Nürnbergistä (“Nuremberg in
the Spotlight”), or were written with the help of the Nuremberg evi-
dence.24 As I have argued elsewhere, Vinde’s book was “a striking inter-
pretation of the trial precisely because the Holocaust permeates his
analysis throughout the book […] Vinde’s work essentially testifies to
the fact that the treatment of the Jews made a huge impression on many
of the trial’s contemporaries.”25 Most importantly, the Holocaust offered
a tangible meaning to which the jurisprudential neologism of “crimes
against humanity” could be attached.26
In essence, what Holocaust reporting from Nuremberg shows is
that in so far as the destruction of Europe’s Jews was considered in
the context of German affairs, the Finnish attitude towards it was
straightforward; in the mainstream discourse the unprecedented hor-
ror which had befallen on the Jews was acknowledged. Yet, when
the tragedy directly touched the Finnish war experience, discourse
changed from acknowledgement to concealment. Most notably,
Finnish involvement in—and the nation’s attitude towards—the
Holocaust was probed between November 1947 and May 1948 in the
trial of Arno Anthoni, the wartime head of Valpo. Anthoni, who had
sent the eight refugee Jews to the Germans in 1942, was charged
with neglect of duty, meaning that the court thought he had acted care-
lessly in his post and thus risked Finland’s reputation as a sovereign
and democratic state before foreign powers. Tellingly, the court
assessed more leniently the fact that due to his actions eight Jews were
handed over to the Gestapo.
Ever since the late 1940s, the trial has occupied a minor role in
the Finnish memory of the immediate postwar years, popularly
23
For a standard argument, see Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial: War Crimes
Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (Oxford, 2001).
24
Victor Vinde, Välähdyksiä Nürnbergistä (Hämeenlinna, 1945); Bo Enander &
Franz Arnheim, Niin hallitsi Hitler (Helsinki, 1945). Both of these works were origi-
nally written by Swedish journalists, but they were swiftly translated into Finnish,
which indicates that there appeared to be both the market and demand for this type of
literature.
25
Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust, p. 102.
26
See also Holmila, “Portraying Genocide: The Nuremberg Trial, the Press in
Finland and Sweden and the Holocaust, 1945–46,” Acta Societatis Martensis 1 (2006),
pp. 206–20.
referred to as “the years of danger” under intensive pressure from the

Soviet Union and Finnish communists. Instead, the major Finnish
postwar case, the War Guilt Trials of eight leading wartime politicians,
which coincided with the Nuremberg Trial, has created voluminous
literature. In contrast, Anthoni’s trial has hardly elicited any academic
or popular interest in Finland despite the peculiarities of the legal
process. Only in the late 1970s was the trial first subjected to historical
scrutiny.27 Of the trial’s peculiarities, the court acted only according to
Finnish penal code, not—it seems—even considering the realm
between international law and domestic jurisdiction, as if Nuremberg
principles did not exist. Second, there have been allegations that
the president of the trial was too biased to participate in the process as
he was an ex-chairman of the Finnish-German Association.28 Finally,
as the radical left had anticipated throughout the proceedings,
Anthoni was not found guilty of anything else than “unskillful conduct
of his post.” In an astounding fashion, the court decided that
during the war Anthoni did not have sufficient knowledge of the treat-
ment of the Jews in Germany, despite the fact that numerous witnesses
in the court and documentary evidence pointed in the other
direction.29
On the whole, in the context of the immediate postwar years, a lot of
the tension in the process did not emanate from the fact that the
Finnish participation in the Holocaust was at stake. Instead, the trial
was yet another battleground between the left and the right, in which
both sides saw a good opportunity to hurl political insults at one
another. The left used Anthoni’s case to argue that Finland was in fact
full of criminals like Anthoni and therefore in need of a proper politi-
cal purge. The right argued that the radical left exaggerated everything
27
Elina Sana, Kuoleman laiva S/S Hohenhörn: Juutalaispakolaisten kohtalo Suomessa
(Porvoo, 1979), pp. 262–88.
28
Sana, Kuoleman laiva, p. 285. According to Yrjö Blomstedt, who reviewed Sana’s
work, that was not the case and the person in question, Werner Wickström, learned
about his connections with the association through Sana’s book. However, Blomstedt
did not mention who instead of Wickström would have been the chairman.
29
For example, the Finnish Ambassador in wartime Berlin testified that he had sent
memos back to Finland telling not to “send Jews back here for Germany cries out for
the Jewish blood.” Similarly, the wartime minister Väinö Tanner told the court on
12 February 1948 that by the time the Finnish government discussed the matter of
sending eight Jews back to Germany, he knew that the Nazis systematically persecuted
the Jews. Sana, Kuoleman laiva, pp. 265, 287. For the debates in the government in
1942, see Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust,” esp. pp. 423–8.
530 antero holmila
to do with Finland’s wartime record in order to curry favor with the

Soviet Union.30
Paradoxically, the radical left’s assessment of Finland’s participation
in the Holocaust was retrospectively speaking perhaps closer to the
historical record than the elite’s assessment, which forged the canonical
interpretation of Finland’s separate war. For example, in the Anthoni
trial, the communists constantly argued that unlike how the defense
made it sound, Anthoni and the wartime minister of the interior, Toivo
Horelli, as his closest superior knew what was happening to the Jews in
Europe and knowingly sent the Jews to the hands of the Gestapo.
Hence, so their argument went, Anthoni and Horelli should bear the
main responsibility for what had happened. The court, like popular
opinion, argued that Anthoni had acted according to Finnish law and
customs.
Despite the accumulating evidence against Anthoni, he was found
not guilty of the charges—save a reprimand for misconduct of his post.
In 1979 Mikael Livson from the prosecuting team reflected on the issue
thus: “If I as a lawyer think about the matter retrospectively, I must say
that the evidence against Anthoni was so massive and all his claims
were proven as fabrications that people were hanged in Nuremberg for
less.”31 Horelli, as Anthoni’s superior, was not even indicted—he only
appeared in the court as the witness for the defense. In addition, the
trial overlooked the Nuremberg statutes and the new legal framework,
which was established at the Nuremberg Trial. Tellingly, the defense
claimed in the closing speech that
the only thing that might prove Anthoni’s guilt is that he has committed
a crime against humanity, a crime which is not recognized in our domes-
tic jurisdiction […] despite the defense’s hard effort, they have not been
able to prove that as a result of the extradition any Jews had lost their
lives.32
Thus, as the court’s ruling made it clear, Finland’s wartime record and
the Holocaust were separate entities.
If the legal system found it better to be silent about the Holocaust,
the cultural arena was equally incapable of dealing with the tragedy’s
ramifications. After a huge worldwide success, The Diary of Anne Frank
30
For a lengthier analysis of this, see Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust,
pp. 178–81.
31
Mikael Livson, cited in Sana, Kuoleman laiva, p. 286.
32
Sana, Kuoleman laiva, p. 267.
(the first American edition was published in 1952) was translated into
Finnish in 1955. In the United States the first edition quickly sold out.
In Finland the book went largely undetected as the literary scene was
totally dominated by the debate on Väinö Linna’s Tuntematon sotilas
(“The Unknown Soldier,” 1954). Another important representation of
the Holocaust, Alain Resnais’s Nuit et Brouillard (“Night and Fog”),
received some recognition in film circles in the late 1950s and early
1960s.
Yet, in a characteristic matter, when discussions steered towards the
Holocaust in the early postwar decades, the tragedy was portrayed in a
conclusive way that all that there was to know about the Holocaust was
already known: “inhumanities in the concentration camps and piles of
bodies have already been shown in many other films,” wrote Finland’s
leading film magazine on Resnais’s work. However, by raising the film
to the top of its genre, the magazine continued, “but never with such
shuddering force as in Night and Fog.”33
In fact, the film had already been released in France in 1955 and may
not have been even distributed in Finland were it not for the fact that
Resnais had become a familiar name in Finnish circles with his
Hiroshima mon amour (1958). It seems likely that Night and Fog was
brought before a Finnish audience because of the earlier success of
Hiroshima mon amour. In a similar way, the film magazine Elokuva-
aitta had ran an in-depth feature article about Hiroshima mon amour,
it did not do the same for Night and Fog.
Be that as it may, there were also other films shown in Finland in the
1950s, which depicted the Holocaust. One included footage from
Buchenwald, the Finnish translation running as “Buchenwald’s Corpse
Factory,” another one, a German film Der Nürnberger Prozess (the
Finnish translation was “The Face of Truth”), and a Swedish documen-
tary about Hitler called Den blodiga tiden (“The Bloody Time,” trans-
lated into Finnish as “My Struggle,” like Hitler’s autobiography). Thus,
it seems that in the early artistic confrontations with the Holocaust, the
impulse was towards memorializing the event rather than understand-
ing it as a shattering historical episode.
Towards the end of the decade—as a result of the book and play’s
popularity—Anne Frank’s story was made into a film. In 1959, the film,
The Diary of Anne Frank, received three Academy Awards. Despite the
33
Elokuva-aitta 21/1960, p. 27.
532 antero holmila
Oscars and the film’s topic, it is questionable to what extent it raised

awareness of the Holocaust in Finland. First, as far as the Oscar hype
was concerned, the epic film Ben-Hur with its eleven titles overshad-
owed all other winners in the Finnish media. Second, neither the film
itself nor its portrayals were about Jewish suffering. Instead, it was first
and foremost depicted as an early teen love story. In the spring of 1959
the film magazine Elokuva-aitta reviewed the film. The review did not
connect it to the Holocaust. The same was apparent on the opposite
page where the magazine published a photo of a scene featuring Anne
Frank (Millie Perkins) and Peter van Daan (Richard Beymer). The cap-
tion read: “Young sprouting love between Anne and Peter in the film
The Diary of Anne Frank. As a film, little Anne’s story is serious,
devoutly made and also interesting because of the good acting perfor-
mances.”34 Indeed, in public these “good acting performances” elicited
some of the main interest regarding the film. The reason for such com-
ments were in the fact that Millie Perkins, without previous acting
experience, had beaten established film stars Audrey Hepburn and
Susan Strasberg for the role of Anne Frank.35
II. Indifference from the Distance
Eichmann Trial and Scholarly Evasion: The 1960s and 1970s

In the literature about the memory of the Holocaust, the early 1960s
have often been described as a period when the tragedy emerged in the
West’s—and particularly in America’s—historical consciousness as a
topic in its own right. The main cause for this lies in the capture and
trial of Adolf Eichmann:
The intensely public nature of the trial not only communicated an enor-
mous amount of information; it also transformed the status of the
Holocaust in the American mind. It became, in a sense “registered” in
American collective memory as a key event in the modern age and as a
watershed in the definition of what humanity is capable of. Although the
Holocaust in no way replaced the great patriotic American narrative of
34
Elokuva-aitta 17/1959, pp. 22–3.
35
See, Elokuva-aitta 18/1959, p. 27. Although Strasberg was not cast in Anne
Frank’s role, she starred in an Italian Holocaust film Kapò (in the same year), which
was nominated for an Oscar in the category of best foreign film.
“WWII,” a niche was created alongside that chronicle to make room for
this other story that had no uplifting ending.36
In Germany the trial was also intently followed. According to
Heidemarie Uhl, “the arrest and conviction of Adolf Eichmann in 1961
was a key event for the German process of coming to terms with the
past and initiated the prosecutions of SS crimes before German courts
(the Auschwitz Trials), which were intently followed by the public.”37
Yet, one must bear in mind, as Wulf Kansteiner has mentioned, that
although “[t]he Eichmann trial had been covered extensively in the
West German media […] the majority of West German citizens rejected
the way that Eichmann had been captured and found it inappropriate
that he was put on trial in Israel.”38 In Finland, too, the press repro-
duced the same idea as the trial opened.39 In particular, defense lawyer
Robert Servatius’s opening statement received a good deal of interest,
headlined as “the court of justice is invalid.” The story continued that
the defense counsel had “requested the court to annul its power of
jurisdiction based on the fact that the German mass killings personally
touched every one of the three judges.”40
Even before the trial opened, Eichmann elicited a good amount
of interest in Finland. For example, the biggest Finnish newspaper
Helsingin Sanomat serialized Charles Wighton’s “The Story of
Eichmann” in 18 segments between March and April 1961 on the
paper’s editorial page. In many of the segments, Eichmann’s role in
organizing the Final Solution was mentioned. For its part, Suomen
Kuvalehti, an influential weekly magazine, also made Eichmann
famous. However, the story on the whole concentrated on other mat-
ters, focusing on “Eichmann’s secrets,” not regarding the Holocaust but
his role at the end of the war in hiding Nazi gold, counterfeit British
36
Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America
(Seattle, WA, 2001), pp. 11–2; See also Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life
(New York, 2000), p. 134.
37
Heidemarie Uhl, “From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis: Nazi Rule,
World War II, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory,” in Lebow et al., Politics of
Memory, p. 48.
38
Wulf Kansteiner, “Losing the War, Winning the Memory Battle: the Legacy of
Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of Germany,” in
Lebow et al., Politics of Memory, p. 113.
39
Helsingin Sanomat, 8 and 12 April 1961.
40
Helsingin Sanomat, 12 April 1961.
534 antero holmila
pounds and some Nazi documents. The documents in question had

nothing to do with the Holocaust either, but, as the story repeat-
edly mentioned, they were believed to disclose the European-wide
network of Nazi collaborationists.41 On the whole, Eichmann’s story
was squeezed into a boyish spy narrative.
During the trial itself, Finnish newspapers or magazines did not
publish a lot of analytical material from Jerusalem. Yet, the trial fea-
tured regularly in Suomen Kuvalehti’s “the Week in Pictures” pages.
Hence, even if the horrors of the Holocaust were not given textual rep-
resentation in the magazine (or in the mainstream press), the pictures
often showed the reactions of the crowd following the trial. Thus,
Suomen Kuvalehti was at least implying that the Holocaust cut deeply
into Israeli society.42 On the other hand, there is little evidence that the
trial would have made a big impression on Finns at the time or subse-
quently. For example, Hannah Arendt’s acclaimed yet controversial
book Eichmann in Jerusalem has never been translated into Finnish.
Similarly, whereas the trial initiated the prosecution of SS-men in
Germany, it did not raise new curiosity towards Finnish-German rela-
tions in Finland or Anthoni’s trial—despite the fact that in the immedi-
ate postwar years the left sought to equate Anthoni with Eichmann.
Therefore, it appears that the gains in “Holocaust memory” were
short-lived. Most of all, the Holocaust remained a marginal issue
regarding Finnish views about wartime collaboration with the Nazis. If
that was apparent in the public sphere—especially in relation to the
Eichmann case—it was equally noticeable in Finnish scholarship about
the Finnish-German collaboration in the 1960s.
After the war, the destiny of Jews in Finland during World War II
cropped up every now and then. In 1948, the controversial memoirs of
Heinrich Himmler’s masseur Felix Kersten were published in Finnish.
In the memoirs he refers to Himmler’s wishes to deport Finnish Jews to
41
Suomen Kuvalehti 11/1961, 12/1961 and 13/1961.
42
As Tom Segev and others have argued, the trial served as “national group ther-
apy” for the Israeli citizens and other Jews for it made use of a shared public place, “in
which to grieve for private memory.” Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and
the Holocaust (New York, 1994), p. 351; Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment:
Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT, 2001), p. 109.
See also Susan Sontag, “Reflection of the Deputy,” in Eric Bentley, ed., The Storm over
the Deputy (New York, 1964), pp. 118–23. For a critical examination of the politics of
the trial as part of building the postwar Israeli identity, see Idith Zertal, Israel’s
Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge, 2005), esp. pp. 92–109.
Majdanek extermination camp in Poland. In the story that follows,

Kersten portrays himself as the one who pacified Nazi demands regard-
ing Finnish Jews.43 Although the book was a sensation, as it revealed
Nazi secrets from the inside, it did not raise further questions about
Finland’s attitude towards Jews. Further, the extradition of the eight
Jews from Finland was not included in Kersten’s narrative. The fact that
Finnish Jews were saved made it clear that the issue did not constitute
a problem, which would demand a closer look. In any case, Kersten
himself was considered highly untrustworthy in his statements.44 In
the 1950s, Kustaa Vilkuna, who was the head of the Finnish State
Information Department during the war, wrote that Himmler’s brief-
case was photographed while he visited Finland in 1942, and it con-
tained a list of Finnish Jews.45
If Finland’s treatment of Jews was not really a problem for Kersten, it
was not a problem for Finnish scholarship either. For what follows, I
have selected two different types of scholarly studies from the 1960s,
one dealing with macro-level history, another one with micro-level
history. In their distinctive ways, however, they illuminate the dynam-
ics of Finnish scholarship when it came to thinking about the Holocaust
in general and the role of Finland in it in particular. Tuomo Polvinen’s
study from 1964 dealt with Finland’s role in the policymaking of the
Great Powers between 1941 and 1944.46 It is notable that Finland
appears as an object in the international political scene, meaning that
Finland had very little of its own agency in the course of history.
Second, in 1968 Mauno Jokipii published a monumental work detail-
ing the history of Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers on the Eastern Front in
1941–43.47 Moving away from the Holocaust, these two examples also
illuminate another trend in Finnish historiography. Namely, ever since
the nineteenth century, Finnish historians were intimately involved in
the building of Finnish national identity. Traditionally, the historians’
43
Felix Kersten, Himmlerin henkilääkärinä: Muistelmia Kolmannesta valtakunnasta
vv. 1939–1945 (Hämeenlinna, 1948), pp. 124–32.
44
Professor Mauno Jokipii examined different versions of Kersten’s memoirs in
1961. The Holocaust did not play any notable role there. See Mauno Jokipii, “Kerstenin
muistelmat ja elämäkerta,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 59 (1961): 3, pp. 357–9.
45
Kustaa Vilkuna, “Suomen juutalaiset ja Himmlerin salkku,” Uusi Kuvalehti, 12
November 1954.
46
Tuomo Polvinen, Suomi suurvaltojen politiikassa 1941–44: Jatkosodan tausta
(Porvoo, 1964).
47
Mauno Jokipii, Panttipataljoona: Suomalaisen SS-pataljoonan historia (Helsinki,
1968).
536 antero holmila
role was considered more akin to a public servant. Thus, it is not sur-
prising that many leading historians in Finland were also politicians
and closely tied to the nation’s political elite.48
Two cases illustrate the point how the scholarly legacy continued in
the postwar years. Polvinen (born in 1931) and Jokipii (born in 1926)
had as their teachers and academic mentors professors who had a
direct link to the wartime Finnish policymakers. Arvi Korhonen
(1890–1967) had received a doctorate in history in 1923 and was
professor of general history at the University of Helsinki from 1940
to 1959. During the Continuation War he served at the Finnish
High Command. After the war he belonged to Finland’s longest-serv-
ing state president Urho Kekkonen’s confidants. All in all his presence
in Finland’s cultural affairs was formidable. Among his numerous
posts, he worked in a committee, which sent recommendations to
Finland’s public libraries which books they should stock and which
were not suitable. As a historian he was staunchly patriotic, support-
ing and developing the separate war thesis.49 Another similar case is
L.A. Puntila (1907–1988), who also served in the State Information
Department as well as being the prime minister’s secretary during the
war. From 1952 to 1971 he served as professor of political history at the
University of Helsinki. Like Korhonen, Puntila had strong nationalistic
feelings, although he had moderated his views as the 1930s progressed
(in the 1960s Puntila joined the Social Democratic Party). What is
more, both professors embodied the sense that the historian’s most
important task was to serve the nation—a feeling, which in the postwar
decades still transmuted into the patriotic writing of history.50 Through
Korhonen’s and Puntila’s mentoring the legacy was passed on to the
48
Pekka Ahtiainen & Jukka Tervonen, “Historiatiede oman aikansa tulkkina:
Katsaus suomalaisen historiankirjoituksen vaiheisiin viimeisen sadan vuoden ajalta,”
in Pekka Ahtiainen et al., eds., Historia nyt: Näkemyksiä suomalaisesta historiantut-
kimuksesta (Porvoo, 1990), pp. 11–38, esp. 14–5; Pekka Ahtiainen, “Suomalaiskansallinen
historiankirjoitus: Jatkumo vai varjo menneisyydestä?” in Pekka Ahtiainen et al., eds.,
Historia, sosiologia ja Suomi: Yhteiskuntatutkimus itseymmärryksen jäljillä (Helsinki,
1994), pp. 19–32; Päiviö Tommila, Suomen historiankirjoitus: Tutkimuksen historia
(Porvoo, 1989).
49
Jukka Tervonen, “Kansa taisteli, historioitsija kertoo: Arvi Korhonen ja historian-
tutkimus kansakuntaa yhdistävien arvojen vaalijana,” in Ahtiainen et al., Historia,
sosiologia ja Suomi, pp. 40–2; Pauli Kettunen, “Historian poliittisuus ja kansallinen
katse,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 101 (2003): 1, p. 15.
50
For Puntila’s life and achievements, see Jukka Tarkka, Kansallinen kolkuttaja:
L.A. Puntilan yhteiskunnallinen elämäntyö (Helsinki, 2004).
next generation of historians such as Tuomo Polvinen and Mauno

Jokipii.
Thus, it should not come as a surprise that when thinking about the
Holocaust in the works of Polvinen and Jokipii, it remained far removed
from the Finnish war experience, which was shaped by a strongly
patriotic interpretive framework. Polvinen, as a political historian,
considered it from the perspective of a decision-making process in
which the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 was key. On the whole,
he offered a clinical and detached description of the Holocaust, con-
firming the view that historians’ “findings are often presented in isola-
tion from the horror that it perpetrated.”51
What is more, in line with the (patriotic) framework established in
the Anthoni trial, Polvinen follows the canonical narrative by drawing
a clear line between the Holocaust and the extradition of the eight Jews
from Finland: “Viewed from the German perspective the question [of
handing over the Jews] was not about Endlösung but about the deal
between the [German] criminal police and Anthoni […]”52 If the event
was not part of the Holocaust when viewed from the German perspec-
tive, which—in any case—is difficult to believe, what about the Finnish
perspective? The matter is left untouched by Polvinen as his overall
goal was to view Finland as an object. As he noted in the introduction,
“the attitudes and comments by the Finns have been taken into account
wherever that has been thought as necessary in order to understand
the bigger picture.”53
The fact that Polvinen did not even attempt to analyze Finnish atti-
tudes towards the extradition is a fine example of how the Holocaust
and especially Finland’s role in it were written out of the Finnish his-
torical consciousness. Finally, Polvinen buried the issue behind the
back of conservative political history: “Hitler had to […] take into
account the political need to keep Finland his co-belligerent which he
[…] greatly valued. The question about the Finnish Jews was, after all,
secondary and could be put aside.”54 With such a narrative the implica-
tions were clear: the matter was secondary and could be put aside in
the historiography too. Then again, in fairness to Polvinen, his analysis
51
Dan Stone, Constructing the Holocaust: A Study in Historiography (London,
2003), p. 63.
52
Polvinen, Suomi suurvaltojen politiikassa, p. 189.
53
Ibidem, p. v.
54
Ibidem, p. 190.
538 antero holmila
of Hitler’s priorities in Finland was by and large right, confirmed by

later scholarship,55 but his work nevertheless illustrates how little the
Holocaust concerned the Finnish scholarly landscape in the 1960s.
Mauno Jokipii’s Panttipataljoona (“Pledge Battalion,” 1968) offers a
minutely detailed history of the Finnish Waffen-SS volunteer battalion.
The work in itself is the clearest example of totalizing impulse in
Finnish military history writing. The book lures the reader into the
realm of objective and accurate construction of the past; the historian
has taken a backseat, telling the story “as it was,” the footnote apparatus
is massive, as is the whole book. In effect, the book insinuates that all
there is to know about the history of the Finnish Waffen-SS battalion is
included. In this way, the work—as did all Finnish scholarship at the
time—assumed “its own innocence where the Holocaust was con-
cerned.”56 This in turn, was achieved by using rhetorical strategies,
which overcame the fragmentation of the historical record by organ-
izing it into a single and overarching vision of military history. In this
manner, Jokipii was able to provide the narrative qualities of continu-
ity, coherence and closure, which further contributed to the work’s
acclaimed scholarly standing.57
The fact that the Holocaust in all its chaos and drama finds no con-
venient place in Jokipii’s work is immediately clear when he encoun-
tered it in his sources. First, Jokipii refers to the Holocaust only a few
times without conceptualizing the event. This, however, should not
come as a surprise because in the 1960s, scholarship in general was still
unable to grapple with the Holocaust. If it is possible to say that the
premise (traditional military history) from which Jokipii worked was
not conducive to recognizing the Holocaust for what it really was, there
is even more certainty in the assessment that Jokipii deliberately left
some “unpleasant excesses” untold.
The most vivid and telling example of not only his inability to con-
struct the Holocaust, but to shelter Finnish readers from it, is painfully
clear when he discusses a particular incident, which followed the
shooting of one regiment commander by a Soviet sniper in the early
55
For example, see Markku Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia? Suomi, Hitlerin
Saksan liittosopimusvaatimukset ja Rytin-Ribbentropin sopimus (Helsinki, 2004), p. 40;
Marianne Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä: Suomalaisen siviiliväestön ja saksalaisen
sotaväen rinnakkaiselo Pohjois-Suomessa 1941–44 (Helsinki, 2000), pp. 167–70.
56
Stone, Constructing the Holocaust, p. 99.
57
For achieving coherence through certain narrative strategies, see for example,
Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation (Madison, WI, 1989).
days of Operation Barbarossa. In accounting for the episode, Jokipii

first went to some trouble to show how difficult it was to objectively
construct the event when different sources accounted for the shooting
differently. In the end, without pondering the issue, he was content to
claim “it happened.” However, rather than the shooting in itself, the
real issue at stake was what happened afterwards. “The aftermath,”
Jokipii observes, “turned regrettable.” The sniper was caught and killed,
“but the Germans thought that that was not enough […] the 7th
Company was sent to the village to retaliate. The village was burned to
the ground and at the same time some suspect Russians and Jews were
executed without further investigation.”58 In Jokipii’s analysis the event
sounds coherent and conventional enough to pass as a regrettable side
effect of war. Besides, other writings, whether fictional or factual, had
also noted that the Germans were unnecessarily brutal in their discipli-
nary measures as well as in warfare. Yet, as working within the frame-
work of military history, Jokipii did not even attempt to recount the
story as anything else than “a regrettable” retaliation trope.
The most troubling issue however, is that Jokipii used the volunteers’
accounts of the event rather sparingly and only as far as they dealt with
the shooting of the commander (which after all was the very matter
that interested Jokipii). Strikingly, the lengthiest account of the event
barely gets mentioned even though Jokipii is fully aware of it. Whereas
for Jokipii the main issue was the shooting of the commander, Finnish
Waffen-SS-volunteer Sakari Lappi-Seppälä’s account operates in a
remarkably different register. He, too, began his account with the
shooting, but continued to describe the way in which 36 Jews were first
humiliated and then shot in groups of five into the graves they had dug
for themselves. The volunteer, Lappi-Seppälä, was ordered to partici-
pate in the shooting with another Finn, but having refused they were
ordered to collect watches and other valuables from the victims
instead.59 All this was omitted from Jokipii’s analysis, which portrayed
the war on the Eastern Front—and Finnish participation in it—as
rather a conventional war. Thus, although offering a cachet of objective
scholarly apparatus for the work, Jokipii nevertheless could not avoid,
wittingly or unwittingly, arrogating the past to his own aims: the work
was commissioned by the organization of Finnish SS-veterans.
58
Jokipii, Panttipataljoona, p. 192.
59
Sakari Lappi-Seppälä, Haudat Dnjeprin varrella: SS-miehen päiväkirjan lehtiä
(Helsinki, 1945), pp. 86–91.
540 antero holmila
Therefore, one should not be surprised that the Holocaust was studi-
ously avoided in the narrative.60
Confronting and Challenging National Myths: The 1980s

As has been shown above, the Holocaust appeared in Finnish historical
culture and in popular culture from time to time. However, it was not
until the late 1970s when the Holocaust started to take root in Finnish
historical consciousness. Generally speaking, the late 1960s, and the
1970s especially, was the period of a strong leftist movement in society.
Coupled with a generational change, strong leftist student movements
and the rise of alternative historical traditions such as labor history,
oral history, microhistory and, later on, gender history, the traditional
conservative historical landscape was becoming more fragmented and
the generation growing up and maturing in the postwar decades was
increasingly suspicious of traditional conservative views.
Yet changes in historical consciousness took a while to take effect,
and until the late 1970s, the Holocaust still remained a marginal topic
in Finland. For example, high school level history textbooks in the
1970s mentioned the event in total in an average of two sentences.61
If there are turning points in Finland’s recognition of the Holocaust
and its implications, 1979 is one of them. First, in the spring of 1979
the Finnish commercial TV channel Mainostelevisio broadcast NBC’s
television miniseries Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss. Second,
later on in the year Elina Sana’s (she was writing under her maiden
name Suominen) documentary-scholarly work, which detailed the
extradition/deportation of eight foreign Jews from Finland into the
hands of the Gestapo, was published. Both topics brought the treat-
ment of Jews into the Finnish historical scene, forcing the issue to be
considered in public.
Holocaust was aired on Finnish television between March and April
1979. As elsewhere, the program was a popular success, with approxi-
mately 2.3 million Finnish viewers.62 Judith Doneson has argued that
60
Another contender for the commission, Y.P.I. Kaila was a former SS-volunteer,
who was known to be critical about many aspects of the Finnish Waffen-SS experience.
Presumably he did not get the commission because in the eyes of the wider public, he
would have been unable to write “objective” history.
61
Katri Ikonen, Holokaustin kuva suomalaisissa historian oppikirjoissa 1970-luvulta
2000-luvulle, unpublished MA thesis (University of Turku, 2008), p. 14.
62
Mitä, Missä, Milloin: Kansalaisen vuosikirja 1980 (Helsinki, 1979), p. 395.
unlike any earlier representation of the Holocaust, the American “tel-

evision show […] forced Europeans to confront their […] participa-
tion in the destruction of European Jewry.”63 Doneson’s argument is
also fitting in the Finnish context. For a short period of time, maga-
zines and newspapers featured articles about the TV miniseries, its his-
torical background and Finland’s role in the Holocaust.
However, in keeping with hegemonic postwar narrative, the argu-
mentation about Finland’s role in the Final Solution was often defen-
sive and in some cases belittled the Holocaust. In essence, the horrors,
which the miniseries mediated, were quickly diluted by using a strat-
egy, which could never fail: comparing the numbers of the Holocaust’s
victims to the number of Stalin’s victims.
The most striking line of defense was offered by a well-known mili-
tary historian and army officer, Sampo Ahto.64 Although there is no
evidence that Ahto would have deliberately minimized the Holocaust,
his main points are worth considering in some detail for many reasons.
First, they encapsulate the nationalistic discursive framework in which
Finland grappled with the extermination of the Jews. Second, as a cor-
ollary to the first point, Ahto’s concerns illuminate the profound uneas-
iness, which Finland’s conservative historical elite felt towards the
Holocaust. The reason was the fear that Finland’s honest fight over its
independence could be tainted by drawing the country into the murky
history of the Holocaust. Finally, as a respected military historian and
public commentator, the merits of Ahto’s words must be considered as
they carry a certain intellectual and authoritative cachet. In short, Ahto
illuminated views, which extended far beyond his own opinions; he
voiced the concerns of the conservative-traditionalists, whose main
duty was to safeguard the nation’s clean historical record.
Starting with the title, Ahto’s argument is clear: “The TV show tell-
ing the fate of the family Weiss is only a part of the century of violence.”65
The article starts by lamenting the commercialization of the series, as it
seemed to be nothing else than a formulaic recreation of the successful
TV series Roots. In the Finnish context, the most telling comparison
63
Judith Doneson, The Holocaust in American Film (Syracuse, NY, 2002), p. 194.
64
Sampo Ahto, “Weissin perheen kohtalosta kertova tv-sarja on vain osa väkivallan
vuosisadasta,” Suomen Kuvalehti 11/1979, pp. 52–7; Tapani Ruokanen, “Arkistoja
tuhottiin, syylliset pakenivat: Uusi tutkimus todistaa, että SUOMI OLI VALMIS
LUOVUTTAMAAN JUUTALAISET,” Suomen Kuvalehti 40/1979, pp. 52–7. Emphasis
in the original (“Finland was ready to deport Jews”).
65
Ahto, “Weissin perheen kohtalosta,” p. 52. Emphasis added.
542 antero holmila
was with a hugely successful docudrama Sodan miehet (“The Men of

War”) shown on Finnish television a year earlier. Although both series
had some representational inaccuracies, according to Ahto, much of
Holocaust’s credibility suffered from clear historical inaccuracies (the
writer Gerald Green was not a historian, as Ahto happily noted).
Similarly, Ahto was displeased with many scenes, which were included
only to have a shock effect. Next, Ahto supplied a list of complaints, the
biggest of which regarded the portrayal of the perpetrators: “It is of
course more than natural that American-Jewish filmmakers could not
resist the temptation of portraying the victims as clean white martyrs
and the Germans as beating, kicking and raping sadists, opportunists
or cynicists.”66 According to Ahto, the series missed the fundamentally
important aspect about the nature of the killers: that they were hard-
working ordinary people who often felt the work unpleasant but neces-
sary, they were good fathers, and so on. What follows, in Ahto’s
reasoning, is that the program failed to offer any insights into the most
perplexing question, that is, how these people became killers? Thus,
Ahto was implying that the perpetration could not be taken seriously,
since the portrayals of the perpetrators were so flawed.
Ahto’s personal view on how the perpetrators were portrayed is
questionable, if not a deliberate view on leading the readers astray. On
watching the series it should be clear that it did not simply portray the
killers as “rapists and sadists” as Ahto argued, but exactly the opposite.
The series was certainly loaded with clichés and stereotypes, but if
Ahto really watched the miniseries, he seriously misunderstood the
portrayal of the Dorf family. As Wulf Kansteiner has written: “[the]
Holocaust remained for many years [in Germany] one of the very few
historical products that took the question of perpetration seriously
[…] the series gave faces and identities to the victims and the perpetra-
tors, an achievement that explains its tremendous impact in Germany.”67
After offering his own historical overview of the Holocaust, Ahto
reminded readers that as far as documents were concerned, there was
no proof that Hitler gave an explicit order to murder the Jews, the
number of killed has been exaggerated (he was content with about five
million) and finally, “Holocaust lets one believe that the whole of
Germany was involved […] the truth seems to be that every German
66
Ahto, “Weissin perheen kohtalosta,” p. 53.
67
Kansteiner, “Losing the War,” pp. 124–5.
had an inkling that the Jews were not treated well, but only a fraction
knew what really happened.”68 His argument sounds very much like
newspaper reporting about the liberated camps over thirty years
earlier. Finally, he argued that the series only increased hatred
towards Germans, which this new “Auschwitz-mentality” of portray-
ing Germans as devils incarnate seemed to cause. In a sense, like the
conservative German historical elite in the Historikerstreit, he wanted
to play down the horrific nature of Nazism. Instead of reveling in the
unpleasant excesses of the former co-belligerents of the Finns, Ahto
was calling for a simple and correct historicization of the past:
[M]ore importantly than to hate, it would be to ask why our century has
become a century of violence. How is it possible that the Nazis murdered
five million Jews, that after the war at least 2.4 million Germans were
murdered, that between 1937–1938 Stalin killed 7–8 million, but possi-
bly 23 million of his own citizens […]69
Despite Ahto’s efforts to limit the series’ impact, it nevertheless raised
Holocaust awareness in Finland. As the series opened, the media was
not only full of articles about the program, but most of all there were
calls to open a discussion about the history of the Holocaust. In essence,
many of the public figures and academics interviewed by the media
were concerned that the series was seen more as entertainment than a
real historical tragedy.70 As a result, at least two panel discussions were
organized on television. However, the audiences, it seems, were not
impressed by the “expert” opinion and the discussants’ skills,71 so it
seems likely that good opportunities for an honest discussion about the
genocide were missed. Yet, in retrospect, the lack of the discussants’
skills was hardly surprising because at the time when the Holocaust
was only just emerging as an area of investigation, experts were diffi-
cult to find.
Unsurprisingly, Ahto did not dwell on the Finnish participation in
the Holocaust, although he noted that there are documents showing
how in some cases the Germans told the Finns what they were doing to
the Jews. Yet the miniseries raised questions about Finland’s treatment
68
Ahto, “Weissin perheen kohtalosta,” p. 56.
69
Ibidem, p. 56.
70
Sini Ikävalko-Ratia, Polttouhrit ei hätkähdyttänyt: Polttouhrit-televisiosarjan
aiheuttamat reaktiot Suomessa keväällä 1979, unpublished MA thesis (University of
Helsinki, 2004), p. 32.
71
Ibidem, p. 1.
544 antero holmila
of the Jews. For example, a popular magazine Apu, which had serial-
ized Gerald Green’s Holocaust, featured an article “Finland has a share
in the Holocaust.” The piece was written by a popular historian, crime
novelist and journalist Aake Jermo. In the introduction he told how
“Holocaust had shocked the whole of Europe […] most of us [Finns]
might have consoled ourselves that Finland had nothing to do with the
persecution. The affair is not quite so happy from our part either.”72 In
the media, an issue, which had been buried for over three decades, thus
came to light again: Arno Anthoni and his responsibility in sending
the eight Jews to Germany in 1942. Arguments flew for and against
him (Anthoni’s widow also participated in defending her late hus-
band), but in the end, as Finland’s leading Swedish-speaking paper
Hufvudstadsbladet put it, Anthoni had been already punished. More
importantly, according to the paper, he had acted in special wartime
circumstances for the good of his country.73
Later on in the year Arno Anthoni and Finland’s participation in the
Holocaust came into even sharper light when Elina Sana’s Kuoleman
laiva S/S Hohenhörn (“The Ship of Death S/S Hohenhörn”) was pub-
lished. Anticipating a sensation, Suomen Kuvalehti ran an interview
with a young reporter-researcher. If the article, which connected
Finland and the Holocaust in Apu magazine, was fairly neutral in tone,
the one in Suomen Kuvalehti was a direct accusation of wartime politi-
cal leaders for “adopting the same policies as German-occupied coun-
tries did.” The headline made it clear, too: “Archives destroyed, the
guilty ones run away. New research proves that Finland was ready to
deport Jews.”74
Responses to Elina Sana’s work were diverse. Most of the historical
elite slated her work, while the public reception was more enthusiastic.
For the professional historical cadres the main bone of contention was
Sana’s inability to solidly build her case on documentary evidence. To
this end, Professor Yrjö Blomstedt argued:
The shadows of the extermination camps also reach Finland and the fate
of those eight extradited is full of human tragedy. But from there it is still
a long way to the idea launched by Sana that Arno Anthoni would have
been Adolf Eichman’s henchman in Finland.75
72
Apu 13/1979.
73
Hufvudstadsbladet, 26 April 1979.
74
Suomen Kuvalehti 40/1979, p. 52.
75
Yrjö Blomstedt, “Juutalaisten luovutukset 1942,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 78
(1980): 2, pp. 142–6. Quote from p. 146.
Although Sana overstated Anthoni’s importance for the Germans, the

way in which Blomstedt compared Anthoni and Eichmann effectively
blurred the grey zone where Finnish-German police collaboration
took place even more. Another strategy with which conservative his-
tory circles sought to limit the impact of Sana’s work was the claim that
the details she brought up were nothing new but had been known in
academia and among the well-informed public for decades.76
Few historians had indeed referred to the extradition, but Sana’s
work was the first time when the saga was subjected to an in-depth
analysis. As far as methodological issues were concerned, Sana was
criticized for not interrogating her sources sufficiently but taking them
at face value. Although some of the criticism was justified—for exam-
ple, the omission of any footnotes/endnotes—the validity of Sana’s
work was only examined in reference to archival source material in
Finland. This, again, is telling of the modus operandi of professional
Finnish historical culture at the time, for Sana’s work was in no small
part a result of oral history (she had interviewed pretty much everyone
involved in the affair who was alive at the time) and extensive archival
work in archives in Germany, Switzerland, Poland and Israel.
On the other hand, the fact that the public was more receptive
towards Sana’s work shows that the interest in the Holocaust and espe-
cially Finland’s participation in it was increasing—not least due to the
television series Holocaust which also served as a reference point while
debating Sana’s study.77 In a similar way in the 1980s, Finnish school-
books started to offer more information about the Holocaust, also
using some documents and literary passages, notably from Green’s
Holocaust.78
Even if the link between Finland and the Holocaust disappeared
from the public radar in the early 1980s, Sana had opened a new line of
historical inquiry, which spawned a number of other works, which
either supplemented her work or directly challenged it. Thus, we can
say that the foundations for Finland’s Holocaust historiography were
laid in the 1980s. In 1984, spurred by Sana’s findings, Taimi Torvinen’s
study of Finland’s refugee policy during Hitler’s reign appeared.79
76
Blomstedt, “Juutalaisten luovutukset,” p. 142. Of the professional historians, only
Tuomo Polvinen acknowledged that Sana’s work in fact did tease out a lot of valuable
new information about the extradition.
77
For example, Blomstedt, “Juutalaisten luovutukset,” p. 142.
78
Ikonen, “Holokaustin kuva,” passim.
79
Torvinen, Pakolaiset Suomessa.
546 antero holmila
Although Torvinen herself had first-hand experience of helping ref-

ugees during the war, her conclusions were much more cautious than
Sana’s. Already in the preface she wrote—probably referring to Sana—
that “discussions relating to refugee problems during Hitler’s reign
tend to be accusatory and moralizing in tone which is often justified.
Yet, it is easy to forget that Finland was a nation at war, fighting for its
survival.”80 As Tuomo Polvinen, who reviewed her work in the Finnish
historical journal Historiallinen Aikakauskirja commented, Torvinen’s
book brought new information to some issues, which Sana’s book left
unanswered.81 Unlike Sana, Torvinen did not find evidence that
Finland would have had a systematic plan to deport Jews. Also, as she
went on to remind the reader, the extradition/deportation of the Jews
was part of a much larger operation of sending “undesirables” to the
hands of the Germans.82 On the other hand, Torvinen did acknowledge
that Valpo was influenced by anti-Semitism and that it might be part of
the explanation why Jews were sent to the Germans.83 In addition, the
strength of Torvinen’s analysis was that she contextualized Finnish atti-
tudes towards Jewish refugees vis-à-vis European refugee policies in
the 1930s as well as wider Finnish perspectives on refugees.
The year following Torvinen’s study, Hannu Rautkallio’s examina-
tion of the same issue was published.84 His study, the title of which
translates as “Those Eight and Finland’s Consciousness,” was diametri-
cally opposed to Sana’s opinions. Rautkallio argued that the extradition
was an isolated incident, initiated by the Finns. But—so the argument
goes—the extradition was not part of the Holocaust and Finnish
authorities did not have knowledge of the Final Solution. Further,
Valpo’s action was a routine police operation based on a routine-like
agreement between the two police forces. Racial considerations were
not a factor in Valpo’s decision to send the Jews into the hands of the
Germans. Simply, it was a matter of getting rid of five foreign Jewish
criminals (together with three dependants) at the same time when
19 other non-Jewish criminals were sent into German hands.
80
Ibidem, p. 7.
81
Tuomo Polvinen, “Pakolaispolitiikkaa,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 83 (1985): 1,
p. 67.
82
Ibidem, p. 67.
83
For a longer discussion of Torvinen’s work, see Holmila, “Finland and the
Holocaust.”
84
Hannu Rautkallio, Ne kahdeksan ja Suomen omatunto: Suomesta 1942 luovutetut
juutalaispakolaiset (Espoo, 1985).
By the mid-1980s when Rautkallio’s work appeared, the ripples

which the Holocaust caused in the late 1970s had calmed down in
Finland. Rautkallio’s work did not receive the same kind of public
interest and Sana’s work also appears to have slipped into the margins
of Finland’s historical narrative. However, topics occasionally appeared
which were related to Finland’s darker side of World War II.
Although the point here is not to examine other blind spots in
Finnish historiography, for the reason of illustrating how in Finland’s
historical memory all aspects of Finnish brutality were watered down
it is useful to draw attention to debates relating to the treatment of
Soviet Eastern Karelians. In 1987, novelist Eino Pietola published a
controversial work on the Soviet prisoners-of-war in Finland. Apart
from the actual content, his foreword about Finnish silence is worth
noting: “The impetus to this work,” he tells us, came from an editorial
in a local Southern Finnish newspaper, which stood against a memo-
rial for over a thousand Russian prisoners-of-war, who had died or
been killed in a camp nearby. “I was particularly affected by a claim in
the editorial: ‘We did not shoot prisoners-of-war, as has reliably been
asserted.’ ”85 A few years later, a similar work, published by the Finnish-
Soviet Friendship Society, appeared. It was written by Helge Seppälä,
and dealt with Finland as an “occupying nation” in Eastern Karelia.86
As with Sana’s work about Finland and the Holocaust, academic
response was very similar in these cases. First, the historical elite’s reac-
tion was “aggressively defensive” about Finland’s position during the
war. Second, neither of the works was considered as objective scholar-
ship, but more like documentary journalism. Such a claim was par-
tially correct, but it did play down the fact that the books were based on
archival documents. Third, the works were typically accused of Soviet
propaganda. For example, Sampo Ahto chastised Seppälä for his own
wartime recollections: “[…] about Finnish ‘concentration camps’ he
[Seppälä] writes a lot, but he never visited inside, only at the gates.
There hovered a whiff of death, Seppälä remembers. This kind of infor-
mation the writer brings up […].”87 Seppälä had been a guard in one of
the camps.
Ahto criticized Seppälä, in some respects for a reason, for deliber-
ately leaving a lot of information untold in order to present a warped
85
Eino Pietola, Sotavangit Suomessa 1941–1944 (Jyväskylä, 1987), p. 7.
86
Helge Seppälä, Suomi miehittäjänä 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 1989).
87
For example, see Sampo Ahto, “Seppälän harharetket,” Kanava 3/1990, p. 309.
548 antero holmila
view on the Finnish occupation of Eastern Karelia. Yet Ahto could have
mentioned that Finnish authorities did call their camps concentration
camps—no quotation marks needed as Finnish documents habitually
used that term. Also, no doubt these camps reeked of death, as Seppälä
pointed out. Over 24,000 people were incarcerated in these camps and
over 4,200 died.88 In an Eastern Karelian population census from April
1942, the death toll in the concentration camps was 137.5 people per
1,000 inmates. In a camp in Petrozavodsk, over 3,000 inmates died
during 1942.89 All this was documented in Finnish archives but—by
and large—not considered worth examination. As Antti Kujala recently
remarked about examining the killings of the Soviet prisoners-of-war
during the war: “Before 1991 it would have been virtually impossible to
conduct this kind of research.”90 In 1987, as mentioned above, Pietola
tried, but the reception was cold. Not least because of his indicting
conclusion:
When we are looking for the real reasons for the unusually high death
toll of ethnic Russian prisoners-of-war and civilians in Finnish prisoner-
of-war camps and concentration camps […] we cannot bypass the prem-
ise that Finns were raised in the spirit of nationalism. With the
consolidation of those foundations and fascist ideology, an extreme
hatred and contempt against Russians was born.91
Elsewhere Hannu Rautkallio continued with his quest to prove
Finland’s innocence regarding the Holocaust. First, in 1987 his work
was translated into English under the title Finland and the Holocaust:
The Rescue of Finland’s Jews.92 In 1989 Rautkallio’s next work Suomen
juutalaisten aseveljeys (“The Finnish Jews’ Brotherhood-in-Arms”)
appeared. In it he examined the experiences of Finnish Jews as part of
the Finnish Army.93 The underlying premise of the work was similar
to his earlier work: First, to prove that Finland’s war was a separate
one from that of the Nazis. Second, to argue that Finland did not
88
Lars Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen sodanaikainen kuolleisuus
Suomessa: Muonahuolto, tautisuus ja Punaisen Ristin toimettomuus 1939–44 (Helsinki,
2009), p. 12.
89
Osmo Hyytiä, “Helmi Suomen maakuntien joukossa”: Suomalainen Itä-Karjala
1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2008), p. 67.
90
dassa (Helsinki, 2008), p. 12.
91
Pietola, Sotavangit, pp. 246–7.
92
Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust.
93
Rautkallio, Suomen juutalaisten aseveljeys.
participate in the Holocaust, and third, as a corollary to the second

theme, to show that the country really was an exception in the history
of the Holocaust: “Endlösung […] was a central aim in the war of
Hitler’s Germany and it was shared by all other Axis and co-belligerent
nations. Only Finland was left on the outside, only Finnish Jews were
saved from the destruction and they shared Hitler’s war on his side.”94
On the other hand, in terms of his contribution to scholarship, his
gathering of the memories of Finnish Jewish soldiers must be counted
as an important achievement. It is interesting to note, however, that in
this case individual memory was not problematized as it was mainly
parallel with the accepted view that Finland had no share in the
Holocaust.
III. Finnish Public Memory and the European Identity Politics
The Patriotic Turn: Historical Culture in the 1990s

The collapse of the Soviet Union had a profound effect on the way in
which countries in the Soviet orbit began to reassess their histories and
memories of World War II. In a large framework, questions concerning
the true impact of Nazism, collaboration and resistance began to be
examined from radically new viewpoints, free from the limitations of
Cold War metanarratives. In Finland, just as in most Central and
Eastern European countries, the major turn was toward rehabilitating
patriotic interpretations of the war.95 The patriotic turn was not condu-
cive towards assessing Finland’s role in the Holocaust, despite the fact
that generally speaking the collapse of the Soviet Union transformed
the study of the Holocaust. In the 1990s, virtually only work dealing
with Finland and the Holocaust was confined to a limited academic
circle: William Cohen and Jörgen Svensson’s critical, but seriously
flawed examination of Rautkallio’s thesis appeared in Holocaust and
Genocide Studies in 1995.96 Similarly, the Holocaust did not receive a
lot of attention in Finland’s public life or in school curriculums in the
94
Ibidem, p. 7.
95
Vesa Vares, “Kuitenkin me voitimme! Uuspatrioottiset tulkinnat talvi- ja jatkoso-
dasta suomalaisissa populääriesityksissä,” in Markku Jokisipilä, ed., Sodan totuudet:
Yksi suomalainen vastaa 5.7 ryssää (Jyväskylä, 2007), pp. 183–212.
96
William B. Cohen & Jörgen Svensson, “Finland and the Holocaust,” Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 9 (1995): 1, pp. 70–93. For a critical examination of Cohen’s and
Svensson’s article, see Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust.”
550 antero holmila
1990s. For example, none of the high school syllabuses between 1963
and 1994 raised the Holocaust as a topic, which had to be covered.97
Despite the lacunae in Holocaust teaching and scholarship in
Finland, globally the field was not only booming but also becoming an
increasingly visible topic in the public memory. The cultural landmark
of the 1990s in popularizing the Holocaust was undoubtedly Steven
Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). As Jeffrey Shandler has mentioned,
the film generated “an extensive public discussion on the nature of the
Holocaust and its mediation.”98 As many critics have observed, the only
true comparison with the public interest that Spielberg’s film stimu-
lated is the 1978 miniseries Holocaust.99 In Finland, Schindler’s List gen-
erated some public discussion about the event but—unlike Holocaust—it
did not extend to comments on Finland’s role or participation in the
Holocaust. Although Schindler’s List was considered as having some
educational value, it was primarily viewed as a product of Hollywood
entertainment, which used a historical episode in the background. An
article in Suomen Kuvalehti illustrates the point. By understanding the
film as a Hollywood product, the understanding seemed to subscribe
to a very Hollywood-like emplotting: namely, the film’s redemptive end
was taken as commendable: “it is glad to note that in this time of cyni-
cism there still are people like Spielberg who have kept their faith in the
goodness in humans.”100 Thus, it can be said that as far as public mem-
ory was concerned, the redemptive discourse of “Spielberg’s Holocaust”
in Finland was largely accepted and not problematized from the per-
spective that as a real historical event the Holocaust hardly had such a
happy end. In the words of Lawrence Langer, “Holocaust memory
redeems only when it falsifies.”101
If the film was conceived of as a tale of redemption, some commen-
tators believed that Spielberg had chosen the Holocaust as a topic in
97
Ikonen, “Holokaustin kuva,” p. 25.
98
Jeffrey Shandler, “Schindler’s Discourse: America Discusses the Holocaust and Its
Mediation, from NBC’s Miniseries to Spielberg’s Film,” in Yosefa Loshitzky, ed.,
Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List (Bloomington, IN, 1997),
p. 153.
99
Mintz, Popular Culture, p. 125.
100
101
Lawrence Langer, Admitting the Holocaust (New York, 1995), p. 35. In fact, Kari
Salminen’s article was exceptional in that he raised the concern about Spielberg’s
“fairy-tale narrative.” However, Salminen did not raise it from the point of Holocaust
history, but rather from the point of Spielberg’s quest for an Oscar award. Suomen
Kuvalehti 10/1994, p. 51.
order to win an Academy Award. Kari Salminen’s article in Suomen

Kuvalehti is telling: “When the Oscars are dished out, the topic is a
decisive factor.” In the article the writer commented that “in reality
Steven Spielberg has never been even close at getting the Oscar […]
Only now when he has directed a three-hour long melodrama about
the genocide in Europe is he likely to join the club.”102
Central to our concern here is not to assess the salience of Spielberg’s
film or the problems of representation and mediation of the Holo-
caust in culture, but rather to examine the ways in which it reverber-
ated in Finland’s public memory. In this light, it is significant that
discussion about the film in Finland did not loop back into thinking
about the Holocaust as a historical event. Neither did it lead to educa-
tional programs about the Holocaust. Finally, unlike in many other
countries, Finnish historians did not spill ink over pondering the film
or the historical events behind it. Despite the fact that the film was the
second most viewed film in Finnish cinema in 1994 with 290,584
filmgoers (after Forrest Gump),103 it did not lead to similar responses to
NBC’s Holocaust. Thus, judging from the differences in and the volume
of the discourses which these two major screen portrayals of the
Holocaust generated, it seems that in the 1990s the interest in the
Holocaust was somewhat lame in general and more importantly,
Finland’s own historical experience remained at arm’s length from the
tragedy.
Sociologist Mika Hannula’s account of Norbert Elias’ work in
Helsingin Sanomat in 1997 neatly encapsulates the main concerns of
Finland’s historical culture and therefore deserves our attention: After
analyzing the importance of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, “coming to
terms with the past” or according to Hannula “learning to live with the
past” in the German context, he reminded the reader that coming to
terms with past traumas was not only a German issue but concerned all
nations, including “Finland, where sore points can be found in the
events of 1918 and in the 1970s period of Finlandization.”104 It seems to
me that ten years later, a similar assessment without a reference to
Finland’s darker side of World War II history would have been virtually
impossible.
102
103
Kati Sinisalo, Elävän kuvan vuosikirja 1995 (Helsinki, 1995), p. 136.
104
Helsingin Sanomat, 3 April 1997, p. C7.
552 antero holmila
New Millennium: Towards an Uneasy Confrontation of the Holocaust?

In Finland, apart from a brief period at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s,
the Holocaust entered the historical landscape in the new millennium.
The reasons were two-fold: first, albeit with the secondary importance,
was the “globalization” of the Holocaust with the introduction of the
Holocaust Remembrance Day in Finland. Second, and more impor-
tantly, the publication of Elina Sana’s controversial book Luovutetut
(“The Extradited”), which detailed wartime civilian and prisoner-of-
war extraditions from Finland to Germany and established the
Holocaust as a topic, which directly related to the unpleasant side of
Finnish wartime history.105 In other words, only in the new millennium
did the Holocaust finally have to be dealt with as part of Finnish his-
torical experience.
In the realm of public remembrance of the Holocaust, the first sign
towards a slowly changing attitude was the unveiling of Finland’s only
Holocaust statue, Apua anovat kädet (“Hands Seeking Help”) in
November 2000. On behalf of Finland and Finnish citizens, the then-
prime minister Paavo Lipponen offered apologies to Helsinki’s Jewish
community, saying that “the [extradition] decision was made by the
Finnish government.”106 Thus, 55 years after the end of the war, Finland
officially recognized its participation in the Holocaust.
Second, in 2002 the Ministry of Education decided to commemorate
the Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in the following year it was
commemorated in similar events as in many other European coun-
tries. Therefore, it also received some public interest. Prime minister
Lipponen was a keynote speaker of the day, held at the main hall of
the University of Helsinki.107 By trying to raise the awareness of the
Holocaust, Lipponen educated the Finns: “Remembrance Day falls
on the day when Auschwitz was liberated. That was the day when the
horrors of Auschwitz were disclosed to contemporaries.”108 In fact,
105
Elina Sana, Luovutetut: Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle (Helsinki, 2003).
106
Helsingin Sanomat, 6 November 2000.
107
Yad Vashem, Finnish Section, www.holocaustinfo.org/info/muistopaiva.html,
retrieved 24 February 2010.
108
Paavo Lipponen, cited in Yad Vashem, Finnish Section, www.holocaustinfo.org/
info/muistopaiva/2003/, retrieved 24 February 2010. As far as the historical substance
is concerned, in Finland, as in most other countries, the liberation of Auschwitz went
largely unnoticed as has been mentioned above. The images that the prime minister
may have had in his mind were the scenes from Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald liber-
ated in April 1945.
Lipponen’s statement was much more about the politics of memory, an

attempt to acknowledge and share the common European heritage,
than about the history of the Holocaust. As Tony Judt has wryly, yet
correctly, observed, “Holocaust recognition is our contemporary
European entry ticket.”109 Although Judt was mainly writing about
Eastern European countries seeking to join the EU, his comment has
also wider resonance. Finland, trying to be the EU’s “good disciple,” has
officially noted the importance of the Holocaust as a commonly shared
building block of European identity.
Yet the recognition has its problems. For one, Finland has found it
difficult to anchor itself to the Holocaust, since the nation barely expe-
rienced it. This, in turn, has contributed to occluding the history of the
tragedy, as history has been used as a hobby-horse of political rhetoric,
as Lipponen’s comments above illustrate. Second, the shared European
narrative, which places the suffering of the Jews at the heart of remem-
brance, has led to the situation where the hierarchy of victims comes
into even sharper focus. This, in turn, must be counter-productive to
the goals of those who promote the idea of shared European memory.
In other words, the idea of shared transnational memory means the
weakening of the nationally constructed historical identity, which is
dominated by a narrative of Finland having fought two defensive wars
between 1939 and 1944; both the Winter War and the Continuation
War. Importantly—so the argument goes—the wars were not of
Finland’s own making, which means that Finnish casualties, sacrificed
in a heroic defense of independence, are more worthy of recognition
and honor than other victims of World War II—Jews or others. Finally,
and most worryingly, the Holocaust Remembrance Day presents a
good opportunity for the Finnish government to portray itself as mor-
ally respectable, consequently glossing over Finland’s dubious contem-
porary record of upholding human rights. It is utterly unethical and
insincere to resort to apologies (however genuine) for sending refugee
Jews back to the hands of their executioners in 1942 while at the same
time the authorities keep sending back Iraqi and Somali refugees to the
warzones they have managed to escape. In this context the claim of
using the Holocaust—and the Memorial Day—as a pedagogical tool to
instruct about human rights rings hollow and abuses the memory of
those who died and the pain of those who survived the Holocaust.
109
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London, 2005), p. 803.
554 antero holmila
In any case, despite the prime minister’s best efforts to raise the
awareness of the Holocaust they did not find much resonance in the
media, which by and large ignored the whole affair. Similarly, no words
were raised about Finland’s connections with the episode. For example,
the regional newspaper Keskisuomalainen published a column about
Remembrance Day on the editorial page. The writing was about the
persecution of women in many parts of the world, religious persecu-
tion and racism. Nothing about the Holocaust or Lipponen’s speech
was mentioned.110
The Holocaust truly exploded into Finnish historical culture with a
Finnish-grown controversy. Namely, when Elina Sana’s book Luovutetut
was published in November 2003, it cast a dim light on Finland’s war-
time policy in general and the country’s treatment of Russian prison-
ers-of-war and Jews in particular. A big part of the uproar was caused
by her claim that Finland had sent far more Jews (47 instead of eight)
to Germany.111 Her claim went straight into Finland’s national identity,
which predominantly believed Finland to have had a clean slate during
the war; Finland’s war was separate from the Nazis at all ideological
and pragmatic levels. Sana’s challenge, then, was serious: Although in
academia it had been recognized that anti-Bolshevism was one of the
central tenets on which the young state was built after the independ-
ence in 1917 and the Civil War in 1918,112 in public memory such a
view was less obvious, as has been illustrated in reference to Pietola’s
and Seppälä’s works on Finland’s occupation of Eastern Karelia.
Further, after Sana’s work Finns had to acknowledge that in many cases
Finnish anti-Bolshevism translated into gross violations of human
rights. Anti-Bolshevism, then, was not just a theoretical or mental cat-
egory, but it found its equivalent in real actions. Usually helpless pris-
oners-of-war and ethnic Russian civilians paid the price, as Pietola and
Seppälä tried to argue in the 1980s.
110
Keskisuomalainen, 1 February 2003.
111
The purpose here is not to deal with the substance of Sana’s work as it has been
assessed elsewhere. For example, see Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust”; and Hana
Worthen, “Tip of the Iceberg? Finland and the Holocaust,” East European Jewish Affairs
39 (2009): 1, pp. 121–33.
112
For example, Kari Immonen, Ryssästä saa puhua… Neuvostoliitto suomalaisessa
julkisuudessa ja kirjat julkisuuden muotona 1918–1939 (Helsinki, 1987); Heikki
Luostarinen, Perivihollinen: Suomen oikeistolehdistön Neuvostoliittoa koskeva vihol-
liskuva sodassa 1941–44; Tausta ja sisältö (Tampere, 1986); Heikki Luostarinen,
“Finnish Russophobia: The Story of an Enemy Image,” Journal of Peace Research 26
(1989): 2, pp. 123–37; Outi Karesmaa, Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä: Rasistinen
venäläisviha Suomessa 1917–1923 (Helsinki, 1998).
Another part—moving away from organic Finnish anti-

Bolshevism—of the Sana debate was caused by her claim that “official
history writing”—that is, academic history—had been silent over these
unpleasant issues for too long. Historians responded by pointing out
that Sana’s work was too judgmental instead of analytical to pass as
“objective” research.113 Similarly, as critics pointed out, many of the
claims she had brought to light had in fact been dealt with already in
the 1990s, but because of mainly being either Master’s or PhD disserta-
tions they did not attract public interest.114 Others, while recognizing
the value of Sana’s work in bringing Finnish war crimes into the public
sphere, criticized her work for being too contradictory and defective to
be considered as scholarly research.115
Responding to Sana’s allegations, the leading Finnish historical jour-
nal ran a special issue on Jews, the Holocaust and extraditions from
Finland in 2004.116 Even before that, in the editorial of the first issue to
come out after Sana’s study, the editor-in-chief Juha Sihvola had already
responded to her allegations: “Historiallinen Aikakauskirja does not
evade the responsibility of grappling with the traumatic dimensions of
Finnish history […] it looks like in the case of wartime extraditions to
Germany as well as postwar extraditions to the Soviet Union critical
history research has a lot to do.”117
By assessing the impact of Sana’s work seven years after its publica-
tion, her contribution to the historical discourse is many-fold: First, on
a general level the book forced a public debate where concerned citi-
zens, researchers, journalists and political actors, spearheaded by
President Tarja Halonen, participated in assessing the state of Finland’s
historical culture.118 Second, the book gave a jolt to thinking about the
Holocaust as a problem, which needed to be confronted properly by
academia and the public memory. The latter materialized when
Professor Emeritus Heikki Ylikangas wrote a stage play for the National
113
Oikeus 1/2004.
114
Jukka Lindstedt, “Juutalaisten sotavankien luovutukset,” Historiallinen
Aikakauskirja 102 (2004): 1, pp. 144–65.
115
For example, Henrik Meinander, “Intressant men bristfälligt om fångutlämnin-
garna,” Hufvudstadsbladet, 14 December 2003.
116
Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 102 (2004): 2.
117
Juha Sihvola, “Historian sumeat ja kauheat valinnat,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja
101 (2003): 3, p. 491.
118
Jouko Tilli, Luovutuskeskustelu menneisyyspolitiikkana: Elina Sanan Luovutetut
jatkosotaan liittyvän historiapolicyn kritiikkinä, unpublished MA thesis (University of
Jyväskylä, 2006), p. 138.
556 antero holmila
Theatre about the extradition of the eight Jews. The play was based on
his report to the Finnish government, which he was asked to draft after
the Simon Wiesenthal Center had written an open letter to President
Halonen calling for a full investigation of Finnish deportations to Nazi
Germany and punishment of those responsible. Similarly, in late 2005
an independent theatre in Lahti staged a play Minä olen Adolf Eichmann
(“I Am Adolf Eichmann”), which also toured in Helsinki. The play was
not about Finland and the Holocaust. Instead, Eichmann was used as
an analogy about people’s general ignorance of the world’s wrongs. Last
and most importantly, the biggest contribution which Elina Sana’s
work caused was that, after Ylikangas’ recommendation, it led to a
research program under the auspices of the Finnish National Archives,
which investigated all prisoner-of-war and civilian extraditions from
Finland to other countries between 1939 and 1955.
In 2008 research results from the project started to come out and
the findings were tremendous—both in terms of empirical findings
as well as a shift in more general historical discourse. The translated
titles of the studies produced in the project bear witness to the shift
from an uncritical patriotic discourse to the more critical one: “Secret
Brothers-in-Arms,” “Prisoner Killings” and “German Prison Camps
in Finland.” Additionally, other similar works—some which have
raised new controversies—detailing the darker side of Finland’s war
include “Finnish Eastern Karelia, 1941–44,” “Will the Front Collapse?”
and “Ugly War: The Silenced History of the Winter War and the
Continuation War.”119
Although many of the books could be related—at least implicitly—
to the Holocaust, Oula Silvennoinen’s Salaiset Aseveljet (“Secret
Brothers-in-Arms”) deserves a closer look here—not so much in terms
of its content as it has been dealt with in Silvennoinen’s own chapter
above, but because the way in which it was received publicly is illustra-
tive of the current historical culture in Finland. What is more, the
reception of his dissertation exemplifies Finland’s current historical
understanding of the Holocaust and the varieties of silence, which still
surround it.
119
yhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki, 2008); Kujala, Vankisurmat; Lars Westerlund, Saksan
vankileirit Suomessa ja raja-alueilla 1941–1944 (Helsinki, 2008); Hyytiä, “Helmi
Suomen maakuntien joukossa”; Heikki Ylikangas, Romahtaako rintama? Suomi puna-
armeijan puristuksessa kesällä 1944 (Helsinki, 2007); Sari Näre & Jenni Kirves, eds.,
Ruma sota: Talvi- ja jatkosodan vaiettu historia (Helsinki, 2008).
First, the work explicitly linked Finland to the Holocaust with the
revelation of the German “Einsatzkommando Finnland” being active
in Finnish Lapland. Second, Silvennoinen has stated very clearly on a
number of occasions that indeed the operations of this unit and
Finland’s participation in it cannot be seen in any other way than the
nation’s involvement in the Nazi genocide.120
Professional historians as well as journalists and commentators
praised Silvennoinen’s work, which was a “service to the nation’s
historical consciousness,” as one reviewer put it.121 But what was meant
by Finland’s historical consciousness? In what way was it hit? On
21 September 2009 Swedish historian-journalist Henrik Arnstadt rev-
eled in Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter that “Finland par-
ticipated in the Holocaust.” In Finland, in contrast, Silvennoinen’s
study was assessed from a different premise. Namely, it was considered
in terms of its contribution to the separate war thesis—or more pre-
cisely, as Helsingin Sanomat put it, his dissertation was “the last nail in
the coffin of the separate war thesis.”122 No space was used for ponder-
ing what was Einsatzkommando Finnland and what it revealed about
the nature of Finland’s war effort. A few months after the publication
of the dissertation the editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat returned
to the separate war thesis in his editorial column. According to him,
the younger generation of scholars was looking at the war years from a
distance, which contributed to a welcomed criticism but also to some
“overstatements.” What these were, he did not mention.123 Thus, it is
striking that in Finland Silvennoinen’s work still could not be consid-
ered in terms of its most significant historical discovery. Instead, the
meaning of the Einsatzkommando Finnland was totally hidden under
the (meta-historical) discussion about the separate war.
***
Over the last two decades in most of the Western world the
Holocaust has become the referent for collective suffering during
World War II. In Finland, however, the Holocaust usually does not
120
For example, Kanava 1/2009; and Oula Silvennoinen, “Finland and the
Holocaust: What we know and what we don’t know,” paper presented at the Living
History Forum, Stockholm, Sweden, 13 February 2010.
121
Jukka Tarkka, “Suomalaiset tekivät synkkyyden töitä,” Helsingin Sanomat,
24 September 2009.
122
Helsingin Sanomat, 28 September 2009, p. D4.
123
Janne Virkkunen, “Jatkosota—erillissota?” Helsingin Sanomat, 30 November
2008.
558 antero holmila
stand as a yardstick for wartime suffering and gross negligence of

human rights; that role is reserved for the vast number of Stalin’s vic-
tims. By and large, the Holocaust is in the margins of the Finnish his-
torical consciousness due to two crucial factors, which on the one hand
relates to the historical context of Finland in World War II and on the
other, to the politics of history in the postwar years. First, without
restoring the traditional elite’s defense, the fact still remains that only a
handful of Jews were deported from Finland, and—unlike in many
other European countries—the action caused public protests. If in
numerous European countries the number of Jewish victims was con-
siderably higher—or at the same level—than the number of other casu-
alties, in Finland the situation was reversed: Finland lost over 90,000 of
its citizens in the war and inflicted many more deaths on others—
mainly Soviet soldiers and many civilians—but hardly any Jews. These
factors have made it nearly impossible to find a context in which the
Holocaust and the fate of the eight Jewish refugees could be embedded.
Additionally, the issues—such as the question of plundered Jewish
property—which have contributed to the framework of European-
wide recognition of the Holocaust has not touched Finland very exten-
sively, meaning that there has not been a similar kind of impetus for
grappling with the Holocaust’s impact in our contemporary society.
Thus, the trouble of finding a context for the Holocaust in the
Finnish historical culture is not solely the result of Finnish unwilling-
ness or negationism in dealing with the Holocaust. Instead, it is born
out of the factual basis that very few Jews under Finland’s protection
were killed in the Holocaust, very few people witnessed it, participated
in it or somehow benefitted from it. Therefore one must be aware of the
fact that there simply is a limit of “how much Holocaust” one can
extract from Finland’s historical landscape.
Second, the politics of history has also had an impact on Finland’s
relation with the Holocaust: during the Cold War era, it was very dif-
ficult to deal with the darker side of both the Finnish and Soviet
conduct of war without the matter being turned into a heated and
politicized issue. Further, Soviet rhetoric on the Great Patriotic War,
which marginalized the Holocaust, suited both the Finnish conserva-
tive elite as well as the Moscow-influenced left: Finnish left-wing
opinion dovetailed Moscow’s opinion, so if Jewish suffering did not
suit the Soviet Union’s master narrative of World War II, the Finnish
radical left was not so interested in it either. For the conservative
elite, as we have seen, minimalizing the Holocaust’s impact was
convenient as it helped to sustain the view that the war on the Eastern
Front had been traditional warfare against the Bolshevik threat.
Additionally, by avoiding dealing with the most horrific crimes of the
old co-belligerent, there was less chance that uncomfortable questions
about Finland’s own murky war record would be raised. Such consen-
sus is only now slowly breaking up.
Another characteristic feature, which in many ways sets the Finnish
confrontation with the Holocaust apart from most other European
countries, is that throughout the decades there has been a lack of a
Jewish voice and distinctly Jewish memory in the Finnish public
agenda. Finland only received a handful of camp survivors after the
war and as such there was neither a “survivor community” nor “survi-
vor literature,” not to mention public figures who were survivors and
thus authorities on the matter. A striking example of this is the first
official Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2003. All Finland’s Holocaust
survivors attended the ceremony: it was three of them. Similarly, the
main concerns with the small Finnish Jewish community have been
elsewhere than keeping the Holocaust on the public agenda in Finland.
For example, the main debates and controversies regarding Finland
and the Holocaust have not featured many Jewish opinions. Perhaps
the only notable exception to the rule was the debate caused by the air-
ing of the TV miniseries Holocaust in the spring of 1979. Thus, in a
long postwar perspective the role of Finland’s Jewish community in
bringing the Holocaust onto the public agenda has been far less domi-
nant than in other European countries, not to mention the United
States.
As I have sketched out in this chapter, the Holocaust has remained
on the margins of Finland’s historical consciousness not only because
of the historical context and politics of history but also because of
lack of interest from Finnish historians in the subject matter. As such,
when the Holocaust has been even mentioned, historians have used
diverse strategies, practices and myths, which have silenced the Jewish
experience from Finnish history and historiography. The following
two statements separated by the time span of over sixty years are
indicative. In the last chapter of his PhD dissertation, entitled “the
conspiracy of silence,” Oula Silvennoinen formulated the Finnish men-
tality thus:
the question [about Finland’s role in the Holocaust] has not even been
left open [for interpretation] in scholarship, but without exception
researchers have used silence for an argument that for some reason
560 antero holmila
actions were different in Finland than in any other parts of the German
Eastern Front.124
In 1945, the above-mentioned Finnish SS-volunteer and author Sakari
Lappi-Seppälä confronted the early Finnish mindset towards the
Holocaust: “[In Finland] all the stories one hears about Germany are
very positive,” but as he continues,
all expensive women’s and men’s furs and warm winter clothes were from
[…] Polish Jews […w]ho walked to the fields in a line, where they were
ordered to undress […] after undressing they climbed onto a parapet of
a mass grave to wait for their executioners’ liberating machine-gun fire
[…] The assets of millions and millions of people were thus robbed and
they were removed from the world in the same outfit as they once were
born […] But this is not true, nobody can believe that, for others would
have told about it too, was the answer I received.125
Finally, as becomes clear with the reception of Silvennoinen’s disserta-
tion in 2008, it seems that Finnish historical consciousness is still
getting to grips with the over 60 year long legacy of the separate war
thesis. More than the Holocaust as such, Finland’s cooperation with
Nazi Germany’s warfare is the overpowering historical trauma that
needs working through. If the collective memory of the Holocaust,
Finland’s institutional and mental involvement in it, is to be honestly
considered, letting go of the separate war thesis is the prerequisite.
124
Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet, p. 330.
125
Lappi-Seppälä, Haudat Dnjeprin varrella, pp. 215–7. Emphasis added.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: STUDIES ON
FINNISH HISTORY IN WORLD WAR II IN ENGLISH
a. General Presentations
- “Aspects of Security: The Case of Independent Finland,” theme issue on Finnish

political and military history with several articles, Revue internationale d’historie
militaire 62 (1985).
- Jussila, Osmo, Seppo Hentilä and Jukka Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy to a Modern
State: A Political History of Finland since 1809 (London, 1999).
- Kirby, David, A Concise History of Finland (Cambridge, 2006).
- Meinander, Henrik, A History of Finland: Directions, Structures, Turning Points
(London, 2011).
- Ojala, Jari, Jari Eloranta and Jukka Jalava, eds., The Road to Prosperity: An Economic
History of Finland (Helsinki, 2006).
- Vehviläinen, Olli, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia
(Basingstoke, 2002).
b. Political History
- Beck, Peter J., “The Winter War in the International Context: Britain and the League
of Nations’s Role in the Russo-Finnish Dispute, 1939–1940,” Journal of Baltic
Studies 12 (1981): 1, pp. 58–73.
- Berry, R. Michael, American Foreign Policy and the Finnish Exception: Ideological
Preferences and Wartime Realities (Helsinki, 1987).
- Gerrard, Craig, The Foreign Office and Finland: Diplomatic Sideshow (London, 2005).
- Heikkilä, Hannu, The Question of European Reparations in Allied Policy, 1943–1947
(Helsinki, 1988).
- Jacobs, Travis Beal, America and the Winter War 1939–1940 (New York, 1981).
- Jakobson, Max, The Diplomacy of the Winter War: An Account of the Russo-Finnish
War, 1939–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1961).
- Jokipii, Mauno, “Finland’s Entrance into the Continuation War,” Revue internation-
ale d’historie militaire 53 (1983), pp. 85–103.
- Krosby, Hans Peter, Finland, Germany, and the Soviet Union, 1940–1941: The
Petsamo Dispute (Madison, WI, 1968).
- Lundin, Charles L., Finland in the Second World War (Bloomington, IN, 1957).
- Nevakivi, Jukka, The Appeal That Was Never Made: The Allies, Scandinavia, and the
Finnish Winter War, 1939–1940 (London, 1976).
- Nevakivi, Jukka, “A Decisive Armistice 1944–1947: Why Was Finland Not
Sovietized?” Scandinavian Journal of History 19 (1994): 2, pp. 91–115.
- Polvinen, Tuomo, Between East and West: Finland in International Politics, 1944–
1947 (Minneapolis, MN, 1986).
- Rentola, Kimmo, “The Finnish Communists and the Winter War,” Journal of
Contemporary History 33 (1998): 4, pp. 591–607.
- Ruotsila, Markku, Churchill and Finland: A Study in Anticommunism and Geopolitics
(London, 2005).
- Schwartz, Andrew J., America and the Russo-Finnish War (Washington DC, 1960).
562 selected bibliography
- Upton, Anthony F., Finland in Crisis 1940–1941: A Study in Small-power Politics

(London, 1964).
c. Military History
- Brooke, Justin, Volunteers: The Full Story of the British Volunteers in Finland 1939–41
(Upton-upon-Severn, 1990).
- Chew, Allen F., The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War (East
Lansing, MI, 1971).
- Edwards, Robert, The Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939–40 (New York,
2008).
- Finland’s War Years 1939–1945: A list of books and articles concerning the Winter War
and the Continuation War, excluding literature in Finnish and Russian, a bibliogra-
phy compiled by Kristina Nyman (Helsinki, 1973).
- Kulkov, E.N., and O.A. Rzheshevsky, eds., Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War 1939–
40, ed. in English Harold Shukman, transl. Tatyana Sokokina (London, 2002).
- Lunde, Henrik O., Finland’s War of Choice: The Troubled German-Finnish Coalition
in World War II (Havertown, PA, 2011).
- Mann, Chris, and Christer Jörgensen, Hitler’s Arctic War: The German Campaigns in
Norway, Finland and the USSR 1940–1945 (New York, 2002).
- Manninen, Ohto, The Soviet Plans for the North Western Theatre of Operations in
1939–1944 (Helsinki, 2004).
- Reese, Roger R., “Lessons of the Winter War: A Study in the Military Effectiveness of
the Red Army, 1939–1940,” Journal of Military History 72 (2008): 3, pp. 825–52.
- Ries, Tomas, Cold Will: The Defence of Finland (London, 1988).
- Screen, J.E.O., Mannerheim: The Finnish Years (London, 2000).
- Tillotson, H.M., Finland at Peace & War 1918–1993 (Norwich, 1996).
- Trotter, William R., Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War 1939–1940 (Chapel
Hill, NC, 1991).
- Van Dyke, Carl, The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–40 (London, 1997).
d. Social and Cultural History
- Ahlbäck, Anders, and Ville Kivimäki, “Masculinities at War: Finland 1918–1950,”

Norma—Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies 3 (2008): 2, pp. 114–31.
- Broberg, Gunnar, and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Steriliza-
tion Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland (East Lansing, MI, 1996).
- Kivimäki, Ville, and Tuomas Tepora, “War of Hearts: Love and Collective Attachment
as Integrating Factors in Finland during World War II,” Journal of Social History 43
(2009): 2, pp. 285–305.
- Korppi-Tommola, Aura, “War and Children in Finland during the Second World
War,” Paedagogica Historica 44 (2008): 4, pp. 445–55.
- Lähteenmäki, Maria, “A Village in Crisis: Finnish Lapland in the War Years, 1939–
45,” Ethnologia Fennica: Finnish Studies in Ethnology 27 (1999), pp. 30–6.
- Luostarinen, Heikki, “Finnish Russophobia: The Story of an Enemy Image,” Journal
of Peace Research 26 (1989): 2, pp. 123–37.
- Nevala-Nurmi, Seija-Leena, “Girls and Boys in the Finnish Voluntary Defence
Movement,” Ennen ja Nyt (2006): 3–4, www.ennenjanyt.net/2006_3/nevala.html,
accessed 8 September 2010.
- Pimiä, Tenho, “German Folk Culture Research in Karelia in the 1930s: Ideological
Decoration of Nazism or Serious Research on Ancient History?” Ethnologia
Fennica: Finnish Studies in Ethnology 31 (2004), pp. 12–20.
selected bibliography 563
- Pipping, Knut, Infantry Company as a Society, Swedish original in 1947, ed. and
transl. Petri Kekäle (Helsinki, 2008).
- Tepora, Tuomas, “Redirecting Violence: The Finnish Flag as a Sacrificial Symbol,
1917–1945,” Studies in Ethnicity & Nationalism 7 (2007): 3, pp. 153–70.
- Tuominen, Marja, “A Good World after all? Recovery after the Lapland War,” in The
North Calotte: Perspectives on the Histories and Cultures of Northernmost Europe,
ed. Maria Lähteenmäki and Päivi Maria Pihlaja (Inari, 2005), pp. 148–61.
- Vehviläinen, Olli, “German Armed Forces and the Finnish Civilian Population
1941–44,” Scandinavian Journal of History 12 (1987): 4, pp. 345–58.
e. Finland and the Holocaust / Civilian Internees and the

Prisoners-of-War
- Cohen, William B., and Jörgen Svensson, “Finland and the Holocaust,” Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 9 (1995): 1, pp. 70–93.
- Holmila, Antero, “Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment,” Holocaust and
Genocide Studies 23 (2009): 3, pp. 413–40.
- Holmila, Antero, Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press,
1945–50 (Basingstoke, 2011).
- Kujala, Antti, “Illegal Killing of Soviet Prisoners of War by Finns during the Finno-
Soviet Continuation War of 1941–44,” Slavonic and East European Review 87
(2009): 3, pp. 429–51.
- Raivo, Petri J., “Oblivion Without Guilt: The Holocaust and Memories of the Second
World War in Finland,” in Gender, Place and Memory in the Modern Jewish
Experience: Re-placing Ourselves, eds. Judith Tydor Baumel and Tova Cohen
(London, 2003), pp. 108–25.
- Rautkallio, Hannu, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews
(New York, 1987).
- Silvennoinen, Oula, “Still Under Examination: Coming to Terms with Finland’s
Alliance with Nazi Germany,” Yad Vashem Studies 37 (2009): 2, pp. 67–92.
- Westerlund, Lars, ed., POW Deaths and People Handed Over to Germany and the
Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report by the Finnish National Archives
(Helsinki, 2008).
- Westerlund, Lars, ed., Prisoners of War and Internees: A Book of Articles by the
National Archives (Helsinki, 2008).
f. Memory and Historiography of War
- Armstrong, Karen, Remembering Karelia: A Family’s Story of Displacement during

and after the Finnish Wars (Oxford, 2004).
- Fingerroos, Outi, “Karelia—A Place of Memories and Utopias,” Oral Tradition
Journal 23 (2008): 2, pp. 235–54.
- Heiskanen, Anu, “A Useless War Memory: Erotic Fraternization, German Soldiers
and Gender in Finland,” in The Gender of Memory: Cultures of Remembrance in
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe, eds. Sylvia Paletschek and Sylvia
Schraut (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), pp. 204–20.
- Jokisipilä, Markku, “Finnish History Culture and the Second World War,” in Finnland
und Deutschland: Studien zur Geschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Bernd
Wegner et al. (Hamburg, 2009), pp. 174–91.
- Kinnunen, Tiina, “Gender and Politics: Patriotic Women in Finnish Public Memory
after 1944,” in The Gender of Memory: Cultures of Remembrance in Nineteenth- and
564 selected bibliography
Twentieth-Century Europe, eds. Sylvia Paletschek and Sylvia Schraut (Frankfurt am

Main, 2008), pp. 181–203.
- Kinnunen, Tiina, “Images of Patriotic Women and the Contested Concepts of
Patriotism, post-1944 Finland,” Women’s History Magazine 52 (2006), pp. 8–14.
- Loipponen, Jaana, Telling Absence: War Widows, Loss and Memory, PhD thesis
(University of Edinburgh, 2009), http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3304, accessed
17 September 2010.
- Meinander, Henrik, “A Separate Story? Interpretations of Finland in the Second
World War,” in Nordic Narratives of the Second World War: National Historiographies
Revisited, eds. Henrik Stenius, Mirja Österberg & Johan Östling (Lund, 2011),
pp. 55–77.
- Olsson, Pia, “To Toil and to Survive: Wartime Memories of Finnish Women,” Human
Affairs 12 (2002): 2, pp. 127–38.
- Raivo, Petri J., “ ‘This Is Where They Fought’: Finnish War Landscapes as a National
Heritage,” in Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory, eds. Timothy
G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper (New Brunswick, NJ, 2006),
pp. 145–64.
INDEX
Agamben, Giorgio 507 Axis Powers 74, 89, 111, 122, 135, 138,
Aho, Juhani 486 173, 339, 362, 369, 549
Ahonen, Sirkka 36, 462 see also Hungary; Italy; Japan;
Ahtisaari, Martti 466, 494 Romania
Ahto, Sampo 20, 541–3, 547–8
air raids 1, 11 (fig.), 59, 71–2, 78, Baltic Sea (region) 2, 52 (map), 56, 64,
144, 153, 172 (table), 173, 181, 191, 65 (map), 68, 75, 77 (map), 107, 206,
193, 195, 198, 212 (fig.), 215, 223, 230, 399
259–60, 326, 340 Baltic States 3, 5, 49, 52 (map), 53–4,
Airo, Aksel 174 57–8, 65 (map), 67, 76, 88, 94, 97, 191,
Ajossaari Island 377 251, 274, 379, 381, 399, 493
Åland Islands 52 (map) see also Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania
Alasjärvi, Lake 508, 511, 513, 515 Bay of Vyborg 150, 163–4, 461
Alexander I, Czar 49 Behring, Emil Adolf von 338
Allied Control Commission 9, 25 n.41, Belorussia 80–1, 159–60, 164, 381, 387
30, 85 (fig.), 86, 89, 169, 390, 392, Benelux countries 5, 67, 97, 129, 338
478 n.96 Berlin 65 (map), 66, 68, 80, 124–5, 160,
Allied Powers (Western Powers) 187, 369, 388
during and after the Continuation Beveridge, William 352
War 1, 8, 76, 78–80, 82–3, 87–9, Bion, Wilfred 291–2
113–4, 128, 135, 155 (map), 156, Björklund, Johannes 270
272, 394, 404, 457, 466, 480, 491 Björkman, Sven and Rakel 279, 284,
during the Winter War and the 298, 300–2, 304–6, 308–10
Interim Peace 2, 15 n.15, 22, 62–4, Blomstedt, Yrjö 529 n.28, 544–5
65 (map), 78, 98, 150, 187 Blücher, Wipert von 26, 93, 95–6,
see also France; Great Britain; United 100–1, 106–7, 109–10, 112, 116–23,
States 125, 129, 131, 133–4, 138
Anderson, Benedict 271, 499 Bonaparte, Napoléon 49
Anthoni, Arno 528–30, 534, Breyer, Hans Joachim 370
537, 544–5 Buchwiser, Arthur 372
anti-communism 6, 8–9, 25, 43, 50–1, Butler, Judith 34
53, 55–6, 58, 71, 74, 87, 94–5, 104,
106, 108, 113, 178, 195–6, 259, 360, Castrén, Erik 388, 389, 523
362, 440–1, 445, 470, 522, 525 (fig.), casualties, see deaths
554–5 centrism and liberalism, political 9, 54,
see also Russophobia; 56, 70, 79, 123, 129, 206, 237, 240, 244,
war propaganda 256, 319, 326, 448, 521, 527
Antonescu, Ion 104, 110–2, 135 children 18, 30, 193, 196, 198,
Arctic Ocean 52 (map), 83, 86, 142, 206, 208, 210, 212 (fig.), 213–6,
145, 149 218–9, 221–3, 231–2, 242, 255, 260,
Arendt, Hannah 534 282, 300–1, 316–7, 320–4, 326–35,
Armistice of 1944 1, 2, 25, 30, 81, 83, 338–43, 346–8, 350–3, 407, 409–10,
86–7, 89–90, 165, 169, 223–4, 247, 421, 423, 427, 437, 472, 475–8,
267, 272–3, 390–1, 439, 490 505–6, 519
Arnstadt, Henrik 557 see also deaths, infant mortality;
Auer, Väinö 403 evacuations, “war children”;
Auschwitz 77 (map), 523, 527, 533, 543, families
552, 552 n.108 Churchill, Winston 78
566 index
citizenship 42, 53, 177–8, 181, 185–6, Denmark 2, 5, 30 n.57, 58, 64–5, 65
234–5, 237–8, 248, 256–7, 269, 274, (map), 67, 75, 97, 101, 117, 128, 163,
315, 317, 317 n.5, 319, 324, 332, 346, 217, 249, 317 n.6, 319, 337–8, 343,
351–4, 386–8, 443, 521–2 346, 522
civic and non-governmental see also Nordic orientation and social
organizations 33, 195, 209–10, 213, state in Finland
240, 316, 318, 321–3, 325–6, 330, deportations and internments 8, 18–9,
336–7, 344 (fig.), 353, 445, 448, 451, 27, 27 n.47, 43, 74–5, 228–9 (map and
488, 491, 496–8, 506–7, 514 table), 230, 325, 385–92, 472 n.77,
see also Civil Guards; Lotta Svärd 523–4, 526–30, 534–5, 537, 540,
Organization 544–6, 552, 555–6, 558
Civil Guards (Defense Corps) 25 n.41, see also Eastern Karelia, Finnish
30, 50–1, 53, 87, 143–4, 175, 177, 195, internment camps; evacuations
210, 212 (fig.), 213, 237, 358, 337 Dietl, Eduard 126 (fig.)
Civil War of 1918 23, 36, 41, 50–1, 55, DiNardo, Richard 113, 138
177, 182, 194, 195, 233, 235–41, Doneson, Judith 540–1
243–5, 247–8, 269, 273–4, 315, Donner, Sven E. 253
321, 358, 443, 467, 469–70, 473, Dvina (Viena) Karelia, see Eastern
488–9, 574 Karelia
class, see social strata
Cohen, William 549 Eastern Front, German-Soviet 2, 8,
communism, Finnish 3, 9, 25, 53–4, 58, 15–6, 69, 74, 76, 77 (map) 79–81, 93,
63, 70, 86–9, 91, 181, 195, 200, 237, 100, 104, 108, 122, 152, 157–9, 166,
243–4, 246, 261, 290, 317 n.5, 378, 173, 202, 369–70, 375, 456, 490, 535,
442, 447, 449, 467, 529–30 539, 559–60
see also Soviet Union, communism Operation Barbarossa 1, 5–6, 11 (fig.),
and Stalinism; youth radicalism, 13–6, 22, 40, 68, 76, 103, 105–7,
postwar 112, 120, 135–6, 152–4, 155 (map),
conservatism 9, 19, 30, 79, 87, 94, 98, 224, 369, 442, 521, 539
131, 134, 243, 249, 254, 326, 329, Eastern Karelia 2 n.1, 27 n.45, 51, 52
440, 443, 467, 473, 501, 537, 540–1, (map), 263, 395–6, 399–400, 403–4,
545, 558 406 (fig.), 483–90, 498–9
Croatia 6, 135 Finnish internment camps 31 (fig.),
culture, see everyday life and culture, 43, 228–9 (map and table), 384
wartime, (fig.), 386–9, 472–3, 547–8
Czechoslovakia 5, 6, 90, 135 Finnish military occupation 8, 13,
16–7, 43, 69, 71–2, 74, 76, 154, 155
Danielsbacka, Mirkka 257 (map), 156–9, 164, 198–9, 249–53,
deaths 267, 382, 396, 404, 423, 440, 455,
casualties of war 172 (table), 215–6, 471, 484, 499
266 (fig.), 274, 329, 330 n.49, 340, Finnish occupation policies 7, 17, 19,
373, 389, 472, 548, 558 31 (fig.), 43–4, 228–9 (map and
culture of sacrifice and military table), 259–60, 382, 384–90, 392,
burials 35, 41, 178, 197, 233–5, 396–8, 404, 407–23, 425, 428–31,
236, 238–40, 244, 265 (fig.), 275, 448, 478 n.96, 547, 554
435, 439–40, 458, 504 (fig.), see also evacuations, Soviet citizens;
525 (fig.) Finnic peoples; Greater Finland
infant mortality 321–2, 330, ideology; Karelianism
332–3, 349 economy 18, 25, 102, 109, 194, 203–5,
prisoner-of-war mortality 27, 43, 207–9, 214, 231–2, 315, 319–20,
172 n.2, 360–1, 364, 367, 372, 322–3, 347, 376, 495, 497–8
374–6, 378–80, 389–90, 393, 425, agriculture 75, 86, 159, 161, 183, 198,
548 204–10, 214, 224, 227, 230, 232,
suicides 264 296–7, 341, 363–4, 502
index 567
food supply 8, 38 n.76, 43, 67, 74–5, Lapland 29 n.51, 193, 224, 228–9
80, 193, 205–7, 211 (fig.), 323 n.7, (map and table), 335, 340, 348–9,
327, 333, 339–43, 346–8, 350, 364, 527 n.22
376–8, 383 (fig.), 394 Soviet citizens 228–9 (map and table),
foreign trade 6, 8, 18 n.22, 40, 67–8, 407–8, 423
75, 79–80, 91, 96, 98–9, 103, 137, “war children” 30 n.57, 216–7, 223,
168, 203–4, 206 228–9 (map and table), 260, 331–2,
human resources and labor 41, 60, 75, 340, 342–3, 345 (fig.), 475–6
87, 153, 158, 181, 206–10, 211 (fig.), see also deportations and internments
213–5, 230–1, 297–9, 323, 363–4, everyday life and culture, wartime 18,
372–3, 424 29, 41, 196, 205, 208, 210, 213–4,
industry 59, 70, 88, 152, 183, 191–2, 218–20, 227, 262, 264, 298, 300–4
203–4, 207–8, 219, 350, 385, experiences, frontline 148–9, 158,
441, 448 161–2, 184–5, 208, 213, 216, 257–9,
Pechenga (Petsamo) nickel 261–2, 269, 274, 277, 281–3, 287–90,
mines 14 n.13, 18 n.22, 67–8, 98–9, 292–4, 296–7, 304–6, 308–9, 311, 367,
137, 152 386, 416, 444–6, 461, 522
reconstruction, postwar 232, 315,
349–53 Fabricius, Wilhelm 111
see also war reparations Fagerholm, K.A. 194
Ehrnrooth, Adolf 435–6, 463 families 42, 86, 193, 196–8, 205, 210,
Eichmann, Adolf 532–4, 545, 556 213–6, 219–23, 227, 232, 254–5,
Elgenmark, Olle 343 277–312, 320–1, 324, 330, 334, 345
Elias, Norbert 551 (fig.), 352–4, 423, 427, 436–7, 467–8,
Elisenvaara 472 475–9
emotions 33, 37, 42, 193, 196, 233, 245, see also children; gender and sexuality
247, 253–5, 265 (fig.), 278, 281, 285 “finlandization” 447–9, 463, 481, 551
(fig.), 286 (fig.), 287, 291, 293–4, Finnic peoples 2 n.1, 43–4, 224, 230,
307–11, 345 (fig.), 477, 514 366–7, 374, 379–82, 386–8, 396–400,
Enckell, Carl 131, 133 402, 407–9, 415, 422, 424–5, 427–9,
Enroth, Curt and Martha 280, 284, 290, 431, 484, 488, 490
298, 300–12 see also Eastern Karelia; evacuations,
epidemics 327, 329, 333–5, 338–40, Ingrians; Ingria region; Tver;
347–9 Vepsian district
Erfurth, Waldemar 93, 109–10, 116, Finnish Army
118–9, 129, 131, 133 air and naval forces 142, 163–4,
Erkko, Eljas 58–9 168–9, 212 (fig.)
Ervasti, August Vilhelm 487 cohesion and combat
Estonia 5, 8, 51, 52 (map), 65 (map), motivation 24–5, 139–40, 157,
78–9, 81, 85 (fig.), 153, 162, 226 (fig.), 177–8, 181–7, 196, 200, 243,
230, 366, 382, 387, 399, 424 254–64, 268, 270, 272
see also Baltic States discipline and executions 23–4, 167,
European Union 453, 494, 497–8, 553 184–7, 257, 267, 269–70
evacuations 18, 191, 208, 210, 223, 225 foreign volunteers 8, 61, 151, 366–7,
(fig.), 228–9 (map and table), 232, 423, 478 n.96
324–8, 330–1, 335, 339, 350, 353 leadership 21, 55–6, 68–9, 74, 79–81,
Finnish Karelians 29 n.51, 36, 45, 70, 93, 102, 106, 109–10, 112, 121, 126
86, 193, 198–9, 223–4, 228–9 (map (fig.), 129, 136, 139–40, 147, 154,
and table), 247, 261 n.76, 342, 344 156–8, 160, 162–3, 174–5, 199–200,
(fig.), 348, 407–8, 423, 437, 472, 268, 272, 363–6, 368, 441, 471
475–6, 484–6, 490–6, 499–502, 503 mobilization and demobilization 11
(fig.), 505–9, 511–7 (fig.), 59, 70, 86–7, 89, 104 n.25,
Ingrians 29 n.51, 224, 226 (fig.), 141, 153, 171, 191, 208, 211 (fig.),
228–9 (map and table), 397, 424–5 214, 346, 363, 436
568 index
operations in the Continuation 277–8, 298–302, 306, 438, 467–71,

War 2, 8, 23–4, 71–3, 130, 139, 475, 477–9, 481–2
154, 155 (map), 156–61, 161 (map), see also families; German Army,
162–9, 176, 180 (fig.), 182, 200, relations to Finnish civilians
208, 250–3, 264, 267–8, 271–2, Gerber, David A. 283
367–8, 489 German Army 55, 57, 62–4, 97, 151,
operations in the Lapland War 77 174–5, 249, 452
(map), 169–70, 170 (map), 171, air and naval forces 81, 84 (fig.), 153,
272–3 163–4, 168–9
operations in the Winter War 22, 40, cooperation with the Finnish
59–60, 63, 139–45, 146 (map), military 6, 40, 55, 57–8, 68–71,
147–50, 164–5, 168, 176, 99–106, 112, 126 (fig.), 130, 132,
179 (fig.), 243 135–6, 152, 154, 155 (map), 156–7,
tactics, training and command 40, 55, 369–76, 379–82, 425, 455 n.47,
142–5, 147–9, 151–4, 157–8, 166, 456–7, 557
174–7, 179 (fig.), 181, 185–7, 365 military aid to Finland 8, 12 (fig.), 40,
troops and strength 99, 104 n.25, 141, 68, 81–2, 84 (fig.), 130, 152, 161
143, 145, 147–8, 150, 152–4, 156, (map), 162–3, 166, 187, 267
158, 162–4, 166, 168–9, 171–3, 208 operations against Finland 1, 20,
see also deaths, casualties of war; 86–8, 127 (fig.), 132–3, 169–70, 170
experiences, frontline (map), 171, 193, 224, 272–3, 390–1
Finnish independence (in 1917) 5, 13, operations against the Soviet Union 2,
49–51, 53, 95, 194, 235–6, 238, 241, 6, 8, 69, 71–6, 78–9, 81, 83, 103–5,
275, 315, 321, 483, 488, 521, 554 117, 153–4, 155 (map), 156–7, 159,
Finnish Karelia 2, 2 n.1, 44–5, 70, 75, 170 (map), 173, 372, 523, 539
199, 206, 247, 267, 340, 342, 398, relations to Finnish civilians 29–30,
483–5, 490–1, 496–7, 499–502, 504 30 n.55, 41, 70, 192, 197–9, 208–9,
(fig.), 505–17 220–4, 227, 230, 249, 477
claims of restitution 45, 485, 491–8, see also deaths, casualties of war;
500–1 Eastern Front; Lapland War
Karelian Isthmus 2 n.1, 45, 52 (map), Germanophilia, see Germany, prewar
57, 59–60, 63, 76, 80–1, 141–2, 145, relations with Finland and Finnish
149–51, 154, 158–65, 167, 177, 223, Germanophilia
252, 264, 266 (fig.), 267–8, 272, 345 Germany 5, 17, 61–2, 64, 65 (map),
(fig.), 423, 441, 461–2, 483, 485, 88–9, 217, 274, 338, 362, 364, 388–9,
490–2, 494–5, 498–9, 507, 515 397, 401–2, 429–30, 454–5, 466, 526,
Ladoga Karelia 2 n.1, 52 (map), 60, 533–4
145, 147–9, 154, 157, 164–5, 176, and the Winter War 6, 15, 22, 39, 57,
224, 483, 485, 492 62–4, 66, 95–6, 100–1, 152
see also evacuations, Finnish co-belligerence with Finland 1–3,
Karelians; Karelianism 5–6, 13–6, 22, 25–7, 30, 40, 43,
Finnish-German “brotherhood-in- 66–76, 79, 82–3, 89–90, 93–125,
arms,” see Germany, co-belligerence 126 (fig.), 127 (fig.), 128–38, 178,
with Finland 192, 201–2, 204, 206–7, 249–50,
Foucault, Michel 34 327, 339, 350–1, 356, 361, 369–76,
France 2, 5, 45, 62–4, 80, 97, 115, 150, 393–4, 403–4, 442, 455, 457, 462,
187, 220, 249, 260 n.74, 321, 338, 402, 469, 471, 477, 522–3, 527–9, 534–7,
456 n.48, 531 552, 554–60
see also Allied Powers foreign policy towards Romania 57,
68, 71, 93, 103–5, 109–10, 135,
Gallen-Kallela, Akseli 486 137–8
gender and sexuality 29–30, 32 (fig.), national socialism 53, 95, 107, 138,
34 n.63, 34–5, 177–8, 193, 197, 210, 221, 227, 246, 249, 272, 356, 362,
213–4, 220–3, 231, 256, 259–60, 262, 370, 375, 380, 382, 386, 389, 401–2,
index 569
429–30, 454–5, 457, 466, 469, 474, Hanko (Peninsula) 57, 60, 65 (map),
522, 526–7, 529 n.29, 534–5, 543, 146 (map), 151, 153, 155 (map), 158,
548–9, 554, 556, 559–60 228–9 (map and table)
prewar relations with Finland and Hannula, Mika 551
Finnish Germanophilia 9, 39, Hansson, Per Albin 58
50–1, 55–6, 58, 66, 94–5, 98, 100, Harlin, Renny 470
109, 119, 123, 131, 133–4, 318–9, Härö, Klaus 476
322, 402, 524 Haukkasaari 420, 431 n.84
war strategy 2, 16–7, 22, 40, 64, 78, Heinrichs, Erik 154, 441
94, 98, 100–4, 108, 116, 124, 129, Heiskanen, Anu 478
137, 206, 400, 455–6, 521, 549 Helanen, Vilho 381
see also Axis Powers; German Army; Helminen, Helmi 398, 419–22, 424, 428,
Holocaust; Lapland War 431 n.84
Goebbels, Joseph 104–5, 111, 123, Helsinki 50, 52 (map), 59, 61, 70, 82, 86,
131–2, 135 89, 130, 133, 138, 150, 153, 159, 203,
Gorbachev, Mikhail 21, 450 224, 225 (fig.), 321, 330, 337, 343, 346,
Göring, Hermann 66, 95, 100–1 351–2, 411, 415, 417, 420, 426, 431,
Gothóni, René 514 446, 452, 474, 492
Great Britain 8–9, 37, 49, 55, 58, 273–4, Hentilä, Seppo 501
283 n.21, 291, 299, 319, 323–4, 338, Hepburn, Audrie 532
342–3, 350, 352, 457 Hietamies, Heikki 476
at war with Finland 8, 73–4, 76, 78–9, Hiitola 508–13, 516
83, 90, 104, 390, 491 Himmler, Heinrich 111–2, 132 n.97,
during the Winter War and the 429, 534–5
Interim Peace 2, 15 n.15, 62–4, 67, Hirdman, Yvonne 299
78, 150–1, 187 Hirn, Yrjö 486
see also Allied Powers history writing of World War II,
Greater Finland ideology 16–7, 19, 43, Finnish 7, 9–10, 13–30, 33–44, 96,
45, 71, 103, 108, 198, 209, 251–2, 254, 106, 108, 252, 441–2, 449–51, 453,
260, 267, 270, 381, 385, 388, 395–9, 459, 461, 490, 538, 555
403–4, 405 (fig.), 407, 410, 418, 420, separate war thesis and Finnish
430–1, 484, 487–90, 500 exceptionalism 4–8, 14–7, 19, 22,
Academic Karelia Society (AKS) 385, 26, 40, 45, 93, 114, 442, 456, 465,
398–9, 412, 440, 488, 490 469, 481, 521, 523, 530, 536,
see also Eastern Karelia; nationalism, 557, 560
Finnish see also nationalism, Finnish, and
Green, Gerald 544 history writing
Grönhagen, Yrjö von 429 Hitler, Adolf 6, 55–7, 64, 68–9, 71, 79,
Grundherr, Werner von 117–8 81–3, 90, 93–8, 100–5, 108–9, 113,
Gulf of Bothnia 52 (map), 153, 170 116–8, 121–3, 125, 126 (fig.), 128,
(map), 377 130–2, 134–6, 162, 206, 455–6, 465,
Gulf of Finland 52 (map), 60, 470, 527, 531, 537–8, 542, 545–6
81, 146 (map), 151–3, 158, 163, Hobsbawm Eric, 50
168, 390, 497 Hogland Island 155 (map), 158, 390
Gustafsson, Verner, 377 Holocaust 6–7, 18–9, 27, 45, 111–2,
273–4, 436, 454–5, 466, 475–6, 519ff.
Haavio-Mannila, Elina 29 see also Jews and anti-Semitism in
Habermas, Jürgen 501 Finland
Hackzell, Antti 131 Hoover, Herbert 325, 327–8
Hakamies, Pekka 512 Horelli, Toivo 530
Halbwachs, Maurice 479, 520 Hungary 6–8, 90, 105, 128, 131, 135,
Halonen, Pekka 486 151, 390
Halonen, Tarja 456, 474, 555–6 see also Axis Powers
Hamina 342, 359 Hutton, Christopher M. 401
570 index
Huunonen, Viljo 507 Kersten, Felix 534–5, 535 n.44

Hyvinkää 240 Khrushchev, Nikita 492
Kiestinki 155 (map), 156, 158, 166,
Ilomantsi 146 (map), 147, 161 (map), 170 (map)
165, 330, 420–1, 461 Killinger, Manfred von 93, 111–2, 138
Ingria region 51, 52 (map), 224, 226 Kilpisjärvi 170 (map), 171, 348
(fig.), 230, 249, 254, 366, 396, Kirkenes 170 (map), 171
398–9, 424 Kitilä 148
see also evacuations, Ingrians Kivimäki, Toivo M. 98, 109
Interim Peace 1, 3 n.3, 14, 39, 70, 151–3, Klinge, Matti 19
192, 200, 206, 241, 244, 247–8, 327, Koivisto, Mauno 461
332, 337, 340 Koivunen, Anu 34
international law 107, 119, 133, 356–9, Kokko, Yrjö 264
361, 363–4, 382, 385, 388, 394, Korhonen, Arvi 13–5, 440, 442, 536
523, 529 Kotilainen, Väinö A. 385
Italy 6, 23 n.35, 53, 105, 115, 135, 169, Köyliö 367, 376, 391
339 Kristeva, Julia 34
see also Axis Powers Kronstadt 168
Ivalo 170 (map), 171, 347 Krosby, Hans Peter 14, 442
Kuhmo 146 (map), 148–9
Jaakkola, Jalmari 403, 405 (fig.) Kühne, Thomas 256
jäger movement and officers 55–6, 99 Kujala, Antti 27, 378, 427, 548
Jakobson, Max 492 Kujansuo 508–9
Jalas, Rakel 330 Kukkonen, Antti 426
Jansson, Tove 264 Kulomaa, Jukka 23–4, 268
Japan 6, 74, 356, 393 Kuopio 351
Järnefelt, Eero 486 Kupriyanov, Gennadiy 392
Järvilehto, Niilo 387 Kursk 76
Jermo, Aake 544 Kuusamo 224, 228–9 (map and table),
Jews and anti-Semitism in Finland 6, 341
18–9, 43, 45, 112, 380, 475–6, 521–4, Kuutamolahti 421
524 (fig.), 525 (fig.), 526, 534–5, 537, Kymi, River 159, 161 (map), 163
540, 544, 546, 548–9, 554, 558
Joensuu 483 n.1 Laaksonen, Lasse 22
Jokipii, Mauno 15–6, 25, 449, 535–9 Laatikainen, Taavetti 415
Jokisipilä, Markku 26, 114 Ladoga Karelia, see Finnish Karelia,
Jonas, Michael 26 Ladoga Karelia
Judt, Tony 553 Ladoga, Lake 52 (map), 72, 142–5,
Junila, Marianne 29–30 147–8, 154, 161 (map), 165, 169, 400,
Jutikkala, Eino 403 413, 484, 508
Laine, Antti 17, 385 n.51, 448
Kähkönen, Sirpa 457 Laine, Edvin 444, 458
Kaila, Y.P.I. 540 Langer, Lawrence 550
Kansteiner, Wulf 533, 542 Lapland 1, 52 (map), 67, 146 (map),
Karelian Isthmus, see Finnish Karelia, 372, 375, 557
Karelian Isthmus Lapland War 1, 10, 20, 44, 77 (map),
Karelianism 484–501, 506 86–8, 127 (fig.), 140, 169–70, 170
Karjalainen, Elina 502 (map), 171–2, 172 (table), 191, 193,
Keitel, Wilhelm 126 (fig.), 132, 156 228–9 (map and table), 272–3, 348,
Kekkonen, Urho 447–8, 452, 461–3, 350, 436, 455, 458, 527 n.22
465, 469, 492, 536 Lappeenranta 483 n.1,
Kemi 377 504 (fig.), 508
Kemijärvi 146 (map), 149 Lappi-Seppälä, Sakari 539, 560
Kemppainen, Ilona 34–5, 197, 252 Latvala, Pauliina 479
index 571
Latvia 5, 52 (map), 65 (map), 387 162, 174, 200, 250, 368, 386,
see also Baltic States 469, 489
Lauretis, Teresa de 34 as the president (1944–46) and in the
Lauttamus, Niilo 444 postwar era 3, 10, 64, 83, 89,
League of Nations 61, 318, 323 131–3, 441, 446, 460 (fig.), 462, 464,
Lebow, Richard Ned 437, 454 469–70, 525 (fig.)
Lefko, Josef 522 before World War II 56, 109, 239,
Lehto, Liisa 514 250, 321, 469–70, 489
Lehväslaiho, Reino 444 see also “Scabbard Order”
Leino, Eino 486 Mannerheim Line 141–2, 145, 146
Leningrad 3 n.2, 8, 40, 49, 52 (map), 57, (map), 149–51
64–5, 69, 76, 85 (fig.), 89, 91, 103, 153, Manninen, Ohto 16, 21
160, 162, 230, 249, 252, 424, 491, 495, Marshall, T.H. 352
509–10, 513 Maseng, Einar 64
siege of 2, 15 n.14, 72–3, Maverick, R. 327
75, 77 (map), 78, 121, 154, 155 Meinander, Henrik 37
(map), 156 n.23, 158–9, 168, Melnikova, Yekaterina 512
254, 404, 447 memory of World War II 7, 12 (fig.), 14,
liberalism, see centrism and liberalism, 35–6, 39–40, 43–5, 60, 96, 222–3, 241,
political 246–7, 267, 271–5, 433ff.
Lieksa 146 (map), 147 Merikoski, Kaarlo 410
Lillqvist, Katariina 469 Merikoski, Veli 385 388
Lindstedt, Jukka 24 Mikkeli 121, 129, 133, 146 (map), 174,
Linkomies, Edwin 123 268, 427
Linna, Väinö Mikkola, Marja-Leena 472
The Unknown Soldier (1954) 36, 199, minorities, Finnish
251–2, 267, 442–4, 446, 451, 458, Greek Orthodox 412, 505
459 (fig.), 468, 505, 531 Roma 475–6
Lipponen, Paavo 466–7, 474, 552–4 Sami people 348
Lithuania 5, 7, 52 (map), 65 (map) Swedish-speaking 60, 79, 129, 199,
see also Baltic States 278, 280–1, 318 n.10, 322, 544
Livson, Mikael 530 Modeen, Gunnar 320
Loimola 146 (map), 147 Mollberg, Rauni 444, 468
Lönnrot, Elias 395, 483, 486 Molotov, Vyacheslav 68, 94,
Lotta Svärd Organization (lottas) 30, 32 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 1, 5, 8, 14, 22,
(fig.), 36, 87, 195, 208, 210, 213, 223, 57–8, 61, 65 (map), 67–8, 94, 99, 106,
260, 326, 344 (fig.), 461, 464, 467–70, 115, 140, 152, 448, 471
475, 481 Moscow, 52 (map) 57–9, 63–4,
Lüdtke, Alf 115 68, 74, 78, 83, 90, 94, 142, 242,
Lundin, Charles L. 13, 19, 442 404, 490–2
Luostarinen, Heikki 19, 34, 254 Moscow Peace Treaty 65 (map), 66,
97–8, 146 (map), 151, 165, 178, 192,
Maaselkä Isthmus 154, 155 (map), 198–9, 248–9, 469
157–8, 161 (map), 165, 382, 404, 415, Murmansk 52 (map), 155 (map), 156,
423 164, 171, 386
Mainila 59 Murmansk Railway 3 n.2, 8, 73–4, 78,
Mälkki, Juha 181 103, 155 (map), 156, 386
Malm, Sulo 368, 375 Mustajoki, Heidi 264
Mannerheim, C.G.E. Muto, F. 327
as the commander-in-chief Myrdal, Alva and Gunnar 320
(1939–44) 3, 3 n.3, 21, 62, 67–9,
71–2, 74, 81, 83, 96, 99, 102, 104, Narva 77 (map), 162
109–10, 117, 119, 121–2, 124–5, 126 Narvik 65 (map), 170 (map), 171
(fig.), 135–6, 150, 154, 156, 160, nationalism, Finnish
572 index
and history writing 21, 25, 34–5, 39, Palm, Pertti 475
44, 50, 440–1, 448–9, 451, Pälsi, Sakari 408, 431 n.84
535–6, 541 Parikka, Pekka 450
before World War II 9, 30, 43–5, 49, Paris Peace Treaty 1, 86, 485,
51, 53, 178, 210, 238, 256, 359–60, 491–2, 497,
395 n.2, 395–400, 409, 412, 420, Pavelic, Ante 135
425, 440, 442–4, 451, 467–8, 473, Pechenga (Petsamo) region 14 n.13,
483, 487–9, 499, 548 18 n.22, 52 (map), 60, 65 (map), 83,
in wartime 25, 30, 43, 71, 87, 195–7, 149, 152, 170 (map), 224, 228–9
220, 233–4, 246, 249, 270–1, 274–5, (map and table), 497
359–60, 381, 385, 388, 397, 407–9, see also economy, Pechenga nickel
428, 443, 467–8, 489, 499 mines
“neo-patriotism” 21, 44, 275, 435–6, Pekkala, Mauno 491
438–9, 441, 444–5, 447, 450–5, Peltonen, Eeva 473
457–8, 461–74, 479–82, 499 Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 360, 470
see also Greater Finland ideology; Penttinen, Päivy 476
Karelianism; right-wing radicalism, Perkins, Millie 532
Finnish Petrozavodsk 52 (map), 154, 155 (map),
Nazism, see Germany, national socialism 157–8, 161 (map), 164, 252–3, 260,
Nietjärvi 161 (map), 164 304, 382, 384 (fig.), 404, 409, 411–5,
Niiniluoto, Maarit 29 422, 484, 510, 548
Nikkilä, Eino 414–5, Pettersson, Lars 418
Niskanen, Mikko 447 Pietola, Eino 19 n.25, 547–8, 554
Niukkanen, Juho 441 Pihkala, Erkki 18 n.22
Nordic orientation and social state in Pipping, Knut
Finland 3, 5, 9, 25, 39, 42–3, 54, 56, Infantry Company as a Society
58, 64, 78, 90–1, 231, 274, 315–25, (1947) 24–5, 182–5, 255, 260,
328–9, 333, 350, 352–4, 463 269, 282
Normandy 8, 80, 160 Pohjala, Kyllikki 329
Norway 2, 5, 52 (map), 58, 62–5, 65 Poland 5, 8, 49, 53–4, 57, 59, 61, 65
(map), 67–8, 75, 97, 101–2, 151, 169, (map), 88, 97, 115, 191, 249, 535,
170 (map), 171, 217, 222, 317 n.6, 319, 545, 560
338, 343, 346, 356, 369–70, 372, political system, Finnish
374–5, 393, 522 before World War II 3 n.3, 5, 9, 51,
see also Nordic orientation and social 53–4, 56, 58, 177, 200, 237, 239,
state in Finland 241, 244, 246, 256–7, 319, 430
Novgorod 366 during the war 3, 3 n.3, 5–6, 13, 70,
Nummela, Ilkka 231 76, 78–9, 82, 100, 102, 113, 129–31,
Nuremberg Trials 89, 393, 527–30 137–8, 181, 188, 197–200, 231,
Nygård, Toivo 16 234–5, 246, 257, 269, 273, 430
in the postwar era 3, 25, 88, 90–1,
Oesch, K.L. 163, 378–9, 441 261, 450, 465–7, 471, 474
Olonets (Aunus) Karelia, see Eastern see also “finlandization”; Nordic
Karelia orientation and social state in
Olsson, Pia 481 Finland
Onega, Lake 52 (map), 69, 154, 252, Polvinen, Tuomo 14–5, 535–8,
382, 418, 484 545 n.76, 546
Otto, Reinhard 375 Porajärvi 420, 421
Oulu 146 (map), 144, 148, 170 (map), Porkkala 86, 89, 91, 224, 228–9
224, 447, (map and table)
Pöysti, Sirkka 486, 508–17
Paasikivi, Juho Kusti 87, 89–91, 492 prisoners-of-war 7 n.4, 27, 43, 259,
Paavolainen, Olavi 408, 441 355–82, 389–93, 527, 552, 556
Palaste, Onni 444–5 Finnish 28, 173, 359, 361, 380, 393
index 573
German 374, 390–1 troops and strength 60, 80, 141–2,

Soviet 7, 19 n.25, 27, 43, 74–5, 172 n.2 144, 148–9, 153–4, 159–60, 162–4,
(table), 214, 220, 224, 274, 346, 355, 173, 267, 423
359–68, 372–6, 378, 383 (fig.), 384, see also deaths, casualties of war;
389, 391, 394, 397–8, 409, 425–8, Eastern Front
478, 547–8, 554 Red Cross 208, 318–9, 326–7, 337,
see also deaths, prisoner-of-war 359–60, 364
mortality Reinecke, Hermann 370
public opinion and morale 23, 35, 60, Reinikainen, Oskar 329, 333
70, 178, 181, 191–202, 218, 231, religion and clergy 55, 177–8, 196–8,
239–55, 260–4, 269, 271–4, 282–3, 219, 230, 249, 263, 269–71, 396, 400,
324, 326, 361–2, 394, 489 406 (fig.), 407, 411–2, 415, 417, 491,
see also “Spirit of the Winter War”; 505, 554
war propaganda Repola 420, 428, 431 n.84
Puntila, L.A. 536 Resnais, Alain 531
Ribbentrop, Joachim von 82, 94–5, 111,
Raappana, Erkki 165 118, 122–5, 128–33, 137
racism 19, 43, 106, 108, 221, 254, 260, right-wing radicalism, Finnish 3, 53–4,
274, 317, 322 n.25, 359–60, 362, 56, 58, 71, 76, 79, 87, 133 n.99, 457,
371–4, 379, 385–90, 396, 401–2, 408, 467, 537, 548
430, 463, 524, 548, 554 see also nationalism, Finnish; Greater
see also Germany, national socialism; Finland ideology
Jews and anti-Semitism in Finland; Riihimäki 240
Russophobia Rintala, Paavo 446–7, 468
Raitis, Riikka 29 Romania 6, 8, 40, 57, 63, 68, 71, 89–90,
Raivo, Petri 526 93, 103–5, 108–12, 115, 124, 134–8,
Ramsay, Henrik 123–5 521
Rautkallio, Hannu 18, 19 n.24, see also Axis Powers; Germany,
546–9 foreign policy towards Romania
Red Army 51, 90–1, 181, 258–9, 396, Roosevelt, Franklin D. 78
407, 435, 445, 463 Roper, Michael 291
air and naval forces 57, 59–60, 71–2, Rose, Sonya O. 351
78, 142, 144, 151, 153, 158, 164, Rössing, Horst 371
166–9, 224, 492 Rovaniemi 153, 155 (map), 170 (map),
operations against Germans 8, 69, 171, 227, 272, 351, 369–70
71–4, 76, 77 (map), 78, 80–1, 88–9, Rukajärvi 155 (map), 156, 159, 165
111, 132–3, 153–4, 156, 159–60, 170 Ruokolahti 367
(map), 171, 202, 274, 404, 424, Ruovesi 341
538–9 Russia
operations in the Continuation Federation 21, 45, 273, 457–8, 484,
War 8, 40, 69, 71–4, 77 (map), 493–500, 508, 510–2, 514
80–2, 130, 133, 137, 153–4, 156–8, Imperial 49–50, 53, 56, 58, 76, 107–8,
160–1, 161 (map), 162–9, 187, 202, 159, 235–6, 241, 357, 359, 391,
215–6, 223, 262, 264, 267–8, 271–3, 486–7, 521
292, 421, 423, 456 see also Soviet Union
operations in the Winter War 1, 40, Russophobia 6, 9, 19, 43, 53, 58, 135,
57–60, 141–5, 146 (map), 147–51, 195, 231, 236, 259, 359–62, 408, 412,
187, 191, 195, 249, 456 445
partisans 159, 172 (table), 215–6, 259, see also anti-communism; war
367, 475 propaganda
tactics, training and motivation 63, Ruuth, Y.O. 488, 498
72–3, 80, 130, 140–2, 144–5, Ryti, Gerda 271
148–51, 153–4, 157, 159–61, Ryti, Risto 3 n.3, 67–9, 71–2, 76, 82–3,
164–6, 171, 173, 176 89–90, 102, 106, 107 n.33, 109, 123–4,
574 index
126 (fig.), 129–32, 137, 157, 162, 326, social state, see Nordic orientation and
393, 403, 440, 462–3 social state in Finland
Ryti-Ribbentrop Pact 82, 130–2 social strata 51, 55, 58, 70, 86, 177,
181–3, 185–6, 194–6, 200, 204–7, 214,
Saimaa, Lake 146 (map), 152–3, 159, 217, 227, 234–41, 243–6, 250, 261,
163–4 274, 279, 315–23, 342, 443, 470,
Saint Petersburg, see Leningrad 481–2, 502
Saksi, Veikko 497–8 Söderman, Tom 519
Salla 60, 146 (map), 151, 155 (map), Sommestad, Lena 299, 302
156, 224, 228–9 (map and table), Sortavala 340, 495
370, 374–5, 497 Soviet Union
Salminen, Kari 550 n.101, 551 birth and interwar years 5, 8, 19,
Salminen, Väinö 408 49–51, 52 (map), 53–9, 106–7,
Samuel, Raphael 475 140–1, 230, 237–8, 245, 247, 357–8,
Sana (Suominen), Elina 18, 27, 529 n.28, 385–6, 395–6, 403–4, 408, 412, 420,
540, 544–7, 552, 554–6 424, 483–4
Savonen, Severi 328–9, 332, 337 communism and Stalinism 9, 21, 25,
Savonjousi, Kai 415 38–9, 43, 51, 55, 58, 70, 74, 76, 85
Sax, Arne and Hilma 280, 288, 294, 297 (fig.), 178, 236, 240–1, 247, 254,
Sax, Göran 280–1, 284–5, 288, 290, 292, 263, 270–1, 274, 360, 375, 379, 388,
294, 296–8 399, 409, 411–7, 428, 454, 457–8,
Sax, Nils 278, 280–1, 284–5, 290, 293, 471, 488, 522, 559
297 foreign policy 2, 25, 51, 56, 63, 75–6,
“Scabbard Order” 72, 117 n.63, 250, 79, 82, 87, 88–9, 91, 97, 134, 241,
250 n.37, 489, 499 249, 357, 364, 430
Schellenberg, Walther 111 Great Terror 59, 176, 226 (fig.), 230,
Schoenfeld, Arthur 102 240, 263, 273, 385–6, 396, 424
Segerstråle, Lennart and Marie- population 74, 141, 228–9 (map and
Louise 287–9, 291–4, 296 table), 230, 263, 371, 373
Segerstråle, Ulf 279–80, 284–5, 287–9, postwar history and relations to
291–6 Finland 3, 20–1, 27–8, 30, 44,
Segev, Tom 534 86–91, 267, 272, 315, 352, 390–4,
Seppälä, Helge 15 n.14, 16, 448, 547–8, 435–7, 439, 447–58, 463–7, 472–3,
554 480–1, 490–3, 529–30, 549, 555, 558
Seppänen, Unto 505 war aims and strategy 1, 13, 22, 40,
Seppinen, Jukka 495–6 57, 59, 62, 67–8, 94, 130, 133, 139,
Setälä, E.N. 395 140, 144–5, 150–1, 153–4, 159–60,
sexuality, see gender and sexuality 162–6, 169, 187
Shandler, Jeffrey 550 see also Eastern Karelia; Red Army;
Sibelius, Jean 487 Russia
Sihvo, Hannes 486 Spåre, Maximilian 358, 360, 371
Sihvola, Juha 555 Spencer, Dr. 327–8
Sillanpää, Miina 196 Spielberg, Steven 550–1
Silvennoinen, Oula 26–7, 456, 556–7, “Spirit of the Winter War” 23, 35, 60,
559–60 178, 195–6, 244–5, 273
Sivén, Bobi 420 see also public opinion and morale
Smolar, Isak 523 SS and Waffen-SS, German 99, 110–1,
Smolar, Rony 523 128, 132–3, 373–4, 381–2, 523, 533–4,
social democracy 3, 9, 25, 50–1, 539
53–4, 56, 58, 60, 70, 79, 88, 91, Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzkommando
102, 123 n.80, 129, 177, 181, Finnland) 373–5, 456, 557
194–6, 200, 206, 237, 239–41, Finnish volunteer battalion 15,
243–4, 250, 256, 261, 319, 326, 99–100, 102, 152, 391, 456, 464,
329, 441, 466–7, 519, 536 535, 538–9, 540 n.60, 560
index 575
Stalin, Josef 57–9, 61–3, 74, 76, 78, Tulemajärvi 421

80–1, 86, 88, 90, 94, 97 n.10, 101, 113, Tuominen, Marja 33
139–40, 150–1, 159–60, 176, 181, 188, Turku 133, 146 (map), 203, 271
230, 249, 362, 390, 396, 404, 424, Tuulos 161 (map), 164
490–1, 493, 495, 541, 553, 558 Tuuri, Antti 450
Stalingrad 76, 104–5, 112, 121, 136, 202, Tver 366
254, 388
Stalinism, see Soviet Union, communism Uhl, Heidemarie 533
Stewen, Martin 375 Ukraine 8, 144, 220, 381–2, 387, 456
Stockholm 65 (map), 83, 122, 133, 138, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
375, 493 Administration 350
Summa 146 (map), 149, 150 United States 9, 55, 58, 274, 283 n.21,
Suomussalmi 146 (map), 148–9, 176 319, 330, 337–8, 350, 351 n.114, 457,
Suutari, Virpi 477 464, 531–3, 541–2, 559
Svensson, Jörgen 549 during the Continuation War 8, 73–6,
Svinhufvud, P.E. 107 n.23, 119 78, 82, 104, 116, 118, 120, 124, 130,
Svir, River 69, 154, 155 (map), 157–9, 156, 404
161 (map), 164, 252, 285 (fig.), 382, during the Winter War and the
404, 413, 423, 484, 522–3, 524 (fig.) Interim Peace 78, 102–3, 151,
Sweden 49, 52 (map), 54–6, 90–1, 101, 325–9, 331, 338
117, 159, 163, 230, 280, 317 n.6, see also Allied Powers
319–20, 334–5, 346, 391, 396, 399, Upton, Anthony F. 14, 442
435, 464, 527, 531, 557
during the Continuation War 2, 76, Vaasa 50, 146 (map)
79, 82, 120, 168, 204, 345 (fig.) Vahter, Tyyni 429
during the Interim Peace 65 (map), Valkeasaari 160
67–8, 97–8, 103, 104 n.25 Vanne, Ilkka 468
during the Winter War 2, 5, 15, 58, Vehviläinen, Olli 37
61–5 Veltjens, Joseph 101–2, 105
Swedish aid to Finland 30 n.57, 151, Vepsian district 366, 387, 408, 411
193, 204, 224, 327, 337, 348, 350–1 Vilkuna, Kustaa 402, 408, 429, 535
see also Nordic orientation and social Vinde, Victor 528
state in Finland; evacuations, “war Virkkunen, Meri 348
children” Virrankoski, Pentti 494–5
Switzerland 5, 91, 350, 545 Voroshilov, Kliment 149
Vuoksi, River 161 (map), 164
Tali-Ihantala 12 (fig.), 161 (map), Vuosalmi 161 (map), 164, 461
163–4, 461, 467 Vuosniemi 420
Tampere 146 (map), 203 Vyborg (Viipuri) 24 n.38, 45, 52 (map),
Tanner, Väinö 67, 123 n.80, 200, 260, 60, 65 (map), 80, 150, 154, 157, 159,
329, 441, 529 n.29 161 (map), 163–4, 167, 265 (fig.),
Tartu Peace Treaty 51, 395, 483 267–8, 368, 461, 483, 485, 490–2,
Timonen, Senni 514 494–5, 502
Timoshenko, Semyon 149
Tiso, Jozef 135 Walden, Rudolf 102
Tittmus, Richard 324, 343 war crimes, Finnish 27, 89, 259, 367,
Tolvajärvi 147, 176 378–9, 392–3, 528–30, 555
Torgovnick, Marianna 445 War Guilt Trials 3, 10, 25, 39–40,
Törni, Lauri 464 60, 69, 83, 89–90, 440–1, 453, 461,
Tornio 170 (map), 170–1, 272 463, 465, 529
Torvinen, Taimi 18, 545–6 war propaganda 19, 27 n.45, 74, 82, 121,
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation 149, 151, 178, 195–6, 198, 221, 246–7,
and Mutual Assistance 90–1, 94, 254, 259, 262–3, 367, 371, 401, 408–9,
465, 492 411, 440, 470, 547
576 index
see also public opinion and morale; Wighton, Charles 533

Russophobia; anti-communism Witting, Rolf 98, 100, 102, 109, 116,
war reparations 2, 18 n.22, 79, 86–8, 118–20, 123, 129
315, 352–3
war veterans 33, 87, 232, 255, 259, 272, Ylikangas, Heikki 22–3, 269,
435, 439, 442, 444 555–6
Waris, Heikki 323–4, 352 Ylppö, Arvo 322, 329
Weber, Max 234, 248 youth radicalism, postwar 385, 446–7,
Weizsäcker, Ernst von 101, 125 450, 466–7, 470, 473
White Sea, 52 (map) 385, 400, 484
Wickström, Werner 529 n.28 Zhdanov, Andrei 85 (fig.), 390

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Finland in World War II

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hw

History, Memory, Interpretations

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV

List of Figures, Maps and Tables..............................................................vii

1. Finland and the Great Powers in World War II:

4. Wars on the Home Front: Mobilization, Economy

6. Families, Separation and Emotional Coping in War:

7. War and the Emerging Social State: Social Policy,

Map 3.1. The Winter War, 30 November 1939 – 13

Tiina Kinnunen & Ville Kivimäki

KA Finnish National Archives

Outi Fingerroos, PhD, adjunct professor, researcher in ethnology at the

Sonja Hagelstam, MA, doctoral student of ethnology at the Åbo

Antero Holmila, PhD, lecturer in history at the University of Jyväskylä,

Markku Jokisipilä, Doc.Soc.Sc., researcher, academic director of the

doctoral dissertation (2004) on Finnish-German relations during

Michael Jonas, PhD, lecturer and postdoctoral research fellow in

Marianne Junila, PhD, senior lecturer in history at the University of

Tiina Kinnunen, PhD, adjunct professor, senior lecturer in history at

(2000) on Ellen Key’s reception in the early German women’s move-

Ville Kivimäki, MA, doctoral student of history at the Åbo Akademi

Helene Laurent, MD, M.Soc.Sc., doctoral student of history at the

Henrik Meinander, PhD, professor of history at the University of

Tenho Pimiä, PhD, University of Jyväskylä, wrote his doctoral disserta-

Oula Silvennoinen, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Tuomas Tepora, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the University of

Pasi Tuunainen, PhD, adjunct professor, senior lecturer in history

His other research interests include the history of Finnish peacekeep-

THREE WARS AND THEIR EPITAPHS: THE FINNISH

The Finnish participation in World War II started with the Soviet

The idea of Finnish exceptionalism in World War II both as a tendency

invasion of the Soviet Union, it found itself in the reference group of

later chapter by Oula Silvennoinen shows, the wartime history of

Perhaps the very question of exceptionalism can be somewhat

of 1939–45. In the case of smaller European countries it would also be

I. Finnish Scholarship of World War II: A Concise Historiography

National Frames: Disputes and Perspectives from the 1940s

defensive nature of Finland’s wars in 1939–45.5 Most importantly,

War) and resulted in the colossal 11-volume Suomen sota 1941–1945

far-reaching expansive aspirations in 1941, but they were based on the

evacuees, rationing, culture, censorship, children and so on. As such it

no role in the incident.24 As we will see, this debate returned to public

political history of war had been supplemented with social, economi-

Rehabilitation and Myth Breaking: National Reassessments from the

War of 1918) were still fundamental for competing political identities

totalitarian regimes, and the decisive role of the Molotov-Ribbentrop

Finally in 1944, the Army itself used draconic measures to subdue

given some academic respite. Nevertheless, the issue returned to the

“brotherhood-in-arms” in 1941–44 kept them close to German aca-

prisoners-of-war in Soviet hands was also examined—the topic had

Social and Cultural History of War from the 1990s onwards

a question which also has been studied elsewhere in Europe: the

The discussion was now expanding outside the traditional war-related

by the long tradition of operational staff histories, is not very well

manliness and womanhood, especially motherhood, in the representa-

An important branch in the cultural histories of war has been the

kuva johtavassa suomalaisessa sanomalehdistössä maaliskuusta 1938 talvisodan päät-

course, plenty of important topics still left unstudied, especially with

communist super power.75 Symptomatically, the Finnish Continuation