Finland – WW2 – More…

Karelian Front In WW2 north of Leningrad

This is a continuation of some thoughts on Finnish history based on the exchanges I had ten days ago with Ms Tytti concerning Finland’s role in World War 2. The exchange is found in the comments to the blog entry “Finland’s Jews – Some Reflections.’

First let me say that I appreciated her willingness to take the time to enter into a dialogue (of sorts) with me. The dialogue was a spin-off of an entry about Finland’s Jews who fought in the Finnish army in the early stages of the war on the side of Nazi Germany but ended the war in an alliance with the Allies, particularly the Soviet Union, with whom the Finnish government signed a treaty in 1944 that resulted in an end to the Finnish-Nazi alliance.

The history of the small central European countries in World War 2 caught as they were between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is complex and for the most part completely tragic. In the case of Finland, although it was allied with the Nazis its territory and military retained a certain degree of independence throughout. Nazi troops were stationed in the north of the country from where they launched military offensives into Soviet Karelia although most of Finland remained free of them.

What I would like to probe in more detail is our discussion about the Finnish role in the siege of Leningrad in which our views differed considerably. For 900 days Leningrad was surrounded and besieged with Nazi troops on its western, southern and eastern gates and Finnish troops sealing off the city to the north. Before it was over more than a million people inside the city had died from constant bombing, frost (the winter temperatures were often -40 F or below) and malnutrition. In January of 1943, the Soviet army broke through at Lake Lagoda opening a fragile lifeline to the city but the city itself was not liberated until January 27, 1944.

Concerning the Finnish role in all this, it existed but was more nuanced than I suggested although in no way was it the defensive posture that Ms. Tytti suggests. Finland was indeed trying to regain territories it lost to the USSR in the Winter War (1939-1940) but it was an active ally of the Nazis that included its role in joining the Nazis in the blockade of Leningrad as well as permitting the Nazis accesses to bases in Finnish Lapland from which they Germans attacked the northern reaches of Soviet Karelia in their attempt to cut off the supply route from Murmansk on the Arctic Ocean. That said, the Finnish-Nazi alliance was in many ways an uneasy one filled with tensions. Finland was no Nazi patsy…but it was Hitler’s ally.

A memorial park to the victims of the Leningrad blockade. Under each square of lawn is a mass grave in which all tolled hundreds of thousands of victims lay buried

In Finland, World War Two is referred to most of the time as “The Continuation War”, ie a continuation of the Winter War instigated by the Soviet Union against Finland in the winter of 1939-1940, also called `The Winter War.” By using this semantic approach, the Finns imply that World War 2 was for them only a continuation of the Winter War. I never found this expression particularly convincing although the term was widespread. In their effort to regain territories lost to the Soviet Union as a result of the Winter War, Finnish troops launched an offensive into Karelia (north of Leningrad) on July 10, 1941, by which time Nazi armies were approaching the city from the east and south. By early July 1941. Finnish troops had smashed through the old 1939 border just northwest of Leningrad whose outskirts they soon reached before stopping their offensive. By the end of the summer, the city would be completely blockaded.

As Alexander Werth notes in his excellent “Russia At War”:

“One thing was very striking during the Leningrad Blockade; the enemy was Germany and Finland was scarcely mentioned. Yet the Finns were also at war with the Soviet Union, were taking part in the blockade of Leningrad, and their troops were within some twenty miles north and north-west of the city. Further east, they had penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and were holding a line along the Svir River, between Lake Lagoda and Lake Onega. The large Soviet city of Petrozavodsk, capital of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, was under Finnish occupation.”(1)

The passage continues to describe the Nazi-Finnish military alliance at Leningrad as “very unusual”. And indeed it was as Finland retained a considerable degree of independence in the relationship both politically and on the battlefield.

According to Werth, the Nazis were frustrated with the Finnish refusal to storm Leningrad from the north. Had the Finns done so, with Nazi troops moving in from the west and south, it is likely that the city would have fallen into Nazi hands. At least one German historian, Walter Gorlitz, takes issue with the idea that the Finns were not active participants in the Leningrad siege, arguing that had the Nazis actually been able to storm the city that the Finns would have participated in this final onslaught (which however never took place).

One of Finland’s many cemeteries honoring its war dead. Note that this soldier died in March, 1940, towards the end of the Winter War. The cemetery where Viinikainen  is buried is in Lahti in Eastern Finland, not far from the current Russian-Finnish border.

In launching their offensive into the Karelian isthmus north of Leningrad, the Finns argued that they were just trying to recoup territories lost to them in the Winter War (1939-1940) which had then been annexed by the Soviets. But as they marched into these regions they soon occupied “considerable stretches of Soviet territory that never belonged to them,” notably east of Lake Lagoda.

Werth points out that the Finns were “less subservient” to the Germans than were either the Hungarians or Romanians. There were rather strict limits to the Finnish participation in the Leningrad blockade. The German troops stationed in Finland were never used against Leningrad from Finnish territory although they were used further north. After the war the Finns were to claim that this restriction on Nazi troop movements probably “saved Leningrad” – something of a stretch to my mind. Further that while their troops were within range, the Finns had not taken part in the bombing or shelling of the city (which different sources suggest to have been the case) or hardly. No doubt had the Finns launched a major offensive from their positions outside the city would have gravely affected the city’s ability to survive the blockade.

There were several factors that came into play in Finnish reluctance to participate more actively in the Leningrad blockade. Military allies perhaps, but the Finns had no great love for the Nazis who had invaded fellow Nordic neighbors of Norway and Denmark. The Finns understood that sometime down the line, had the Nazis been successful in their invasion of the U.S.S.R. that they too could easily be militarily swallowed up. The fact that the Soviets, their sworn enemy was allied with two close allies – Britain and the United States – was also a factor in their military prudence. Finally there was Finnish General Mannerheim’s reluctance to take part in the conquest and destruction of Leningrad.

There is little doubt that had the Finns participated in Leningrad’s sacking that its post-war relations with Stalin and the USSR would have been quite different. The terms of the post war relations with their larger and more powerful neighbor would have more than likely been severe. Their cautious approach was a key element in the post-war reconciliation between the Finns and the Soviets, which was in many ways both a model for a new kind of cooperative relationship that other Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – in no way enjoyed. Unlike the rest of central Europe, post-war Finland did not experience a major occupation of Soviet troops and the general terms of the Soviet-Finnish armistice were much milder than the Finns feared the rest of the world expected.

In this light, it is possible to argue that the Finnish refusal to attack Leningrad from the north outright during the blockade was nothing short of a key element in Finland’s survival as an independent nation in the postwar period. Yes, they did lose territory on the Karelian Peninsula, but they retained their independence in the bargain. And so much of what Ms. Tytti was arguing, on reflection, had validity to it. Of course all this is a diversion, interesting admittedly, to the role of Finland’s Jewish population in World War II where this particular thread began. It was unusual to be sure, but then that community never lost site of its dual identity – that of being Finns and Jews.

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1. Alexander Werth, Russia At War: 1941-1945. Carroll and Graf. 1964, p.360-362