Seppo Hentilä The Finnish-German Brotherhood of Arms as Politics of Memory

1. Seppo Hentilä The Finnish-German Brotherhood of Arms as Politics of Memory Interdisciplinary seminar HISTORY, MEMORY, POLITICS Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies September 23, 2010

2. What are we exactly talking about when we talk about politics of memory, politics of history or public uses of history? There is no clear definition or translation of these concepts into English – and neither there is it into Finnish The Germans, however, have two long phrases in regular use: Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung These may be translated as “treating” the past, “working over” the past, “confronting” it, “coping“, “dealing” or “coming to terms” with it, even “overcoming” the past The variety of possible translations indicates the complexity of the matter at hand

3. If we would translate the phrase Vergangenheitsbewältigung into Finnish indicating to ruling, mastering or controlling over the past, it would be quite misleading The phrase means rather, as Timothy Garton Ash has suggested, coming to terms or coping with the past, and in that way we would be able to “control” it My actual research project The Finnish-German Brotherhood of Arms as Politics of Memory confronts a major question of Finnish national memory It also examines significant themes in Finnish historical writing since the Second Word War

4. In the circumstances subsequent to the Second World War, fighting on the German side threatened to become a severe political burden to Finland Therefore one could expect that the collaboration with Nazi Germany would have been the core subject of Finland’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung during the post-war era Surprisingly enough, the fact is almost the opposite: Finns are the only nation in the losing side of the war which has succeeded to make the memory of the war to a cornerstone of national identity and self-consciousness ... and this is not even enough: the Finns – living “next-door to the Bear” – were able to cherish their positive war memories throughout the decades of the Cold War

5. Finland was not occupied by the Red Army in the autumn 1944, and the old elite under the leadership of Marshal Mannerheim (as President of the Republic in 1944–46) was entitled to lead the country from war to peace Under these circumstances the Finns were not compelled to make any thoroughgoing account of their wartime politics The Soviet Union with which Finland signed an interim peace treaty on September 19, 1944 chained Finland to its sphere of influence with a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance (FCMA), signed in April 1948 The military article of this treaty was based on German threat: “If Germany or some other country allied to it were to attempt to invade the Soviet Union through Finland’s territory…”

6. In fact, the final result of the Second World War, and especially the point that Finland had fought on the German side, determined the geopolitical position of Finland during the Cold War, as long as the Soviet Union existed Throughout the post-war decades it was advantageous to the Finns to disassociate their waging of war with the war of Hitler The Finns succeeded quite skilfully in articulating the explanation that they were in no way politically or morally responsible for Hitler’s war

7. Already during the war the Finnish government declared that the Finns were waging their own national separate war (erillissota) According to this phrase, Finland’s only objective in this war was to compensate for the injustices which the Soviet Union had caused when attacking Finland in 1939 on the basis of the Hitler-Stalin treaty The Winter War in 1939–40, in which the tiny heroic nation defended her sovereignty against the superior invader, legitimated the so-called continuation war (jatkosota) in 1941–44 as a justified compensation war (hyvityssota) The names, given by the Finns to the war already in 1941 - as well as calling the peace of the Winter War 1940 immediately as an interim peace (välirauha) - are genuine reflections of the attitudes of contemporaries

8. Finnish historical writing subsequently explained Finland’s joining the war in June 1941, at the same time as Hitler launched his Operation Barbarossa, with the so-called driftwood theory (or floating log theory; the Finnish phrase is ajopuuteoria) The core of this explanation is in fact that Finland was driven to the war to the German side against its own will and without active decision-making, Finland was like a log caught and carried along by a rapid spring flood The purpose of the driftwood theory was to absolve Finland’s political and military leadership from joining the war to the German side

9. Already during the 1950s and 1960s three foreign scholars, Charles L. Lundin, Anthony Upton and Hans Peter Krosby, presented documentary evidence against the trustworthiness of the driftwood theory, and then, by the end of the 1960s, the younger generation of Finnish historians gave it up, too. The collapse of the Soviet Union caused a change in the overtones of the historical debates on Finland’s or fates in the Second World War This change was at large neopatriotic by nature New questions which had been impossible to put during the Soviet influence (partly because of a certain self-censorship practised by the Finns themselves) were raised

10. In the new political climate since the collapse of the Soviet Union the outcome of the Second World war was interpreted in general as a defensive victory (the Finnish phrase: torjuntavoitto) Along and at the same time with the strengthening defensive victory rhetoric the floor was opened to other kind of new questions, too. The debate on certain ”shadowy aspects” of the war, especially on the historical interpretation of the so-called Finnish-German brotherhood of arms (from June 1941 to September 1944), caused headlines Elina Sana’s documentary book Luovutetut [The Extradited] (WSOY: Helsinki 2003) brought into the public debate sides of the brotherhood in arms which had previously stayed in the shade

11. The extradition of some three thousand Soviet prisoners of war and hundreds of civilians, some Jews among them, to the German army and to the Gestapo attracted even wide international attention The Simon Wiesenthal Centre requested in a letter to President Halonen that the Finnish government to clarify if there were some precarious things in the history of Finland during the war, which still were hidden The Finnish government reacted quickly and nominated Professor Heikki Ylikangas to write an expert’s opinion about the state of research on the problems in question

12. Ylikangas discovered serious shortages in the previous research For example the authorised military history of the Continuation War (Jatkosodan historia) in six volumes describes the extraditions with following six lines, written by Professor Ohto Manninen (Vol 4, p. 282): “Soviet prisoners of war which belonged to kindred nations of the Finns were moved from the German POW camps to Finland via Tallinn and Danzig in December 1942 and in April 1943, altogether 2048 men. Correspondingly 2661 Soviet POWs, first of all belonging to national minorities, commanders and political staff, were extradited to German custody.”

13. Ylikangas suggested that the human extraditions from Finland during the war should be clarified thoroughly, and one or two major research projects should be established for this task The results of the research project Finland, POWs and Extraditions, 1939–1955, completed in the National Archives in 2004–09, have added our knowledge largely about the certain shadow sides of Finland’s warfare The head of the research team Lars Westerlund has published two important monographs, the first one on German POW camps in the north of Finland and the second one on the mortality of the Soviet POWs in Finnish custody during the Winter and Continuation Wars As much as one third of the Soviet POWs (almost 20 000 men) died on hunger and diseases in the Finnish camps during the first 12 months of the Continuation War

14. Oula Silvennoinen’s dissertation about the cooperation between the Gestapo and the Finnish State Police brought into day light a real novelty, the SS-Einsatzkommando Finnland which worked in the North of Finland and Norway and was assisted by a group of Finnish policemen from the State Police Antti Kujala deals in his monograph with the illegel killings of ca. one thousand Soviet POWs by the Finns So, it is my principal task to study the Finnish-German brotherhood of arms as politics of national memory In other words my research question is how the Finns have coped with the fact that their country was fighting on Hitler’s side in the Second World War

15. From this point of view the phrase brotherhood of arms is more or less a common denominator among the political and historical ballasts which have challenged the Finns to remember (and sometimes also to forget) the war The driftwood theory and the separate war thesis were the main historical explanations (artefacts) with which the Finns tried to repress the unpleasant memory of the brotherhood of arms According to this explanation, Finland was not guilty in the war and did not have any responsibility for the unhappy fate of being driven to the German side in the war Therefore the peace terms, demanded by the Soviet Union, ceded territories, war reparations and the so called war guilt process were an enormous unjust

16. I intend to bite into some major historical turning points in which the coping with the brotherhood of arms became necessary – and times when it was more advisable to be quiet and to forget the unpleasant past To make my project feasible, I will examine the arguments of the Finns in six historical turning points which were the most challenging from the viewpoint of Finland’s national memory In the negotiations on the interim peace treaty in 1944 and Paris peace treaty in 1947 2. In the so-called war guilt process in 1946, in which eight prominent political leaders were sentenced to prison from two to ten years

17. In the negotiations on the FCMA treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1948 • In the political crisis between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1958 and 1961; in both cases the Soviet Union expressed its distrust to Finland’s ability to prevent the potential threat of the West German militarism • In different phases during the 1960s and 1970s when Finland had to fight for the credibility of her policy of neutrality • 6. In the explanations given to Finland’s position at the Second World War after the Cold War, for example, the heated debate in 2005–09 on the ideas of separate war and defensive victory

18. In addition to these six cases, my seventh case will be forgetting and silencing the past, or in other words repressing the memory of the brotherhood of arms For instance, in official speeches on memorial days, e. g., when the Independence Day on December 6 was celebrated and the significance of the war for saving of Finland’s independence was strongly pointed out, the brotherhood of arms with Germany was definitely forgotten and probably never mentioned

19. Sources • Academic and non-academic historiography • Published autobiographies, diaries, collections of speeches, etc. of politicians, intellectuals and journalists who participated to history debates • Newspapers and periodicals • Documentary films, photos, radio programs, recordings, etc. • Archival documents (letters, diaries etc.) • Museums and exhibitions • Film, fiction and fine arts (use of these sources is possible but because of limited resources not probable in this study)