COMMENTARY: Hitler's reluctant wartime guest
Mannerheim
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By Jaakko Lyytinen
On June 27th, 1942, a rather hush-hush meeting took place on the outskirts of Rastenburg (now known as Ketrzyn in Poland, but then in the German province of East Prussia).
The venue was the Wolfsschanze or "Wolf's Lair", and it took its name from its chief resident, who liked to use the nickname "wolf" about himself.
He is usually better known as Adolf Hitler.
Inside the Führer's Eastern Front military HQ, men in crisp dress uniforms examined huge maps.
In addition to the senior German officers present, there was one slightly older gentleman with a moustache and whose collar insignia differed from the rest, in that they displayed three heraldic lions and the crossed batons of a marshal.
He was Marshal of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (the title had been recently bestowed, on Mannerheim's 75th birthday on June 4th), and he was not altogether enthusiastic about the visit.
The dull roar of 70th anniversary memories of the miracle of the Winter War of 1939-40 is now beginning to fade away, so it is perhaps time to take the large heraldic feline by the tail and get down to the latest sequel to the continuing story of the much more problematic Continuation War, Episode 70.
Once more we are faced with those painful questions: what ultimately was Finland's relationship with Nazi Germany?
Were we "co-belligerents" or was this a euphemism for "allies"?
All wars are sensitive questions for Finns, but the Continuation War of 1941-44 is like oral herpes, which stubbornly appears as cold sores on the lip, however much one smothers it with magical antiviral creams and ointments.
Ylioppilaslehti, a venerable Finnish student newspaper, recently asked 240 undergraduates from the University of Helsinki what they knew about Finnish military history.
Some 36% of the respondents did not know that Finland handed over Jews to Germany (not many were handed over, but some dozens of Jews were numbered among the refugees extradited and Russian prisoners of war exchanged for Finns in Germany).
As many took the view that the Continuation War was a "separate war" with the Soviet Union (basically a revanchist action to right the wrongs committed in the attempted Soviet invasion of 1939), and not a part of the Second World War as such.
The younger generation clearly does not know what the older generation has not wanted to tell them.
In its November article, darkly entitled "Nazi Finland", Ylioppilaslehti went over the basic facts: during the Continuation War there were more than 200,000 German soldiers in Finland; Finland handed over thousands of Soviet POWs to Germany; more than a thousand Finns joined a volunteer combat battalion of the Waffen-SS and saw action on the Eastern Front.
It is also worth remembering the significance of Germany military and Luftwaffe assistance in the decisive defensive battles of the precarious summer of 1944.
As recently as in 2005, President Tarja Halonen described the Continuation War as a "separate" conflict against the Soviet Union in an address in Paris.
Maybe Halonen was making a foreign policy statement.
Or alternatively she thought perhaps that wars are such a touchy issue for the Finns that a blue-and-white half-truth was preferable to the less salubrious whole truth and nothing but.
The image of Finnish and German collaboration during the Second World War has become more sharply focused in recent years, thanks largely to historians from the younger generation such as Markku Jokisipilä and Oula Silvennoinen, who have finally demonstrated that it is probably time to ditch the talk about a separate war (see article from 2008).
Side by side with the historical facts runs the mental side of things.
It has only recently and gradually begun to be recognised quite how heavy a shadow the war casts on our lives.
Ville Kivimäki, who has studied the traumas of the war, speaks of "the capsulated and untreated experiences in homes", and "the legacy of wounded parenthood".
The traces of this are still there to be seen.
On the individual level it manifests itself in a pent-up unwillingness to speak about the subject, which sometimes discharges itself in violence.
On the national level it can be seen in a denial of history that is released in the shape of accusations against younger historians.
Those who would keep the war a sacred matter claim that the researchers are trampling on the memory of the veterans, even though the veterans themselves accept the truth.
It is a question of a collective trauma - one that requires collective treatment, the acknowledgement of historical facts.
This does not mean trashing the honour of the Finnish veterans.
It does not mean the tired old debate of whether it would have been preferable instead that Finland had gone the way of the occupied Baltic States or Poland.
Of course it would not have been preferable.
But it would be better if we shrugged off the frilly euphemisms and recognised what exactly was going on in the Continuation War and how profoundly the wars have damaged Finnish generations.
Acknowledging this will not make war criminals of the fallen heroes.
Perhaps then Finland's independence would at last find some other meaning and significance than the endless repetitions of our wars.
In June 1942, Mannerheim would very much have preferred not to have to make the trip to Germany.
His hand was forced, however, since Hitler had made a surprise and almost unprecedented visit to Finland on Mannerheim's 75th birthday a few weeks earlier.
Mannerheim's visit to the Wolfsschanze was a reciprocal matter, "an obligatory gig", as the weekly magazine Suomen Kuvalehti headlined its article on the subject last week.
The visit gnawed away at the credibility of the belief upheld by Mannerheim that Finland was engaged in a separate war alongside the Germans.
The commander-in-chief had tactical reasons for his use of the term.
Those who would whitewash history have only pretexts and excuses.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.12.2010
Previously in HS International Edition:
Presidential Forum disagrees on myth of a "separate war" (20.11.2008)
See also:
Wartime refugees made pawns in cruel diplomatic game (18.11.2003)
Links:
Continuation War (Wikipedia)
JAAKKO LYYTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jaakko.lyytinen@hs.fi
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| 14.12.2010 - THIS WEEK |
COMMENTARY: Hitler's reluctant wartime guest
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