Many Finnish women followed German soldiers in 1944 out of fear - not love

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By Hannele Tulonen
     
      A majority of the Finnish women who accompanied German soldiers as they left Finland in 1944 did not do so as girlfriends or brides. The image of “hussies with loose morals” is one-sided according to a study by Ville Kontinen, a researcher at the Finnish National Archive.
      The number of women who left Finland is not as great as had previously been estimated. Some have said that as many as two thousand might have gone. Sources indicate that there were at least 750, and Kontinen does not think that there would have been more than 1,000.
     
Kontinen’s study is based on records of interrogations by the State Police, or VALPO. A total of 658 women returning from Germany in 1945-1948 were interrogated by VALPO. Kontinen has drawn up statistics on the reasons and motives that the women had for their move.
      The interrogators considered the information given by the women to be quite reliable. It was their view that the women had felt it best to speak the truth, lest they be contradicted by others who return later.
     
Fewer than half, 270 women in all, said that the reason for their departure was a relationship with a German soldier, or that the men asked them to come along. In addition, the Germans sometimes used scare tactics to persuade the women to come as labour.
      There were rumours going around that Finland had been occupied, and the Germans added fuel to the rumours. The women were largely cut off from the news. They were worried about the outcome of the war, and of a possible punishment that might await them.
      One of the women said that fear was a more important factor for her decision to leave than any romantic feelings. Fear was mentioned as a reason by 100 of the women.
     
Many left because the others left as well. In Kemi and Helsinki, social pressure was a factor.
      Some women were also eager for an adventure, and wanted to travel.
      The prospect of well-paid work at German restaurants, at textile plants, and offices was attractive to some. Nurses were motivated by a professional calling.
     
A few dozen women were taken against their will. Such situations emerged when the Germans promised to help someone get to Sweden, but took the women to Norway instead.
      Seventy returning women did not give a reason for their departure, or then the reason was unclear.
     
The mother of Hamburg-born Frans Kantola had worked first at the Pohjanhovi restaurant, and later at an officers’ restaurant in Rovaniemi. She became engaged to a flight officer who asked her to go with him. The journey went via Norway to Germany, where Frans’s mother was ordered to go to Hamburg. There she continued to work at an officers’ restaurant when her beau sought out his previous family.
      It was the ordinary story. The man had either a fiancé or family waiting back home.
      The relationships often broke up anyway, and many women who actually married in Germany returned to Finland because the conditions in the ruins of Germany were so bleak.
     
Kantola was born after Germany surrendered in 1945.
      At first he was sent to a children’s home for about a year, but after that he lived with his mother. They returned to Finland in 1948.
      In Rovaniemi people looked askance at the “women of the Germans”, so the mother left the son with her sister’s family and moved to the south of Finland.
     
Over the years Kantola tried to ask his mother about what had happened to her during the war and later in Germany, but she did not want to talk about it very much.
      “It must have been difficult.”
      However, he found the houses where they lived in Germany.
      He also found his father’s grave, and Kantola has brought flowers there.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.5.2011
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  War children fathered by German soldiers are looking for their fathers (25.5.2011)
  A now-identified unknown soldier and his wedding photo (17.5.2011)

See also:
  “Hitler´s brides” from Finnish Lapland (10.5.2011)

HANNELE TULONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
hannele.tulonen@hs.fi