Researcher seeks explanation for massive war casualties among "Red" villages

Were the sons of those in the Civil War Bolshevik camp given impossible missions?

Jukka Kemppinen

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By Jarmo Huhtanen
     
      Professor Jukka Kemppinen would like to see a scientific study of his observation of the high attrition-rate in the Winter War and Continuation War among troops called up from communities or parishes that were on the Red side in the Finnish Civil War a generation earlier.
      On the basis of his own preliminary statistical studies, Kemppinen throws up a startling question: did the pre-war mobilisation and call-up system lead to a situation in which the sons of men who had fought against the White faction in the Civil War of 1918 were killed in markedly disproportionate numbers?
     
As a spin-off from the examination of quite another issue, Kemppinen has used IT and statistical methods to merge in a new fashion the lists of those who fell in Finland's two wars with the Soviet Union and the communities where they lived immediately before the conflict.
      "My attention was drawn to the fact that when you place on a map the 'Red' communities and those which suffered casualties that were significantly greater than the norm, then the weightings and the marker-pins match up to the same areas in many cases", claims Kemppinen.
      Kemppinen has also calculated the numbers of the fallen by age-group.
      His observation is that the losses in the Winter War of 1939-40, for instance, were so great that  there was an almost complete drain on conscripts of the optimum age.
      "In the Winter War, the greatest need was for the age-cohort from 1919, who had only just completed their military service as conscripts [and were thus better trained]."
      However, as a consequence of the Civil War in the previous year, the 1919 age-group was among the smallest of the entire 20th century (see graph in accompanying article).
      "There was a huge dip in the numbers of births, since the fathers [those on the losing 'Red' side of the conflict] were sitting imprisoned in Tammisaari or Hennala [a prison camp in Lahti]."
     
In the decentralised mobilisation system that was in operation immediately prior to the Winter War, infantry units were made up of men called up from the same local communities. The system was changed during the brief period of peace between March 1940 and the outbreak of the Continuation War in the summer of 1941.
      "In the Winter War, the call-up system in the brought some horrendous consequences. If some unit was ordered to a difficult place with high casualties, entire communities could get a generation wiped out. There are some big issues here, which will make people stop and think."
     
The backgrounds of those groomed for officer and NCO positions were screened carefully in the period before the Winter War. The result was that conscripts with a leftist family background inevitably found themselves among the other ranks.
      "Until 1939 there was a fairly clear rule that the sons of Reds from the Civil War era were not admitted to NCO training."
      As yet, Kemppinen does not offer an opinion on whether military units from "Red" locations would deliberately have been deployed in the areas with the fiercest fighting.
      "Was it an accident or was it not? What was conscious and what was not? What I do know as a lawyer is that we would not have deliberately got our own troops killed, but then again there are several cases in which particular units were given apparently insane missions."
      "I want to put forward the question of whether this aspect might have influenced the casualty figures."
     
Kemppinen is unsparing in his criticism of Finnish military history research.
      He laments the lack of a quantitative research approach that makes use of IT resources and of statistical methods.
      "Our picture of history remains wanting because nobody has sought to exploit quantitative analysis. It is now possible to calculate a good many things that have hitherto been just conjecture and opinion."
      "I'd push things a bit further to say that in the light of traditional critical examination of sources, the study of military history is pretty woeful. Even the Military Archives have not been given a decent inventory job for lack of funds."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.2.2005


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Minister believes contentious claim about war casualities merits study (14.2.2005)

Links:
  Helsinki Institute for Information Technology: Jukka Kemppinen
  Database of fallen soldiers during the Second World War in Finland (1939-1945)

JARMO HUHTANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jarmo.huhtanen@hs.fi