Images of courts-martial and executions carried out on Finnish soldiers were transferred to the classified list in order to spare the feelings of relatives. Picture sequences showing the executions of Russian infiltrators and saboteurs provide a telling reminder of the madness of war. Here, Finnish officers are taking a cigarette break with a condemned Russian infiltrator. The text on the reverse notes that the Russian is laughing at his "last request". The picture from July 1941 is not from the eastern front but from Hanko, to the west of Helsinki. The Hanko peninsula was also the scene of some fighting in the summer of 1941, before troops at a Russian naval base (leased under the terms of the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940) were flushed from the area.
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