Finland at War

"Finland did not capitulate!"

by Paul Sjöblom

Myths die hard. One such myth, clung to tenaciously abroad, is that Finland "capitulated" to the Red Army in World War II.

"Finland did not capitulate!" ex-president Mauno Koivisto once again emphasized in a recent public appearance.

He spoke at a seminar held in early August in the North Karelian city of Joensuu to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Finnish victory in the crucial battle of Ilomantsi. Two attacking Red Army divisions were decimated in that last major engagement on the Finnish front before the Armistice concluded in early September 1944.

The future Finnish president witnessed that battle as a soldier in a reconnaissance company commanded by the legendary war hero Captain Lauri Törni (who became a legend also later on in U.S. uniform as a Green Beret under the name Larry Thorne).

In the summer of 1944, when the Red Army launched an all-out offensive aimed at eliminating Finland, the Finns were "extremely hard-pressed," Koivisto declared, but they "did not capitulate."Time and time again, he said he has had to correct this misconception in discussion with foreigners. "We succeeded in stopping the enemy cold at key points," he said, "and in the final battle at Ilomantsi even in pushing him back."

Military historians note that the two elite Red divisions were completely routed after a week and a half of fighting, leaving behind over 3,000 dead, 94 pieces of heavy artillery, a half dozen rocket launchers and the rest of their ordnance. Moscow could only decide that the Finns had plenty of light left in them and would never accept an unconditional surrender.

The Canadian-born Finnish-American scholar Leo Vuosalo, who moved to Helsinki this summer after selling his house in California, fought in this battle as a young recruit. Returning to America after the war, he studied at several California universities and a wrote a thesis dealing with the campaigns on the Finnish front. For the next 35 years or so, he taught courses in history and political science at various universities and other educational institutions in California.

"My academic colleagues," he recalls, "persisted in propagating the myth of Finland's capitulation. They obstinately refused to accept the facts I presented to prove they were wrong."

He sites the case of a Stanford University history professor named Kennedy who wrote much-used textbook dealing with U.S. foreign policy in which Finland gets a passing mention as having been "flattened" by the Red Army. In quite a recent edition of the book, this gross distortion of historical fact remained uncorrected.

Last year, I received an inquiry from a Finnish-American friend about Larry Thorne, whose exploits, he said, had been featured in a movie about the Green Berets. My friend wanted to know whether Thorne had actually, as he had heard, been a popular war hero in Finland, too. Included in the letter was a copy of an official U.S. military biographical sketch of the fellow. This document jolted my by stating that Thorne had been obligated to flee West for fear of Communist reprisal after Finland's "capitulation."
. . .

The ignorance of even the best-informed observers in the West about Finland's part in World War II is astounding.

Take British Major-General H.M. Tillotson's book Finland at Peace & War--1918-1993, for example. It was written, in close collaboration with Finland's Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Defense, Defense Staff, Commission of Military History, Military Archives and Military Museum, to mark, in 1993, the 75th anniversary of the armed forces in independent Finland.*)

Yet, in its 354 pages, the book has room for only one sentence about the single most important battle, perhaps, fought in Finland's Continuation War, Tali-Ihantala. There the Finnish concentration of artillery fire was the heaviest in the country's military history. It has been described as even heavier than the Soviet fire in the siege of Berlin.

The Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus was launched just at the time of the Western Allies' landing at Normandy. The several armies hurled against Finnish fences were crack troops, the Soviet "elite." Stalin's plan was obviously to occupy Finland before the Wester Allies could advance very far against the German lines.

For every 100-meter stretch of the Isthmus, the Red Army placed no less than 10 pieces of artillery--in one sector all of 400 over a distance of only one kilometer. Since the Finns had only 268 cannon, they could mount only 5 for every kilometer. The artillery odds were thus 20 to 1 in the attacker's favor. Besides, with some 400 bombers and 600 fighters thrown into the fray, the Soviet forces had overwhelming air superiority. Official Russian records reveal that during the summer offensive, aircraft of the 13th Soviet Air Force carried out "more than 9,000 combat missions" against the Finnish forces.

The artillery fire aimed at Finnish targets has been described by some researchers as the most massive in world military history up to that time.

At the critical Ihantala sector, however, the Finnish defenders managed to concentrate their fire to the extent of smashing the advancing Soviet spearhead.

In the Russian book Bitva za Leningrad 1941-1944 (The Battle of Leningrad) edited by Lt.-Gen. S.P. Platonov, it is stated: "The repeated offensive attempts by the Soviet Forces failed . . . to gain results. The enemy succeeded in significantly tightening its ranks in this area and repulse all the attacks of our troops . . . During the offensive operations lasting over three weeks, from June 21 to mid-July, the forces of the right flank of the Leningrad front failed to carry out the tasks assigned to them on the orders of the Supreme Command issued on June 21st."

It was then that Stalin ordered the withdrawal from the Finnish front of the decimated elite divisions to join the forces advancing on Berlin.

In a speech held Sept. 4, this year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice ending Finnish-Soviet hostilities, Prime Minister Esko Aho declared:

"I do not see defeat in the summer's battles, but the victory of a small nation over a major power, whose forces were stopped far short of the objectives of the Soviet leadership. Finland was not beaten militarily . . .

"Finland preserved her autonomy and her democratic social system . . .

"Finland was on the losing side of the war, but won the peace."

Significantly, aside from Britain, Finland was the only European country involved in the war west of Russia that was never occupied by enemy troops.

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*) The all-out support given the British general by the Finnish military authorities is pointed up by the fact that the Preface to his book was contributed by Admiral Jan Klenberg, who is there titled "Commander-in-Chief," though that title belongs in peacetime to the President of the Republic. The commanding officer of the Finnish Defense Forces praises the book, stating that it "has a central role in illustrating the history, the present time and the future of the national defense of Finland for foreigners." This makes it all the harder to understand how Tillitson's book fails to recognize the momentous significance of the Finnish victories in the battles of Tali-Ihantala and Vuosalmi, which halted the massive offensive of 1944 and won for Finland a negotiated armistice and saved the country from enemy occupation.