Unusual question involving WW2 and Finland

[Drakon]

In the first two weeks of winter war the deat-rate of Russian prisoners of war in finish camps was actually allmost as high as the death rate in Auschwitz. (Somewhere around 70 pro cent if I remember correctly.) After those two weeks the deat rate decreased down to a much more normal leve and if you look at a statistic tha concist the whole WWII era it doesn't look that horryfying.

...but I was talking about the first two weeks of winter war. I don't think that just the bad food situation or bad hygiene could explain the mortality rate. I mean the whole war lasted only three months.

Where exactly do you get the horrendous figures from the beginning of the Winter War? I would be interested to see a source for that assertion.

Around 6000 Soviet soldiers were captured during the war, and of these, 5572 were returned to USSR in 1940. At least around 150-200 of the rest were anti-communists, who stayed in Finland and eventually found their way abroad. Even assuming all the rest, ca. 300 soldiers did in fact die in the Finnish camps the mortality rate for the whole war would be 5%. This assumed number is dwarfed by the horrible Continuation War figures.

This project tries to list all Russian POWs that died during Winter War, and of the 135 known names not a single one seems to have died during the first weeks of the war.

This is certainly something to be expected, because this was a defensive war and the first successful Finnish counterattack (at Tolvajärvi-Äggläjärvi, beginning December 12th) could have brought in a substantial number of Russian POWs only after those two weeks would have passed.

[Joutilas]

My senior high history theacher told me this. I you like I could ask him some aditional info. It could be I remembered the figures wrong but I'm pretty certain I didn't.

But ask my teacher and get back to you.

[Max Fun]

I think you guys have got somewhat off the original question... But as you are discussing the soviet prisoners now, I may drop in a few lines on that.

My mother was a teen during the wars, her home being at the Carelian isthmus. She has often told me about them having to have left their home - twice. When they returned back during the Continuation war, they started plowing again for a couple of years. And there was a camp for soviet prisoners nearby. As every man was needed, they could take prisoners from the camp to work on their lands and pay in food and stuff. The prisoners were more than happy of this, which shows off in how they behaved...

Of course, the prisoners given work needed to be guarded. At first there followed a Finnish soldier with his rifle, but soon the people got acquianted with their daily workers and they gave the guarding task to the civilians taking the prisoners to their fields. That's my mother, then only 15, who carried the rifle with an order to shoot in case the prisoners would not behave... The prisoners wouldn´t have even thought of escaping or anything, because they had nowhere to go. It was worse on their own side, and they knew they'd get killed over there... At last the men even carried my uncle, who was only 5 then, on humpback, when he had been with my mother to get the men to work from the camp!

When the Soviets started their massive attack 1944, those prisoners got terrified. They weren't definitely afraid of the Finns, but they understood they'd get between a rock and a hard place. The best option by far for them was working for the Finns while at a camp, and end of war would mean them being returned - most likely to a Soviet camp, if not shot directly. They begged the Finns wouldn't let them to the Soviets...

This history of my mother should pretty much tell the Finnish camps were in fact a paradise in comparison to the conditions on the other side.

[Joutilas]

A correction to my first post about this subjeckt.
The mortality rate during the first month of contuniaton war was over 70%, NOT during the first two weeks of winter war.

[Joutilas]

This history of my mother should pretty much tell the Finnish camps were in fact a paradise in comparison to the conditions on the other side.

Of coarse. I'm not saying that in any way the things finns did were in any comparison with the things russians did to their own. Still war crimes were commited and I don't think that, that kind of atitude is vey healthy way to observe history.


The reason why I started to talk about this issue was because this is something that isn't wery openly discussed in the finish community and I think that this is wrong.

[Joona]

I am certainly not claiming Finns aren't capable of committing or did not committ war crimes, and I am very sorry for any that happened. But from which hat is that 70% pulled? I mean, there is a phrase "lie, bigger lie, statistic".

It is not a war crime to shoot a POW attempting escape, for example. And that is just one example. A 70% mortality rate would suggest a systematic destruction of POWs, which sounds pretty incredible compared to Max's mom's eyewitness account and many other similar ones I have heard from my own (now mostly deceased) relatives. Another point is were those POWs that died (for certainly many did) killed in purpose, or did they perish for starving, diseases, and shit instead of being victims of some intentional genocide scheme? Not that POWs should be treated with any less care than your own citizens with the same basic human rights - unlike in Guantanamo (yeah, this is an intentional troll - sue my fucking ass).

No offence, but I smell an air of deliberate hostile apologism here in a matter that does not seem to warrant any.

Joona

[Julian]

A quick aside on Gitmo/Guantanamo:

Yes, it looks very much to me (after a decent bit of research) as if the present Administration is attempting to flout the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, as well as the US Constitution.

I find this quite distressing.

The Nitwit-in-Chief has not only tarnished the reputation of my country, he's pretty much tarred and feathered himself and his cronies for good. I for one wouldn't mind too much seeing them get tossed to the International Criminal Courts. 'Twould certainly be a fascinating show, whatever the verdicts.

I don't give a hang who those guys held in Gitmo are, or what they've done, however subhuman and reprehensible the deed. They're still human beings, and despite them technically not fitting the 'classic' definition of POW, they still fit within the Conventions, and should be treated humanely with none of this "waterboarding" garbage.

By all legitimate means, hell yes, we need to kick terrorist butt. They're a threat to Denmark, Holland, Finland--to the West itself.
They want to shove us all through a dusty stultifying little hole, back into their repressed and tribalistic 7th Century. To hell with that!!

Probably the one good thing coming out of this wretched mess...our European friends are keeping a sharp eye on us, and won't let us wiggle out of our promise to uphold the rule of international law. So we argue!! Big deal!! It would be unnatural not to argue and fuss and disagree and throw beer bottles at each other now and then.

Doesn't mean Yanks and Europeans will stop being friends and watching each other's backs...

[Joona]

I knew I could trust you replying, Lynshka. Consider the troll my personal greetings with love.

I fully agree terrorists are assholes, but my point was that every one of us has an asshole, and should be treated according to that. Ie, treat everyone as they were assholes unless proven otherwise.

Just kidding, the basis of justice is to consider everyone not guilty until proven otherwise. Just being an arab and having sometimes said "America sucks ass" and fighting in a war for your country doesn't constitute a crime or necessarily doesn't even suggest aggression - it is just an opinion. If any Caucasian white said so, there would be hell to pay if he/she was arrested for it without any other "evidence".

Making a donkey bridge (sorry for the Finglishm) back to the subject, I would like to see some evidence supporting the rather strange implication that Russians were mistreated to the level of intentional mass slaughter. And again, I certainly do not deny that shit happens in POW camps everywhere as tempers run short in wartime.

Joona

[Laurentius]

70% deaths at a prison camp sounds way too high, considering that eg. death rate at prison camps after the Finnish civil war (with starvation even outside the camps, and the Spanish Flu raging) was at most 10-15% in one or two camps, less in most places. And even THAT is considered high, AND the tempers were just as high then.

The 70% death rate among Russian POWs sounds about right only if we count in those who were shot by the Soviets themselves as "deserters" and "fascist collaborators" after they were released and returned to Soviet Union... maybe this is the source of confusion?

As for the internment camps in East Karelia in '41-'44, I do not recall that they would have been even near that 10%, and they were complained about already...

[Joutilas]

But from which hat is that 70% pulled? I mean, there is a phrase "lie, bigger lie, statistic".

My history teacher told me this. He said that he had read it from some book thats title I offcoarse forgot to ask. I could check it out.
And you are forgetting that as I said the death rate was high only the first month of continütion war. After that the death rate dropped to a much more normal level. Bad hygine and starvation among Russian POWs must have been a great contributor to this but I think that it's naive to presume that given the high motions among finns that those would be the only reasons for the high mortality.
I don't think tha there were any systematic killings though.

[Julian]

Still war crimes were commited

I don't think tha there were any systematic killings though

Make up your mind, Joutilas.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but my patience is wearing thin on this subject.

You were the one making 'war crimes' allegations against your own people,
whom the Soviets were attempting to overrun and crush.

You're starting to sound like a "sensitivity-trained" Yank university student.

[Joutilas]

Ok maeby I wasn't that clear with my last post. What I meant was that there was no commands that came from the generals to systematicly kill every Russian POW. Just random acts of violence that superiors looked thru their fingers.

[Joona]

Lynn, Lynn. Please don't overreact. It is fairly certain that Finns committed war crimes just like any other soldiers. It can be quite safely assumed there were rapes and murder in the counteroffensive phase. One example of this being the semi-fictional sporadic execution by sergeant Lehto in the Unknown Soldier. Of course that is not evidence, but I would speculate that as the book is based on Linna's own experiences with his platoon and "tower rumours" heard on the front, it does give at least some hints on the general attitude of the Finnish soldiers then. And the general attitude of Lehto's brothers in arms was he was a fucking psycho.

But that is on an individual, personal level. The issue here is not whether there were war crimes, but whether they were standard official procedure and general hate mongering. No individual incidents would get 70% of POWs wasted. As for crimes, I would be more pissed about executing your own deserters (it was not a crime then, but I still think it was immoral) and the so called partisan raids by the Soviets, where whole villages of women and children were raped and killed. Maybe sometimes the other way around. Hatred breeds hatred.

But I do appreciate your feisty defence for the Finns. Sometimes I wonder what made you such a fan of this country and its people all the way from California.

Joona

[Drakon]

Joona, Joutilas, Julian: Let me have a stab at this by referencing real studies by historians.

Professor emeritus Heikki Ylikangas, in his statement submitted to the Prime Minister's Office in 2004 gave out the numbers of the Russion POWs in the Continuation War, as follows:

Russian POWs, caught by the Finnish forces during the Continuation War:
ca. 64 000
Of the same, died in Finnish POW camps:
ca. 18 700

The total mortality for the war was thus a bit under 30%

Pirkka Mikkola, in his Masters' thesis to the Helsinki University in 1976, title translated as The Life and Death of a Prisoner of War , calculated the number of Russian POWs caught during the first three weeks of the war as ca. 17 000. After this the flow slowed down a bit, but in the end of 1941, according to Mikkola, the Finnish camps held 56 000 prisoners. This means an average addition of over 11000 new prisoners per month in between August 1941 and January 1942.

Now, the "Finland, Prisoners of War and Extradictions"- project by the Finnish National Archives (referenced, with a link, in my earlier post) gives the number of dead POWs during the first month of the war, July 10th to August 10th 1941, as 285. Of the captured soldiers, until the end of July this translates to a 2% monthly mortality at the most.

The project's data can not be complete, of course, but the numbers of dead POWs it lists by name, the location, the cause and the date of death is only a little over 500 soldiers short of the highest estimates of the deaths for the entire war (by Mikkola and referenced also by Ylikangas). I thus consider it a quite reliable source as to the distribution of the deaths during the war.

As far as the worst monthly mortality for the war goes, Pirkka Mikkola gives it as 5%, for the months of January and February 1942. The more recently compiled data by the National Archives project confirms his numbers.

This is as much that can be stated without actually burrowing into the Finnish War Archives and to see the original documents. There is still, of course, the possibility that the mortality numbers at individual camps were considerably higher than the total numbers, but even with such a provision the 70% given by Joutilas seems impossibly high.

There is also one remaining option, that of explaining Joutilas's number by a simple error of memory or reading comprehension by him or his teacher. If we stick with the number of 70%, we could justifiably claim that

70% of the Russian POWs that died in the Finnish camps during the Continuation War died during the first ten months of the war.

This claim, if made, would be supported by both Mikkola and the National Archives project. As ominous as it sounds at first, it does not point towards the Finnish camps as being especially brutal, as such, but rather to the great harshness of the camp conditions in the years 1941 and 1942 in comparison with the rest of the war. The reasons for the abnormally high mortality during the winter of 1941-42 we already discussed with Laurentius.

[adam7]

I have to say that this thread is exceptional for a discussion forum on the internet. Good Work!

Perhaps the only thing in the original discussion, that I would like to add to, is the discussion on Soviet, i.e. Stalin's goal in the Winter War.

Here it mostly has been suggested that Stalin wanted to secure Leningrad, which was the stated reason given by the Soviets. However, Soviet troops attacking at Suomussalmi, at the "waist" of Finland and attempting to cut the country in half, did have written orders not to cross over into Sweden by mistake and if coming across Swedish military personnel, to salute smartly.

Stalin put up a "Finnish People's Government", which allegedly was situated in the town, actually village of Terijoki on the Finnish side of the legitimate border. The "government" was headed by Otto Wille Kuusinen, one of the leaders of Finnish communists from the civil war of 1917 - 1918, who had fled to Russia. First Stalin made a treaty with this "government" and refused to negotiate with the real and legitimate government. Later Stalin dropped this fiction and made the peace treaty with the real and legitimate government.

The Soviets also had planned the victory parade in Helsinki, the Finnish capital. The Soviets had banners for the parade and held in reserve the "Finnish People's Army" which was conscripted partly of ethnic Finns from the SU, who had not succumbed in Stalins ethnic cleansing of minorities. The Peoples Army were given originally Polish uniforms, which the Red Army had captured when they invaded the already defeated Poland. After the Winter War the "Finnish Peoples Army" was quietly disbanded.

Stalin also had given the composer Shostakovich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich instructions to compose a musical piece based on Finnish traditional music themes, which the composer fulfilled, which music was to be played at the Soviet victory concert in Helsinki. The notes were found only a few years ago, and had before that never been performed in public, since only London, Moscow and Helsinki never were occupied of all the capitals of the European countries that participated in WWII.

To this detail, a very strong opinion is convinced that Stalins aims were to reclaim the czarist borders of Russia. As some might now, Finland was during 1809 - 1917 an autonomous grand duchy under the Russian czar, a part of the Russian empire, but still with an expanding home rule and local legislation, which came from the Swedish, not Russian tradition. I concur with this opinion.