Originally posted by Fishu
Anyway, personally I have no problems if people likes to say finns were allied with the nazis, because otherwise I would be probably speaking fluent russian and painted red flags in my childhood (which are not in the receiving end of a barrel, like those used to be in my true childhood
)
However I'm proud to know the finns in WWII didn't go to conquer whole of russia with the germans like they wanted, but rather stopped around the areas of former borders nor joined in the nazi's holocaust acts.
First: USSR didn't want to "conquer" Finland, and it didn't. The war, ended with the complete of the Finnish defences, resulted in admission of pre-war Soviet suggestions. That's the fact. Finland lost all opportunities to protect itself in March, 1940.
Second: Finns
did not stop at "former borders". They occupied Karelia including Petrozavodsk.
Third: Finns organized genocide against non-Finnish population in Karelia, and the death rate in their concentration camps was in fact higher then in German ones.
I have found the name of the book I mentioned to you a few years ago. In Finnish it's "Suomi Miehittäjänä 1941-1944" by Helge Seppälä.
Here is a quote from here:
http://www.tendens.se/nicolas/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=287Posted by Juha Tompuri:
Atleast one book is about the Finnish rule at East Carelia: "Suomi Miehittäjänä 1941-1944" (Finland as Occupant...) by Helge Seppälä (not one of my favourite authors) 1989.
Finnish policy at those days was nationalistic.
Some notes from the book:
Civilian population under Finnish rule (31th Dec-41):
35919 nationals (Carelians etc)
50200 non-nationals (Russian etc)
1st Jan-44:
41875 nat.
41510 non-nat.(death rate and checking/changing nationality from the first figures)
Finland had two type of "camps" at E Carelia: concentration camps =prisons at Kinnasvaara(5 nationals and 87 non-nationals) and Kolvasjärvi(107 nationals and 2 non-nationals) and "siirtoleiri" (a camp for polically unreliable people, they lived at there but worked outside of the camp) Petrozavodsk(57 nationals and 11819 non-nationals), Alavoinen(4 nationals and 2285 non-nationals) and Pyhäniemi(1 national and 550 non-nationals)
At first Finnish didn´t pay for the work, but later for example national carpenter got 12FMK/hour, but had to pay no taxes (in Finland 14,9FMK/hour -taxes) non-nationals got about 70% national salary.
Food rations for the non-nationals were lower than for the nationals. After the war A.Zdanov gave us a list (61 names) about war criminals: 40 of them were E Carelia related. Among them were the commanders of the military rule at E Carelia, col. V.A. Kotilainen and col. A.V. Arajuuri (charged for ethnical food rations). Both emigrated Finland after the war, and after their return -48 and -49 the charges were dropped.
There is no reliable data about the death-rate at the area. 4600 is perhaps quite close the truth. The sadest period was the begining of 1942, hard winter, lack of food and diseased killed 3536 people at the camps between 18th Jan-31th Dec -42.
There is also something about the partisans and underground resistance.
Regards, Juha
"Sotavangit Suomessa 1941-1944" (POW´s at Finland...) by Eino Pietola perhaps has something about the war Crimes too. Can´t remember exact. Anyway, I just don't see any reason to call our Finnish comrades (I mean
comrades not "comrades") bad names. It happened 60 years ago, and nazism was declared criminal and inhuman long time since. We have to fight modern neo-nazis, so such things will never happen again, instead of declaring whole nations "nazi supporters".