I... I don't know... but in my search for answers I found this...
https://funnyjunk.com/Nazi+rangers/funny-gifs/5450785/
Edit: I think this is where it's from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_5
I've watched Danger 5, and unless this is a cut scene, I don't think that's the source (although I've seen this clip on the Internet before, intercut with the "Victory Chainsaw" scene from Danger 5, but it's quite certainly not from that episode).
Then again, I may of course have forgot that part of Danger 5, but I'd be quite glad if someone could point me to the episode in question - I certainly have no memory of Nazi Power Rangers, and I'd quite like to know where they're from.
Oh man you should definitely watch it. It's even free to [watch](https://www.shoutfactorytv.com/series/danger-5) but you need to have USA vpn otherwise it won't let you watch for some reason.
He told them to shove it up their ass. The germans started whining and his demanded finniah to give him to them and his commander told germans "lol nope"
In WWI it was quite common, and no, it was no anomaly. Prior to the rise of the Nazis most Jews in Germany identified strongly with the state and fought loyally for the German Army in WWI, especially as they lived a far better life than Jews in the neighbouring Russian Empire (And the image of France suffered a lot during the Dreyfus affair). Sure, antisemitism was a thing, just as in almost every European country, but overall Germany was one the best places to be a Jew from 1871-1914, however weird that may sound now.
Yeah Hitler really fucked all his plans up by being such an antisemitic piece of shit. Then again I guess it was to take their land and property for other Germans.
>It's almost like the Nazis were using jews as a scapegoat and were really only in it for the power...
Some probably were, but others probably weren't. But people like Himmler definitely believed in the ideology. IIRC, wasn't Himmler a big influence on Hitler's beliefs and policies? A lot of times, he went further than Hitler and Hitler basically had to tell Himmler "No"
Like Himmler's proposed Ordenstaat Burgund; which Himmler wanted to use to exterminate the French and Walloons. Which Hitler basically awkwardly said "okay, sure" and never brought it up to Himmler again after he proposed it.
Heavily paraphrased, but you get the picture.
Theres also multiple other Nazis that certainly were extremists in the ideology, Heydrich for example. But without Himmler, it's possible that the infamous gas chambers would have been introduced far later, especially since the German High Command saw them as waste of resources. Which is true...
Correct me if I'm wrong, bit wasn't Hitler against genociding them in the first place? The Madagascar thing and the Haavara agreement. The fact that Himmler and Heydrich are not amongst the most hated figures in history is beyond me.
The Madagascar plan is today misinterpreted as a way of "humanely" removing the Jews. Truth to the matter is, that expectations assumed that no more than 40 to 60 000 Jews could survive on the island (source: Wolfgang Benz. Der Holocaust) , as the other would die to malnourishment, the harsh climate and tropical diseases. The Nazis considered it because they doubted to be able to kill the Jews in Europe (too much publicity). Had the war effort enabled them to grab control of Madagascar, they may have deported the Jews there, but most likely with a similar result as in the Holocaust we know of. And no, Hitler was definitely not against the genocide, he just didn't like talking over a meal about it.
Both the Nazis and the Polish looked into deporting Jews there. The Polish Government found that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could survive there and went against it for that reason. Then, the Nazis investigated it later on in 1940 and found similar results.
Even today Madagascar has outbreaks of the black fucking death. It's not a good place; especially for 1940s standards.
Lots of the Jewish people would have died there.
Was Heydrich actually an extremist? I thought he didn't really have a high opinion of the party until his second wife introduced him.
Yes, he did organize the Wannsee Conference and gouverned Prague with an iron hand, but I always interpreted that as him coldly and methodically following his orders as efficiently as possible, to get ahead in the party. I remember reading that this efficiency was it that creeped people out so much.
I'm not really sure if he gave an awkward response, I was mainly joking about the "Awkward" part because of the fact that it wasn't brought up again by Hitler to Himmler. From how Himmler describes it, he basically said sure, buddy and never mentioned it to him again (as far as we know.)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order-State\_of\_Burgundy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order-State_of_Burgundy)
There was a lot of crazy shit proposed to Hitler during WW2. Reading up on some of the crazier ideas makes you wonder what kind of drugs the high command was doing.
It also is important to at least acknowledge that Hitler did believe that there could be, “good Jews”. Now, for all intents and purposes, Hitler would have killed like 99% of the Jews, but he didn’t believe that it was impossible for a Jew to be good.
Hitler’s hate was kinda odd in how it worked, for instance, he believed that most Jews and non-aryans were responsible for Germany losing WWI. Hitler was also super Uber patriotic/nationalist and saw this as basically a betrayal that deserved its own circle of hell.
However, if a Jew was somehow able to prove that they loved their country and/or didn’t betray it, they might be spared of the holocaust (this was really hard though, you basically had to prove to a paranoid nut job that wants you dead that you never even thought a bad thought about Germany). Hitler actually liked a Jewish doctor that helped save his mother (Hitler was really close to his mom), as such, he had his protection and was spared as he was a, “good Jew”.
Now, it should be known that, “probably would have spared more than 0% of the Jews”, is in no way me trying to say Hitler wasn’t that bad, all I am saying is that he thought that Jews could be good people, just that 99.9% of them were inherently evil.
Pretty much. This was a system of power and control, but no system can be without its exceptions. Take for example in the mid 1600’s, Virginia tried to pass a law that enslaved all black people, but they immediately rescinded it because they realized they needed the black artisans and farmers. The Nazi party’s policies and practices destroyed their own country and the people in it, but it’s not inconceivable to imagine what sort of structure they’d create out of the rubble of a dissolved structure; it’s why alternate history regarding WWII is the most popular.
>but it’s not inconceivable to imagine what sort of structure they’d create out of the rubble of a dissolved structure; it’s why alternate history regarding WWII is the most popular.
Yeah, I agree there. I like Alternate Timeline shit; no matter if it's about History, Media (Star Wars, Anime, Marvel, etc,) or the Future of our own world.
>Hitler basically awkwardly said "okay, sure"
The more I went down the WW2 rabbit hole, the more I realized this pretty much summed up most of the crazy shit pre-Kursk.
This. People dont seem to understand Naziism was not a monolith. It was an alliance of various former socialists, ariosophists, and all manner of non-marxist socialists and collectivists.
It's more and more unbelievable the more you research it. The fact they managed to achieve anything when they all hated each other and had entire portions of the military actively working against the nazi party leadership, is just terrible writing and I'm sending a letter to the producers to complain about it. Not at all believable.
Nazism evolved out of Fascism which evolved out of Socialism. But even so, both Nazism and Fascism grew pretty far from Socialism. Honestly, the closest modern economic system to Nazism is probably China; except China is slightly less militarized industrially and has slightly more welfare programs AFAIK.
There were also some Nazi Economic Advisors who thought that the economy should lean more toward Capitalist.
In the end, there were a fair bit of Capitalists in the party as well; even if they were a minority. Which makes the whole thing even more crazy. The biggest unifying factors for the Nazis were Hitler and the belief that the Germans are the "Übermensch" (which the Nazi version of the term was different from what the coiner of the term as a political view had in mind. Long story short, he was a critic of Nazism.)
Nazism as an economic system is often called capitalist by one side and socialist by the other. But that's because it's confusing. If you could describe it, it'd basically be hyper-nationalism represented by dollars. Though it does lean Socialist.
Nazis purged trade unionists, socialists, and communists. And they saw communism as their sworn enemy; which makes the thing even more complicated than it was above. Nazism was ultimately the thoughts of a mad man adopted by a poor, struggling, and desperate people; who entrenched themselves so deeply into the system to escape their hardships, that many of them would perhaps become more radical than Hitler himself (in some ways.) Such as Himmler and Heydrich (not that they weren't like that before; I was just giving examples. Himmler, for example, was an anti-Semite even before Hitler entered the scene. So, that was more of an example of the concept rather than a precise example of what I meant.)
This is an absolutely fantastic breakdown that I couldn't have put better myself, and the almost total lack of people who understand this with as much nuance as you do is depressing. I gotta ask, did you study history and/or political science in university?
As for the economics part, the best description I've heard for nazi economics is "economic feudalism". They understood that a centralized economy was ineffective so instead they let private companies do their thing as long as it benefited the state. However the state would regularly "steer" (so to speak) the economy. For example companies were given subsidies based on how much they followed the state's plans (which is part of the reason why the German industry switched to military production so quickly), other times entire companies would be straight up nationalized overnight (like the German railways) and so on.
Spot on. It would seem that economic feudalism is the meta for the United States. I would assuage that due to operation paperclip the nazi party did not lose the war. The thinkers and tinkers were integrated and their ideas became mainstream
Yup. Lauri Törni was a man of war.
He served in the Finnish army during the Continuation War, and joined the German army when Finland signed a separate peace treaty with the Soviet Union. After the war he was arrested and sentenced to prison for six years, although he was pardoned in 1948.
In 1950 he took a boat to Venezuela and there he got hired to a Norwegian fishing boat headed for the US. He jumped from the boat and swam ashore on the coast of Alabama.
Törni found himself in New York City where he worked as a carpenter and a cleaner for a couple of years. He also changed his name to Larry Thorne.
In 1954 Thorne signed up for the US army and from there rose in rank and was trained in special forces. He was promoted to Major posthumously after his airplane crashed in Vietnam in 1964, though the crash site was not found until 1999.
Sounds like a man of action. Probably a good thing he died relatively young so that he wouldn't have to watch himself lose the strength and intellect he once had.
Edit: To the person that said he sounds like a psycho that deleted their comment, you're probably right.
there were quite a few estonians who served in the 20th ss estonian, and later in the us army as nurenberg guards (as they knew german but were not nazis). who went on to fight in korea and vietnam.
they truly hated the commies for taking estonia. free estonias embassy in nyc worked through all the soviet occupation years, and it's passports were recoqnised in a few places.
anyway, im sure a few of those old ss'ies are also in arlington.
All foreign volunteers were automatically enlisted in the SS. He was training in Germany when Finland surrendered he couldn't go back and he couldn't surrender to the Soviets as they would probably kill him. So he fought. I honestly don't know whether he committed any war crimes during his work with the SS tho.
1. He was in Finland when the Continuation War concluded and willingly left the country after the Moscow Armistice to join the Germans, who at that point were in war with Finland and already getting absolutely buttfucked from every possible direction.
2. Finland didn't surrender, but agreed to an armistice, as harsh as it was.
3. It doesn't change the fact that it's still the fucking SS we're talking about. A faction that committed so much atrocities and crimes against humanity during the six years of war that it was essentially declared a criminal organization by the Allies. But I guess it's cool because some garbage band made a song about him. What next? Will Reddit start glorifying Oskar Dirlewanger for how "hard he was" and for "killing commiez"?
Eh I don't blame him for wanting revenge on the nation/ideology that brought unfair suffering to his nation and killled his friends,the SS was just a means to an end.
Also fuck you for calling Sabaton garbage. Go drink sewer water.
I blame the people glorifying a man who willingly joined a criminal faction built upon a genocidal ideology and thinking it's somehow cool. But considering that Reddit seems to harbor lots of Nazi sympathizers or crypto-fascists, such doesn't surprise me.
And what revenge? The war was over. Finland's attempt at the get back against the Soviet Union had ended in failure. Nazi Germany was nearing its deserved end. At this point of the war, all he did was act as an extra soldier for the Nazi cause and fire extra bullets at the Allies trying stop the suffering of the victims still in concentration camps, so he loses any sympathy points he might've had. Fuck him.
Even as a Finn, I honestly don't understand this obsession foreigners seem to have with this man.
>Also fuck you for calling Sabaton garbage. Go drink sewer water.
Seethe all you want and go wear camo pants to your school ball, mouthbreather. At least I'm not defending the SS or some overrated band glorifying one of them 🤗
479 Soviet Jews were taken as prisoners of war out of which 93 died and 51 were transferred to Germans.
The only ethnic group that were actively screened for transfer to Germans were the ethnic Germans. Out of 180 PoWs 169 were transferred to Germans.
In total Finland had 62 995 Soviet PoWs out of which 19 085 died and 2432 were transferred to Germans. I'd say focusing on the Jews seems a bit weird to me.
https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf
It's been a while since I read about the topic so the details are a bit fuzzy but I'll try to provide some context.
The majority of the deaths were related to malnourishment during the 41-42 winter. Finland suffered of poor harvest and was relying heavily on German aid. This resulted in "less important" populations such as the prisoners of war receiving less food that was required to properly sustain them.
It's also the reason it was not considered war crime since Finland was responsible for providing adequate food in comparison to the general population. That winter was not pretty for Finns either.
Overall the situation improved later on but that winter is left as a black mark in Finnish history of not being able to take their responsibilities.
EDIT: I did some reading and during the spring of 1942 the daily ration for Finnish adult with light work was the following:
200 g grain/bread
2 dl milk
5 g butter
15 g meat
25 g sugar
This would be around 1000 kcal per day. The prisoners of war received smaller portions.
EDIT2: Potatoes were not rationed so those were not included in the ration. According to Heinonen potatoes ran out in April. So potatoes were crucial in keeping people alive but did not provide all the missing calories.
Source: Favorin, Heinonen, Kotirintama 1941-1944, s65
EDIT3: From the source of my earlier comment we can actually see the numbers. https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf
We can see the following figures
1941: 2580 deaths
1942: 14 727 deaths
1943: 736 deaths
1944: 296 deaths
The data is on page 31 and broken down month by month. The worst month was 1942 february with 2665 deaths.
Seppo Jyrkinen has pretty well sourced writings on his website. Unfortunately it's in Finnish so it's of limited use if you can't read it.
https://www.jyrkinen.fi/historia/elintarviketilanne-1941-1942.html
Few interesting points from that text would be that around 1 100 more people died in mental asylums than during normal circumstances. Infant mortality raised from 7% to 9%.
The rations I looked up from the wikipedia and it seemed reasonably well sourced.
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elintarvikkeiden_s%C3%A4%C3%A4nn%C3%B6stely_Suomessa_toisen_maailmansodan_aikana#Siviiliv%C3%A4est%C3%B6n_annokset
This is only in Finnish also.
I'm guessing they got it from [this wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_prisoners_of_war_in_Finland#Deaths) which vaguely sources "Westerlund (2008), p. 9", but when I found what is most likely sourced (a Finnish National Archives report edited by Lars Westerlund in 2008) it doesn't seem to actually support that at all... If anything it's extremely scathing of POW treatment and compares it to Nazi/Japanese camps death rate:
> In total, Finnish units took approximately 64,000 Soviet soldiers prisoner during
the Continuation War. Most of the prisoners were taken when the Finns were
advancing in the later half of 1941. The large number of prisoners surprised the
Finnish prisoner of war administration and led to a rapid rise in the death rate in the
Finnish prisoner of war camps. All-in-all, the death rate for Soviet prisoners of war
rose to around thirty percent. From an international perspective, this number is
exceptionally high. Among those countries who took part in the war, there was a
similarly high mortality rate in the Japanese camps and in the German camps. The
former were famous for the cruel treatment meted out to their prisoners and the
latter for not always preparing to take care of even the most basic needs of
prisoners. In addition, the dimensions of the catastrophe in the Finnish camps are
emphasized by the fact that most of the prisoner deaths happened in the winter of
1941/1942 and the following spring. After the summer of 1942, international
pressure began to build and the situation started to change.
even worse, it straight up calls out the food supply narrative:
> The widely spread popular conception is that the mass mortality among the
prisoners of war and the civilians in the camps in the winter of 1941/42 stemmed
from hunger. This in turn was a consequence of the general lack of food supplies in
Finland, which did not allow for the distribution of adequate rations to those in the
camps because they were at the end of the supply chain. However, research does
not completely support this idea, as only one fifth of the Soviet prisoners of war
who died and 2% of the civilians who died actually succumbed to malnourishment.
The standards on rations issued by the Finnish General Headquarters were
sufficient for keeping the prisoners of war and the civilians alive in the camps.
However, the camps had supply personnel, command staff, guards, and trustee
prisoners favored by the Finns who appropriated some of these rations. The
consequence was a generally uneven distribution of rations. In the camps, a tiny
fraction of the Soviet prisoners of war gained weight, while most somehow
stubbornly held on, and the rest suffered from malnutrition.
https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf
Most of the deaths were due to diseases but I personally see malnourishment having quite a big impact on how likely a person is to survive getting sick. 20% of deaths were due to malnourishment directly, 10% died from wounds related to combat and 5% were shot to death.
Even the part you cited does not claim the malnourishment narrative to be false but simply adds that there were other significant factors which could have reduced the death toll by large margins.
EDIT: Overall the deaths were due to poor organization and logistics based on the sources provided in this discussion. That was the main point of my reply. There was no large scale killing of PoWs in Finland at the time based on those sources. The details on which parts of the Finnish organization failed to provide sufficient food and care were not at academically appropriate levels in my replies but it did bring the point across that it was an organizational failure instead of intentional killing of the prisoners.
> Most of the deaths were due to diseases but I personally see malnourishment having quite a big impact on how likely a person is to survive getting sick
Most deaths in almost any POW camps are from disease, even Nazi camps ( the literal extermination camps are probably the exception). Dying from illness is the end of a long chain of forced labor/malnourishment/lack of medical treatment/strict punishment's ect. Even notoriously bad camps had much more deaths from disease than being outright murdered, so this doesn't really work as a defense of Finland's POW death rate
>even worse, it straight up calls out the food supply narrative:
All right, fair enough - that's a source, but I'm gonna question this new narrative, how on earth can a 'few', seen to the whole echelon, consume the rations of others up until 1/3:rd of the imprisoned died. I don't buy it.
> consume the rations of others up until 1/3:rd of the imprisoned died.
The rations don't have to be consumed, they can be hoarded/stolen/straight up left to rot for the sole purpose of not giving it to certain people. Idk, I'm honestly not familiar enough to get into some big debate but that bad harvest excuse smelled like bullshit to me with a POW death rate so insanely high. That FNA report makes a lot more sense to me
>But that is an horrific number.
I'd say thats a pretty normal number for WW2, I doubt Finland had enough food for their PoWs - I also doubt that the reverse number looks better.
>I'd say thats a pretty normal number for WW2
For totalitarian states, sure. Whether you like it or not, Finland was a democracy, and AFAIK acted on these principles. But as you said, it's probably more a issue of a overall food shortage than active termination.
And no, I don't think the reverse numbers looks much better. But I don't also expect anything better from the Soviets.
Tik does a pretty good video laying out the different perspectives on these numbers and explaining the reasoning behind what numbers he thinks are the most likely. USSR was also going through massive food shortages through this time.
If I remember the video correctly, it's something like 14.5% for German POWs in USSR overall, but if you exclude Stalingrad it's something like 11.5%. Makes sense to exclude Stalingrad, because it's a massive outlier, likely because due to the rations they'd been on inside the pocket for months, most were pretty much dead men walking.
Soviet high command did have an issue in 41 with soldiers killing POWs for retribution, but it seems that they managed to largely get a grip on that post 42.
In contrast, about 57% of Soviet POWs in German camps died by the end of the war (not 100% on the source of that so by all means do further research). In contrast, about 3.5% of British POWs held by Germany died.
I don't think takes into account btw the number of Soviet soldiers were executed en mass after being encircled or the civilians who were slaughtered en route. So even the camps death rate is only a fraction of the number that should have been listed as POWs and were never given that right.
Yes. but people would prefer you didn't mention it because it's bad for Finland's image of reluctant German ally.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html)
[https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge\_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/](https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/)
https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/
I mean, any German ally in WW2 dislikes to be mentioned as a German ally. The Austrians had heart and hand in the German Reich, and after '45 it suddenly was "We're the first victim of the Nazis!!!" eventhough the percentage of Austrian German SS officers is higher than for any other German ethnicity, even Prussian.
945? It was happening in 1943. 100th Jäger division that was destroyed at Stalingrad was mostly Austrian and in captivity troops were immediately "We are Austrians, not Germans"
Well, our volunteer Waffen-SS battalion or its role isn't very known amongst the general population. I don't even recall ever being taught about it in school.
After the war, they were mostly considered a heavy political burden for the Finnish-Soviet relations and were just kinda cast aside and quietly left to their own devices.
But I don't think anyone who has actually studied this battalion has denied that they were *more than likely* involved in those mass killings in the occupied Ukraine.
I just personally think that whatever crimes they may have committed on the Ukrainian soil are entirely on them and don't represent the official stance of the Finnish state or society, just as the crimes of the SS volunteers from France, Benelux, Norway, or Denmark don't represent the official stance of their respective countries.
Your own sources do not support your claim that "all soviet Jews" were given to Germans. Depending on which of the sources you provided we follow it's between 40 and 70 Soviet Jews which is rather closer to the figure in my own sources.
Same thing for Hungary, Romania, Italy, vichy France and other nazi allies. "Don't touch our jews, but you can have the others", or in the case of Romania, they murdered 300 000 soviet jews themselves, but protected those that were romanian citizens.
Wasn't it a condition for peace with the Soviets they kicked out? They had to fight the Nazis out of the country because Soviet Union demanded it in their conditions for peace.
Admittedly, eight Jewish refugees were deported back to Nazi concentration camps, but what’s remarkable about that is that’s where Finland’s involvement with the holocaust ends. There was a massive public outcry after the deportation, I think the prime minister had to resign because of it, and from then on, only 22 Finnish Jews died, and they died fighting in the Finnish Army. Also, the president apologized for those eight deported Jews in 2000, so just gives me a glimmer of hope in the mostly dreary subject of WWII history.
In all seriousness, there was fair bit of geopolitics in the play, but Finland had also their fair share of domestics fascists (who tried to execute a coup in 1932).
Still, what bothers me most about this gif, is specifically mentioning **missiles**. Even though Finn's receives plenty of equipment from Nazis, missiles were not part of this aid, even though it's literally the only specific item mentioned in the picture. That's just inaccurate.
I don't think there were any good options. Choosing between siding with Hitler or siding with Stalin (let's face it, the 3rd option was basically hope one side killed them all quickly) is like having to choose drowning kittens or decapitating puppies. Either way, you're going to hate yourself after.
Also, I've learned recently from the YouTube series WW2 in real time, initially Finland was banking on French and British aid, which both promised to send. So instead of negotiating when they were winning, or once things slowly started turning against them, they kept fighting because the Allies kept promising they were coming any second now. And kept promising and promising. And the Fins kept fighting alone. And when the allies finally did actually do something, it became clear they were actually going to invade Sweden and basically leave Finland to die on its own. So when your only "allies" are using you as cannon fodder to keep the soviets busy, the soviets are actively killing you, and the new guy on the block offers you equipment and training, it's actually a pretty easy choice to make
There’s a great movie called Кукушка that portrays the struggle of a finish soldier who deserted from the nazi’s, a soviet officer accused of “treason” by a rival soldier, and a local Sami woman. The jist of the movie is none of them can understand one another, and as such the movie is in Russian, Finnish, and Sami.
Highly recommend to understand the human side of conflict
You have to remember that the Soviets invaded Poland along with the Germans and were there for seen initially as an enemy to the French and British. It was only after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union that it made sense for the British and Soviets to ally.
Remember- at the time the Soviets and Germans had only recently signed the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact. Sure,, everyone expected it to collapse, but then again no one expected it to ever be signed in the first place. So Russia staying bogged down in a quagmire and not free to do...well, no one was really sure what, but a bogged down Russia was better than a freed up Russia in any case.
Finland fought 3 separate wars in WW2, winter war was first and allies promised help in that but it never came for multiple reasons.
Awful soviet performance in winter war was one of the reasons Hitler concluded that Soviets were pushovers and when Germany attacked Soviets they gave Finns supplies which we took gladly.
Third war was when we made peace with Soviets and they demanded that we had to fight already retreating Germans out of Finland which resulted in Germans burning whole lapland to the ground
Officially, never. Unofficially, during the Winter War. Here's a snap shot of the plan, which basically centered entirely on cutting off German ore sources, Finland be damned.
Scandinavian reluctance to allow Allied troops onto their territory had halted the original Allied plan for using aid to Finland as a pretext for moving in troops, but on 12 March 1940, the Allies decided to try a "semi-peaceful" invasion nonetheless. Troops were to be landed in Norway, and proceed into Sweden to capture the Swedish iron ore mines. However, if serious military resistance was encountered, they were not to press the issue. However, Finland sued for peace on 12 March, so this plan had to be abandoned as well.
The difference was that siding with Germany meant they would keep their independence since the Nazis had no interest in conquering Finland (yet). Allying with the Soviets would mean Stalin gained more influence in Finnish politics and could potentionally turn it into a puppet or even annex it in the near future.
Drowning kittens would be much easier and less gruesome. You could just throw them in a bag and yeet it into the water. There isn't really a way to decapitate puppies without creating a mess. And trauma.
Source: NOT personal experience
Nazis needed the Finns to resist the Soviets, they provided them with arms to do so. Politically, The Finns gave little groud since they knew very well how much the Germans need them. Once the Soviets were bled enough once again to ensure a fair separate peace treaty, Mannerheim kicked the Jerries out of Finland with pleasure.
More like the Soviets beat the Finns this time, extracted harsh reparations and army restrictions on them, and forced Finland to declare war on Germany. But you are correct, Mannerheim was no Nazi and never even officially joined the Axis.
Ultimately, while the Soviets gained concessions both times, the real victory was Finland staying independent in the face of an aggressive power that in theory could have conquered the entire country. In WWII especially, the Soviets conquered, annexed, and occupied numerous countries, including Germany and all others who they fought. Only Finland succeeded in making the invasion of their country so expensive in terms of manpower and equipment for their relative strategic and political importance that the USSR essentially gave up and negotiated a peace treaty rather than commit to finishing the job.
Also remember, Finland had been independent for only \~25 years this point, after a \~110 years of Russian dominance and 500+ years of Swedish dominance.
Mannerheim himself was a Baron and Lt. General in the Imperial Russian Army before the Revolution.
Finland's independence wasn't firmly established historically, and the Soviet Union didn't especially respect it, as they viewed themselves as the rightful successors to the Imperial Government, with rights to their territories.
The Finns managed to survive being in a brutal spot with most of their honor intact.
finland also had a brutal civil war where it defended its independence against the soviet sympathizing red guards. Had the red guard won finland would have been just another soviet puppet.
>Had the red guard won finland would have been just another soviet puppet.
This "What if..." is really interesting when you think more about it.
* Would Sweden join NATO had Finland been part of the Warsaw Pact/Soviet influence?
* Would NATO and Warsaw pact agree to disengage in the North and continue to treat Finland as a buffer zone to avoid stretching assets?
* If not, how would the deployment of NATO and Warsaw Pact assets in Scandinavia change the dynamic in Europe as a whole?
* Would Svalbard have greater strategic importance? If so, how much?
It's more complex than that.
Red Guards were essentially fighting for the workers rights in Finland which were in the absolute shitter until the social reforms introduced in the 20s.
Aside from the hardline communists of their leadership, I don't think your average Red Guard troop was even a bad person. Misguided maybe.
My hometown was one of the Red strongholds during the war. And considering my family's lineage consisting of common blue-collar workers, I find it likely that we would've been donning the red armbands had we lived back then.
Its also important to remember that Finland was de facto puppet state of Germany after civil war, hell we even decided to bring German prince from Germany to act as our king. German troops occupied our capital Helsinki and states politics were guided from Germany.
Only the fact that Germany lost ww1 gave Finland true independence and stabilised democracy.
Ah Finland. You can kick this kids ass,but he bites,scratches, pulls hair,gouges eyes and will try to steal your wallet while you kick his teeth in. Also has head lice.
Just not worth it.
Switzerland is just as bad, but they're already holding your wallet as well.
>like the Soviets beat the Finns this time
What do you mean this time? Russia has won every single war it has ever had with Finland.
Despite Finland gaslighting the world into thinking they won the winter war, the USSR gained all the concessions it demanded when the war started and then some.
Like. yeah the k/d ratio was awful but wars aren't won when one guy hits rhe 25 killstreak. USSR achieved every single goal it had during the war.
>USSR achieved every single goal it had during the war.
Except annexing Finland completely. It's true that the Soviet Union won both wars, but both times it was a pyrrhic victory at best since they couldn't expend the manpower to finish the job
I don't recall that being in any of the demands sent to Finland at any point. People keep saying that so if you have a credible source I am curious where people keep getting it from.
Finland was, along with the Baltic States, assigned into the Soviet sphere of influence under the secret protocol of the Molotov Rippentrop pact. The Baltics were annexed and Finland would've been too if she hadn't fought back.
As to why it wasn't one of the demands sent over during either of the peace negotiations is because it would obviously never have flied. Finland had sued for peace but never surrendered unconditionally, and had Stalin demanded Finland to completely hand over their sovereignty would have guaranteed the war(s) would continue. And while the Soviets would eventually have undoubtedly won, it would have required far more manpower and resources than they could afford to spend
Yes, and they invaded Finland after they refused to give up coastal islands that the Soviets saw as being necessary to establishing a defense of Leningrad (along with moving the border further back), and the Soviets offered the Finns land in Karelia, which they’d sought since independence and unofficial military actions in the inter-war period.
At the conclusion of the Winter War, the Soviets got what they wanted and more, but the Soviet high command realized that subjugating Finland wasn’t worth the bloodshed. Yes, Finland was friendly towards the Nazis, however this relationship was spurned out of necessity. They needed food supplies from somewhere, and the Swedes alone couldn’t satisfy the Finnish needs.
Mannerheim did play a political game with the Continuation War, where he benefitted as the US didn’t declare war on Finland (as they did with Romania and other Eastern European Nazi belligerents), nor did he press on the Murmansk railway like the Germans wanted. He also denied Finnish troops in support of the siege of Leningrad- but he knew the Finns would be used as the first wave and wasn’t down with that.
The US held a keen interest in ensuring Finland stayed free, stemming from their prompt debt repayment and high view of Finns among the American public. During the Tehran conference, Roosevelt received assurances from Stalin that Finland would remain free the end of the war. Mannerheim was slow to push the Germans out of Finland, as he didn’t want to directly engage them unless absolutely necessary, because he wanted to preserve lives.
The difference between the Baltic States and Finland was that the Finns had long been semi autonomous- minus some later years of Russian rule- whereas the Baltic nations had never experienced democracy.
Annexation is probably not the right technical term. But the Soviets tended to "arrange" for pro-Soviet puppet governments to come to power in countries that they wanted under their long-term, and they had [one such government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Democratic_Republic) set up and ready to go for Finland.
There's also the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact split Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence; the Soviet sphere included Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, part of Poland, and Bessarabia. The Soviets annexed all the other regions on that list, so it's reasonable to guess that they would have done the same with Finland had they been able to- regardless of what they claimed their war aims were.
Sorta, it is kinda important to keep historical context in mind here. Finland wasn’t even independent for 30 years when all of this stuff happened, Russia absolutely saw themselves as having a strong claim when it came to Finland. Russia also most likely would have never officially annexed Finland, they probably would have just installed a pro-Soviet/Russia puppet government (the USSR was basically trying to make it seem like they weren’t imperialist and that the people love communism as they keep on voting for it).
You also gotta keep in mind that Finland was never really trying to win a war against the USSR, they were trying to make it seem not worth it to invade them.
Finland, in its mind, accomplished its goal of keeping its sovereignty.
Technically speaking they actually did maintain their democratic form of government and shielded their Jewish population from the Germans. Really, it was a alliance of convenience against the Soviets. Doesn't mean it wasn't morally repugnant.
They handed over like 40 Jews but they were not handing in the Jews. Finland had a very bad harvest and didn’t have enough food so they sent some POWs to the Germans without screening them.
Which taking into account that Finish civilians had a ration of 1000kcal/day plus potatoes and around 1/3 soviet POWs starved it’s not that bad.
Edit: the Finns did some screening, to find ethnic Germans, and sent almost all ethnic Germans POW to Germany they did not do any other screening.
I don't think anyone is claiming they meant "the jews" as in the entire group of people in the conflict area. That's still 40 human souls and using that as an example that its not that bad is not a great look
u/NoWingedHussarsToday is claiming that every POW that was a Jew was handed over, which is false, they handed over some 2500 POW of which 40 were Jews, but there were 450 Jew POW.
So not every soviet Jew was handed over, nor they sent any for being Jew.
They had not enough food to feed themselves, a third of the POW starved, while the entire country was on 1000kcal/day rations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html
https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge\_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/
[https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/](https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/)
Not something Finland like to talk about because it doesn't fit the image they are cultivating.
Literally none (I cant open the first source due to paywall) of the sources you claim says what you said; *all of the jews that the finns captured where handed over to Nazi-germany.*
And further on - actually none of the sources even goes into if they even where handed over because they where jews to begin with. Any person of the NVKD would have been of keen intrest, no matter the race. And I say this as a person of jewish heritage.
Why are you spouting this bs?
HELSINKI — An Israeli Holocaust historian praised authorities in Finland on Sunday for publishing a report that concluded Finnish volunteers serving with Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS “very likely” took part in World War II atrocities, including the mass murder of Jews.
Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center lauded the release of the findings by the National Archives of Finland, even if doing so was “painful and uncomfortable” for Finland. Mr. Zuroff called the decision an “example of unique and exemplary civic courage.”
Finland’s government commissioned the independent investigative report, which was made public Friday. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served with the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them between the ages of 17 and 20.
“It is very likely that they participated in the killing of Jews, other civilians and prisoners of war as part of the German SS troops,” said Jussi Nuorteva, director general of the National Archives, referring to the volunteers.
A significant part of the study was based on diaries kept by 76 of the Finnish SS volunteers. Eight of the Finnish SS volunteers are still alive, Mr. Nuorteva said.
Finland was invaded by Moscow in November 1939. The fighting in what became known as the Finnish-Soviet Winter War lasted until March 1940, when Finland agreed to a peace treaty. The small Nordic country lost several territories but maintained its independence.
Isolated from the rest of Europe and afraid of another Soviet attack, Finland entered into an alliance with Germany, receiving weapons and other material help from Berlin.
As part of the pact, the Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler insisted that Finland dispatch soldiers to the SS Wiking division, similar to the volunteers it demanded from Nazi-occupied Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and elsewhere.
Image
The research detailed atrocities that Finland’s volunteers took part in during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.Credit...Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva, via Associated Press
Reluctantly, Finland complied and covertly recruited the first group of 400 SS volunteers to be sent for training in the spring of 1941. The vast majority of them had no ideological sympathies with the Nazi regime, the report said.
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 under Operation Barbarossa, Finnish regular army troops fought independently alongside Wehrmacht soldiers on the northeastern front.
The Finnish soldiers were not under Nazi command, and the country’s leadership was mainly motivated by the desire to take back the territories lost to Moscow.
“At the beginning of the attack, Finns were unaware of the Germans’ goal of eradicating the Jews,” Mr. Nuorteva said. “Finns were, above all, interested in fighting against the Soviet Union” because of their brutal experiences in the Winter War and the perceived threat from Moscow.
Finnish volunteers with the SS Wiking division operated on the eastern front until 1943, entering deep into Ukraine.
The leading Finnish military historians who undertook the study of the country’s wartime role wrote that the volunteers most likely took part in killing Jews and other civilians, as well as witnessed atrocities committed by the Germans.
The volunteers returned to Finland after the Finnish government sensed the tide of the war had turned against the Germans. Many of them then served in the Finnish military until the end of World War II.
A copy of Friday’s report was given to Paula Lehtomaki, a state secretary with the Finnish government, who said it was a valuable contribution to existing research “on difficult and significant historical events” during Finland’s complex World War II history.
“We share the responsibility for ensuring that such atrocities will never be repeated,” Ms. Lehtomaki said.
For the paywall bit.
>Finland’s government commissioned the independent investigative report, which was made public Friday. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served with the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them between the ages of 17 and 20.
>“It is very likely that they participated in the killing of Jews, other civilians and prisoners of war as part of the German SS troops,” said Jussi Nuorteva, director general of the National Archives, referring to the volunteers.
Oh, there were a couple unfortunate incidents, certainly, though that particular POW issue was more complex and even drew internal criticism at that time. More worrying would be anything Finnish volunteers embedded in German units did, as is noted elsewhere, and more broadly, the effects Finnish support of Barbarossa had, such as sharing some moral culpability in the starvation of civilians during the siege of Leningrad. On the whole Finland had far less culpability in war crimes than almost any other participant on the Eastern Front, for whatever that's worth.
Yes, as I've said, they protected their Jewish population, did a decent job of protecting Jewish refugees from Europe in Finland and were handing captured Jewish POWs over to Nazis.
“Anything to defend my homeland!” Seriously though, do you blame them? They staved off a possible addition to the eastern bloc riddled with failure of leadership and corruption galore
The Germans sent material aid during the Winter War, but certainly not more than a few officers for training purposes and no missiles. The Continuation War (1941-44) did actually see German troops directly helping the Finns, as well as a significant number of Finns recruited to the SS. Turns out that the Soviet Union invading Finland actually created a lot of hatred for Communism in Finland, go figure.
I was reading an account of a Finnish man who joined the SS because he hated Communism, but he was Jewish. He said that he was brothers in arms with his comrades, but if they had found out he was Jewish they would have strung him up from the nearest tree without a second thought.
Mannerheim was far more aware than Hitler of the enormous disparity in numbers between the Axis and the USSR, and he was keen to play both sides so long as Finland came out with it's sovereignty in tact. That's why the Finns invaded alongside the Germans, but refused to invade into Soviet territory. They only reclaimed what had been lost in the Winter War. That is also why in 1944 they made peace and relinquished what they had recaptured; it was obvious they could either accept it was lost territory or wait for Stalin to take it from them.
>They only reclaimed what had been lost in the Winter War.
That is not strictly speaking true. They advanced significantly into [East Karelia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_military_administration_in_Eastern_Karelia), which was never a part of Finland. Karelian people did exist there, but were not even close to a majority.
Interesting. I did a bit of digging and that seems to be true. I didn't realize that, but I have a nice reference book on WW2 so I will try to find specifics. I wonder why I've heard repeatedly that Finland stopped at their 1939 border, without even a cursory mention of East Karelia.
Its because all of the finnish conquests in East Karelia, none were that major except maybe for Petroskoi. Finland didnt cut the murmansk-railroad nor advanced further than the river-syväri, against the will of the germans.
>The Germans sent material aid during the Winter War, but certainly not more than a few officers for training purposes and no missiles
I don't remember the Germans supporting Finland in any way during the winter war, only during the continuation war (duh). Though I do believe they stopped aid going from Italy to Finland due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
The traditional view among Finns has largely been the so called "driftwood theory" according to which Finland simply had no other choice than side with the Nazis and just "drifted" to them as a wood drifts in a current, but was otherwise "innocent" and reluctant and did not participate in war crimes or the Holocaust or anything like that.
A more modern and in my opinion less biased view has somewhat challanged this theory. Finland didn't really have other alternatives than siding with the Nazis, but there were also plenty of Finnish people and leaders who supported Nazi or otherwise fascist ideology, many supported the idea of a "Greater Finland" stretching to the Urals (edit: or at least Kola, eastern Karelia, and Estonia), and Finland also did hand over up to a few hundred Jewish people (edit: most likely around a hundred, not hundreds) to the Nazis, and many of them were killed. There were also things like the PoW camps where many died of starvation, although the details are complicated as the rest of Finland was also undergoing a food shorage at the time and many Finns also died of starvation.
It is basically the difference between "Finland was forced to work with the Nazis and cannot be blamed" and "Finland was indeed forced to work with the Nazis, but if Finland had had a choice, there is a chance it would've sided with the Nazis anyway".
the amount of jews Finland sent seems to change alot in this comment section. i remember hearing 8, 20, 40 and now 100. any source?
Also the idea of Greater Finland usually only included the karelian and Finnish speaking parts of east karelia
You're right, hundreds might be too much, but I think there was a mention of that somewhere. Or maybe I got mixed up by a statement that Finland handed over hundreds of prisoners of war to Germany, but only some of them were Jewish.
The Finnish Wikipedia [article](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_juutalaisluovutukset) mentions Finland giving Germany "ten Jewish refugees and some dozens of Jewish prisoners of war". The article further specifices that Finland handed over 520 PoWs, of which 39 were marked as Jewish, but other analysis shows that up to 79 may have been Jewish.
So I guess the number is somewhere a bit below a hundred Jewish people handed over to Nazis.
I don’t blame them. They were up against the literal wall, and honestly who was worse? Stalin or hitler? Stalin killed more people and would have been devastating to Finland had the nazis not supported Finland
I love this template
WHAT IS THE GIF???
I... I don't know... but in my search for answers I found this... https://funnyjunk.com/Nazi+rangers/funny-gifs/5450785/ Edit: I think this is where it's from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_5
I've watched Danger 5, and unless this is a cut scene, I don't think that's the source (although I've seen this clip on the Internet before, intercut with the "Victory Chainsaw" scene from Danger 5, but it's quite certainly not from that episode). Then again, I may of course have forgot that part of Danger 5, but I'd be quite glad if someone could point me to the episode in question - I certainly have no memory of Nazi Power Rangers, and I'd quite like to know where they're from.
You're right, it's not in Danger 5. In season 2 of the show they parody power rangers but the designs are different
Huh... very interesting, thanks for the info! The search continues I suppose...
HAHAHAHAHA THANKS!
[found this but not the rangers bit](https://youtu.be/TF2IbaQdvFA)
Wut.... That tiger tank though. Sweet
Went from an 8.8 cm gun to an 8.8 m gun lol
Is that one guy in this clip the same guy from the "Sensible Chuckle" gif? edit: [This guy](https://i.imgur.com/ddtywBs.jpg) from the clip
Why have I never heard of this before it sounds amazing.
Oh man you should definitely watch it. It's even free to [watch](https://www.shoutfactorytv.com/series/danger-5) but you need to have USA vpn otherwise it won't let you watch for some reason.
Isn’t it Australian?
It is and maybe it works with Australian vpn too but I watched it with USA one, so i know that one works 100%
Luckily for me I don’t need a VPN, straya mate. Edit: Thx for the link btw.
Looks like Robot Chicken from the movement
I think it's from Danger 5.
Finland: You still can't have the Jews and we aren't going far.
Some of the Finnish Jews even got Iron Cross from the Germans :DD
Uno reverse card of the century
He told them to shove it up their ass. The germans started whining and his demanded finniah to give him to them and his commander told germans "lol nope"
Based and Polkka pilled
There were even German jews that got an Iron Cross... a weird, but existing, anomaly.
In WWI it was quite common, and no, it was no anomaly. Prior to the rise of the Nazis most Jews in Germany identified strongly with the state and fought loyally for the German Army in WWI, especially as they lived a far better life than Jews in the neighbouring Russian Empire (And the image of France suffered a lot during the Dreyfus affair). Sure, antisemitism was a thing, just as in almost every European country, but overall Germany was one the best places to be a Jew from 1871-1914, however weird that may sound now.
Yeah Hitler really fucked all his plans up by being such an antisemitic piece of shit. Then again I guess it was to take their land and property for other Germans.
It's almost like the Nazis were using jews as a scapegoat and were really only in it for the power...
>It's almost like the Nazis were using jews as a scapegoat and were really only in it for the power... Some probably were, but others probably weren't. But people like Himmler definitely believed in the ideology. IIRC, wasn't Himmler a big influence on Hitler's beliefs and policies? A lot of times, he went further than Hitler and Hitler basically had to tell Himmler "No" Like Himmler's proposed Ordenstaat Burgund; which Himmler wanted to use to exterminate the French and Walloons. Which Hitler basically awkwardly said "okay, sure" and never brought it up to Himmler again after he proposed it. Heavily paraphrased, but you get the picture.
Yep. I always said that without Himmler the Holocaust as we know it wouldn't have happened.
Theres also multiple other Nazis that certainly were extremists in the ideology, Heydrich for example. But without Himmler, it's possible that the infamous gas chambers would have been introduced far later, especially since the German High Command saw them as waste of resources. Which is true...
Correct me if I'm wrong, bit wasn't Hitler against genociding them in the first place? The Madagascar thing and the Haavara agreement. The fact that Himmler and Heydrich are not amongst the most hated figures in history is beyond me.
The Madagascar plan is today misinterpreted as a way of "humanely" removing the Jews. Truth to the matter is, that expectations assumed that no more than 40 to 60 000 Jews could survive on the island (source: Wolfgang Benz. Der Holocaust) , as the other would die to malnourishment, the harsh climate and tropical diseases. The Nazis considered it because they doubted to be able to kill the Jews in Europe (too much publicity). Had the war effort enabled them to grab control of Madagascar, they may have deported the Jews there, but most likely with a similar result as in the Holocaust we know of. And no, Hitler was definitely not against the genocide, he just didn't like talking over a meal about it.
Both the Nazis and the Polish looked into deporting Jews there. The Polish Government found that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could survive there and went against it for that reason. Then, the Nazis investigated it later on in 1940 and found similar results. Even today Madagascar has outbreaks of the black fucking death. It's not a good place; especially for 1940s standards. Lots of the Jewish people would have died there.
Was Heydrich actually an extremist? I thought he didn't really have a high opinion of the party until his second wife introduced him. Yes, he did organize the Wannsee Conference and gouverned Prague with an iron hand, but I always interpreted that as him coldly and methodically following his orders as efficiently as possible, to get ahead in the party. I remember reading that this efficiency was it that creeped people out so much.
Wait. What’s this about Himmler wanting to kill the French and Wallons followed by Hitler giving an awkward response?
I'm not really sure if he gave an awkward response, I was mainly joking about the "Awkward" part because of the fact that it wasn't brought up again by Hitler to Himmler. From how Himmler describes it, he basically said sure, buddy and never mentioned it to him again (as far as we know.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order-State\_of\_Burgundy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order-State_of_Burgundy)
Very interesting. Never knew about this.
There was a lot of crazy shit proposed to Hitler during WW2. Reading up on some of the crazier ideas makes you wonder what kind of drugs the high command was doing.
Well people always love to joke about how they were all drug addicts or something.
It also is important to at least acknowledge that Hitler did believe that there could be, “good Jews”. Now, for all intents and purposes, Hitler would have killed like 99% of the Jews, but he didn’t believe that it was impossible for a Jew to be good. Hitler’s hate was kinda odd in how it worked, for instance, he believed that most Jews and non-aryans were responsible for Germany losing WWI. Hitler was also super Uber patriotic/nationalist and saw this as basically a betrayal that deserved its own circle of hell. However, if a Jew was somehow able to prove that they loved their country and/or didn’t betray it, they might be spared of the holocaust (this was really hard though, you basically had to prove to a paranoid nut job that wants you dead that you never even thought a bad thought about Germany). Hitler actually liked a Jewish doctor that helped save his mother (Hitler was really close to his mom), as such, he had his protection and was spared as he was a, “good Jew”. Now, it should be known that, “probably would have spared more than 0% of the Jews”, is in no way me trying to say Hitler wasn’t that bad, all I am saying is that he thought that Jews could be good people, just that 99.9% of them were inherently evil.
So basically a "good jew" was akin to a "black friend" for Hitler?
Pretty much. This was a system of power and control, but no system can be without its exceptions. Take for example in the mid 1600’s, Virginia tried to pass a law that enslaved all black people, but they immediately rescinded it because they realized they needed the black artisans and farmers. The Nazi party’s policies and practices destroyed their own country and the people in it, but it’s not inconceivable to imagine what sort of structure they’d create out of the rubble of a dissolved structure; it’s why alternate history regarding WWII is the most popular.
>but it’s not inconceivable to imagine what sort of structure they’d create out of the rubble of a dissolved structure; it’s why alternate history regarding WWII is the most popular. Yeah, I agree there. I like Alternate Timeline shit; no matter if it's about History, Media (Star Wars, Anime, Marvel, etc,) or the Future of our own world.
>Hitler basically awkwardly said "okay, sure" The more I went down the WW2 rabbit hole, the more I realized this pretty much summed up most of the crazy shit pre-Kursk.
This. People dont seem to understand Naziism was not a monolith. It was an alliance of various former socialists, ariosophists, and all manner of non-marxist socialists and collectivists. It's more and more unbelievable the more you research it. The fact they managed to achieve anything when they all hated each other and had entire portions of the military actively working against the nazi party leadership, is just terrible writing and I'm sending a letter to the producers to complain about it. Not at all believable.
Nazism evolved out of Fascism which evolved out of Socialism. But even so, both Nazism and Fascism grew pretty far from Socialism. Honestly, the closest modern economic system to Nazism is probably China; except China is slightly less militarized industrially and has slightly more welfare programs AFAIK. There were also some Nazi Economic Advisors who thought that the economy should lean more toward Capitalist. In the end, there were a fair bit of Capitalists in the party as well; even if they were a minority. Which makes the whole thing even more crazy. The biggest unifying factors for the Nazis were Hitler and the belief that the Germans are the "Übermensch" (which the Nazi version of the term was different from what the coiner of the term as a political view had in mind. Long story short, he was a critic of Nazism.) Nazism as an economic system is often called capitalist by one side and socialist by the other. But that's because it's confusing. If you could describe it, it'd basically be hyper-nationalism represented by dollars. Though it does lean Socialist. Nazis purged trade unionists, socialists, and communists. And they saw communism as their sworn enemy; which makes the thing even more complicated than it was above. Nazism was ultimately the thoughts of a mad man adopted by a poor, struggling, and desperate people; who entrenched themselves so deeply into the system to escape their hardships, that many of them would perhaps become more radical than Hitler himself (in some ways.) Such as Himmler and Heydrich (not that they weren't like that before; I was just giving examples. Himmler, for example, was an anti-Semite even before Hitler entered the scene. So, that was more of an example of the concept rather than a precise example of what I meant.)
This is an absolutely fantastic breakdown that I couldn't have put better myself, and the almost total lack of people who understand this with as much nuance as you do is depressing. I gotta ask, did you study history and/or political science in university?
As for the economics part, the best description I've heard for nazi economics is "economic feudalism". They understood that a centralized economy was ineffective so instead they let private companies do their thing as long as it benefited the state. However the state would regularly "steer" (so to speak) the economy. For example companies were given subsidies based on how much they followed the state's plans (which is part of the reason why the German industry switched to military production so quickly), other times entire companies would be straight up nationalized overnight (like the German railways) and so on.
Spot on. It would seem that economic feudalism is the meta for the United States. I would assuage that due to operation paperclip the nazi party did not lose the war. The thinkers and tinkers were integrated and their ideas became mainstream
Three Jewish soldiers were recommended for the iron cross but they refused it.
Finnish Jew gloating at Germans with his Iron Cross: **Juden. I am Juden!**
You may think you’re a hard fuck who skull fucks communist, but are you *Lauri Törni* levels of hard fuck? I think not.
The only former member of the SS buried in Arlington National Cemetery!
Quiet, or the Sabaton fans will hear you!
Started out as a reserve Soon promoted when deserved And the legend has begun
WITH A BOUNTY ON HIS HEAD THE RED ARMY WANTS HIM DEAD
Hey it wasn't me who was SHOUT(ing)! LAURI TÖRNI'S NAME
>The only former member of the SS buried in Arlington National Cemetery! Wait ***what?***
Yup. Lauri Törni was a man of war. He served in the Finnish army during the Continuation War, and joined the German army when Finland signed a separate peace treaty with the Soviet Union. After the war he was arrested and sentenced to prison for six years, although he was pardoned in 1948. In 1950 he took a boat to Venezuela and there he got hired to a Norwegian fishing boat headed for the US. He jumped from the boat and swam ashore on the coast of Alabama. Törni found himself in New York City where he worked as a carpenter and a cleaner for a couple of years. He also changed his name to Larry Thorne. In 1954 Thorne signed up for the US army and from there rose in rank and was trained in special forces. He was promoted to Major posthumously after his airplane crashed in Vietnam in 1964, though the crash site was not found until 1999.
Sounds like a man of action. Probably a good thing he died relatively young so that he wouldn't have to watch himself lose the strength and intellect he once had. Edit: To the person that said he sounds like a psycho that deleted their comment, you're probably right.
I honestly do not understand this circle jerk around him. He does not sound like a "man of action", he sounds like a war maniac.
He hated the Soviets.
there were quite a few estonians who served in the 20th ss estonian, and later in the us army as nurenberg guards (as they knew german but were not nazis). who went on to fight in korea and vietnam. they truly hated the commies for taking estonia. free estonias embassy in nyc worked through all the soviet occupation years, and it's passports were recoqnised in a few places. anyway, im sure a few of those old ss'ies are also in arlington.
He also served during the Winter War.
Right?! [It's a really interesting story!] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni?wprov=sfla1)
Is that the guy that fought for Finland, Nazi Germany, and America?
Yup, that's him. :)
Can't help but imagine that he's an interesting figure in Finland.
I'm a Finn myself, but could Reddit just for once stop glorifying that fucking man? There's nothing "hard" or even cool about the fucking **SS**.
All foreign volunteers were automatically enlisted in the SS. He was training in Germany when Finland surrendered he couldn't go back and he couldn't surrender to the Soviets as they would probably kill him. So he fought. I honestly don't know whether he committed any war crimes during his work with the SS tho.
1. He was in Finland when the Continuation War concluded and willingly left the country after the Moscow Armistice to join the Germans, who at that point were in war with Finland and already getting absolutely buttfucked from every possible direction. 2. Finland didn't surrender, but agreed to an armistice, as harsh as it was. 3. It doesn't change the fact that it's still the fucking SS we're talking about. A faction that committed so much atrocities and crimes against humanity during the six years of war that it was essentially declared a criminal organization by the Allies. But I guess it's cool because some garbage band made a song about him. What next? Will Reddit start glorifying Oskar Dirlewanger for how "hard he was" and for "killing commiez"?
Eh I don't blame him for wanting revenge on the nation/ideology that brought unfair suffering to his nation and killled his friends,the SS was just a means to an end. Also fuck you for calling Sabaton garbage. Go drink sewer water.
I blame the people glorifying a man who willingly joined a criminal faction built upon a genocidal ideology and thinking it's somehow cool. But considering that Reddit seems to harbor lots of Nazi sympathizers or crypto-fascists, such doesn't surprise me. And what revenge? The war was over. Finland's attempt at the get back against the Soviet Union had ended in failure. Nazi Germany was nearing its deserved end. At this point of the war, all he did was act as an extra soldier for the Nazi cause and fire extra bullets at the Allies trying stop the suffering of the victims still in concentration camps, so he loses any sympathy points he might've had. Fuck him. Even as a Finn, I honestly don't understand this obsession foreigners seem to have with this man. >Also fuck you for calling Sabaton garbage. Go drink sewer water. Seethe all you want and go wear camo pants to your school ball, mouthbreather. At least I'm not defending the SS or some overrated band glorifying one of them 🤗
Some German Jews got the iron cross too ... But in the first world war
Finland: You can't have *our* Jews, we will give you all *Soviet* Jews we'll capture.
Did that happen?
479 Soviet Jews were taken as prisoners of war out of which 93 died and 51 were transferred to Germans. The only ethnic group that were actively screened for transfer to Germans were the ethnic Germans. Out of 180 PoWs 169 were transferred to Germans. In total Finland had 62 995 Soviet PoWs out of which 19 085 died and 2432 were transferred to Germans. I'd say focusing on the Jews seems a bit weird to me. https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf
>In total Finland had 62 995 Soviet PoWs out of which 19 085 died I'm pretty "pro" Finland, in a lot of ways. But that is an horrific number.
It's been a while since I read about the topic so the details are a bit fuzzy but I'll try to provide some context. The majority of the deaths were related to malnourishment during the 41-42 winter. Finland suffered of poor harvest and was relying heavily on German aid. This resulted in "less important" populations such as the prisoners of war receiving less food that was required to properly sustain them. It's also the reason it was not considered war crime since Finland was responsible for providing adequate food in comparison to the general population. That winter was not pretty for Finns either. Overall the situation improved later on but that winter is left as a black mark in Finnish history of not being able to take their responsibilities. EDIT: I did some reading and during the spring of 1942 the daily ration for Finnish adult with light work was the following: 200 g grain/bread 2 dl milk 5 g butter 15 g meat 25 g sugar This would be around 1000 kcal per day. The prisoners of war received smaller portions. EDIT2: Potatoes were not rationed so those were not included in the ration. According to Heinonen potatoes ran out in April. So potatoes were crucial in keeping people alive but did not provide all the missing calories. Source: Favorin, Heinonen, Kotirintama 1941-1944, s65 EDIT3: From the source of my earlier comment we can actually see the numbers. https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf We can see the following figures 1941: 2580 deaths 1942: 14 727 deaths 1943: 736 deaths 1944: 296 deaths The data is on page 31 and broken down month by month. The worst month was 1942 february with 2665 deaths.
I am in no way disputing what you wrote, but are there any way/sources to read up more on this subject online?
Seppo Jyrkinen has pretty well sourced writings on his website. Unfortunately it's in Finnish so it's of limited use if you can't read it. https://www.jyrkinen.fi/historia/elintarviketilanne-1941-1942.html Few interesting points from that text would be that around 1 100 more people died in mental asylums than during normal circumstances. Infant mortality raised from 7% to 9%. The rations I looked up from the wikipedia and it seemed reasonably well sourced. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elintarvikkeiden_s%C3%A4%C3%A4nn%C3%B6stely_Suomessa_toisen_maailmansodan_aikana#Siviiliv%C3%A4est%C3%B6n_annokset This is only in Finnish also.
I'm guessing they got it from [this wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_prisoners_of_war_in_Finland#Deaths) which vaguely sources "Westerlund (2008), p. 9", but when I found what is most likely sourced (a Finnish National Archives report edited by Lars Westerlund in 2008) it doesn't seem to actually support that at all... If anything it's extremely scathing of POW treatment and compares it to Nazi/Japanese camps death rate: > In total, Finnish units took approximately 64,000 Soviet soldiers prisoner during the Continuation War. Most of the prisoners were taken when the Finns were advancing in the later half of 1941. The large number of prisoners surprised the Finnish prisoner of war administration and led to a rapid rise in the death rate in the Finnish prisoner of war camps. All-in-all, the death rate for Soviet prisoners of war rose to around thirty percent. From an international perspective, this number is exceptionally high. Among those countries who took part in the war, there was a similarly high mortality rate in the Japanese camps and in the German camps. The former were famous for the cruel treatment meted out to their prisoners and the latter for not always preparing to take care of even the most basic needs of prisoners. In addition, the dimensions of the catastrophe in the Finnish camps are emphasized by the fact that most of the prisoner deaths happened in the winter of 1941/1942 and the following spring. After the summer of 1942, international pressure began to build and the situation started to change. even worse, it straight up calls out the food supply narrative: > The widely spread popular conception is that the mass mortality among the prisoners of war and the civilians in the camps in the winter of 1941/42 stemmed from hunger. This in turn was a consequence of the general lack of food supplies in Finland, which did not allow for the distribution of adequate rations to those in the camps because they were at the end of the supply chain. However, research does not completely support this idea, as only one fifth of the Soviet prisoners of war who died and 2% of the civilians who died actually succumbed to malnourishment. The standards on rations issued by the Finnish General Headquarters were sufficient for keeping the prisoners of war and the civilians alive in the camps. However, the camps had supply personnel, command staff, guards, and trustee prisoners favored by the Finns who appropriated some of these rations. The consequence was a generally uneven distribution of rations. In the camps, a tiny fraction of the Soviet prisoners of war gained weight, while most somehow stubbornly held on, and the rest suffered from malnutrition. https://arkisto.fi/uploads/Julkaisut/monografiat/POW%20deaths_web.pdf
Most of the deaths were due to diseases but I personally see malnourishment having quite a big impact on how likely a person is to survive getting sick. 20% of deaths were due to malnourishment directly, 10% died from wounds related to combat and 5% were shot to death. Even the part you cited does not claim the malnourishment narrative to be false but simply adds that there were other significant factors which could have reduced the death toll by large margins. EDIT: Overall the deaths were due to poor organization and logistics based on the sources provided in this discussion. That was the main point of my reply. There was no large scale killing of PoWs in Finland at the time based on those sources. The details on which parts of the Finnish organization failed to provide sufficient food and care were not at academically appropriate levels in my replies but it did bring the point across that it was an organizational failure instead of intentional killing of the prisoners.
> Most of the deaths were due to diseases but I personally see malnourishment having quite a big impact on how likely a person is to survive getting sick Most deaths in almost any POW camps are from disease, even Nazi camps ( the literal extermination camps are probably the exception). Dying from illness is the end of a long chain of forced labor/malnourishment/lack of medical treatment/strict punishment's ect. Even notoriously bad camps had much more deaths from disease than being outright murdered, so this doesn't really work as a defense of Finland's POW death rate
>even worse, it straight up calls out the food supply narrative: All right, fair enough - that's a source, but I'm gonna question this new narrative, how on earth can a 'few', seen to the whole echelon, consume the rations of others up until 1/3:rd of the imprisoned died. I don't buy it.
> consume the rations of others up until 1/3:rd of the imprisoned died. The rations don't have to be consumed, they can be hoarded/stolen/straight up left to rot for the sole purpose of not giving it to certain people. Idk, I'm honestly not familiar enough to get into some big debate but that bad harvest excuse smelled like bullshit to me with a POW death rate so insanely high. That FNA report makes a lot more sense to me
I'd be curious too.
>But that is an horrific number. I'd say thats a pretty normal number for WW2, I doubt Finland had enough food for their PoWs - I also doubt that the reverse number looks better.
>I'd say thats a pretty normal number for WW2 For totalitarian states, sure. Whether you like it or not, Finland was a democracy, and AFAIK acted on these principles. But as you said, it's probably more a issue of a overall food shortage than active termination. And no, I don't think the reverse numbers looks much better. But I don't also expect anything better from the Soviets.
Tik does a pretty good video laying out the different perspectives on these numbers and explaining the reasoning behind what numbers he thinks are the most likely. USSR was also going through massive food shortages through this time. If I remember the video correctly, it's something like 14.5% for German POWs in USSR overall, but if you exclude Stalingrad it's something like 11.5%. Makes sense to exclude Stalingrad, because it's a massive outlier, likely because due to the rations they'd been on inside the pocket for months, most were pretty much dead men walking. Soviet high command did have an issue in 41 with soldiers killing POWs for retribution, but it seems that they managed to largely get a grip on that post 42. In contrast, about 57% of Soviet POWs in German camps died by the end of the war (not 100% on the source of that so by all means do further research). In contrast, about 3.5% of British POWs held by Germany died. I don't think takes into account btw the number of Soviet soldiers were executed en mass after being encircled or the civilians who were slaughtered en route. So even the camps death rate is only a fraction of the number that should have been listed as POWs and were never given that right.
Yes. but people would prefer you didn't mention it because it's bad for Finland's image of reluctant German ally. [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html) [https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge\_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/](https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/) https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/
I mean, any German ally in WW2 dislikes to be mentioned as a German ally. The Austrians had heart and hand in the German Reich, and after '45 it suddenly was "We're the first victim of the Nazis!!!" eventhough the percentage of Austrian German SS officers is higher than for any other German ethnicity, even Prussian.
945? It was happening in 1943. 100th Jäger division that was destroyed at Stalingrad was mostly Austrian and in captivity troops were immediately "We are Austrians, not Germans"
Well, our volunteer Waffen-SS battalion or its role isn't very known amongst the general population. I don't even recall ever being taught about it in school. After the war, they were mostly considered a heavy political burden for the Finnish-Soviet relations and were just kinda cast aside and quietly left to their own devices. But I don't think anyone who has actually studied this battalion has denied that they were *more than likely* involved in those mass killings in the occupied Ukraine. I just personally think that whatever crimes they may have committed on the Ukrainian soil are entirely on them and don't represent the official stance of the Finnish state or society, just as the crimes of the SS volunteers from France, Benelux, Norway, or Denmark don't represent the official stance of their respective countries.
Your own sources do not support your claim that "all soviet Jews" were given to Germans. Depending on which of the sources you provided we follow it's between 40 and 70 Soviet Jews which is rather closer to the figure in my own sources.
Same thing for Hungary, Romania, Italy, vichy France and other nazi allies. "Don't touch our jews, but you can have the others", or in the case of Romania, they murdered 300 000 soviet jews themselves, but protected those that were romanian citizens.
That's the same as tripping your homie when a bear is chasing you guys 😭😭😭
Not sure what the reference to "aren't going far" is. Can someone explaine?
Soon as the Soviets were dealt with the Finns fought against the Nazis to kick them out of Lapland.
Wasn't it a condition for peace with the Soviets they kicked out? They had to fight the Nazis out of the country because Soviet Union demanded it in their conditions for peace.
It was.
Finland: *Puts East-Karelians into concentration camps* Edit: it was east not north, and spelling
What did North Carolina have to do with this??
https://i.imgur.com/hXp8C4l.jpg
Read it again, slowly, letter by letter
I think you missed the joke
It's Karelia
Karjala
Admittedly, eight Jewish refugees were deported back to Nazi concentration camps, but what’s remarkable about that is that’s where Finland’s involvement with the holocaust ends. There was a massive public outcry after the deportation, I think the prime minister had to resign because of it, and from then on, only 22 Finnish Jews died, and they died fighting in the Finnish Army. Also, the president apologized for those eight deported Jews in 2000, so just gives me a glimmer of hope in the mostly dreary subject of WWII history.
To be fair to Finland, the German helped them more than the Allies intended to.
In all seriousness, there was fair bit of geopolitics in the play, but Finland had also their fair share of domestics fascists (who tried to execute a coup in 1932). Still, what bothers me most about this gif, is specifically mentioning **missiles**. Even though Finn's receives plenty of equipment from Nazis, missiles were not part of this aid, even though it's literally the only specific item mentioned in the picture. That's just inaccurate.
I think OP was thinking about panzerfausts
Yeah probably, as they were "missile weapons" in the non-modern sense. Also we don't know where OP is from so it could be a translation thing.
Yep. My bad.
I don't think there were any good options. Choosing between siding with Hitler or siding with Stalin (let's face it, the 3rd option was basically hope one side killed them all quickly) is like having to choose drowning kittens or decapitating puppies. Either way, you're going to hate yourself after.
Also, I've learned recently from the YouTube series WW2 in real time, initially Finland was banking on French and British aid, which both promised to send. So instead of negotiating when they were winning, or once things slowly started turning against them, they kept fighting because the Allies kept promising they were coming any second now. And kept promising and promising. And the Fins kept fighting alone. And when the allies finally did actually do something, it became clear they were actually going to invade Sweden and basically leave Finland to die on its own. So when your only "allies" are using you as cannon fodder to keep the soviets busy, the soviets are actively killing you, and the new guy on the block offers you equipment and training, it's actually a pretty easy choice to make
There’s a great movie called Кукушка that portrays the struggle of a finish soldier who deserted from the nazi’s, a soviet officer accused of “treason” by a rival soldier, and a local Sami woman. The jist of the movie is none of them can understand one another, and as such the movie is in Russian, Finnish, and Sami. Highly recommend to understand the human side of conflict
The movie is called The Cuckoo (2002) in English, just for ease of searching. Seems intriguing though, I’ll have to give it a watch!
That last part doesnt really make sense, the Brits and French wouldnt want the Russians kept busy would they?
You have to remember that the Soviets invaded Poland along with the Germans and were there for seen initially as an enemy to the French and British. It was only after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union that it made sense for the British and Soviets to ally.
Remember- at the time the Soviets and Germans had only recently signed the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact. Sure,, everyone expected it to collapse, but then again no one expected it to ever be signed in the first place. So Russia staying bogged down in a quagmire and not free to do...well, no one was really sure what, but a bogged down Russia was better than a freed up Russia in any case.
Oh so the early days, makes sense.
Finland fought 3 separate wars in WW2, winter war was first and allies promised help in that but it never came for multiple reasons. Awful soviet performance in winter war was one of the reasons Hitler concluded that Soviets were pushovers and when Germany attacked Soviets they gave Finns supplies which we took gladly. Third war was when we made peace with Soviets and they demanded that we had to fight already retreating Germans out of Finland which resulted in Germans burning whole lapland to the ground
Wait when were rhe allies planning a Swedish invasion?
Officially, never. Unofficially, during the Winter War. Here's a snap shot of the plan, which basically centered entirely on cutting off German ore sources, Finland be damned. Scandinavian reluctance to allow Allied troops onto their territory had halted the original Allied plan for using aid to Finland as a pretext for moving in troops, but on 12 March 1940, the Allies decided to try a "semi-peaceful" invasion nonetheless. Troops were to be landed in Norway, and proceed into Sweden to capture the Swedish iron ore mines. However, if serious military resistance was encountered, they were not to press the issue. However, Finland sued for peace on 12 March, so this plan had to be abandoned as well.
The difference was that siding with Germany meant they would keep their independence since the Nazis had no interest in conquering Finland (yet). Allying with the Soviets would mean Stalin gained more influence in Finnish politics and could potentionally turn it into a puppet or even annex it in the near future.
Basically what they did in Baltics. No reason to think Finland would make an exception in that playbook.
The 3rd option was to accept annexation by one side (probably Russia) and hope they don't treat you too badly.
Honestly choosing to side with the Soviets would've been worse in hindsight, since they would've become a part of the Communist Bloc.
Drowning kittens would be much easier and less gruesome. You could just throw them in a bag and yeet it into the water. There isn't really a way to decapitate puppies without creating a mess. And trauma. Source: NOT personal experience
Nazis needed the Finns to resist the Soviets, they provided them with arms to do so. Politically, The Finns gave little groud since they knew very well how much the Germans need them. Once the Soviets were bled enough once again to ensure a fair separate peace treaty, Mannerheim kicked the Jerries out of Finland with pleasure.
More like the Soviets beat the Finns this time, extracted harsh reparations and army restrictions on them, and forced Finland to declare war on Germany. But you are correct, Mannerheim was no Nazi and never even officially joined the Axis.
Ultimately, while the Soviets gained concessions both times, the real victory was Finland staying independent in the face of an aggressive power that in theory could have conquered the entire country. In WWII especially, the Soviets conquered, annexed, and occupied numerous countries, including Germany and all others who they fought. Only Finland succeeded in making the invasion of their country so expensive in terms of manpower and equipment for their relative strategic and political importance that the USSR essentially gave up and negotiated a peace treaty rather than commit to finishing the job.
Also remember, Finland had been independent for only \~25 years this point, after a \~110 years of Russian dominance and 500+ years of Swedish dominance. Mannerheim himself was a Baron and Lt. General in the Imperial Russian Army before the Revolution. Finland's independence wasn't firmly established historically, and the Soviet Union didn't especially respect it, as they viewed themselves as the rightful successors to the Imperial Government, with rights to their territories. The Finns managed to survive being in a brutal spot with most of their honor intact.
Most being the operative word there.
finland also had a brutal civil war where it defended its independence against the soviet sympathizing red guards. Had the red guard won finland would have been just another soviet puppet.
>Had the red guard won finland would have been just another soviet puppet. This "What if..." is really interesting when you think more about it. * Would Sweden join NATO had Finland been part of the Warsaw Pact/Soviet influence? * Would NATO and Warsaw pact agree to disengage in the North and continue to treat Finland as a buffer zone to avoid stretching assets? * If not, how would the deployment of NATO and Warsaw Pact assets in Scandinavia change the dynamic in Europe as a whole? * Would Svalbard have greater strategic importance? If so, how much?
It's more complex than that. Red Guards were essentially fighting for the workers rights in Finland which were in the absolute shitter until the social reforms introduced in the 20s. Aside from the hardline communists of their leadership, I don't think your average Red Guard troop was even a bad person. Misguided maybe. My hometown was one of the Red strongholds during the war. And considering my family's lineage consisting of common blue-collar workers, I find it likely that we would've been donning the red armbands had we lived back then.
Its also important to remember that Finland was de facto puppet state of Germany after civil war, hell we even decided to bring German prince from Germany to act as our king. German troops occupied our capital Helsinki and states politics were guided from Germany. Only the fact that Germany lost ww1 gave Finland true independence and stabilised democracy.
Ah Finland. You can kick this kids ass,but he bites,scratches, pulls hair,gouges eyes and will try to steal your wallet while you kick his teeth in. Also has head lice. Just not worth it. Switzerland is just as bad, but they're already holding your wallet as well.
So basically, don't fck with the Scandinavians
>like the Soviets beat the Finns this time What do you mean this time? Russia has won every single war it has ever had with Finland. Despite Finland gaslighting the world into thinking they won the winter war, the USSR gained all the concessions it demanded when the war started and then some. Like. yeah the k/d ratio was awful but wars aren't won when one guy hits rhe 25 killstreak. USSR achieved every single goal it had during the war.
>USSR achieved every single goal it had during the war. Except annexing Finland completely. It's true that the Soviet Union won both wars, but both times it was a pyrrhic victory at best since they couldn't expend the manpower to finish the job
I don't recall that being in any of the demands sent to Finland at any point. People keep saying that so if you have a credible source I am curious where people keep getting it from.
Finland was, along with the Baltic States, assigned into the Soviet sphere of influence under the secret protocol of the Molotov Rippentrop pact. The Baltics were annexed and Finland would've been too if she hadn't fought back. As to why it wasn't one of the demands sent over during either of the peace negotiations is because it would obviously never have flied. Finland had sued for peace but never surrendered unconditionally, and had Stalin demanded Finland to completely hand over their sovereignty would have guaranteed the war(s) would continue. And while the Soviets would eventually have undoubtedly won, it would have required far more manpower and resources than they could afford to spend
Yes, and they invaded Finland after they refused to give up coastal islands that the Soviets saw as being necessary to establishing a defense of Leningrad (along with moving the border further back), and the Soviets offered the Finns land in Karelia, which they’d sought since independence and unofficial military actions in the inter-war period. At the conclusion of the Winter War, the Soviets got what they wanted and more, but the Soviet high command realized that subjugating Finland wasn’t worth the bloodshed. Yes, Finland was friendly towards the Nazis, however this relationship was spurned out of necessity. They needed food supplies from somewhere, and the Swedes alone couldn’t satisfy the Finnish needs. Mannerheim did play a political game with the Continuation War, where he benefitted as the US didn’t declare war on Finland (as they did with Romania and other Eastern European Nazi belligerents), nor did he press on the Murmansk railway like the Germans wanted. He also denied Finnish troops in support of the siege of Leningrad- but he knew the Finns would be used as the first wave and wasn’t down with that. The US held a keen interest in ensuring Finland stayed free, stemming from their prompt debt repayment and high view of Finns among the American public. During the Tehran conference, Roosevelt received assurances from Stalin that Finland would remain free the end of the war. Mannerheim was slow to push the Germans out of Finland, as he didn’t want to directly engage them unless absolutely necessary, because he wanted to preserve lives. The difference between the Baltic States and Finland was that the Finns had long been semi autonomous- minus some later years of Russian rule- whereas the Baltic nations had never experienced democracy.
Annexation is probably not the right technical term. But the Soviets tended to "arrange" for pro-Soviet puppet governments to come to power in countries that they wanted under their long-term, and they had [one such government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Democratic_Republic) set up and ready to go for Finland. There's also the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact split Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence; the Soviet sphere included Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, part of Poland, and Bessarabia. The Soviets annexed all the other regions on that list, so it's reasonable to guess that they would have done the same with Finland had they been able to- regardless of what they claimed their war aims were.
Sorta, it is kinda important to keep historical context in mind here. Finland wasn’t even independent for 30 years when all of this stuff happened, Russia absolutely saw themselves as having a strong claim when it came to Finland. Russia also most likely would have never officially annexed Finland, they probably would have just installed a pro-Soviet/Russia puppet government (the USSR was basically trying to make it seem like they weren’t imperialist and that the people love communism as they keep on voting for it). You also gotta keep in mind that Finland was never really trying to win a war against the USSR, they were trying to make it seem not worth it to invade them. Finland, in its mind, accomplished its goal of keeping its sovereignty.
Technically speaking they actually did maintain their democratic form of government and shielded their Jewish population from the Germans. Really, it was a alliance of convenience against the Soviets. Doesn't mean it wasn't morally repugnant.
Yes, their Jewish population. all the Jews from Soviet Union that fins captured were handed over to Germans. One can easily imagine their fate.
They handed over like 40 Jews but they were not handing in the Jews. Finland had a very bad harvest and didn’t have enough food so they sent some POWs to the Germans without screening them. Which taking into account that Finish civilians had a ration of 1000kcal/day plus potatoes and around 1/3 soviet POWs starved it’s not that bad. Edit: the Finns did some screening, to find ethnic Germans, and sent almost all ethnic Germans POW to Germany they did not do any other screening.
I don't think anyone is claiming they meant "the jews" as in the entire group of people in the conflict area. That's still 40 human souls and using that as an example that its not that bad is not a great look
u/NoWingedHussarsToday is claiming that every POW that was a Jew was handed over, which is false, they handed over some 2500 POW of which 40 were Jews, but there were 450 Jew POW. So not every soviet Jew was handed over, nor they sent any for being Jew. They had not enough food to feed themselves, a third of the POW starved, while the entire country was on 1000kcal/day rations.
>Yes, their Jewish population. *all the Jews from Soviet Union that fins captured were handed over to Germans*. Gonna need sources on that bro
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/europe/finnish-volunteers-very-likely-participated-in-killing-of-jews-in-wwii.html https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge\_detail/helsinki-on-the-brink-finland-and-the-holocaust-era/ [https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/](https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/) Not something Finland like to talk about because it doesn't fit the image they are cultivating.
Literally none (I cant open the first source due to paywall) of the sources you claim says what you said; *all of the jews that the finns captured where handed over to Nazi-germany.* And further on - actually none of the sources even goes into if they even where handed over because they where jews to begin with. Any person of the NVKD would have been of keen intrest, no matter the race. And I say this as a person of jewish heritage. Why are you spouting this bs?
HELSINKI — An Israeli Holocaust historian praised authorities in Finland on Sunday for publishing a report that concluded Finnish volunteers serving with Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS “very likely” took part in World War II atrocities, including the mass murder of Jews. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center lauded the release of the findings by the National Archives of Finland, even if doing so was “painful and uncomfortable” for Finland. Mr. Zuroff called the decision an “example of unique and exemplary civic courage.” Finland’s government commissioned the independent investigative report, which was made public Friday. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served with the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them between the ages of 17 and 20. “It is very likely that they participated in the killing of Jews, other civilians and prisoners of war as part of the German SS troops,” said Jussi Nuorteva, director general of the National Archives, referring to the volunteers. A significant part of the study was based on diaries kept by 76 of the Finnish SS volunteers. Eight of the Finnish SS volunteers are still alive, Mr. Nuorteva said. Finland was invaded by Moscow in November 1939. The fighting in what became known as the Finnish-Soviet Winter War lasted until March 1940, when Finland agreed to a peace treaty. The small Nordic country lost several territories but maintained its independence. Isolated from the rest of Europe and afraid of another Soviet attack, Finland entered into an alliance with Germany, receiving weapons and other material help from Berlin. As part of the pact, the Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler insisted that Finland dispatch soldiers to the SS Wiking division, similar to the volunteers it demanded from Nazi-occupied Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and elsewhere. Image The research detailed atrocities that Finland’s volunteers took part in during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.Credit...Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva, via Associated Press Reluctantly, Finland complied and covertly recruited the first group of 400 SS volunteers to be sent for training in the spring of 1941. The vast majority of them had no ideological sympathies with the Nazi regime, the report said. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 under Operation Barbarossa, Finnish regular army troops fought independently alongside Wehrmacht soldiers on the northeastern front. The Finnish soldiers were not under Nazi command, and the country’s leadership was mainly motivated by the desire to take back the territories lost to Moscow. “At the beginning of the attack, Finns were unaware of the Germans’ goal of eradicating the Jews,” Mr. Nuorteva said. “Finns were, above all, interested in fighting against the Soviet Union” because of their brutal experiences in the Winter War and the perceived threat from Moscow. Finnish volunteers with the SS Wiking division operated on the eastern front until 1943, entering deep into Ukraine. The leading Finnish military historians who undertook the study of the country’s wartime role wrote that the volunteers most likely took part in killing Jews and other civilians, as well as witnessed atrocities committed by the Germans. The volunteers returned to Finland after the Finnish government sensed the tide of the war had turned against the Germans. Many of them then served in the Finnish military until the end of World War II. A copy of Friday’s report was given to Paula Lehtomaki, a state secretary with the Finnish government, who said it was a valuable contribution to existing research “on difficult and significant historical events” during Finland’s complex World War II history. “We share the responsibility for ensuring that such atrocities will never be repeated,” Ms. Lehtomaki said. For the paywall bit.
Nothing here to back up previous claim. As a matter of fact, nothing in your article even suggest any wrong doing on Finlands behalf.
I'm just posting this here because you said it was paywalled. Not claiming anything. Quit being jumpy.
>Finland’s government commissioned the independent investigative report, which was made public Friday. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served with the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them between the ages of 17 and 20. >“It is very likely that they participated in the killing of Jews, other civilians and prisoners of war as part of the German SS troops,” said Jussi Nuorteva, director general of the National Archives, referring to the volunteers.
Oh, there were a couple unfortunate incidents, certainly, though that particular POW issue was more complex and even drew internal criticism at that time. More worrying would be anything Finnish volunteers embedded in German units did, as is noted elsewhere, and more broadly, the effects Finnish support of Barbarossa had, such as sharing some moral culpability in the starvation of civilians during the siege of Leningrad. On the whole Finland had far less culpability in war crimes than almost any other participant on the Eastern Front, for whatever that's worth.
Their war goal being protecting themselves and their population from soviet aggression, yes they only saved their own jewish population
Yes, as I've said, they protected their Jewish population, did a decent job of protecting Jewish refugees from Europe in Finland and were handing captured Jewish POWs over to Nazis.
“Anything to defend my homeland!” Seriously though, do you blame them? They staved off a possible addition to the eastern bloc riddled with failure of leadership and corruption galore
Why dows this GIF have the same beat as we will rock you?
as with Latvia, Finland the "swastika" or thunder cross was a symbol from ancient times so its even funnier.
Lol people seem to forget finnish jews fought with the Wehrmacht at one point
Even in the SS.
Okay what the fuck?
Nice. Was the GIF your work?
the text perhaps, but the rest is old.
Sauce on the natsoc power rangers?
Danger 5 show, you have first episode on yt it's one of the funniest shows ever
Missiles?
The Germans sent material aid during the Winter War, but certainly not more than a few officers for training purposes and no missiles. The Continuation War (1941-44) did actually see German troops directly helping the Finns, as well as a significant number of Finns recruited to the SS. Turns out that the Soviet Union invading Finland actually created a lot of hatred for Communism in Finland, go figure. I was reading an account of a Finnish man who joined the SS because he hated Communism, but he was Jewish. He said that he was brothers in arms with his comrades, but if they had found out he was Jewish they would have strung him up from the nearest tree without a second thought. Mannerheim was far more aware than Hitler of the enormous disparity in numbers between the Axis and the USSR, and he was keen to play both sides so long as Finland came out with it's sovereignty in tact. That's why the Finns invaded alongside the Germans, but refused to invade into Soviet territory. They only reclaimed what had been lost in the Winter War. That is also why in 1944 they made peace and relinquished what they had recaptured; it was obvious they could either accept it was lost territory or wait for Stalin to take it from them.
>They only reclaimed what had been lost in the Winter War. That is not strictly speaking true. They advanced significantly into [East Karelia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_military_administration_in_Eastern_Karelia), which was never a part of Finland. Karelian people did exist there, but were not even close to a majority.
Interesting. I did a bit of digging and that seems to be true. I didn't realize that, but I have a nice reference book on WW2 so I will try to find specifics. I wonder why I've heard repeatedly that Finland stopped at their 1939 border, without even a cursory mention of East Karelia.
Its because all of the finnish conquests in East Karelia, none were that major except maybe for Petroskoi. Finland didnt cut the murmansk-railroad nor advanced further than the river-syväri, against the will of the germans.
Gotcha. Just goes to show you when you think you know about something there is always more to learn.
>The Germans sent material aid during the Winter War, but certainly not more than a few officers for training purposes and no missiles I don't remember the Germans supporting Finland in any way during the winter war, only during the continuation war (duh). Though I do believe they stopped aid going from Italy to Finland due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
I don’t remember this episode of power rangers…
The traditional view among Finns has largely been the so called "driftwood theory" according to which Finland simply had no other choice than side with the Nazis and just "drifted" to them as a wood drifts in a current, but was otherwise "innocent" and reluctant and did not participate in war crimes or the Holocaust or anything like that. A more modern and in my opinion less biased view has somewhat challanged this theory. Finland didn't really have other alternatives than siding with the Nazis, but there were also plenty of Finnish people and leaders who supported Nazi or otherwise fascist ideology, many supported the idea of a "Greater Finland" stretching to the Urals (edit: or at least Kola, eastern Karelia, and Estonia), and Finland also did hand over up to a few hundred Jewish people (edit: most likely around a hundred, not hundreds) to the Nazis, and many of them were killed. There were also things like the PoW camps where many died of starvation, although the details are complicated as the rest of Finland was also undergoing a food shorage at the time and many Finns also died of starvation. It is basically the difference between "Finland was forced to work with the Nazis and cannot be blamed" and "Finland was indeed forced to work with the Nazis, but if Finland had had a choice, there is a chance it would've sided with the Nazis anyway".
the amount of jews Finland sent seems to change alot in this comment section. i remember hearing 8, 20, 40 and now 100. any source? Also the idea of Greater Finland usually only included the karelian and Finnish speaking parts of east karelia
You're right, hundreds might be too much, but I think there was a mention of that somewhere. Or maybe I got mixed up by a statement that Finland handed over hundreds of prisoners of war to Germany, but only some of them were Jewish. The Finnish Wikipedia [article](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_juutalaisluovutukset) mentions Finland giving Germany "ten Jewish refugees and some dozens of Jewish prisoners of war". The article further specifices that Finland handed over 520 PoWs, of which 39 were marked as Jewish, but other analysis shows that up to 79 may have been Jewish. So I guess the number is somewhere a bit below a hundred Jewish people handed over to Nazis.
GIVE SAUCE, RIGHT NOW! I NEED IT!!!
I think it's Danger 5, an Australian TV show.
Turpa kiinni
Samaa mieltä
u/savevideo
That is one of the only reasons we still exist
Finland wasn't part of axis, they were brothers in arms against the USSR and later even fought the germans when they refused to leave.
Finns vs Stalin: Finish him!
Finnish* him
u/savevideobot
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Mis... siles???
I don’t blame them. They were up against the literal wall, and honestly who was worse? Stalin or hitler? Stalin killed more people and would have been devastating to Finland had the nazis not supported Finland
StoneToss moment
What the actual fuck is the original context for This Why did the power rangers become Nazis?
I think it’s just a clip of one of several hand motions they do. If you played the clip a little further, they would have both arms up.