Returning now to the dispatch of the Information & Purchasing Teams overseas
Returning now to the dispatch of the Information & Purchasing Teams overseas
While Finland had a limited number of embassies and consulates abroad in 1939 (there were 20 Finnish embassies, of which four were outside Europe, and an additional six consulates), these were all limited in their effectiveness and in the work they could carry out by small staff numbers (in 1935 the Foreign Ministry had a staff of 77, while missions abroad employed only slightly more than 100 people). Finnish missions were in place in Argentina (Buenos Aires), Australia (Sydney), Belgium (Brussels), Britain (London), Canada (Ottawa), Czechoslovakia (Prague), Denmark (Copenhagen), Estonia (Tallinn), France (Paris), Germany (Berlin), Hungary (Budapest), Italy (Rome), Japan (Tokyo), Latvia (Riga), Lithuania, Norway (Oslo), Poland (Warsaw), Romania (Bucharest), Spain (Madrid), Sweden (Stockholm), Switzerland (Berne), the USA (Washington DC and New York), the USSR (Moscow) and Yugoslavia (Belgrade),
Public Relations work in embassies and consulates prior to the Winter War had been largely improvised, with ambassadors given pretty much a free hand. Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus had planned and out together a war-information training program for diplomatic personnel but in mid-1939, this had largely not been implemented. Appointment of diplomatic personnel took place at infrequent intervals and with substantial travel times and costs involved in returning personnel to Finland, this training was not at the time a high priority. Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus war plans made provision for the immediate dispatch of Information Teams to each of the overseas diplomatic posts if war seemed imminent, with the size of the teams roughly correlated to their likely importance to the Finnish war effort. (This in fact meant that the largest teams were dispatched to Stockholm, Oslo, Washington DC, London, Paris, Berlin and Rome – to these locations also went senior Finnish politicians or military personnel with “connections” that could be utilised).
When the Information Teams arrived in-country, their first task was to confirm target audiences and carry out a systematic consideration of what should be the shape of information activity and operations for each country. The general concept was that in the event of war with the USSR, public relations and lobbying should not be carried out on an ad-hoc basis, but should be on a soundly planned footing, with specific objectives. Ground-work was started almost immediately teams arrived in-country, and in this the relationships that had been cultivated by the existing diplomatic personnel were critical, as were business relationships and past contacts. Thus, the initial arrivals of the Information Teams at each post saw a flurry of diplomatic, business, political and social contacts, not something that the Finnish diplomatic missions were generally noted for.
One can observe several parallel activities underway from July 1939 on: the commissioning of articles in foreign newspapers and publications, contacts with local journalists and politicians, contacts with commercial firms with whom Finnish companies did business, contacts with Finnish immigrant groups and societies, the immediate cultivation of “influential” local citizens who it could be anticipated would support Finland in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. The “progressive” nature of the trade union and social welfare situation in Finland was also utilized to make contacts with Unions and workers organizations whilst the Social Democrat Party’s links, however tenuous, with other socialist parties were used to build “political” relationships. The presence within each of the Information Teams of two or three Finnish politicians (inevitably minor players within Finnish politics) representing the various flavours of Finnish politics enabled the teams to start building a relationship with similarly minded political parties in the democracies. Conversely, in Italy the right-wing Finnish political party which had already-close ties with Mussolini’s regime, the IKL, were utilized with considerable success. In Spain, ties that had been established informally during the Spanish Civil War were brought into play.
The major disappointment was in Berlin. Germany was a country with which Finland had long had close ties, economically and militarily as well as political. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been an unwelcome introduction to German Realpolitiks and the Finnish representatives in Berlin worked furiously to determine what was happening. Finland had already been leaked the secret protocols regarding the Baltic States & Finland, both from the USA and from German sources who strongly disagreed. The messages received were conflicted, but what it seemed to boil down to was that Hitler had a working arrangement with Stalin and while Finland could expect no official help from Germany, discreet unofficial assistance could be arranged, and in this “unofficial assistance” Goering seemed to be Finland’s biggest asset. As we will see, some unofficial German assistance would indeed be forthcoming, until events escalated the tensions between Finland and Germany to a point where even Goering would no longer lend his protection to any such schemes.
The Information Teams at the foreign diplomatic posts went into overdrive in the short time they had available before the war actually broke out. Articles in newspapers, journals and periodicals were printed, bought, commissioned, suggested, or supported in several ways. Publications directly written by Information Team (mostly previously prepared and then rapidly adapted in the spot) writers were spread through the embassy connections. Direct commissioning of foreign authors in order to produce articles seemingly free of official propaganda took place also. In many cases this was achieved through utilizing writers with sympathetic views towards Finland (this became rather more prevalent after the Winter War actually broke out). In France for instance, the Information Teams had to cater to the voracious appetites of a notoriously venal daily press and additional funding was provided for this. Ambassadors and Consuls acted through their networks of contacts, while whatever Finnish organizations, or organizations that might be sympathetic to Finland, were contacted and assistance asked for. In many of the countries, it was possible to put in place the groundwork for “Support Finland” organizations. As a result, most of the immediate pre-war publicity regarding Finland dovetailed nicely into the image of Finland that Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus wanted to spread.
After the USSR actually attacked Finland, the Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus publicity campaign stepped into high gear, with remarkable results. The Winter War dominated headlines worldwide (although the lack of news from the “Phony War” also helped in this). Support organizations sprang into being seemingly overnight, the in-country Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus Information Teams provided guidance, assistance and speakers. Country-specific campaigns sprang into being – to raise funds for Finland, to exert pressure on the Government to send aid, unions and churches spoke out against the aggression of the USSR, large public gatherings took place where speeches supported Finland, the Finnish Ambassadors initiated urgent meetings with Government Ministers and Prime Ministers while the Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus Information Teams ensured there were in all the local newspapers together with demands for support of Finland. All in all, the campaign was better organized and run than many political or advertising campaigns, and the results were, as we will see, surpassingly effective in raising local support and turning this into effective influence for Finland’s benefit..
In the following posts, we will look at the impact that the Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus Information Teams had in a number of countries from which volunteers were dispatched and from which assistance was provided, most notably the USA and Australia (countries for which more historical information in available than others. We know for example, that there was large scale support for Finland in Hungary, with much fund-raising activity, but unfortunately very little information on this survived WW2 and the post-war Communist government. This unfortunately precludes using Hungary as an example).
On the outbreak of the Winter War, the Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus Information Teams also encouraged foreign correspondents and politicians of influence to visit Finland. Given the distances and travel time involved, it goes without saying that these were from journalists and politicians / diplomats from, or already in, Europe and North America. Every assistance was given to these “foreigners of importance” to reach Finland, down to ensuring priority seating on the Finnish airline flights from America, London, Berlin, Oslo and Stockholm. The first day of the war in Finland saw about fifty additional foreign journalists arrive to join those few that were already in the country. Many more arrived within the next few days. Most expected a situation similar to Poland, with Finnish resistance to collapse within a few days, perhaps a few weeks at best. None expected the Finnish military to put up the fight that they did.
“Foreign guests” were free to meet whomever they pleased, but they were also largely dependent on their hosts, and many were all too happy to have their traveling organized for them. Certainly none expected the expert handling and facilitation that they received from the Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto – who, as well as running the Press Centre at the Hotel Kämp as the central coordination point, had established ancillary Press Centres in Viipuri, Oulu and in the north, at Rovaniemi. Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto also organized and provided accommodation and on arrival, assigned each foreign war correspondent a personal “minder” from the pool of Tiedotusupseeri (Information Officers) whose task was to assist and “guide” the war correspondents. The results of this were not to the dislike of the Finns, and the articles of almost all the correspondents dovetailed nicely into the image of Finland and to the overall “story” that the Valtioneuvoston Tiedotuskeskus and Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto wanted to spread.
The reportage brought back by the photographer Therese Bonney for instance (who had arrived in Helsinki shortly before the Winter War broke out), was a mix of things obviously arranged for her (meeting Jean Sibelius, Väinö Aaltonen, being shown around Helsinki, the Finnish army, the construction of the Olympic stadium, model sanatorium and sports facilities in Tuusula, etc) and things that every Frenchman would have instinctively associated with Finland (hard-working women, saunas, nature, etc). There is an obvious correspondence involved in these immediate pre-war articles between what the foreigner wanted to find and the way their Finnish chaperons tried to show the best of the country. After the Winter War broke out, the immediate focus of the foreign correspondents was of course the war itself. As mentioned, most correspondents had expected Finland to fall quickly and it was only after the War had been underway for a few days, with heavy fighting and strong resistance reported by those already there, that the major news media organizations began to send out correspondents, including thirty from Britain alone.
The fact that the conflict took place in a time when news agencies had invested in wide networks of war correspondents but other fronts were rather quiet was an added reason for the attention. Correspondents were fascinated by many different aspects of the war – the huge imbalance of forces, the skilled and stubborn resistance of the Finns, the obvious commitment of every Finn to the fight, the unbelievably one-sided casualties in the early battles. Correspondents were also fascinated by the arctic aspect of the war. The snow, the cold climate and soldiers on skis wearing white camouflage made for a novel and exotic experience. Many correspondents chose to cover the battles in Lapland, although the decisive struggle was being fought on the Karelian Isthmus, in the southeastern part of Finland. These war correspondents showed a genuine interest in the turn of events, and the skilful assignment of untypically talkative Tiedotusupseeri appointed to work with the foreign correspondents assisted in engaged many of the war correspondents strongly at an emotional level.
As has been mentioned, the Tiedotusupseeri appointed to work with the foreign press had a remarkably fluid role and great care was taken to appoint personnel with the characteristics necessary to work comfortably with foreigners whilst at the same time ensuring that information of military importance was not included. As such, Tiedotusupseeri tended to be rather less taciturn than the norm, and included a large number of women, all of whom had to have completed military training and special courses on how to identify and deal with militarily significant information. They also needed to ensure that the image conveyed was that which the Finnish military wished to be conveyed in the event of a war. It was stressed to “minders” that manipulation of the media should not be overt but carried out subtly, as much as possible by letting the “facts” speak for themselves. After the war actually started, the Soviets assisted this effort almost as if they were working to the same plan as the Finns – the random bombings of Helsinki and other cities in the early days of the war, with numerous civilian casualties and buildings destroyed and in flames, was fodder for the foreign journalists, many of whom had seen similar death and destruction unleashed in Spain and had written furiously and passionately on this topic then.
The Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto was well aware of this from their own analysis of the Spanish Civil War and used this to advantage from the start, ensuring that foreign correspondents were informed of the bombing of civilian targets, and organizing trips for the journalists, giving them opportunities to discover the damage and interview affected civilians. The impression of a total war being carried out, with all of Finland’s people, both military and civilian, under attack from a ruthless USSR whose tactics echoed those of the Fascists in Spain and Poland very quickly became part of the overall picture of the Winter War. As Virginia Cowles would write in one of her early reports from Finland:
“Twenty-four hours later, I took a trip along the coast to Hango. Here I saw for the first time what continuous and relentless bombing was like. The deep quiet of the snowbound countryside was broken by the wail of sirens five or six times a day as wave after wave of Soviet bombers sometimes totalling as many as five hundred came across the Gulf of Finland from their bases in Estonia, only twenty minutes away. All along the coast I passed through villages and towns which had been bombed and machine-gunned; in Hango, the Finnish port which the Soviets demanded in their ultimatum, twenty buildings had been hit, and when I arrived, ten were still burning.
It is difficult to describe indiscriminate aerial warfare against a civilian population in a country with a temperature thirty degrees Fahrenheit below zero. But if you can visualize farm girls stumbling through snow for the uncertain safety of their cellars; bombs falling on frozen villages unprotected by a single anti-aircraft gun; men standing helplessly in front of blazing buildings with no apparatus with which to fight the fires, and others desperately trying to salvage their belongings from burning wreckage if you can visualize these things and picture even the children in remote hamlets wearing white covers over their coats as camouflage against low-flying Russian machine-gunners you can get some idea of what this war was like."
The stoic response of the Finnish civilians to these attacks was grist to the mill for the foreign journalists, making for memorable quotes that stuck in the minds of foreign readers of the newspaper articles that were churned out nightly (most of the British reporters for example worked for Morning papers, thus their articles needed to be filed by 9pm in the evening to make the morning papers, where they would be read and then talked about in the office or the factory). Every evening the press room of the Hotel Kämp overflowed with correspondents from a dozen different capitals, arguing, doubting, grumbling, questioning. The telephone rang continuously. From one end of the hotel to the other you could hear journalists shouting their stories across Europe to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris and London, and even across the Atlantic to New York. Much to everyone's annoyance, New York was the only connection so distinct you could hear as well as though you were sitting in the next room. Virginia Cowles usually telegraphed her stories to London, but they were often delayed for five or six hours, and occasionally she was forced to telephone.
“The line was so bad I had to repeat every word three or four times and I hate to think what the charges must have been. Some of the delay, however, was due to the fact that the Sunday Times telegrapher couldn't understand my American accent; once in desperation, I handed the telephone to Eddie Ward. "I say, is that really Mr. Ward speaking? Why, I heard you over the radio only an hour ago. And am I really talking to Helsinki? By Jove! What's it like there? Pretty cold, eh?" The official communiqué was issued every evening about eight o'clock and there was always a mad scramble among the big agencies as to who got the news over the wires first. All of them put in telephone calls to Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen blitz calls at nine times the normal rate. Once the Associated Press hung on to the telephone for twenty-five minutes waiting for the communique to be issued. Five minutes after hanging up in despair a call came through for the United Press, and at the same moment a boy walked into the room with the communique. Black looks were exchanged. As a matter of fact, all calls that came through seemed to be for the United Press, and I learned later this was due to a very handsome arrangement with the Hotel Kamp telephone operator.”
On short notice, it was impossible to improve the telecommunications situation, but the Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto worked hard to ensure all else that was possible was done to assist the war correspondents in their work. Censorship was rapid at the Hotel Kämp, rather more so than when you were filing reports from outside Helsinki, but the process itself was somewhat mysterious – the censors were invisible people who lived behind barred doors. No one ever saw them. Your appointed Information Officer took your copy to them and when it came back within a few minutes (for the censorship was extremely prompt) red penciled you might as well complain to God for all the good it did, although the Information Officer’s were all very helpful and would make suggestions as to what would not make it past the censors, which speeded things up considerably once you knew what they were looking for.
The reports filed by British correspondents such as Hilde Marchant and Giles Romilly that we have seen earlier were fairly typical of the short articles that made it into the British papers on a daily basis, while longer and more “thoughtful” articles by reporters such as John Langdon-Davies would appear regularly throughout the war. Correspondents such as Martha Gellhorn and Jessica Mitford would write more human interest stories. All the British newspapers (and in generall, all foreign newspapers) were supportive of Finland to a greater or lesser extent and, as has been mentioned, during the period of the “Phoney War,” the “Winter War” dominated the headlines on a daily basis. While the Fall of France and then the great air battles of the summer of 1940 came to dominate the British Press, the ongoing struggle between Finland and the Soviet Union remained in the news throughout and once more made the front pages as the great battles of August 1940 raged on the outskirts of Leningrad and along the Syvari. The death of Stalin at the hands of the Finns, the ensuing emergence of a leadership triumvirate to rule the USSR and the rapidly-concluded peace agreement between Finland and the USSR would make the front pages in September and October 1940, after which Finland faded from view, relegated to being the subject of (unfortunately perhaps for the British military, incorrect) analysis from newspaper writers such as B. H. Liddell-Hart and books by a number of the war correspondents such as john Langdon-Davies and his “Finland: The First Total War” who had “been there.”
For the Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto, conveying the right image and creating the right publicity was the subject of ongoing analysis throughout the war. Finland must be portrayed as fighting heroically against huge odds, as indeed it was, but at the same time the image conveyed must contain the message that with help, Finland could indeed hold of the might of the Soviet Union, if not forever, for a considerable length of time. Early in the war, many foreign governments held the view that Finland could not hold out long enough for military aid and volunteers to arrive – and this was a myth that Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto worked hard (and successfully) to dispel. Much was made of the victories in the north and in eastern Karelia, much also was made of the slow retreat on the Isthmus and the enormous casualties being inflicted on the Red Army, the sudden counterattacks, the ability of the Finnish artillery to counter the Red Army guns. Much was also made of the devastating attacks on the Soviet Navy and the fight for supremacy in the skies that the Ilmavoimat was slowly winning. And always, the refrain went,
“we need help with guns, ammunition, aircraft, food, volunteers, whatever you can send.”
The commitment of Finland to fight on regardless of the cost was emphasized again and again, as was the involvement of the entire population in the war effort. The Lotta women working at the front as medics, nurses, signalers, drivers, cooks and in combat roles as AA-gunners stunned the foreign correspondents who were not used to seeing women near the frontlines, even in the Spanish Civil War. Their work alongside the fighting men received special attention. So to did the work of the teenage girls and boys in uniform, the girls organizing and looking after refugees from the Isthmus and border areas, manning searchlights, AA guns, working as Air Observers, caring for the wounded, the boys, many of them working in factories taking over adult jobs so that the men could join the fight, working in military depots, unloading railway wagons crammed with military supplies. Other women had taken over civilian jobs, looking after the children, working in factories, providing services that needed to be continued. To the foreign correspondents, this was visibly an entire nation at war. Everything, the efforts of every single person, was dedicated to the war effort. Much was also made of the early foreign units, the Italian Alpini Division, the Hungarians and Spanish Divisions on the way, the early arriving ANZAC Battalion and their eagerness to join the fight.
Press cuttings from the Finnish newspapers of the time reveal just how heavily people were hit by the stories of the "Frenzied assaults of the enemy" and the long columns of death-notices for the killed in action. Hence the Finns also read gratefully the opinions of the world in the international press and of the steady arrival of various units of foreign volunteers. That, and the military successes of the Finnish military, offered comfort.
"Now if ever is the opportunity for friends of freedom and democracy to stand up and do something for their beliefs", urged Webb Miller of UP, one of the most famous correspondents of his day, in December 1939, trying to encourage the formation of an "International Brigade" of volunteers.
"The eyes of the world are watching with admiration this small nation that defends itself against a bullying giant". This of course, was exactly the sentiment and feelings that the Finns hoped to arouse internationally – along of course with material assistance. The Swedish writer Sven Stolpe, speaking in January 1940 said that "
Finland is currently the soldier of humanity, and no people can have a greater task to carry out than the Finns".
Image sourced from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _debut.jpg
The Swedish writer Sven Stolpe in 1929
Before the outbreak of hostilities, Finland had been just a splash of colour on the map for much of the world, but the Winter War made Finland much much more than that. Hence Tapio Vilpponen displayed an impressive prescience when he wrote in Helsingin Sanomat on January 25, 1940:
"There can be no doubt that the continuing positive propaganda towards our country will create for us an ever-richer soil in our interaction with other nations." One of American correspondent David Bradley’s more enduring memories was of being down at the railway station, seeing the trains leaving for the front.
"There were boys and even some girls sitting there waiting, 17 and 18 year old boys and girls wearing uniforms and carrying rifles, a few older men among them, but mostly boys and girls just waiting for trains to take them to the fighting. When I'd seen those kids, I didn't need any book-learning to know what heroes were."
Image sourced from: http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/7 ... 716b42.jpg
David Bradley, who became known to Finns as a correspondent covering the Winter War, died on January 7th 2008 at his home in Norway, Maine in the United States at the age of 92 years old. He was born on February 22nd, 1915. Bradley was the last living foreign correspondent who had covered the Winter War and had reported on the war for the American Lee Syndicate and the Wisconsin State Journal. After the Winter War Bradley studied medicine at Harvard University and went on to serve in the US military. In 1946 he was sent to the Pacific to take radiological measurements at Bikini Atoll. Bradley was among the first American scientists to warn Americans about the health hazards of nuclear radiation. Bradley left the military and continued to work against nuclear armament in his speeches and his writings. He was elected to the House of Representatives of the State of New Hampshire, where he served from 1955 to 1959, and again from 1973 to 1975. He returned to Finland to teach the English language and American Literature at the University of Helsinki from 1960 to 1962. He wrote a book, “Lion among Roses” about his experiences in Finland.
The ongoing reporting of Finnish victories, the stubborn fight they were putting up, the news of the foreign volunteers arriving, all inspired men and women in other countries to demand that their own governments do something to assist Finland. In the self-governing democracies of the British Commonwealth – Australia, Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, a ground-swell of public opinion supported the sending of volunteers to join the fight. In the USA, there was a mixture of support for Finland opposed by a wary isolationism that rejected any involvement in European wars. In other countries there was also strong public support for Finland – in South America, in Japan, in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway. But all of this meant very little if it was not translated into guns, munitions, aircraft and men to fight. And in this, the Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto faced a certain fact – the war in Finland was receiving much media attention. The lone struggle of a plucky and hopelessly outnumbered Finland against Stalin's armies made a good story, particularly when accompanied by images of white-clad soldiers on skis fighting in the snow supported by the Lotta’s. But this would only last as long as the war in Europe remained a “phoney” war – and the Finnish General HQ knew enough about the German military to be convinced that the Phoney War would not last forever – and when the war ceased to be “phoney”, Finland and its struggle would disappear from the news. And with that disappearance, the fickleness of foreign public opinion would mean there would no longer be public pressure on governments to assist Finland.
What was needed was to ensure large enough commitments of men and material early in the war so as to ensure support would continue, if only for the reason that large numbers of foreign volunteers had been committed and their loss would be a public relations disaster for the governments that had, even if reluctantly, supported and even organized their dispatch. To achieve this commitment, an even higher news profile generating greater public pressure on the foreign governments was needed – as were active support organizations in the countries concerned. How to achieve this publicity and ensure it was always in a favorable light had been the subject of considerable analysis within the Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto in the year prior to the war. And yet again, the Spanish Civil War had provided an inspiration and an answer. While large numbers of foreign correspondents had reported on the Spanish Civil War, there had also been a considerable number of authors who had actually fought as volunteers with the International Brigades. George Orwell, W.H. Auden, Spender, Day Lewis, MacNeice
This, combined with the desire of many reporters to “report from the frontlines” had led Puolustusministeriön Tiedostustoimisto to come up with a new concept – “Embedding” – which was implemented at the outbreak of the war. In an at the time unique approach, selected foreign journalists who accepted the risk were “embedded” in carefully chosen Finnish military units together with their Finnish “minders” who were fluent in the language of the foreign journalists and who were also “combat soldiers”. In this, the inability of almost all the foreign journalists to understand Finnish measurably assisted in the Finns skilful manipulation of the foreign media to their advantage. From experience in the Spanish Civil War, it was theorised that first-hand accounts from the front more often than not resulted in positive news reports – and in the Winter War this was proven, with the foreign journalists releasing unanimously astonished and admiring reports of the Finnish soldiers fighting against impossible odds in the harsh sub-zero temperatures of the Finnish winter – and winning. Virginia Cowles, the svelte blonde Bostonian journalist, found herself in perhaps the most challenging, dangerous and indeed, terrifying, position she would ever face as a journalist in WW2 when she was embedded in an Osasto Nyrkki (“Fist Force”) special forces unit tasked with an attack on a Soviet airfield deep behind the frontlines.
Photo sourced from: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arc ... 71969a.jpg
Virginia Cowles in Finland (on left behind desk, Martha Gellhorn seated next to her in the center): Aged only 29 at the time of the Winter War, Cowles was a correspondent for Hearst newspapers in the United States. She had interviewed Mussolini in Rome, been flown personally by Air Marshal Balbo over Libya (“I know,” he said, having failed to entice her to fly for a second time, “the trouble is you don’t like my beard”), had tea with Hitler in Nuremberg (where Unity Mitford told her enthusiastically: “He says it’s very exciting to have the whole world trembling before him”). She had been to Soviet Russia, covered the Spanish Civil War (from both sides) where she had lunched with Ernest Hemingway and “the chief executioner of Madrid”, been falsely reported by Kim Philby as kidnapped in Spain, covered Czechoslovakia in October 1938 and, later, reported from the Polish border, as the Germans rolled in. Now she was in Finland covering the war between Finland and the Soviet Union. As with almost every other journalist in Finland, impartial and objective reporting was cast aside as she wholeheartedly supported the cause of Finland. She would see in the New Year of 1940 standing beside Marshal Mannerheim at his “mysterious headquarters hidden deep in the Finnish forests” at Mikkeli, where she entertained the Marshal by singing “Run, Rabbit, Run.”
At the time, the Winter War was also making a major impact in the media. The 1940 play “
There Shall Be No Night” by American playwright Robert E. Sherwood was inspired by a moving Christmas 1939 broadcast to America by war correspondent Bill White of CBS. The play was produced on Broadway in 1940, and won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The 1940 American film “
Ski Patrol” features a Finnish reserve unit defending the border against Russians. The film took great historical liberties in its storyline and was photographed by the Hollywood master Milton Krasner. In addition, a considerable number of books for the British and American markets were written on the subject immediately after (and some even before) the war ended.
At the end and within a year after the Winter War – late 1940 and1941 – quite a number of books were also published in the Soviet Union. Given the death of Stalin and the political succession that had taken place, the books were very narrowly focused on military history and operations, but they had did have a carefully controlled and strong political message. The overall campaign was disastrous, so the literature found its pride in details of particular battles and encounters and in heroic soldiers. For example the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line was represented as a "legendary" performance by the Red Army, as was the defence of Leningrad and the battles on the Svir. Timoshenko, in the biographical film of the same name, was portrayed as the heroic general fighting to the last against the savage Finnish onslaught and an inspiration to his men to do the same.
In fiction, the 1940 boy's adventure story “
Biggles Sees It Through” by W.E. Johns is set during the final stages of the war. In a “fictional” work that is in reality a thinly veiled biography, albeit with many of the events adapted to serve the agenda of the British government, Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth, the leader of the Squadron of RAF Volunteers, flies reconnaissance raids from a base in Finland in a Bristol Blenheim bomber on missions for the British Security Intelligence Service, and encounters a Polish scientist with secret papers on new aircraft alloys, plus von Stalhein, his old World War I enemy, who is working with the NKVD.
Image sourced from: http://www.biggles.info/Details/23/Titlepage.jpg
Frontpiece from “Biggles Sees It Through” – “The Gadiator swept up in a tight half-roll”
There were also a considerable number of books on the war published by western journalists who had “been there.” Almost all of them were critical of the Soviet Union and sympathetic to the Finnish cause. Even after the war had drawn to a close, favorable portrayals of the Finns continued to emerge, a classic example being Virginia Cowles’ hagiographical book “
Hero: The Life and Legend of Colonel Jussi Härkönen,” about Eversti Jussi Härkönen, the founder and commanding officer throughout the Winter War and WW2 of the Maavoimat’s elite Osasto Nyrkki (“Fist Force”) special forces unit.
Photo sourced from: http://twolftfeet.com/sas/SAS_winter_br ... to_014.jpg
Osasto Nyrkki 4WD “Bantam Gun-buggy”, photo taken from “Hero: The Life and Legend of Colonel Jussi Härkönen” by Virginia Cowles (Gummerus, 1949).
Her prologue – “
There is a full moon shining down on the snow-clad forests of eastern Karelia. Overhead you can hear the drone of Soviet bombers whilst behind us the sounds of the frontline battle are muted thunder. Deep in the rear of the Red Army, the men of the Finnish Army’s Fist Force drive through the snow. Their mission – to attack a Soviet airfield packed with bombers being used to attack Finnish cities….” – sets the scene. “
On nights like this,” she continues, “
you wonder how future historians will visualise the majesty of this small country. Will they understand how violently Finland fought, how valiantly her soldiers died: how calmly her people lived in the midst of the world’s first total war?”
In the book she was fiercely critical of America for having “
shrunk from our obligations” to support Finland – “
a small democracy fighting for her life against an evil totalitarian regime” - to the fullest extent possible. As Finland
“….struggles for survival and America refuses to provide war materials and equipment to assist her, shiploads of aircraft engines, machine tools and munitions with which the Soviet war machine will create weapons to use against this gallant country leave our shores for the USSR …….” Strange to say of a book written at one of the darkest times in WW2, and of the grimmest subjects, its chief note is one of gaiety. Virginia Cowles was young and well-connected. As an attractive woman in an almost totally male world, she was treated chivalrously and allowed an access that, nowadays, even top television reporters would envy. “What a fine thing it was,” she writes at one point, “to be a female of the species.” She had the most marvelous time in Finland over the months of war, and she does not solemnly pretend otherwise.
The sheer oddity of the Winter War fascinated her. There is a brilliant description of a midnight dinner laid on by Osasto Nyrkki deep in the Russian forests so that she and another reporter could dine in relative comfort while watching the Finns as they attacked, overran and then blew up a huge Red Army supply dump, and another of the difficulty of keeping warm in freezing Finland in a house which, at the time, was on fire. Equally, though, Cowles reports all the horror with direct human sympathy — the poor, distracted Karelian refugee desperate to get on the Helsinki train with her to find her children who had been evacuated earlier, the Australian Volunteer Battalion cook who makes her breakfast near the frontline on the Syvari one day and is dead in battle the next, the little lost Estonian refugee boy coming to the reception desk of the Helsinki hotel she was staying at late in 1940 after Tallinn had fallen to the Red Army saying, “Minu isa on piloot.” All such vignettes are the more effective because they are not dwelt on, and the physical description of Soviet atrocities is restrained. This is clear, unaffected reportage, and the book is a delight to read for that alone.
Image sourced from: http://pknry.files.wordpress.com/2011/1 ... .jpg?w=990
“Minu isa on piloot.”
What is also likable about the book however, is its more dated aspect — its romantic devotion to Finland and to the heroically portrayed characters of Colonel Jussi Härkönen and Marshal Mannerheim (always an imposing and aristocratic background figure throughout the book). As a child, Virginia Cowles loved the stories of the Knights of the Round Table and of other heroic figures such as Sir Francis Drake, Clive of India and so on. After arriving in Helsinki, she thought “
Finland seemed a wonderful land where all the men were very brave and wore splendid and beautiful uniforms[!]”. This impression was reinforced on meeting Marshal Mannerheim. “
I was impressed by his imposing and aristocratic presence and his military bearing. He looked to me the way I had always imagined a true commander of brave men should look…..” Cowles was most struck, especially when she later compared the way Finland fought successfully against overwhelming odds with the rout of France, by the way the Finnish soldiers naturally respected the great Marshal, and the way the officers, NCOs and men worked together in battle. “
Hardly an order was ever given. It was as if every one of them knew what was expected of them and what to do under every circumstance. A gesture, a nod, and an entire Platoon or Company would begin to move, easily, rapidly and silently through the snow and the forest, white-clad ghosts invisible and inaudible from even a few feet away.”
She also noticed and described Finnish “Sisu” – the sometimes suicidally stubborn refusal of the Finnish soldiers to give in to the Red Army, no matter how outnumbered they were, as well as their sardonically humorous outlook on the ongoing war. She repeated in one news piece she filed the request of one Finnish officer after the annihilation of the Red Army’s 44th Division, “
ask Stalin to send another couple of Divisions, we could do with some more equipment.” Long afterwards she would write
“….it was only after seeing the outcome of these and other battles that I came to truly realize just how much the Finnish Army had achieved, how many casualties they had inflicted on the Red Army and how little it had cost them. And it was then that I began to believe that as long as the world continued to aid Finland with military equipment and with ammunition, Finland could never be beaten.”
Towards the end of her book, she writes “
Of all the days I spent in Finland, I remember August 15th 1940 the best. The Red Army had launched a huge attack on the Finns along the entire front, from Leningrad all the way to the White Sea. On this day the Ilmavoimat shot down a record number of one hundred and eighty Soviet planes. I had been driven down from Viipuri to near the front on the Karelian Isthmus with Vincent Sheean and from where we were we near Terijoki we tried to piece the drama together like a jigsaw puzzle. In almost the whole range of the sky there was action. To the right we could see a plane falling like a stone into the sea, leaving a long black plume against the sky; to the left, a bomber going down in flames; and directly above, a fighter, diving down on one of the bombers and suddenly a tiny fluttering parachute as one of the pilots baled out; and all the time the crackling noise of the anti-aircraft guns' fire and the white bursts of smoke against the sky and the white contrails of the aircraft everywhere. And underlying all other sounds was the continuing rumble of the artillery coming from the direction of distant Leningrad, like muted thunder that never ceased.”
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“….near Terijoki we tried to piece the drama together like a jigsaw puzzle. In almost the whole range of the sky there was action.”
Finland would emerge from obscurity again only in early 1944, once more making the headlines as she joined the Allied and launched the invasion of Estonia, with Finnish/Polish/Allied forces driving rapidly southwards along the Baltic littoral. A number of leading war correspondents who had become confirmed “Fennophiles” over the course of the Winter War would attach themselves to the Finnish forces for the remainder of WW2. Their reports would contrast the “lightning
war” waged by the Finnish and Polish generals together with General George Patton (“
sidelined to Finland by Eisenhower and eternally grateful for it”) with the “
plodding advances” of Bradley and Montgomery on the “other front”.
Virginia Cowles herself returned to Finland in late 1944 and, together with Martha Gellhorn and other journalists, would accompany the Maavoimat on its drive southwards through the Baltic States and in to Poland. She would be flown into Warsaw by the Ilmavoimat as the German siege was broken, reporting on the duplicity of the Soviets as the Red Army refused to assist the Polish Home Army as it battled to hold Warsaw. She would enthrall America and Britain with her reports on the Relief of Warsaw by the Finnish and Polish Armies as well as her ongoing “Reports from the Spearhead” as the Finnish-commanded Army of the North rampaged through northern Poland, in to Germany and onwards to Berlin.
http://images.wikia.com/althistory/images/8/83/Reichstag_flag_(Finland_Superpower).png
“Raising the Flag over the Reichstag” - a historic World War II photograph taken during the Battle of Berlin on 2 May 1945, by an unknown Finnish Propagandaliitto photographer assigned to accompany Virginia Cowles together with her “minder.” It depicts several Maavoimat soldiers raising the flag of Finland atop the German Reichstag building. Accompanying the article filed by Cowles on the Fall of Berlin to the Finnish Army, the photograph was instantly popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. It came to be regarded around the world as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war. Virginia Cowles was the first Allied Reporter to reach Berlin at the end of the War.
The Fall of Berlin was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II and ended as a race to the centre of Berlin between the Soviet Red Army and the Finnish Maavoimat. Starting in early January 1945, the Maavoimat/Polish/Baltic States Army and attached Allied (British, Commonwealth and US) Divisions and the Red Army had conducted parallel drives westwards, breaching the German front on the Vistula and Oder and rapidly advancing westwards through Germany, averaging 30–40 kilometres a day. The Maavoimat and attached allied units under their command were aided in their advance by the relative willingness of German forces they faced to surrender or withdraw without putting up a serious fight – although on the occasions when they did so, they were hammered mercilessly. By contrast, the German forces facing the Red Army tended to fight to the best of their ability. The Red Army was however prepared to take far heavier casualties in order to maintain the speed of their advance so in the end, the advancing armies remained neck and neck to the end. The battle for Berlin lasted from late on 20 April 1945 until 2 May 1945 and was one of the bloodiest in history for the Germans and the Red Army. Not so for the Finns.
The Maavoimat originally had no intention of participating in the battle or of advancing into Berlin. At the commencement of the battle, the Red Army advanced into Berlin from the east and south while the Maavoimat remained stationary along the northern border of the city – with large elements of the Maavoimat continuing to advance westwards, occupying northern Germany and forcing the German III Panzer Army and the German XXI Army situated to the north of Berlin to retreated westwards under relentless pressure until they were eventually pushed into a pocket 20 miles (32 km) wide that stretched from the Elbe to the coast. To their west was the British 21st Army Group, to their east were the Finns and to the South were the Americans – while a Merivoimat naval task force and Rannikkojääkärit units moved to liberate Denmark. The Finnish military command saw no reason to lose large numbers of Finnish lives in order to take a city which was bound to fall and was not especially interested in the “prestige” resulting from the taking of the city. During 20 April 1945, the 1st Belorussian Front commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front had pushed from the south through the last formations of Army Group Centre. The German defences mainly consisted of several depleted, badly equipped, and disorganised Heer and Waffen-SS divisions. Within the next few days, the Red Army rapidly advanced through the city and reached the boundaries of the city centre where close-quarters combat raged. At least 125,000 German civilians perished in the fighting together with some 100,000 German soldiers. The Red Army would lose some 81,000 dead another 280,000 wounded together with 2,000 armoured vehicles destroyed. Throughout the fighting, endless columns of civilians filed northwards towards the Maavoimat positions, passing through to relative safety.
Image sourced from: http://d2o1hzola30dvt.cloudfront.net/wp ... fugees.jpg
Throughout the fighting for Berlin, German civilians filed towards the Maavoimat positions in a continuous stream, desperate to escape the vengeance of the Red Army.
It was the German civilian refugees that would indirectly lead to the Maavoimat moving into Berlin in force. On April 29th, Red Army forces near the Maavoimat positions began to attack and massacre a large German civilian refugee column that was snaking its way out of Berlin and through the Maavoimat lines, passing through the (Estonian) 31st Field Infantry Division commanded by Estonian Army Major-General Nikolai Reek. Reek ordered his Division to move to protect the civilians and, leading from the front as was often his wont, he was killed when Red Army units opened fire on the unit he was accompanying. With Reek’s death in action at Russian hands, the Estonian 31st Division responded with an all-out attack on all Red Army units in their vicinity on the north-east of Berlin, at the same time calling in Polish and Ilmavoimat close air support – which was always quick to respond to any aggressive moves towards Finnish/Polish/Allied units by the Red Army. At the same time, the Polish 1st Armoured Division and the Maavoimat’s 8th Infantry Division joined the fighting in support of the 31st Division. The Red Army units reeled backwards under the sudden and overwhelmingly violent onslaught. Only the personal and forceful intervention of Kenraaliluutnantti Oesch prevented the situation from escalating further.
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“Kenraaliluutnantti Oesch prevented the situation from escalating further”: The Fall of Berlin in 1945. Kenraaliluutnantti Lennart Oesch (right) and his chief-of-staff Eversti Valo Nihtilä (destroyed or captured Red Army materiel in the background). Nihtilä is shaking hands with the 2IC of the 31st Estonian Division who has assumed command on the death of Major-General Nicholas Reek.
However, in a move to prevent further unnecessary civilian casualties and deeply annoyed by the temerity of the Red Army’s attack on Maavoimat units, Kenraaliluutnantti Oesch ordered the Polish 1st Armoured, two Polish and four Finnish Infantry Divisions to move into Berlin. There was no resistance from the German military, those who were encountered surrendered immediately (and gratefully, it might be added) to advancing Maavoimat/Polish Army forces. Within two days, with almost no opposition, the Maavoimat had reached the center of Berlin and on the afternoon of 1 May, the Finnish Flag was raised over the Reichstag. Cowles documented the events surrounding the flag-raising in the articles she filed, writing that “
I asked a rhyma of soldiers who happened to be passing by to help with staging of the photo shoot. Four of them climbed up onto the roof with the flag I gave them and 18-year old Private Ilvari Länsivuori from Helsinki attached the flag to the flagstaff. With him were Private Pekka Ronkainen, Sergeant Jorma Tiilikainen and Private Yrjo Kankkunnen, all from Karelia. It was an historic moment and one I found deeply satisfying.”
German military units in Berlin fighting the Red Army slowly withdrew or were forced northwards where they were not overwhelmed, fighting desperately to enable the escape of German civilians towards the Finnish lines. During, and in the days immediately following the assault, in many areas of the city, vengeful Soviet troops (often rear echelon units) engaged in mass rape, pillage and murder. This too was reported on by Virginia Cowles, although at the time American and British newspapers were (not for the first time) being prevented from printing stories that cast the Soviets in a poor light. Meanwhile, the Maavoimat was in the process of hastily setting up camps for the refugees. Most Germans, both soldiers and civilians, were grateful to receive food issued at Maavoimat Field Kitchens which began on Kenraaliluutnantti Oesch’s orders.
Photo sourced from: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uy4vuBbsXMk/S ... %2B001.jpgCowles was a great admirer of Kenraaliluutnantti Karl Lennart Oesch – and she knew many Generals: “Oesch, the Polish General Anders, the Finnish General Hugo Osterman and George Patton made a great team. They complemented each other admirably. Oesch knew when to rein Anders, Osterman and Patton in and when to give them their heads, while Patton, Anders and Osterman respected each others abilities as well as Oesch’s abilities as a “fighting Commander. Oesch, Anders, Osterman and Patton were an unbeatable combination.
In those areas which the Maavoimat had captured and even before the fighting in the centre of the city had stopped, the Finnish Command took measures to start restoring essential services, as did the Soviets in their sector. Almost all the transport in and out of the city had been rendered inoperative, and bombed-out sewers had contaminated the city's water supplies. The Finns and Soviets both appointed local Germans to head each city block, and began organizing the cleaning-up. After the capitulation the Soviets went house to house, arresting and imprisoning anyone in a uniform including firemen and railway-men – as awareness of this grew and the fighting died away, a trickle of German civilians crossing from the Soviet controlled zone into the Finnish controlled zone became a torrent, and then a flood.
Image sourced from: http://faberfinds.files.wordpress.com/2 ... owles2.jpg
Virginia Cowles: “Days of Wine and Shrapnel”: Born in Vermont, USA, Virginia Cowles (1910-1983) became a well-known journalist in the 1930s with her columns appearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Her autobiography, “Looking for Trouble” covers with brio her reporting of the main events between 1935 and 1940. In his memorial address, Nigel Nicolson recalled the first time he met her, “her appearance was doubly startling: that she should be there at all at so critical a moment; and that she was the most beautiful young woman on whom, until then, I had ever set my eyes.”
Before and during the Second World War she covered the Spanish Civil War, the Winter War, the rout in France, the Middle East, the Italian campaign, the liberation of Paris, and the Allied invasion of Germany. In 1945 she married the British politician and writer Aidan Crawley. She wrote many biographies including “Winston Churchill; the Era and the Man”, “Edward VII and His Circle”, “The Romanov’s”, “The Phantom Major” about David Stirling and the SAS and “Hero: The Life and Legend of Colonel Jussi Härkönen.” It is indeed interesting to contrast her studies of David Stirling and the SAS vis-à-vis Jussi Härkönen and Osasto Nyrkki and the background that is perhaps unintentionally revealed. The SAS were peculiarly British, an elite unit that emerged from the war unplanned and largely unwanted, pushing their way in, developing techniques and tactics as the unit evolved as a fighting force, very much in the British tradition of such units which came and went with each major war. The SAS would be no exception, largely disappearing in the aftermath of WW2 only to re-emerge a decade later when circumstances again called for such a unit.
Osasto Nyrkki by way of contrast had been conceived and developed to meet an identified need – a similar need that the SAS met for the British – but with a great deal more foresight, planning and development. It was no coincidence then that the British Volunteers from the 5th Battalion Scots Guards, who were trained by and fought with Osasto Nyrkki in the Winter War, would be the founders of almost all the British Army’s elite units of WW2. And Osasto Nyrkki itself would remain in existence after WW2, as secretive and close-mouthed as ever, but now also feared by Finland’s enemies, training and preparing for the next war, whatever that might be.
As the war progressed, many of the “star” reporters moved back to Britain and France, some (such as Martha Gellhorn) sooner rather than later, but many remained and continued to report favorably on Finland and on the Russo-Finnish War. However, with Norway and then the Fall of France and the Battle of Britain, Finland became superceded in the news by larger and more world-shattering events. Even the Finnish intervention in northern Norway, their seizure of the Finnmark and the acceptance by the Germans of this as a fait accompli where they had driven the British and the French out, even this failed to make front pages news. The emphasis was on the defeat suffered by the British and the French in Norway, the fact that the Germans preferred not to take on Finland, a small country already fighting the USSR, in the Arctic spoke volumes about the capabilities of the Finnish military – just as the defeat of the British and French forces spoke volumes about their capabilities – as the Fall of France would all to clearly make even more evident. “
Most of the press corps vanished. The story had dried up", said David Bradley, one of the reporters who stayed to the end. “
The Finns and the foreign volunteers continued to fight but they didn’t make the front page anymore until those final days when they succeeded in killing Stalin and bringing the war to an end. Those reporters that stayed were back on the front pages again for a few days after that. But when it was obvious that a peace treaty was being concluded, almost all the foreign press left, there was no real news in a peace treaty.”
Regardless, the foreign press had served its purpose, large volunteer contingents were in place, large amounts of military aid had been forthcoming and regular convoys laden with food, munitions and weapons arrived in Lyngenfijord, Petsamo and the now Finnish-held port of Murmansk from the factories of the USA and Canada. Shipments would continue to arrive up until the peace agreement with the USSR, although primarily from the USA and paid for in hard cash as Canadian factories switched to delivering their output to a British Army which had lost most of its equipment in France and at Dunkirk. And the remnant of foreign war correspondents would continue to file their reports throughout the war, their great coup and their reward for staying the course being the momentous reports on the surprise Ilmavoimat raid on the Kremlin and the death of Stalin and a significant portion of the Politburo who had been meeting with him on that flame-filled night.
“
It’s difficult to imagine a more significant event in the first year of WW2,” Bradley said. “
You have to remember that this was September 1940, the Soviet Union and the Nazi’s were partners, they were brothers-in-arms, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had led to the dismembering of Poland, many in fact had questioned why Britain and France had chosen to declare war only on Germany and not on the USSR as well, they were both equally guilty, accomplices in crime as it were. So the news of Stalin’s death, it wasn’t greeted as a tragic loss as it would have been after the Germans turned on the USSR and they became our ally, it was greeted rather as a significant achievement, a victory against the totalitarian states that dominated Europe, a great victory. And it was a real turning of the tide for Finland, the triumvirate who succeeded Stalin were far more rational, far more sensible. And after what had happened, they preferred o negotiate a peace agreement with the Finns because it was obvious there would be no easy victory over the Finns and that Hitler and Germany was the real threat. Which was of course what the Finns had hoped for.”
Carl-Adam Nycop, a Swedish reporter, spoke at length of the sensation that followed on the announcement of the peace terms. "
We looked at the large map on the wall of the press-room and drew in the new borders. The Finns had given back almost everything the had won, they had even made some minor concessions on the Isthmus and in return that had got a large chunk of eastern Karelia, actually it was a huge chunk, Forests and Swamps, somebody said rather bitterly, and the border up by Petsamo had moved eastwards quite a bit but the Karelian Heartland, the land of the Kalevala, Lake Äänisen, the dream of a Greater Finland, had all evaporated. There was relief, relief at the Peace, relief that Finland had stayed intact, that the Karelians and the Ingrians would be allowed to come to Finland but there was also sadness. One of the Press Centre staff was sobbing in a corner. I tried to talk to a few people in the park in the morning, but they were too shocked. I understood why really, they had fought so long and so hard, so many soldiers and civilians had died, they had won the whole of what many considered to be their true homeland, the Greater Finland of the more ardent nationalists, and now they were giving it up. It was Mannerheim that carried the day with his speech, I think if anyone else had announced those terms there would have been a revolution, but everyone listened to Mannerheim and they would do whatever he asked them to. You could tell, even over the radio you could tell, that he wasn’t happy about it. But if anyone knew the Russians, he did and everybody knew that too."
And so, while there sadness and a lot of bitterness at the Russians, a bitterness that did not disappear as the Siege of Leningrad by the Germans would illustrate, when the Finns would not open their borders to permit any shipments through. Although they did offer that children could be evacuated through Finland but the Soviet leadership did not permit that. But while there was a great deal of sadness and bitterness, there was also relief that the war was over and that Finland had lost nothing, nothing except the lives of her soldiers and of the dead civilians. There were no victory parades, nothing to celebrate the end of the war – largely because when the war was done and the ceasefire had been declared, the Finns had to clean up the mess, repair the destruction, house the refugees. The Soviet Union ceded thousands of square miles of territory in Eastern Karelia to Finland, and around 200,000 Karelian Finns and Ingrians (and a few others that got mixed in with them) were deported by the NKVD over the border into Finland, regardless of their wishes, many of them had been sent to Siberia and they’d been sent all the way back without being told what was happening, they only found out when the trains rolled across the border and they were unloaded. And there were also the 50,000 odd prisoners from the NKVD camps on the Kola, not many of them wished to be returned to the Peoples Paradise and the Finns weren’t going to send them back if they didn’t want to go – they had seen the camps – and the burial sites. So they just gave them Finnish citizenship and that was that. Resettling them and the Ingrians and the Karelians and over 100,000 Estonian refugees was a huge amount of work. And with the rest of the world at war, there were no friends, nobody to come to their assistance, nobody able to do a damned thing and Sweden, which was probably the only country that could have helped, didn’t help much at all, although many individual Swedes did. The Finns had to do it all themselves. And they did."
Notes on Sources
For accounts of the Press in Finland, I’ve used a number of books as sources, many of which have been referenced in the preceding Posts. The first is indeed by Virginia Cowles (“Looking for Trouble,” which has a couple of chapters on her reporting from Finland). The second is Martha Gellhorn’s “The Face of War” (together with her articles from Colliers Weekly and a couple of different biographies – Caroline Moorehead’s “Martha Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life” being the best of the two I read). John Langdon-Davies wrote a very good book on the Winter War, “Finland – The First Total War” which is more about the war than the War Correspondents, but still useful as a source - as is Geoffrey Cox’s “The Red Army Moves” if you can find a copy (I couldn’t find a copy to buy, I had to get it via an inter-library loan).
Geoffrey Cox’s “The Red Army Moves” – excellent source material by a New Zealand journalist - if you can track a copy down….
Cheryl Hocker’s “The Accidental Journalist”, as well as containing some fairly comprehensive information on Edmund Stevens, is also a good source for commentary on other journalists in Finland at the time. A further book, “The Warcos: The War Correspondents of WW2” by Richard Collier has a very good section on war reporting during the Winter War and the War Correspondents who were there. This book formed the foundation for my Posts on this subject and led me to a lot of further reading on the subject. Paul Preston’s “We Saw Spain Die” has comprehensive information on many of these War Correspondents and is a really interesting book to read as well. There are also a couple of Finnish books on the subject which, perhaps fortunately (given the time it takes me to translate and work out the content) I didn’t get my hands on. But if you’re interested they are“TK-Miehet” about Finnish Military Information Companies in the (Continuation) War and “Talvisota Muiden Silmin” (The Winter War through the eyes of Others) by Antero Holmila
“TK-Miehet” about Finnish Military Information Companies in the (Continuation) War
“Talvisota Muiden Silmin” (The Winter War through the eyes of Others) by Antero Holmila. The Winter War drew wide international attention and Holmila's book looks into how foreign press viewed the conflict, with examples covering ten countries and three continents. The articles from Greece, Japan, Hungary and Great Britain show that foreign press emphasised and marvelled at the unity of the Finnish nation. Holmila says: "It is important to acknowledge that they did this for their own national and often political purposes." War loomed over the world and all countries were preparing for it. "Finnish history writing is limited by the fact that it is written by Finns. The language sets such strong barriers. What would have become of the history of Vichy, France if it had been left to Frenchmen to study?" asks Holmila. Unfortunately, Holmilla’s book is available only in Finnish…..
And lastly, for those who don’t know too much about the Winter War and Finland, don’t try and look for a copy of “Hero: The Life and Legend of Colonel Jussi Härkönen” by Virginia Cowles – you won’t find it – this one was invented for this ATL. For the brief mentions of the Soviet prison camps on the Kola and the NKVD slave ships (which existed) – see “Stalin's Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West” by Martin J. Bollinger.
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