A Short History of Finland by Jonathan Clements;

Author:Jonathan Clements;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)
Published: 2022-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Continuation War

The end of the Winter War came as something of a surprise for the Finns in Helsinki, who had heard nothing but stirring tales of heroism, and had started to assume that the strong resistance could go on indefinitely. Mannerheim had a far better idea of the exhaustion of his men and resources, and knew that the time was right to call it before his hard-won line began to buckle. Having served in the Russian military for thirty years, Mannerheim was well aware of his former masters’ policy of seizing as much territory as possible, with no intention of holding it, and then ransoming it back to the enemy for gains elsewhere.

The peace lasted for two whole months before the Russians began pushing for more concessions. Mannerheim had warned all along that this would happen, and had spent many weeks pleading with the government that the war was not over, merely on hiatus.

In 1940, the poet and professor Veikko Koskenniemi wrote lyrics to ‘Finlandia’, a musical piece by Sibelius that dated back to 1900 and the height of the Tsar’s Russification programme. It remains one of the songs that is most likely to rouse the passions of the Finns, possibly even more than their national anthem – its opening, at first sight at least, seems rooted in the struggle for Finland’s independence in the nineteenth century, only for allusions to gather of the conflict that was still raw in Finns’ hearts.

O, Finland, behold, your day is dawning,

The threat of night has been banished away,

And the lark of morning in the brightness sings,

As though the very firmament would ring.

The powers of the night are vanquished by the morning light,

Your day is dawning, O land of birth.

O, rise, Finland, raise up high

Your head, wreathed with great memories.

O, rise, Finland, you showed to the world

That you drove away the slavery,

And that you did not bend under oppression,

Your day has come, O land of birth.

I have cornered Finns at parties and restaurants, and asked them open-endedly to tell me what this song means to them, curious as to whether they associate it with the 1900 tune or the 1940 lyrics. Universally, Finns have recalled sights of snow and combat. Universally, they have begun humming the tune and mouthing the lyrics. Universally, their voices have cracked on the penultimate line ‘ja ettet taipunut Sa sorron alle’ (‘And that you did not bend under oppression’).

It became something of an anthem of the Finns’ sudden counterstrike against the Russians, which began in June 1941. It is remembered in Finland as Jatkosota (‘the Continuation War’), in Russia as the opening salvo of the Great Patriotic War, and in Germany as Operation Barbarossa. In a controversial move, Finland signed a ‘co-belligerency pact’ with Hitler’s Germany, resupplying its own forces with crucial German materials, but also allowing German troops to transit Finland in secret, ready to fall upon the Soviet border in a surprise attack. Mannerheim remained wary of the Germans, as he had been in 1918, and

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