post keeps getting removed by butthurt folks so imma keep reposting to keep em busy
the downvote brigade won’t bother reading but let me state the following anyway:
1. I’m finnish so naturally my family has experienced its fair share of intergenerational trauma (abuse, alcoholism, suicide)
2. I’m not talking about the winter war which was a justified DEFENSIVE operation in response to an illegal invasion, whereas continuation war was an offensive operation that extended beyond the regained pre-war borders and played an important strategic role in Operation Barbarossa.
3. I have no issue with the soldiers themselves, they did what they were told to do by their leadership and much like the general public, were led astray by lying politicians (esp. Ryti) who promised a quick war to regain lost territories and to reunite eastern Finnic groups in a “greater Finland”, which sounds a lot like lebensraum doesn’t it?
My big point is this: the way we teach and talk about the war CAN and often HAS real negative consequences in today’s world. I work as a school teacher and since the war in Ukraine started there have been several instances of Finnish boys excluding Russian classmates from playing together or otherwise bullying them based on their ethnicity. One time I overheard one boy explicitly telling his Russian classmate how “me ei leikitä ryssien kanssa koska ne on pahiksii” (translated: “we don’t play with ruskis cause they’re the baddies). I am not the type of teacher to lecture parents about how to best raise their children, but when I brought this up with one of the Finnish boys’ parents whom I already have cordial relationships with, they simply laughed it off as “boys being boys” and excused it as the boy having fostered a fascination for history after seeing Unknown Soldier for the first time with his parents during independence day.
Besides that, I take issue with how Finnish ppl generally whitewash and downplay fascistic elements present within Finnish pre-war politics and military leadership, instead focusing on Finland’s unfortunate position as a small country. There’s no denying that Finland had to choose between two evils, but let’s not forget that in post civil war finland, fascist-leaning groups had considerable swaying power in politics (e.g., banning communist parties and newspapers) with the state police and right-wing mobs collaborating in extrajudicial arrests and lynchings (see Onni Happonen of SDP). The valorisation of Mannerheim speaks volumes to how deep-seated anti-communism is, as people would rather celebrate a former member of the Swedish-speaking Tsarist-era military aristocracy (who didn’t learn Finnish until his election and was good friends with Hitler) who also happened to order the extrajudicial killings of 100s of Finnish reds during the civil war. Let’s also not forget how the Finnish military administration of Karelia ran concentration camps (of mostly elderly and children since all working-aged ppl were conscripted in soviet military) and these camps often had very high mortality rates.
Someone is probably already typing something along the lines “but we got to have our independence!”, but conveniently forget Finlandization and Porkkala ever happened, or the fact that our economy has never fully recovered from the 90s lama due to our economic ties to USSR which evaporated with the nation’s dissolution.
i could go on but yall get the idea.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE6mnPmztoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE6mnPmztoQ) if anyone curious about hitler/mannerheim connection
by FollowerOfTheBrave