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Well now it's much later and the 'quick' answer I've been composing has turned into a proper monograph on the subject. As that means rather more drafting and editing, it will take a little longer.

shane

Eye of the Deceiver - Twelve[/url]

Were the Finns really that brutal an opponent in OTL? Is this just one of those isolated incidents that will happen or are we just seeing another impact of the extended war in TBO? I've spent a fair amount of time on the Axis History Forum (forum. axishistory. com) and they give the impression that the Finns fought a very clear war (and not just by the standards of the Eastern Front). While they might be biased because of the rather significant number of Finns on the board, they have a strong Holocaust research group and they don't strike me a team that would simply whitewash history.

acesand8s wrote:Were the Finns really that brutal an opponent in OTL? Is this just one of those isolated incidents that will happen or are we just seeing another impact of the extended war in TBO? I've spent a fair amount of time on the Axis History Forum (forum. axishistory. com) and they give the impression that the Finns fought a very clear war (and not just by the standards of the Eastern Front). While they might be biased because of the rather significant number of Finns on the board, they have a strong Holocaust research group and they don't strike me a team that would simply whitewash history.

This is one of the questions that is hard to get an absolute answer on. The immediate information, ie the easily accessible stuff, is contradictory. Basically, the Finns claim they were as pure as the driven snow while the Russians claim the Finns were no better than the Germans. Now, there is very little doubt that a number of war crimes were committed by Finnish troops - simply because the Finnish Army tried and convicted a number of members of their Army for precisely those crimes. That's a double-barrelled piece of evidence, it proves that such crimes did take place but also that they were not approved at a high level.

There is one recorded case of a Finnish unit wiping out a Russian field hospital. Again, accounts differ, the Russian version is that the Finns took the place and killed everybody inside, the Finnish claim is that the patients and medical staff were fighting from within the building. Again, while the fact of the incident isn't denied, there is no evidence to suggest that it was standard Finnish practice.

What's depicted in this section of the story is a specific incident, there's no indication it was Finnish policy, deliberate or what. Given the circumstances of the attack, essentially a rear area raid, it's more than possible that troops got out of control and were operating on autopilot - their orders were to do as much damage to the headquarters as possible and they simply didn't stop to think. Without giving way to spoilers, this incident isn't over yet; its consequences rebound and reappear later in the story.

Another point is that the general escalation of brutality in the TBOverse WW2 (inevitable as the war progresses and exacerbated by the fact that the focus of the war is on the Russian Front where everybody behaved at their worst) has meant that nobody doubts what happened or that it was a deliberate act of policy. That may be an injustice or not, but nobody stopped to ask.

The TBOverse history of the Third Canadian Infantry Division is actually taken from the battles of Imphal and Kohima in India; the infiltration, slicing up the defensive forces into small hedgehogs etc are all features of that battle. So was the massacre in the hospital.

As a final note, as I have said, Finnish behavior in OTL WW2 is very much a matter of who one talks to and, frankly, I'd believe the Russians rather than the Finns. That's a matter of personal choice. The fact that some Finnish officers were convicted of war crimes is pretty strong proof that such crimes did take place. The massacre of the RCAMC unit on the Kola Front is one of those. Whether it was a commonplace event or not, keep reading the story.,.......

acesand8s wrote:Were the Finns really that brutal an opponent in OTL? Is this just one of those isolated incidents that will happen or are we just seeing another impact of the extended war in TBO? I've spent a fair amount of time on the Axis History Forum (forum. axishistory. com) and they give the impression that the Finns fought a very clear war (and not just by the standards of the Eastern Front). While they might be biased because of the rather significant number of Finns on the board, they have a strong Holocaust research group and they don't strike me a team that would simply whitewash history.

You know the saying about bad friends now? It's very relevant here. Allying with Nazi Germany, Finland mimiqued some of it's practices of occupation - concentration camps and ethnic cleansing. Namely, during the Finnish occupation of Karelia.

The first concentration camp for Slavs, including women and children, was created in Petrozavodsk, 24 Oct. 1941.

Those camps were merely a milder form of ethnic cleansing than the German ones. To those wishing for documents on the matter, I recommend Helge Seppälä's "Finland as Occupier, 1941-1944", which deals with the Finnish occupation extensively.

The camp inmate numbers:
* 13 400 — 31 Dec, 1941
* 21 984 — 1 Jul, 1942
* 15 241 — 1 Jan, 1943
* 14 917 — 1 Jan, 1944

In total 13 camps were set up in occupied Karelia, and total inflow was 30,000 men. This were not POW, but civilian population camps. POW camps were also created in 1941.

On 17 April 1942, V.Voionmaa, a Finnish Seim deputee, wrote in his letter home: "...from the 20,000 population of Eenislinn, 19,000 civilians are in camps and 1,000 free. The rationing for camp inmates can't be lauded - two-day old horse corpses. Russian children seek through the trash to find any food remains, thrown out by Finnish soldiers. What would the Genua Red Cross say were they informed about this..."

Due to bad rationing, death rates in Finnish camps were high. According to the Finnish own data, 4 000 died, 90% of them in 1942.

The inmates of Finnish c/c used the labour of 15-year olds, in Kutizhma the age was as low as 14. Work day was 18-19 hours of intense labour, starting at 7 in the morning.

Because men from Karelia were mass-drafted into the Army in the first days of the war and little of them remained, the camp labour was forced on women and children.

After the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad, the Finns started paying compensations 3-7 finnish marks to the camp inmates. Of course, to the 4,000 who were already dead didn't really find that good.

One especially brutal camp was camp #2 (unofficially nicked "death camp" by the inmates, since dissenters and rebels were sent there) - and it's commandant, Solovaara, whom the USSR demanded to convict as a war criminal. In 1942, the practice of beating inmates to death to terrorize other inmates was spread in the camp.

A photo of one of the camps:

It was made in Petrozavodsk by a war corresponent, Galina Sanko, during it's liberation. It was used in the Nuremberg materials.

Also, according to the Extraordinary Commission on Occupation Crimes, finns used slave labour - in lesser amounts than the Germans, and not in industry, but in agriculture.

Winter Warriors 31

General LeMay appears, and things do not look good for our friends at Kola ...

Question that just occured to me; what happened to the US X-plane series in the TBOverse? In reality it was going strong through the X-2 series, then the higher/faster push all got concentrated into the X-15, which was fairly successful but then nothing but a few measely lifting bodies.

Presumably the TBOverse US had a rather more active experimental aircraft program through the 70s and 80s, since they developed and deployed all that high supersonic/hypersonic/spaceplane technology and had rather less computer simulation resources than OTL (though presumably more high-speed wind tunnels).

Starglider wrote:Question that just occured to me; what happened to the US X-plane series in the TBOverse? In reality it was going strong through the X-2 series, then the higher/faster push all got concentrated into the X-15, which was fairly successful but then nothing but a few measely lifting bodies.

Presumably the TBOverse US had a rather more active experimental aircraft program through the 70s and 80s, since they developed and deployed all that high supersonic/hypersonic/spaceplane technology and had rather less computer simulation resources than OTL (though presumably more high-speed wind tunnels).

The X-plane series will be going strong although I think it will take a different route. After the mid-1960s, a lot of effort will be placed on re-entry technology and techniques while from the mid-1970s onwards and equal amount will be placed on the new turboscrams and other approaches to get a runway-launched aircraft that can make it into earth orbit. That's a hard technology feat that (as we saw in High Frontier) takes almost 20 years concentrated work by both Russian and American scientists working together to achieve. After its done in 1986, it takes more than another decade to productionize the engines and get in-service aircraft that can get upwards. All that effort will be supported by X-planes so there's likely to be quite a lot of them.

The printed version of The Great Game is available for sale HERE. Differs somewhat from the original online version. The Amazon page should be up shortly.

Congragulations.

I'll be picking it and Anvil of Anvil of Necessity by feb. Stuart, did you ever decide on if we can get these things autographed?

Ace Pace wrote:Congragulations.

I'll be picking it and Anvil of Anvil of Necessity by feb. Stuart, did you ever decide on if we can get these things autographed?

The only way I can think of doing it is for somebody to mail a copy to me and I'll mail the signed version back. I could supply one to order I suppose; I'll look into that.

Hmn, will have to coordinate with someone about that, seeing as how that would include international postage.