Continuation War
| date | June 25, 1941 to September 19, 1944 |
|---|---|
| place | Finland , Karelia and Murmansk |
| output | Soviet victory; Moscow Armistice |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
|
|
| Troop strength | |
| 530,000 Finns 220,000 Germans |
450,390 (900,000-1,500,000) Soviets |
| losses | |
|
58,715 dead or missing |
200,000 dead or missing |
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Continuation War ( Finnish jatkosota , Swedish fortsättningskriget ) refers to the war between Finland and the Soviet Union that began on June 22, 1941 as a continuation of the Finnish-Soviet winter war (November 1939 to March 1940) during the Second World War . Finland initially succeeded on the side of the German Empire in recapturing the territories that had been lost to the Soviet Union in the winter war. This was followed by a three-year positional war until the Soviet Union launched a major offensive in June 1944 , as a result of which an armistice was concluded. The content of this armistice in Moscow was not only the loss of the reconquered, but also the cession of other Finnish territories to the Soviet Union. Part of the treaty was also the obligation of Finland to attack the German troops still in the country, which led to the Lapland War and the withdrawal of German troops from Finland. A peace treaty only came about during the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 .
Starting position
In 1939 the Soviet Union and the German Empire divided Europe into spheres of interest in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact . Upon completion, both countries pursued a policy of expansion within these spheres. Germany attacked Poland on September 1st, starting World War II. The Soviet Union followed on September 17 and occupied the part of Poland promised to it in the treaty. In the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union blackmailed Bessarabia from Romania and annexed the Baltic states . Before that, however, in the autumn of 1939, Stalin's destination was Finland. Because it rejected its ultimate territorial claims, the winter war broke out , which the Soviet Union started without a declaration of war on November 30 after an allegedly staged incident in the border town of Mainila. Although Finland was able to defend itself against multiple opposing superiorities during the winter and achieve considerable success in some theaters of war, the front threatened to collapse in March 1940 after massive reinforcements by the attacking Soviet troops. As a result, the Moscow Peace Treaty was signed , in which Finland had to cede extensive territories to the Soviet Union that went beyond Stalin's original demands. Finland won the sympathies of the Western powers during the war, but mostly had to fight alone with little support. Germany had not given Finland much attention up to that point.
From the end of 1940, close cooperation between the military leaders of the German Reich and Finland began after the Soviet Union declared any defense cooperation between Finland and Sweden to be an occasion for attack. With this, the realization had prevailed in Finland that after a future attack by the Soviet Union sufficient help could not be expected from the Scandinavian neighbors or the Western Allies . Thus Finland had only one potential ally against the Soviet Union: the German Reich.
With this cooperation, the German Reich intended to secure the supply of essential raw materials from Finland, such as copper , molybdenum , nickel and pyrites .
course
mobilization
The defense of Northern Finland had been transferred to the Wehrmacht in an agreement of May 25, 1941 , which began the deployment in Finland on June 5 with the loading of the first troops in the ports of Stettin and Oslo for ship transport. The transfer of the troops was code-named Blaufuchs and was essentially completed on June 14 with the transfer of 30,600 soldiers.
During the mobilization , a TASS statement was issued on June 14th in which all rumors of an impending attack on the Soviet Union were rejected as false. This caused consternation among the Finnish General Staff , who at the time did not know the exact date of the attack. It was feared that Hitler would have problems finding a credible reason for attack. In an exchange of telegrams, the chief of the Wehrmacht High Command , Keitel , indirectly confirmed the impending attack on Hitler's behalf . The telegram took away the Finns' doubts about the seriousness of the German attack plans.
On June 18, the German troops left their camps and took up their starting positions on the Finnish-Soviet border.
Start of war and initial gain of territory
In the early morning hours of June 22, 1941, " Operation Barbarossa ", the German attack on the Soviet Union, began. After German bombing raids on Leningrad on June 22nd and 23rd, 1941, Ju-88 bombers allegedly made "stopovers" at the Finnish airfield Utti . Also on June 22nd, the Navy with auxiliary miners from Finnish waters began to lay mine barriers. The Finnish government agreed still first in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union for neutral - against Hitler's unilateral declaration of alliance. In his first order of the day, Hitler had informed the soldiers on the Eastern Front that the German Reich had “joined forces with Finnish divisions” to attack.
The bombing of Finnish bases by the Soviets on June 25 then served as a welcome reason for the Finnish declaration of war on the Soviet Union and the start of the Finnish offensive.
In the north of the country, the part of which the defense had been assigned to the Wehrmacht, the area around Petsamo and its nickel mines were taken as part of the Silberfuchs company . After its successful conclusion, the same operation led to a joint Finnish-German offensive against the port city of Murmansk . In the course of the operation, ground was initially gained, Salla was recaptured and in the north the Germans advanced as far as the Liza river . The difficult supply situation as well as the extreme terrain led to the rapid wear and tear of the troops, which then slowed the advance. Fierce fighting broke out at the old border fortifications from 1939 and after the Soviets had relocated reinforcements to the area, only marginal gains in land could be achieved, so the offensive in this area was stopped in November.
In the southern part of the country, the Finns attacked in two directions from July 10th during the offensive on the Karelian Isthmus . The Karelian Isthmus , ceded to the Soviet Union by the Moscow Peace Treaty after the winter war , was recaptured. The residents of the former second largest city in Finland, Viipuri (Wyborg) , were able to return for a short time. After that, the Finnish army marched on Leningrad, but did not continue the offensive against the city after reaching the 1939 borders. Nevertheless, Finland blocked Leningrad from the north, which resulted in its complete enclosure in the course of the subsequent long-term German siege of the city . Finland also supported the formation of a German-Finnish-Italian flotilla on Lake Ladoga to attack the Soviet supply routes.
At the same time Finland recaptured its old territories in western Karelia north of Lake Ladoga. What followed was a controversial act when Finland, together with German troops, continued its offensive in East Karelia in early September , which was never Finnish before. In the course of this offensive, the Finns advanced on a broad front as far as Lake Onega and crossed the Swir River before the offensive was stopped in December 1941. With that the borders of an imaginary Greater Finland were reached.
This resulted in Finland's relations with the Western powers deteriorating. On Finland's Independence Day, December 6, Great Britain declared war on Finland, severely limiting Finland's ability to trade with neutral and allied countries and increasing its dependence on German supplies. However, this remained a symbolic act, since after the declaration of war there were no significant military operations by Great Britain against Finland. Before the declaration of war, Great Britain had already carried out a carrier attack against the port of Petsamo (which was used as a replenishment base by the Germans), and British air units were briefly stationed in the Soviet Union in Murmansk, which carried out support flights for Soviet bombers and training measures until they withdrew performed for crews.
Trench warfare
In the course of Operation Barbarossa , the Wehrmacht was able to take large parts of the western Soviet Union in a short period of time, but was unable to push them out of the war or even defeat them. In December 1941 the advance came to a standstill on all parts of the front. The Soviets launched a counter-offensive near Moscow, which made it clear to the Germans and their allies that, contrary to expectations, the war was far from over. Zeit was now working against the Axis powers , especially since the USA was now also involved in the conflict. The Finnish General Staff and the Enlightenment soon realized that Finland had no choice but to hold out and seize the first realistic opportunity to make peace with Stalin. But the strength of the German Wehrmacht was still a deterrent, and Soviet peace offers were rejected. It remains controversial whether Finland would have been able to conclude a separate peace with the Soviet Union in the spring of 1942.
During the following three years there was a trench war ; Finland was only a secondary theater of war. Germany started its Fall Blau summer offensive in the summer of 1942 and was again able to record large territorial gains in the south of the front. After the Battle of Stalingrad and the failure of the Citadel operation in the summer of 1943, hopes of a German victory faded; henceforth the victory of the Allies was only a matter of time. The Soviet Union then demanded a complete Finnish withdrawal to the borders that had been won by the Winter War. However, this was viewed as “political suicide” by the Finnish government and categorically rejected: a peace agreement under such conditions was considered useless and impossible by the Finnish government. The trench warfare therefore continued.
End of war
In 1944 the war situation for the German Reich came to a head. In several major offensives, the Soviet Union was able to inflict massive losses on the Germans (→ collapse of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front), which after five years of war were no longer able to withstand the increasing pressure of the Allies. Helsinki was bombed several times in February 1944, the heaviest on February 16 (25 civilian deaths) and February 26 (18 civilian casualties) 1944. On June 9, the Red Army launched a massive offensive in the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation force Finland to leave the war. At first she was able to achieve great success; Vyborg Fortress fell, and Finland was threatened with full occupation, as in the Winter War. However, Germany was dependent on Finland to remain in the war. An exit of Finland would have allowed the Soviet Union to advance across the Baltic Sea again at short notice and thus threaten the German positions in the Baltic States, which had withstood several fierce defensive battles near Narva . As a result, the Ryti-Ribbentrop Treaty was signed, in which Finland assured German arms aid not to end the war.
With this support, the Finns succeeded in July and August 1944 in halting the Soviet advance in the battles near Tali-Ihantala , Vuosalmi , the Bay of Viipuri and Ilomantsi . Since Stalin's focus was now completely on Germany, Finland could now, against the will of the German Reich, conclude a separate armistice with the Soviet Union on somewhat acceptable terms . This was signed on September 19th in Moscow. Since the armistice agreements under pressure from the Soviet government also included the fight against the units of the German Wehrmacht stationed in Lapland by Finnish troops, this inevitably led to the outbreak of the Lapland War , which lasted until spring 1945.
The final peace of 1947 with the USSR and the United Kingdom was made after the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 on even tougher terms than after the Winter War. These conditions included the cession of the area around Petsamo with the country's only ice-free northern sea port. In return, Finland was spared occupation by Soviet troops, and the country, unlike the Baltic states, was able to maintain its independence .
Ally or just brother in arms?
To this day, the Finns are reluctant to refer to themselves as former allies of the German Reich. Rather, they want to be seen as a simultaneously but independently belligerent state. One saw and sees in the cooperation with Germany the only possibility to survive the Second World War without losing territory and to be able to regain the territories ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 after the winter war.
The statement that they were only waging war against the same enemy at the same time is only partially true in view of joint Finnish-German operations, but Finland was certainly mainly pursuing its own interests in this war (primarily the reconquest of Karelia ) and was only indirectly involved in the service of Hitler. There was never an official alliance either; contacts with the German Reich were rather very discreet; Finland was already aware at the time that this alliance was not too popular with the world. Moreover, even during the war, Finland had secret negotiations with the USSR to end the war with a separate peace before the Red Army could concentrate its forces on Finland. The price for this peace was that the previously practically allied German troops became enemies in their own country overnight.
On the other hand, however, the fact remains that on May 25, 1941, the Finnish General Staff was informed by the German leadership about Operation Barbarossa that the German Wehrmacht would later be practically defending the northern, barely inhabited half of Finland against the Reds for long periods Army had taken over and that the victory over the Soviet Union had been a common goal. There were also a large number of arms deliveries and similar support measures on the part of the German Reich in order to adequately equip the Finnish army for the war. On June 4, 1942, the Finnish Commander-in-Chief Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim met with Hitler and the German General Staff to discuss the further joint approach; and a few weeks later the general, conversely, visited Hitler at his headquarters.
See also
Book / film
- Tuntematon sotilas ( Crosses in Karelia / The Unknown Soldier) by Väinö Linna
- Pojat (boys) by Mikko Niskanen (with Vesa-Matti Loiri )
- Synopsis: Oulu , summer 1941 - autumn 1944, the film tells of the relationship between a group of boys and the German soldiers
- Rukajärven tie (Ambush) (1999) by Olli Saarela
- Kukuschka - Der Kuckuck (Kukushka, Кукушка) RUS 2002, written and directed by Alexander Rogoschkin with Anni-Kristiina Juuso , Ville Haapasalo , Viktor Bytschkow
- Synopsis: Lapland September 1944; Shortly before the end of the war, Anni accommodates and looks after a Russian corporal and a Finnish sniper who was put into a Nazi uniform by his brothers in arms. Although they all speak three different languages, a friendship develops between them.
- Tali-Ihantala 1944 (Battle of Finland) FI 2007, directed by Åke Lindman and Sakari Kirjavainen .
Web links
- Klaus Reichel: At Hitler's side , article in Time 10/2006
- Finland's special position during the Second World War (on eKritik.de)
Remarks
- ↑ All soldiers under arms during the entire course of the war.
- ↑ Кривошеев (Ed.): Россия и СССР в войнах ХХ века . Олма-Пресс, 2001, ISBN 5-224-01515-4 , p. 269-271 (Russian, online [accessed May 28, 2011]).
- ↑ a b Ohto Manninen: Molotovin cocktail - Hitlerin sateenvarjo. Painatuskeskus, 1994, ISBN 951-37-1495-0 .
- ↑ National Defense College: Jatkosodan historia 6. Porvoo, 1994, ISBN 951-0-15332-X .
- ↑ FAA archive: raid on Petsamo ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/mirror/sa-int/hist.html
