Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS

1,408 Finns were recruited into the Waffen-SS and,[27] although recruitment had initially focused on the Swedish-speaking population of Finland,[21] only about 12% of the volunteers were Swedish-speaking.[17] On average, the recruits were 21 years old,[7] and held a collective ideology of Finnish nationalism, revanchism, and a Finnish form of Lutheran revivalism.[28][29]

As the goal of the Finnish government with regard to the volunteer unit was to confirm Finland's alliance with Germany and create a group of Finnish soldiers with German training rather than confirm Finnish allegiance to Germany or to Nazism,[7][18][25] the Finnish government supervised recruitment. Helsinki and Riekki, seeking to diminish the influence of Finnish far-right groups in the unit and Finnish politics,[18] recruited in all areas of Finland and carried out background checks on all applicants. Communists and members of far-right groups were excluded,[30] and Riekki broke up attempts by far-right Finnish such as the Organisation of National Socialists and Front Soldier League to interfere in recruitment. Reliable Finnish officers were also weeded into the volunteer unit to inform Finnish high command of activities within it.[18]

Nevertheless, many of the recruits belonged to far-right groups,[7] and about two thirds of recruits came from those groups.[31] Finnish historian Mauno Jokipii, whose academic integrity has been questioned in recent times, estimated that around 20% of the volunteer battalion's members were of the far-right.[32] According to Finnish historian André Swanström, at least 45.1% of the recruits belonged to fascist groups.[29]

Military chaplain SS-Obersturmbannführer Kalervo Kurkiala making a memorial speech at the Hietaniemi Cemetery in 1943

The battalion was finally due to transfer to the Mius Front in Ukraine in early November 1941, but transportation shortages to the Eastern Front resulted in a month's delay. Movement finally began on 3–4 December. The battalion was assigned to the Wiking Division on 8 January 1942. Hans Collani, who commanded the group during training, was assigned commander, and given the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer on 9 January. The battalion, originally assigned to the Nordland regiment, was assigned briefly to the Westland regiment from 22 January to 14 February, when it rejoined the Nordland regiment. The "division men", who had been fighting much longer than the inexperienced men, were assimilated into the battalion beginning in January 1942.[40]

Between 14 July and 9 August 1942, the battalion was withdrawn for rest and refit because of the introduction of new heavy weapons, the need for a retraining on warfare manoeuvres, and delays in vehicle replacements. Army Group South was divided into two army groups for Fall Blau. The Wiking Division was assigned to Army Group A, which aimed to capture the Caucasus oil fields. On 13 August, having finished their training, the Finnish battalion returned to the frontlines at Maykop. In September and October 1942, in a failed attempt to capture the oil fields of Grozny through Malgobek, the Finnish battalion suffered heavy losses. Since mid-1942, Germany had requested a second round of recruitment in Finland to help replace casualties suffered by the Finnish SS battalion. A replacement company of 200 men was selected from the Finnish Army, and was sent to the SS battalion in September 1942, arriving on 23 November.[41] Wiking penetrated as deep as the Caucasus' Terek River in this operation.[42]

On 20 December 1942, the Wiking Division was pulled back as more men were needed for the Battle of Stalingrad, but the Finnish battalion remained on the front until January 1943. In January, they were transferred to Stalingrad to relieve the German 6th Army, an attempt that ended unsuccessfully.[lower-alpha 2] The battalion retreated, and by 5–7 February, were west of the Don River. The battalion fought on the Eastern Front until 10 April, when they were withdrawn because of the previously agreed two-year service agreement. Germany wanted to replace the battalion with a new one or a Finnish regiment.[43] 1408 men served in the battalion during its existence.[44] The unit lost 256 men killed in action or dead from illness; 686 were wounded and 14 went missing during its service.[45]

During the Finns' time on the Eastern Front, the language challenge faced by the Finnish troops, as well as their lack of training in German combat principles and weapons, caused the battalion many problems.[46] According to the State Police Chief in Finland, Finnish officers and NCOs were being treated "like recruits" by their sometimes inexperienced German counterparts, and were angry that their commanders were German. An angered group of Finnish troopers on leave over Christmas even threatened to shoot their German officers. These complaints led to a formal note being filed by the Finnish prime minister, and on 9 February 1942, Berger sent claims of mistreatment against the foreign volunteers to Himmler.[47]

Members of the battalion returning to Finland in 1943

Dissolution parade for the Finnish Volunteer Battalion, 11 July 1943

The battalion took leave in Ruhpolding, and on 1 June 1943 returned to Hanko, Finland, where a parade was held. On 2 June, the men celebrated at Tampere, and were given one-month's leave. Germany's original plan was for the Finns to continue their service in the SS by renewing their service agreements. However, on 27 June, Mannerheim proposed to Finnish leaders that the SS battalion be dissolved.[48] They accepted the proposal because of changing opinions of Germany.[49] Hitler approved it on 4 July. On 11 July 1943, the battalion celebrated at Hanko and joined the Finnish Defence Forces.[48]

The Finnish volunteers were regarded with the same admiration given to those who had fought in the Continuation War.[50] Following the war, many Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers were portrayed as Nazis. In 1945, communists Eino Pekkala and Hertta Kuusinen introduced the subject of the SS volunteers in the Finnish parliament, starting a campaign against them. From 1946 to 1948, Valpo, the Finnish State Police, arrested and released more than half of the volunteers. Many former SS volunteers were forced to resign from the army and police.[51]

The first book written on the Finnish battalion was Sakari Lappi-Seppälä's memoir in 1945, which was critical of the Wiking Division and reported on German atrocities. In 1957, Niilo Lauttamus published a novel about the experiences of the Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers. In it, he subscribes to the historical argument that the Finnish battalion was apolitical.[52] Unto Parvilahti published his memoir in the mainstream press in 1958, claiming the Finnish volunteers were "not Nazis, they were heroic soldiers who simply defended their fatherland". Many accused Parvilahti of being a Nazi, but the conservative journal Suomalainen Suomi called his claims "laudable, for it is clear that many former SS men were treated unfairly after the war". However, the liberal paper Helsingin Sanomat was more critical, and the reviewer was left disappointed. Ylioppilaslehti, a student magazine, called the memoir "full of nonsense".[53]

Historian Mauno Jokipii, in his 1968 study of the Finnish volunteers Panttipataljoona: Suomalaisen SS-pataljoonan historia, claimed to apply scholarly methods to their history, but a veterans' organization of former Waffen-SS volunteers commissioned the work. Panttipataljoona is, according to scholar Antero Holmila, "an embodiment of the positivist historical tradition". In his work, Jokipii uses a narrative order to provide a sense of coherence and totality. Holmila Antero criticizes Jokipii, saying his work has a problem in "its distance from the experiences of those who lived through the chaos". Holmila uses the example when Jokipii, describes the aftermath of the death of Westland regiment commander Hilmar Wäckerle and the atrocities committed (burning of a nearby village, Russians and Jews executed without trial for being accused of collaborating with the sniper who killed Weckerle), said that no Finns "were there", which goes against the narrative of Lappi-Seppälä.[54] In its totalizing telling of the story "as it was", Holmila criticizes it as it "assumed its own innocence where the Holocaust was concerned." Holmila says that in doing so, Jokipii "shelters" the audience from the Holocaust.[55]

In Panttipataljoona, Jokipii claimed that, at most, one fifth of the Finnish SS-men would have been right-wing radicals, and that recruiters weeded out extremist applicants. As such, Finland would have purposefully been far from the German goal that two-thirds of the recruits who left to fight for Germany should be "right wing materiel". Based on archival material that surfaced in the 2010s, historians such as Oula Silvennoinen and Marko Tikka, among others, have shown that Jokipii sugar coated the number of right-wing radicals. Both the SS volunteers and the board that recruited them were much more in the hands of nationalist radicals, fascists and national socialists than Jokipii claims. According to Silvennoinen and Tikka, approximately 46 percent of the volunteers, i.e., over twice the number calculated by Jokipii, would have clearly expressed their support for fascist politics.[56]

One narrative of the Finnish Waffen-SS was that of rooting the Finnish Waffen-SS in the Jäger Movement. Publications across the political spectrum commonly framed the story in wartime in terms of the "Jäger legacy", not just within right-wing circles, where the story originated. In 1960, Jukka Tyrkkö's memoirs were published with the subtitle "SS volunteers following in the Jägers' footsteps".[57]

The Waffen-SS was known as an elite unit, and this is mentioned in most Finnish literature on the organization. This built up a narrative of the Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers being "elite troops". This narrative surrounds the character of General Felix Steiner, first commander of the SS-Wiking Division, who "recognized and acknowledged the combat skills of his Finnish soldiers". The focus on how elite the soldiers were has taken away from the investigation of the ideologies within the volunteers. The conventional narrative today is that the Waffen-SS soldiers were "apolitical".[58] Many loyalist authors focus on this narrative.[59]

Until at least 2013, much of the Finnish discussion of the early months of the war had been positive, with only some references to the atrocities. Within Finnish historiography, the absence of "things which cannot be written here" – atrocities and the realities of war hinted at but not explicitly stated – supports the ideas that these "things" never happened and that the Finns were not involved in atrocities.[60] The Finnish public largely shunned the idea that Finnish volunteers would have taken part in atrocities.[61]

The topic saw renewed public attention in 2017, following the publication of Andre Swanström's article on the pastors of the Finnish SS-volunteers.[61] The article cites several excerpts from diaries of Finnish SS-pastors and claims that the Finns were at the very least aware of, and had witnessed, atrocities and war crimes.[62][63] Swanström followed the article with a 2018 book Hakaristin Ritarit (Knights of the Swastika), which the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat described using the title (transl.) "The flawless image of 'normal Finnish boys' in the SS-troops is shattered in the most important military historical work of the year."[64] Swanström's 2017 article prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to request from Finnish president Sauli Niinistö an inquiry into the possible participation of the Waffen-SS volunteers in the holocaust. In response to the request, Finnish authorities announced a committee of inquiry into the activities of the battalion. The committee's work, including that by researchers from the National Archives of Finland, concluded at the end of 2018.[61] The resulting 2019 publication drew significant media coverage,[65][66][67] including demands for "correction" by close relatives of the SS-volunteers, which the National Archive of Finland refused.[68] According to the report, the Finnish soldiers were well aware of the atrocities being committed, and sometimes had traumatic responses to them, which they tried to remedy through heavy drinking. The report's author, Lars Westerlund, concludes that "at least some of the cases show that Finnish volunteers did participate in carrying out atrocities against Jews and civilians", including specifically Olavi Karpalo and Parvilahti.[69] According to Swanström, his publication and that of Westerlund resulted in a "post-myth research situation [which] allows for the history of the Finnish SS-men to be inspected more realistically and from more points of view".[70] Commentators such as the president of the SS heritage association noted that the reports were not absolutely definite in their statements that the Finns themselves committed atrocities.[61] Historian Antero Holmila interprets these types of views as stemming from the public's "need to view war as a black-and-white either-or play", where the lack of a "smoking gun" is seen as a failure by the historian, and that the topic remains a "pain point in Finnish history culture".[71]

Many international perspectives take into consideration the fact that the Finnish volunteers were likely involved in atrocities. According to historian Bernd Boll, the Wiking Division, while marching to Złoczów, went "hunting for Jews" and shot "everything and anybody that looked even the slightest bit suspicious".[72] Historian Peter Longerich wrote: "In Zloczow at the beginning of July, under the very eyes of Sonderkommando 4b and tolerated by the city commandant, Ukrainian activists had organized a massacre of the Jewish population in which members of the SS Viking Division took part on a huge scale."[73] Sakari Lappi-Seppälä describes how Parvilahti, a "National Socialist", destroyed a chapel in Złoczów. However, there is no concrete evidence regarding the involvement of Finnish soldiers in atrocities, so it is commonly assumed, according to Parvilahti's standard narrative, that the troops saw "unpleasant excesses" of German warfare but the war was very much conventional.[72][31]