by Viktor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] Eighty-three years ago, troops from the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts, working together, carved out a land corridor along Lake Ladoga, up to 11 kilometers wide. Soldiers who participated in Operation Iskra heroically saved Leningrad. The most terrifying months of the siege were behind them, and a land route was added to the Road of Life along Lake Ladoga.
The breakthrough of the encirclement encircling the city by Nazi Germany and its ally Finland did not yet mean the siege was completely lifted. August 1943 saw the largest shelling of Leningrad, and until January 1944, Leningrad's defenders held off the enemy advance, protecting the suffering city.
The Nuremberg Tribunal reported 630,000 deaths during the 872 days of the siege. Modern historians cite even more horrific figures: up to 1.5 million men, women, and children died from starvation, disease, bombing, and shelling.
In the public consciousness, one of the most terrible crimes against humanity is associated with German troops.
Specifically, with Army Group North under the command of Wilhelm von Leeb (incidentally, following one of the "small Nuremberg trials," Field Marshal Leeb received only three years' imprisonment and died at his estate at the age of 80). Another marshal, Finnish Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, remained "in the shadows. "
After all, it was his army that closed the ring around Leningrad in September 1941, condemning the city to starvation. Von Leeb enforced the blockade from the west, south, and east; Mannerheim from the northwest and north. Finland deliberately chose to be Hitler's ally.
HOW THE FINNS PREPARED TO VIOLATE THE PEACE TREATY
On June 25, 1941, just three days after Germany's treacherous attack on the USSR, Finland entered the war on the side of the Third Reich. The country saw this as revenge for the Winter War of 1939–40, which had resulted in the loss of some of Finland's territory.
The border, which had previously been 30 km from Leningrad, was moved back 100 kilometers; the Finns ceded border lands in the south and north of Karelia and access to the Barents Sea in the Petsamo (Pechenga) region.
It is generally accepted that when Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Army Commander-in-Chief Mannerheim and political leader President Risto Ryti saw a chance to regain what had been lost.
Therefore, in Finnish historiography, the events of 1941–44 are designated as the “Continuation War” (Jatkosota).
In fact, the Finns began preparing for revenge in advance.
In March 1940, Finland signed the Moscow Treaty with the USSR, which formalized these losses. But already in September of that year—nine months before Germany's attack on the USSR, while the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact was still in effect —a fundamental decision had already been made in Helsinki to participate on the side of the Reich in the war against our country.
The decision was announced during a visit to Berlin by Finnish General Paavo Talvela, who was authorized to conduct negotiations with the German General Staff.
Thus, Helsinki violated the Moscow Peace Treaty, concluded just six months earlier.
In January 1941, with the permission of the local authorities, a recruitment point for Finnish volunteers in the Waffen SS units was opened in Helsinki, and soon the Finns themselves began preparing for mobilization.
Between May 25 and 28, the Germans and Finns finalized plans for joint operations. In May 1941, with the support of the Abwehr, the Estonian Liberation Committee was established in Helsinki, headed by Hjalmar-Johannes Mäe, an ethnic Estonian who had arrived from Germany. After the Nazi occupation of the Baltics, it was Mäe who headed the collaborationist administration of Estonia.
The committee began recruiting and training Estonian émigrés to fight in the war against the USSR. After the outbreak of hostilities, all of them were transferred to the territory of the Estonian SSR.
COMPLICITY IN AGGRESSION
In June 1941, the order for mobilization was given in Finland. Mannerheim's army's offensive was scheduled to begin two weeks after the German invasion. The Finns made this stipulation deliberately, as they wanted to shift responsibility for a new war onto the USSR.
Helsinki hoped that the Soviet Union would be unable to avoid striking German troops on Finnish territory—and that this could be presented to its own population and the world as a "treacherous invasion." However, from June 22, 1941, the actions of the Finnish side could not be interpreted as anything other than full-fledged complicity in the aggression.
From the very beginning of the war, Luftwaffe bombers striking Soviet territory used Finnish airfields. And the Finnish Navy began laying mines in the Gulf of Finland, helping the Germans make the movement of Soviet warships and civilian vessels extremely difficult.
On June 23, two German seaplanes landed sixteen Finnish volunteer saboteurs dressed in German uniforms near the locks of the White Sea–Baltic Canal. The saboteurs were supposed to blow up the locks, but were prevented from doing so by heavy security.
Finland soon received the "justification" they desired: the Soviet Air Force began striking Luftwaffe air bases on Finnish territory. Following this, Finnish authorities declared "aggression," and on June 29, Finnish troops launched an offensive. The Soviet-Finnish border became a front line. In the south of this front, the main Finnish attack fell on Leningrad.
WHERE THE "CREATORS OF GREATER FINLAND" WERE STOPPED
Finland's strategic goal was not only to "regain what was lost"—that is, the Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg, the Pechenga region, and so on. Plans included the annexation of the Kola Peninsula, Karelia all the way to the White Sea, and Inkeri (Ingria, or the Leningrad region).
The regime's ideologists received orders to prepare a "historical justification" for the creation of Suur Suomi—Greater Finland.
Finnish troops reached the old Soviet-Finnish border near Leningrad by early September 1941 and halted at the Sestra River on the Karelian Isthmus, approximately 30–40 km from the city center. Approaching Sestroretsk, they became bogged down in fierce fighting and were unable to advance a single step.
As General Alexander Cherepanov, commander of the 23rd Army defending there, later wrote, “the enemy saw and felt that all his attempts to break through to Leningrad in our direction would be decisively stopped.”
Faced with the defense of Soviet troops at the Karelian fortified region, the Finns stopped there and began to dig in as well.
MANNERHEIM PLANNED TO STARVE HIS "HOMETOWN"
At the same time, the Finnish troops advancing north of Lake Ladoga captured Petrozavodsk in September 1941, cutting the Kirov (Murmansk) Railway. By December, they had reached the Svir River, creating a continuous front from Lake Ladoga to Lake Onega. Finland thus completely closed the northern half of the blockade.
The Finns were drawing away the 23rd and 7th Soviet armies, which were so necessary for carrying out the tasks of lifting the blockade of Leningrad.
With the combined efforts of the German and Finnish occupiers, all land communications connecting the city with the mainland were cut off. Famine began in the city.
In modern literature, one can find assertions that Mannerheim was against the destruction of Leningrad—he allegedly experienced nostalgic feelings.
The Finnish commander-in-chief called the city "Petersburg" in the pre-revolutionary manner, which is not surprising. A graduate of the St. Petersburg Nikolaevsky Cavalry School, Baron Carl Gustavovich Mannerheim served in the Horse Guards. He participated in the coronation of Nicholas II and by 1917 had risen to the rank of cavalry general.
But in 1941, the aging marshal clearly felt no affection for the former imperial capital or its inhabitants. The death by starvation of elderly people—his peers, women, and children—didn't bother him.
Faced with heavy losses, Marshal Mannerheim reflected:
"An attack on the Petersburg fortifications between the border (referring to the old Soviet-Finnish border that existed before 1939 – Ed.) and Petersburg will probably require many casualties, since they are heavily defended. Wouldn't it be better to take it from the south or force the city's inhabitants to capitulate through starvation?"
"The destruction of Leningrad was a decisive turning point."
Overall, the Finnish leadership showed no compassion for the dying Leningraders. In the summer of 1941, the Finnish envoy to Berlin, Toivo Mikael Kivimäki, after conversations with the Reich leadership, reported back home:
“We can now take whatever we want, including St. Petersburg, which, like Moscow, is better destroyed... Russia must be broken up into small states.”
The Finnish frontline newspaper Pohjan of October 21, 1941, stated in large print:
"Its (Leningrad's – Ed.) destruction will mark a decisive historical turning point in the life of the Finnish people."
In October 1941, in a conversation with Hitler's personal envoy Karl Schnurre, the country's president, Ryti, said that Finland did not object to Leningrad disappearing as a major population center and industrial centre.
The president, however, believed that a small part of the city could be preserved as a sort of German trade mission. Ryti also informed the German ambassador to Finland, Wipert von Blücher, that his country did not wish to share a border with Russia in the future.
In connection with this, Ryti asked Germany to annex all territory south of the Arkhangelsk region.
A little later, Finnish Foreign Minister Rolf Johan Witting, meeting with Hitler, heard from the German Fuhrer that Germany agreed to the expansion of Finnish territory to the east, including the Kola Peninsula, but only on the condition that Germany would receive a share in the extraction of minerals on these lands.
Moreover, under pressure from Germany, the Finnish government rejected the possibility of allowing humanitarian aid from neutral countries to pass through its territory. Meanwhile, the policy of creating a "Greater Finland" was pursued in the Finnish-occupied territories of Karelia.
According to Karelian researchers, the Finns established fourteen concentration camps there, in which at least 8,000 civilians (mostly ethnic Russians) died, and over 7,000 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in the most barbaric ways.
FINNS VS. THE ROAD OF LIFE
Hitler, at a meeting with Finnish leaders in June 1942, told them:
"Through the Germans' efforts, the city and its fortifications will be destroyed. Then Finland will be freed from the Russian nightmare... The fate of St. Petersburg must be decided by early autumn... Perhaps the civilian population of St. Petersburg should also be exterminated, since the Russians are so unreliable and treacherous, and therefore there is no reason to pity them."
Neither Ryti nor Mannerheim objected to this way of putting the question.
In 1942, Mannerheim became concerned about the liquidation of the Road of Life, which ran across Lake Ladoga—the only route at that time connecting the city with the mainland.
For this purpose, at the request of Mannerheim's headquarters, in addition to the small Finnish vessels, German and Italian high-speed boats and landing craft were transferred to the lake.
Their operation on October 22 to capture the key island of Sukho, which protected the supply line, ended in complete defeat. Despite this outcome, Mannerheim nevertheless expressed gratitude to the German and Italian sailors for their actions.
In 1942, Soviet troops achieved a radical turning point at the front, after which the Hitler regime began to crumble.
STRICT CONDITIONS
The Finnish leadership, panicking, began to look for ways out of the closing trap, so that Hitler would not drag them down with him.
In September 1944, after a powerful Soviet offensive (the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Operation), Finland withdrew from the war, concluding an armistice under harsh conditions dictated by Moscow.
Following the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, Finland confirmed the return of its 1940 borders to the Soviet Union, paid reparations, and tried its war criminals.
True, the former Finnish leaders who dragged their country into war with the USSR got off very lightly – with short prison sentences.
Finland's role in the siege of Leningrad (and, consequently, in the suffering and horrific death of its inhabitants) was decisive in a geographical and military-strategic sense: without the Finns holding the northern section, the siege ring would not have been closed.
And yet, Finnish historians created a legend about the “noble Mannerheim,” who allegedly stopped the offensive on Leningrad and saved it from destruction.
Finns' complicity in Nazi crimes was largely ignored after the war—after all, it seemed our northern neighbor had denounced its militaristic past by becoming a neutral and friendly state. But now that Finland is a NATO member and at the forefront of those willing to support the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, there is no reason to "forget" the Finns' role in one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century.