40. International Military Tribunal, Trials of the Major War Criminals (Nuremberg, 1947), volume VII, pp.327–328.
41. Ziemke, The German Northern Theater of Operations, p.122.
42. Ibid, p.124.
43. H. R. Trevor-Roper, editor, Hitler’s Wartime Directives 1939–1945 (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1966), pp.93–98.
44. Waldemar Erfurth, The Last Finnish War (Written under the auspices of the Foreign Military Studies Branch of the Historical Division, Headquarters, European Command. Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, Inc., 1979), p.8. Erfurth was Chief, Liaison Staff North, attached to Mannerheim’s headquarters as the representative of OKH and OKW from June 1941 to September 1944.
45. Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Minnen (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1952), volume II, p.261.
46. Mannerheim had not always held this view. In 1919, as General Nikolay Nikolayevich Yudenich, Commander of The Northwestern White Army during the Russian Civil War, was approaching Petrograd (later Leningrad), Mannerheim proposed that the Finns attack the city from the north.
47. Helmuth Greiner, Die Oberste Wehrmachtführung 1939–1943 (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1951), p.357.
48. International Military Tribunal, op. cit., volume VII, pp.309–311.
49. Loc. cit.
50. Mannerheim, Minnen, volume II, pp.261–262.
51. General Hölter spent the whole war in Finland. He was chief of staff to General Erfurth from June to September 1941; chief of staff of the XXXVI Mountain Corps from October 1941 to October 1943; chief of staff of the XIX Mountain Corps from November 1943 to February 1944; and the chief of staff of the 20th Mountain Army from March 1944 to the end of the war.
52. As quoted by Lundin, op. cit., p.97 from Hermann Hölter, Armee in der Arktis. Die Operationen der deutschen Lapland-Armee (Bad Nauheim, 1953), pp.9f. I did not have access to the 1953 edition but to the somewhat shortened 2nd edition published in 1977: Hermann Hölter, Armee in der Aktis. Die Operationen der deutschen Lapland-Armee (München: Schild Verlag, 1977). In this edition a similar statement appears on p.15.
53. Hölter, op. cit., (1977 edition) p.17.
54. International Military Tribunal, op. cit., volume X, pp.947–949.
55. Ibid, volume X, p.982.
56. Erfurth, The Last Finnish War, p.9.
57. Dr. Karl Schnurre was the chief of the Eastern European and Baltic Section of the Commercial Policy Division of the German Foreign Office with the rank of Ambassador.
58. Mannerheim, Memoirs, p.406.
59. Ibid, p.408.
60. International Military Tribunal, op. cit., volume X, pp.998–1000.
61. Mannerheim, Minnen, volume II, pp.264–267.
62. Mannerheim, Memoirs, p.410.
63. International Military Tribunal, op. cit., volume VII, pp.311–313.
64. The War Guilt Trials were not part of the Nuremberg process. Finland was permitted to conduct the trials in Finland under retroactive Finnish laws and with Finnish judges. The law passed by parliament to support the trials limited them to the highest Finnish political wartime leadership, exempting military leaders. It is rumored that the exception of military leaders, including Marshal Mannerheim, was at the direction of Stalin. The trials began on November 15, 1945, and ended in February 1946. The sentences of the eight found guilty ranged from two to ten years. Ryti was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labor. Most Finns considered the trials a mockery of justice and all those found guilty were quickly pardoned after the 1947 peace treaty. Ryti was pardoned in May 1949.
65. Procope, op. cit., pp.236–239. Questioned on this subject at his trial, Ryti answered: “To speak plainly, I was a little suspicious, in consequence of some vague rumors that military cooperation might have been prepared for in advance, besides other things, at the Salzburg-Berlin conferences. But I never had sufficient ground to doubt the assurances of the military authorities when I asked many times whether no consent at all had been given to enter into other negotiations or make agreements…. I trust the assurances of General Heinrichs that no oral or written declarations of any kind had been made.”
66. As quoted in Lundin, op. cit., p.103.
67. Greiner, op. cit., p.357.
68. Bernhard von Lossberg, Im Wehrmachtführungsstab. Bericht eines General stabsoffiziers (Hamburg: H. H. Nölke, 1949), pp.113–114.
69. As quoted by Ziemke, The German Northern Theater of War, p.204, note 33, from official German military documents.
70. Ibid, p.204, note 33.
71. Ibid, p.134.
72. Ibid, p.135.
73. Göran Westerlund, Finland överlevde. Finlands Krig 1939–1945 i ord och bild (Helsingfors: Schildts Förlags Ab, 2007), p.65. Finland’s army was, since 1918, based on universal military training. The country was divided into nine military regions at the start of the Winter War. Each region was divided into three military districts. A military region was required to form a division when reservists were called up during a mobilization. The division was to consist of three infantry regiments, one from each district. Each region was also required to mobilize one artillery regiment. Other units, such as signal, engineers, support troops, naval, and air units were activated through the efforts of several regions. While the principle of regional mobilization was maintained after the Winter War, the loss of territory required the redrawing of the military regions to support the mobilization of 16 divisions and some independent regiments—see Ari Raunio, Sotaoimet. Suomen sotien 1939–45 kulku kartoin (Kustantaja: Ghenimap Oy, 2004), pp.104–107. The number given by Westerlund includes various support and auxiliary organizations including the Lotta Svärd, a voluntary auxiliary paramilitary organization for women. The Lottas worked in hospitals, manned some of the air-raid early warning stations, and carried out other non-combat auxiliary tasks for the armed forces.
74. Westerlund, op. cit., pp.64–65 and M. Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty. Tutkimuksia Saksari ja Suomen sotilaallisesta yhteistyöstä 1940–41 (Keuruu: Otava, 1987), pp.620–622 and Vehviläinen, op. cit., p.89.
75. As quoted in Vehviläinen, op. cit., p.89.
Chapter 2
1. NSR, VII, Fuerher Directive 21, dated December 18, 1941.
2. NSR, Serial 260, Schnurre, Aufzeichnung, October 31, 1941.
3. Ryti is also alleged to have told Schnurre that he favored depopulating the Leningrad area and that Germany should retain it as some kind of “trading post.”
4. NSR, Telegram from Blücher to the Foreign Office, Serial 260, November 9, 1941.
5. Blücher, op. cit., pp.263–264.
6. Major General Sir Charles Maynard, The Murmansk Venture (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1928), pp.95–98.
7. Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, Als politischer General im Osten (Leipzig: K. F. Köhler, 1936), p.63.
8. Lundin, op. cit., p.121, quoting several historians.
9. Erfurth, The Last Finnish War, p.20. This order of the day is not quoted in Mannerheim’s memoirs.
10. Lundin, op. cit., p.127. Also published in the New York Times, July 15, 1942 after it had been released by the Germans.
11. At the war-guilt trial in 1945, President Ryti stated that government was not informed of the July 7 order of the day and it did not reflect Finnish policy.
12. Blücher, op. cit., pp.245–246 and pp.249–250.