The Year of Broken Promises - A Finnish Timeline

[DrakonFin]

"High-ranking observers in the war games of August 1939. Field Marshal Mannerheim and General Prior in the centre of the photo."

Photo: The Finnish Military Museum.​

Fourteen: Arvo

Horse hooves beat the dry ground on the clearing in the woods as the First Squadron of the Häme Mounted Regiment rode to war under the morning sun of early August.

Well, not to war, not as such. It was just an exercise. But it felt more exhilarating for Lieutenant Arvo Vaara to imagine they were actually riding out to meet a real enemy instead of just other Finnish soldiers making up the Yellow force standing against their White force for the purposes of the war games.

Up in the air, a Fokker biplane passed the mounted troops, on a reconnaissance run due east. The pilot saluted the men down below with his plane's wings. Arvo looked at the plane go and was sure that the machine gunner scanning the blue summer skies, sitting behind the pilot facing back, smiled to him.

Captain Majewski had given a small speech to the assembled troopers before they set up to fulfill their part in today's exercise, acting as a recon screen on the left wing of the White force as it would first seek contact with the advancing Yellows, and then, after finding them, conduct a fighting withdrawal to wait for the arrival of the bulk of the White force's strength.

”My soldiers”, Majewski had boomed in his awkward, Swedish-accented Finnish, ”today we will let everyone see the difference a man and a horse can do in the field of battle. All eyes are on you today. I hear Mannerheim himself will be attending the event! Men! Horsemen, cavalrymen! I am counting on you all – let's go and give them a bloody good show!”

The captain's smile had been wide as the men of the First Squadron roared in response.

”Cheer up, Vaarra!”, the older officer had said to the young lieutenant, winking, ”Now it's our chance to do what we do best! Forwards!”

Lieutenant Arvo Vaara looked at the advancing mounted unit, surrounded by a rising cloud of dust. Majewski's good mood was infectious, as always. Despite himself, Vaara smiled, too, and spurred his mount on.

Time to get into the spirit of the thing.

….

One fine day everything goes

Goes like dancing on roses

….​

"A machine gun section prepares for action as the press looks on."

Photo: The Finnish Military Museum.
​

....


Gustaf

The small multinational knot of senior officers and politicians advanced slowly along the dusty road. On both sides of the road, infantry soldiers were waiting for the order to advance. A machine gun squad crouched behind a boulder placed in the middle of the field like thrown there by an unthinking giant.

Gustaf looked at the last unit in the area marching into position – fresh-faced Finnish warriors, looking maybe nineteen years old, led by an impossibly baby-faced second lieutenant with a map satchel on his hip and field glasses hanging from his neck. The sight of the high-ranking observers in their immediate vicinity apparently put a spring in the step of the infantrymen.

Where do they get young officers these days – straight out of a kindergarden?, the old man thought.

”Marshal?”, General Prior next to him asked him. Apparently he had muttered his thought aloud.

Gustaf turned at the Danish officer and gave him a polite smile.

”General, I was just thinking how young these soldiers look like. It's been a few summers since we last were that young, certainly.”

Prior gave Field Marshal Mannerheim a mock-mournful smile.

”It's been that, alas. To be that young again... But then, now we are older and wiser, what! Between you and me, marshal, a young man is probably one of stupidest beings alive. I can assure you I was! Brash, uncaring and vain. There are benefits in experience and wisdom that do make up some of the benefits of youth we have lost."

Prior's comments touched Gustaf more deeply than he probably had thought they would. Just the night before, the old man had once again been a young man in his dreams, an officer of the Chevalier Guard in St. Petersburg, back in the good old days. In fact he had been slightly confused to wake up in his field cot and, opening his eyes, to see his right hand.

A worn old man's hand.

Gustaf just nodded in response to Prior's words.

The group rounded a bend in the road, the men finding themselves behind a copse of trees. There they came upon an armored vehicle standing unmoving next to the road. A tanker, a young soldier stood smoking next to the Vickers 6-Ton. When he realized the nature of the entourage approaching him, he dropped his cigarette, stood to attention and ripped off a textbook salute.

Next to him, another man crouched next to the tank, cursing.

”Where's that bloody wrench, Seppälä?”, he said, ”hurry the hell up!”

The man standing in attention looked pained.

”Corporal, there's...”

”Don't you corporal me, Seppälä! Get me a goddamned...”

The Minister of the Interior, Kekkonen, had sidled up to the tank. He leaned on the hull and looked at the man on the ground.

”Engine trouble, corporal?”, he asked innocently, with a hint of a sly smile on his lips, making the NCO stand up suddenly.

”Who the hell...”, said the man, and then looked around, to see several general officers in uniforms and other men in suits, freezing in place.

Kekkonen grinned at him.

”At ease, corporal”, General Walden said, smiling now as well, waving a hand soothingly, ”don't you mind us, we'll be on our way.”

The entourage walked on, guided forward by a Finnish liaison officer in the know about the starting positions of the units taking part in the exercise, leaving the two confused tankers still standing next to their malfunctioning vehicle and for the while not knowing what to do next.

Gustaf Mannerheim took a look at his pocket watch, seeing that it was quarter to.

Not for long now, the field marshal thought to himself.

….

One fine day everything goes

Goes like dancing on roses

One fine day everything goes

….


Veli and Erkki

A man and a boy walked slowly along a gravel road past golden fields of rye.

In his left hand, the boy six carried a small paper bag of hard candy. In his right hand he grabbed a grey and black plush toy animal.

Veli and Erkki had seen their sister Sisko off in the morning. The university student had left the Vaarala pier in a boat, waving goodbye to her mother and siblings, and by now she had already boarded a train for the capital. Veli knew that little Erkki loved his older sister very much and was always very, very reluctant to let her go. And that is why he had taken to bribing Erkki on these occasions. Now again they had walked together to the village's little co-operative shop, Erkki holding back his tears, trying hard to show what a big boy he was.

Veli bought his baby brother two marks' worth of polkagris candy.

The road was new, build recently to get rid of an unnecessary curve near the village school. The coarse gravel rattled under the feet of the two travellers as they were slowly but surely approaching home. The sun was shining but a surprisingly cold wind had picked up.

To the left, now, Veli could see an old man digging a ditch next to the road. It was Jahvetti, a man who had been hurt in the head during the civil war and had never fully recovered from it, never regained his senses fully. These days, the tall, bony man of sixty-one was widely seen as a village idiot.

As Veli and Erkki reached the old man, he suddenly turned at them and quietly smiled a wide smile full of black, rotten teeth, standing perfectly still. At the same time, uncannily, a shadow fell on the man and the boy.

Veli turned around and to his surprise saw that a large dark cloud had risen from the horizon, now already blocking out the early afternoon sun.

”A storm's coming”, Veli told Erkki, ”we better hurry home so we don't get caught in the rain.”

As Veli and Erkki turned their backs to Jahvetti, the old man started humming to himself loudly. It startled Veli and made his skin crawl.

”Veli”, Erkki said in a quiet voice.

”Yes, what is it?”

”Mr Badger's feeling afraid.”

Yes, Veli thought to himself, me too.

….


Gustaf

The group of high-ranking guests had been led to a little meadow uphill from a small lake and a few fields beyond it. Gustaf knew that due to the way the exercise had been set up, the White and Yellow forces would meet in battle on those fields. This was then a very good spot to view the one of the opening battles of the war games.

The weather worried Gustaf, however. After a sunny morning, a bank of dark clouds was now emerging from the east to cover the skies. The clouds were pushed along by a cold wind, and pretty soon now, he thought, there would be a need to take cover from the expected rain. As the clouds pushed closer, the rumble of thunder could also be heard from afar.

To the left of the old field marshal, Prime Minister Cajander removed his pince-nez glasses and used the binoculars a liaison officer had handed him. After a brief moment, he handed the optics to Minister Sköld instead, and directed the Swedish guest to look at the left side treeline where he thought he had seen camouflaged infantry.

And then there were the whistles by the referees of the exercise, signalling that the action could start.

Almost immediately, Gustaf could see squads of infantry carefully emerging from between the trees where Cajander had pointed to.

At least his eyesight is all right, the old career soldier thought wryly.

On the other side of the fields, the artillery opened up.

...


Sergeant Antti Karvonen, Field Artillery Regiment 2

Sergeant Karvonen felt thoroughly miserable. He was still hung over from the night before. In the poker game against the cavalry officers in the evening, Karvonen had lost more money than he wanted. Much more. He'd had to part with the very nice bundle he had won from the cocky young lieutenant on the train, and even that had not been enough. In fact when he eventually returned home from the war games, Karvonen would have to explain to his wife why he was suddenly flat broke.

It had been very hard to sleep at night, even despite all the booze he had had.

Next to Karvonen, the field phone rang. The sergeant answered it, and a voice on the other end of the line started detailing him the coordinates for the section of 122 mm howitzers would need to fire upon.

Just then thunder rumbled above, and heavy rain started to fall on the field artillery section. Karvonen was not sure if he got the right numbers. Trying to shield himself from the sudden cold rain, the sergeant thought to ask battalion HQ to repeat them.

Fuck it. It's just an exercise, he then thought.

The sergeant decided that he heard the coordinates right the first time, and relayed the numbers along.

The section of WWI-era howitzers roared, rivalling the noise of thunder around it.

….


Gustaf

Heavy rain fell on the group of observers, and soon a joint agreement was reached to start seeking for shelter. The thunder storm appeared to be right on the top of the group now. There were flashes of lightnings all around.

From between the sounds of thunder, Gustaf suddenly heard a quite different noise. It was a sound he would have recognized even in his dreams. Someone else must have realized the same thing, because they shouted a warning.

”Incoming!”

It was much too late. The force of the explosion made the old soldier fly like a rag doll.

Everything went black.

When Gustaf again opened his eyes, he was looking at the world from an altogether different, very unlikely angle. Nothing was how it was supposed to be. The ground around him was churned up, and there was blood all around.

Everything had gone quiet.

From beyond the veil of heavy but silent rain, rain he could not feel at all, the old man saw four horsemen approach him, as if ghosts or apparitions. A young officer dismounted and walked up to him, a look of astonishment, panic and growing horror on his water-soaked face.

Get a grip of yourself, man!, Gustaf thought. It can't be all that bad.

The young officer opened his mouth. By the look of it, he started bellowing frantic orders.

Gustaf could hear nothing, and he could not get up.

He felt the world slip away from him.

...

....

One fine day everything goes

Goes like dancing on roses

One fine day everything goes

Goes like dancing on the graves


It's the day when the priest returns

Walks the village road and opens the gate

Bringing along a tinderbox to make even truth burn

Now if ever, now if ever

It is time to adorn a modest coffin

With the herbs of the meadow

…

....


To Be Continued

[filler]

 

[Karelian]

"Rakkautta kutsuu hanki valkoinen", indeed.
Finland is now officially out of luck.

 

[varyar]

"This bodes ill" seems a slight understatement here.

 

[r1ncewind]

Indeeed, was really hoping finland would do better against the soviets but without mannerheim..

 

[Pexa]

"This bodes ill" seems a slight understatement here.

Indeed, indeed. While I admire general Airo for his logistic skills and operational planning, inspiring leadership qualities and uniting the country might be somewhat beyond his, or any other general's at this time, skills. The question is, who will now be in charge? Heinrichs, perhaps? Or if you want to be cruel, Öhquist could take over, and waste half the manpower on pointless counterattacks...

Nice believable twist, and quite unexpected.

 

[Utgard96]

Oh dear.

 

[DrakonFin]

Fifteen: The Storm and the Harvest

The summer storm that ravaged Eastern Finland on the 8th and 9th August 1939, called the Sylvi Storm [1] according to it being Sylvi's name day, surprised Finnish meteorologists. In hindsight, though, the weather had been hot and dry in Finland for a surprisingly long period in late July and early August, and a thunderstorm was a natural culmination to the prevailing weather. The storm brought along with it heavy rains all around the Eastern part of the country, especially on the Karelian Isthmus, in Northern Karelia and in Northern Savonia. There were heavy bouts of lightnings and some destructive gusts of wind as well.

As harvest time was just beginning in the Finnish countryside, the storm led to many farms losing much or their crops in the affected areas. The effects were very patchy, though, and in some municipalities the storm affected the great majority of the farms while in the neighbouring one there were next to no damages caused by it. It took mere days for local notables and political representatives of the Agrarian League to start advocating for state support in terms of both direct monetary grants and indirect tax considerations for the affected farms and communities to help the locals carry the losses incurred.

The prevailing feelings in Finland in mid-August were shock and grief. The so-called Hannila shots [2], the misdirected artillery barrage that killed and injured several Finnish and foreign political and military leaders at the great war games in and around Viipuri on August 8th sent the nation into a political crisis the kind that had not be seen since the early 1930s and the heyday of the far right nationalist Lapua Movement.

Several books and articles have been written about the Hannila shots, in Finland and Sweden, the most recent of them the acclaimed Hannila: When the Sky Fell Down by the young Finnish historian Jenni Indrenius. It is hard to overstate the importance the incident had on the political reality of the First Republic at summer's end 1939. Like Mika Waltari did in his novel The Number of Our Days, most historians now see the Hannila shots as the bookend to the 1930s in Finland, and as the beginning of the WWII period proper. The fact that it was only two weeks from the incident to the announcement of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, on August 22nd, is naturally important for this view. After a period of relative calm, the events in Finland and around the small northern nation started gaining momentum, taking Finland towards the bigger storm known as the Second World War, much like a treetrunk floating in a meandering little river that suddenly turns into fast-flowing rapids.

The first people to stumble on the site of the carnage caused by the explosion of several 122 mm high explosive artillery shells in the midst of a group of high-ranking observers were troopers from the Häme Mounted Regiment. Four mounted soldiers, part of the "White" force's reconnaissance efforts, investigated the site of the artillery strike on the initiative of a young officer. This was caused, apparently, by the realization that the area in question should not have been a target for the field guns of Artillery Regiment 2, supporting the "White" force's assault in the exercise.

What the men, Lieutenant Vaara, Sergeant Jokinen, Private Argillander and Private Hämäläinen found were dead and dying men, some of them mutilated beyond recognition. Four people had died apparently immediately: Prime Minister Aimo Cajander, Minister of Defence Juho Niukkanen, General Rudolf Walden, the industrialist and a member of the Defence Council [3], and Per Edvin Sköld, the Swedish Minister of Defence. Eight others were injured in various ways, from surprisingly light injuries to life-threatening ones.

Three mounted troopers started a frantic effort to help the injured members of the group of observers, while Sergeant Jokinen was sent to find the nearest field radio or, failing that, field telephone, as soon as possible to summon medics to the scene and to reach the leadership of the war games [4] to call an immediate halt to the exercise. There was a number of Finnish liaison personnel at the scene, too, some of whom were also injured. At the insistence of Lieutenant Vaara, these shell-shocked men also started assisting with the first aid efforts.

Happily for the victims of the artillery strike, it was only about seven hundred meters to the closest infantry command post, and from there help could be called in. Almost exactly 45 minutes after the fateful artillery shots, Lieutenant General Hugo Österman, in his HQ at Heinjoki, then ordered all operations to do with the war games halted and sent also orders to the effect that all efforts must be taken to help the injured men in Hannila. The Viipuri city hospital was alerted, and best available means of transport were organized for the effort. Practically and rather fortuitously, this meant calling in two of the Air Force's Junkers floatplanes, a W 34 and a K 43, slated to take part in the exercise specifically in a medical evacuation role, to land on the nearby Hannilanjärvi to fly the stricken men to Viipuri. For the Commander of the Civil Guards, General Malmberg, even this modern means of transport was not enough: he took his last breath in the air enroute to the Karelian capital.

As soon as the tragic nature of the apparently misdirected artillery shots became apparent to the Finnish military leadership present, the question of whether these strikes could have been deliberate rather than accidental was considered by some. Orders were sent from Heinjoki to the units taking part in the exercise to find and apprehend those that were responsible for the incident forthwith. This lead in practice to infantry units surrounding artillery batteries in temporary mini-sieges and standoffs, sometimes threatening artillerymen at gunpoint, before the situation was resolved.

At the same time, the authorities in the Finnish capital were contacted in expectations of potential incidents taking place in Helsinki as well. The later historical studies about the Hannila shots suggest that in the event especially Major General Edvard Hanell, the commander of the ”White” force in the exercise, was all but sure that the attack was deliberate and just a prelude to an imminent larger attack against Finland. This sort of response to the event was natural under the circumstances, even if in hindsight it arguably appears very much like unfounded paranoia.

In Helsinki the military leadership's reaction mirrored Hanell's view. Upon receiving word from Viipuri, the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Oesch, placed all the capital area military units under alert, and also all the Civil Guards in the capital and surroundings were alerted. Of course due to the exercise in Viipuri taking up so much of active Finnish forces, the cupboard was pretty bare. The first troops appearing as reinforcements to patrol the surroundings of the ministries in central Helsinki were Navy conscripts roused at the naval barracks in Katajanokka, quickly armed with rifles and marched to the Senate Square by a flustered junior officer from the gunboat Karjala. The first actual regular command to reach battle readiness in the capital area was the Kuivasaari fortress island, where the battery of 12 inch Obuhov guns stood ready for action as quickly as three hours after the word of the Hannila incident reached the island.

In the evening of August 8th as the summer storm known as Sylvi pounded Eastern Finland with all her might, as the military authorities in Viipuri and the nearby municipalities were trying to make head or tails of the situation, and as surgeons in the Viipuri city hospital struggled to save the lives of seriously injured men under the light of oil lamps [5], in Helsinki uniformed men were seen setting up road blocks on the main streets and roadways leading to the heart of the Finnish capital.

The news of the Hannila incident did not take long to be transmitted outside Finland. Journalists from across Europe were taking part in covering the war games in Viipuri, and many of them rushed to tell their readers about what had happened as soon as possible. Some of the most iconic photos of the aftermath of the incident were also taken by foreign photographers.

...

The badly injured General Malmberg is taken aboard an Air Force Junkers floatplane to be flown to Viipuri for treatment.
This rare photo of the aerial evacuation was taken by a photographer covering General William Prior's visit to Finland for the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende.​

...

The old man had woken up early and was now eating a light breakfast in his spartan room. Outside, snow fell slowly on the trees in the park. Under the overcast sky, everything appeared to be painted in shades of grey.

Nothing stirred.

As the man finished his coffee, there was a discreet knock on the door. Slowly, deliberately the old man stood up to reach his familiar military bearing. It was quite difficult. Then, slowly, he headed for the door.

Reaching his hand for the brass knob to open the heavy wooden door, Gustaf Mannerheim felt a twinge in his lower body, as if something was not all right. A cold sweat was rising to his forehead.

He opened the door but there was nobody there.

He then looked down. On the ground there was a single black riding boot, shined to perfection.

”I need to summon my servant to remind him that he forgot my other damn boot”, the old cavalry officer thought.

Then he felt a slight vertigo and reached out for the wall next to him to steady himself. He could see his own image in the mirror across the hallway, recognizable but distorted.

A realization came to him.

”No, that's right. One boot is all that I need now.”

…


It did not take long for the artillery section in question to be be identified. As the artillery battalion's HQ confirmed the coordinates the section had been ordered to fire at, and as the artillerymen of the section itself all separately agreed that slightly different coordinates, those of the unfortunate group of observers, had been used instead, it was certain who was responsible for the artillery strike.

The problem was that Sergeant Antti Karvonen, the man who had relayed the wrong coordinates to the section (on this every member of the section agreed) was nowhere to be found. He had gone missing in the confusion following the accident. The man was never seen again. There are several theories as to what happened to Sergeant Karvonen on August 8th, ranging from the mundane to the fanciful and even supernatural. The most realistic theory yet put together, first suggested already during the war, was that the body of an unknown man in a Finnish military uniform, found floating near Käkisalmi on the shores of Lake Ladoga in the spring of 1940 belonged to Karvonen. If we accept the theory, it would suggest that the artillery sergeant took his own life by drowning himself after the incident.

Lieutenant Arvo Vaara, the cavalry officer who led the first aid efforts on the scene of the incident became to be seen as the hero of the day. His actions in Hannila were rewarded with a high military decoration and in early December 1939 he would be promoted to captain.

….

The hero of the day. Lieutenant Arvo Vaara as he appeared in the Helsingin Sanomat on August 19th, 1939.​

….

Prime Minister A.K. Cajander was buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki on Sunday, August 20th. The official state funeral was well-attended, with thousands of people lining the streets from the Helsinki Cathedral to Hietaniemi in the fine sunny late August weather. General Lauri Malmberg's funeral was organized in Helsinki as well, with full military honours. Juho Niukkanen, the Minister of Defence, was buried in his home municipality of Kirvu on the Karelian Isthmus. Urho Kekkonen, the Minister of the Interior, was one of the men carrying his coffin. Kekkonen still walked with a limp, like he would for the rest of his life. General's Walden's funeral was, surprisingly, also a very modest affair, including only the closest family.

Per Edvin Sköld, the Swedish Minister of Defence, became the first Swedish state official whose dead body was transported on an aircraft home from abroad, to be buried in Swedish soil.[6] General Linder had stayed in Finland for the while, to handle the aftermath of the incident in different ways, and shaken and injured as he still was, he now returned home on the same plane as the late Minister Sköld.

Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim was brought to Helsinki on August 18th. He would start his long period of convalescence in his Kaivopuisto home. Historians generally agree that in the months after the Hannila incident, Mannerheim suffered from depression, partly brought on by various complications following from the amputation of his right leg from the knee down.

Even before of the public funerals of Cajander and Malmberg, and the more private ones for Niukkanen and Walden, the damage the Hannila incident had done to the Finnish state leadership had to be repaired. With the president still in a poor condition, and with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence dead, the state leadership was decimated and in sore need of replenishment. On August 10th, Eljas Erkko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, assumed the position of Acting Prime Minister for the time being, after consulting with the surviving members of the cabinet and the leaders of the parties in the ruling coalition. But more would need to be done. The immediate response of the Finnish government, such as it was, was to call the parliament to Helsinki by the beginning of the third week of August, to end the summer vacations of the parliamentarians early.

When the members of the Eduskunta on Monday, August 14th filed into the plenary chamber, there were many views as to what should be done about the situation. While in the early hours of the first meeting after the summer holiday, the mood was suitably somber (following a moment of silence held for those dead in the Hannila incident), it took no time for quite vocal disagreements to break out. Paavo Susitaival, the member of parliament for the Patriotic People's Movement, was the first to call for a special election in the parliament for a president, to be taken on the same week. Susitaival argued that Finland was in an immediate danger of a Soviet invasion while the nation was practically decapitated politically, and that a strong president would be something the nation would need under the circumstances. Susitaival called also for an immediate declaration of a state of war and the mobilization of the military reserves after the special election.

As the discussions in the Eduskunta continued on Tuesday the 15th also other parties started to agree with the special election for a new president. Urho Kekkonen himself argued for this on behalf of the Agrarians. As the discussion about the parliament declaring Kallio unable to prosecute the duties of the President of the Republic and choosing a new president according to an expedited procedure, a note was brought to the Social Democratic speaker of parliament, Väinö Hakkila.

What the small piece of paper said was that just an hour earlier, President Kyösti Kallio had regained consciousness in the hospital and according to the doctors attending him now appeared quite lucid.

….

The burial of Juho Niukkanen, as depicted in Karjala, the main daily newspaper appearing in Viipuri, on August 21st, 1939.

Urho Kekkonen is the first pallbearer on the right.​

...

Notes:

[1] Sylvi-myrsky.

[2] Hannilan laukaukset. Hannila is a village in the municipality of Antrea, some 20 km north from Viipuri.

[3] Rudolf Walden was the founder and main owner of the Yhtyneet Paperitehtaat Oy (United Paper Mills Inc.), a major Finnish industrial concern created in 1920. Together with Gösta Serlachius of the G.A. Serlachius company, he was also a leading member of the Finnish Paper Mills' Association, a de facto cartel dominating the Finnish interwar forestry sector. In terms of his military and defence policy role, Walden was seen as C.G.E. Mannerheim's closest collaborator in the National Defence Council.

[4] The exercise HQ was located in the Heinjoki municipality, roughly 10 kilometers south from Hannila.

[5] The storm having cut electricity for the while.

[6] The AB Aerotransport Junkers Ju 52 carrying Sköld's remains landed in Stockholm's Bromma airfield on August 13th.


…


To Be Continued...

 

[Utgard96]

So neither Mannerheim nor Kallio is actually dead. This is beginning to look like Candide.

and Per Edvin Sköld, the Swedish Minister of Defence

This is interesting too. At this point the cabinet was still a Social Democratic-Agrarian coalition, and in fact the wartime coalition wouldn't form until December. Sköld had only been appointed in 1938, on the death of Agrarian defence minister Janne Nilsson, so it's quite possible that the portfolio goes back to the Agrarians with his death. OTOH, there's also a few candidates I can think of within the Social Democratic party - Herman Eriksson, who set up the Department of Public Economy (which handled much of the war economy) and had previously been a minister without portfolio, would be my foremost candidate for it.

 

[DrakonFin]

So neither Mannerheim nor Kallio is actually dead. This is beginning to look like Candide.

I need to keep y'all on your toes, don't I?

Besides, I'm starting to realize that this is not so much a TL, as such, but rather a long-winded advertisement for 1930s German airplane manufacturers...

This is interesting too. At this point the cabinet was still a Social Democratic-Agrarian coalition, and in fact the wartime coalition wouldn't form until December. Sköld had only been appointed in 1938, on the death of Agrarian defence minister Janne Nilsson, so it's quite possible that the portfolio goes back to the Agrarians with his death. OTOH, there's also a few candidates I can think of within the Social Democratic party - Herman Eriksson, who set up the Department of Public Economy (which handled much of the war economy) and had previously been a minister without portfolio, would be my foremost candidate for it.

Thank you for the pointers. You'll get to see the incident's fallout in Sweden as well, even if it might amount to just an aside or a throw-away comment at first.

 

[Pexa]

Prime Minister Aimo Cajander, Minister of Defence Juho Niukkanen, General Rudolf Walden, the industrialist and a member of the Defence Council [3], and Per Edvin Sköld, the Swedish Minister of Defence

Well, Cajander will not be so much missed, but Walden, oh dear.

For the Commander of the Civil Guards, General Malmberg, even this modern means of transport was not enough: he took his last breath in the air enroute to the Karelian capital.

Damn.

The first actual regular command to reach battle readiness in the capital area was the Kuivasaari fortress island, where the battery of 12 inch Obuhov guns stood ready for action as quickly as three hours after the word of the Hannila incident reached the island.

Good practice, at least.

”No, that's right. One boot is all that I need now.”

Not a minor injury then, but still, at least he is alive and well enough to maintain command - but does he want to?

Quite an interesting update, indeed.

 

[DrakonFin]

Sixteen: September 2009

The young woman sat on the train, looking out the window. The central parts of Helsinki were behind her now, and on the right side of the track she could see old concrete tower blocks, slowly crumbling away and in their old age reaching out for the overcast September sky. The general colours were grey, and peeling pink and light blue.

Billboards of advertisements framed the tracks in parts, blocking much of the view. The woman noticed many of the same ads and logos she had seen at the airport and the central railway station, but there were new ones as well. Car ads by Peugeot and Renault, cosmetics and lingerie ads with ubiquitous smiling blondes, Ericsson phone ads (”Connecting the North. Ericsson.”). Further away from the city centre, one ad kept repeating: a professional-looking woman in her forties, in a business suit and glasses, standing in front of rows and rows of computer equipment, accompanied with an angular, futuristic logo. The caption on the billboard said ”Massive Information – Massive Improvements.”

Inside, the train carriage was newish but already somewhat rundown. The info screen that was supposed to show the next stations was not working, and for obvious reasons: it appeared someone had punched it with some force. On the side wall, the cheery green logo text ”H-RATA” for the train company had be turned with a red permanent marker into the sentence ”mun on pakko HuoRATA”, the meaning of which the woman wondered.

Without the info screen in a working condition, the woman almost missed her stop. At the last moment, she squeezed out of the train to find herself on the Leppävaara station. It was a concrete affair, adorned with yet more big billboards, with some of those small kiosks and vending machines in evidence. The woman took off towards a random exit, and then in a minute found herself out on a small square. She was surrounded by a collection of older and newish buildings, some of which housed hairdressers, second-hand shops, small grocers and a couple of bars. In the centre of the square was an old empty plinth on which the woman assumed had stood a statue sometime in the past. Now, she saw a sign, in Finnish and English, telling her that she had apparently arrived to ”Fatherland Square”.[1]

Next to to the empty plinth, a small knot of idle youngsters was listening to music from a derelict-looking boom box. They glanced towards the woman but didn't take any real interest into her. They were more interested in a grey jeep that cruised past the square right then, with a prominent ”S” logo on its doors. The jeep was occupied by two men in grey uniforms and it flashed its lights to the youth, one of whom flipped it the bird.

Digging a tourist map of the Greater Helsinki area out of her bag, the young woman started putting together a path towards her destination. It was happily just a few blocks away – walking alone, lost in her thoughts, wondering if there would be rain, she was suddenly confronted by a big open lot of land, the landscaping of which was far from completed. In the middle of it stood an impressively big pile of a building, a modern thing the outer shell of which made out of acid-treated steel to give the impression of old, rusted steel surfaces.

The woman entered the spacious hallway, past a security guard in a somewhat old-fashioned grey uniform at the door. There were coat racks and lockable lockers on the right and apparently a cafeteria on the left. To the front of her, stood a long desk with four separate counters for visitors, two of which were occupied by members of staff. On the wall, there was the logo of the Finnish National Archival System, SKA. Below it, the woman noticed a familiar jagged S and T symbol.

”Good morning, how can I help you?”, a humourless-looking woman in a colourful blouse asked the woman as she sat down in front of the counter at the right end of the long desk.

”My name is Nora Farrah”, Nora said in English, ”and I am here in hopes of being able to go through Second World War era documents about my relatives in Finland.”

The woman just nodded.

”Your ID, please.”

Nora handed over her passport, which the woman put under a scanner and then perused the text on the screen.

”Have you completed and filed a VL101 form at the Archival System main office?”

Damn. What with the taxi accident, the young woman had forgotten all about that.

”Sorry, no. I haven't had the time yet. I came straight here as I read somewhere that this is where the relevant files are kept at.”

The woman in the colourful blouse looked at her mournfully.

”Then I can't really help you. You need to fill the VL101 first for access. Without it, we can't let you order any files on your own, or use a research station here.”

Nora felt disappointed and a little angry.

”Please. I have come all the way from the United States. Surely I could fill the form here and wait for it to be accepted?”

The woman shook her head.

”That's not how it works. All access permits go through the main office. There's really nothing I can do here before you go back to Rauhankatu and get the access permit worked out”, the woman said, shrugging.

The woman could feel something in the clerk's demeanor that she liked how she could use what little authority she had to make her life more difficult.

”All right”, Nora said, ”if you can't help me, maybe someone else can? Can I maybe talk to your supervisor about this?”

The look on the female clerk's face turned colder.

”My supervisor's not available right now”, she said, in a cool voice, ”and besides, he does not deal with these kinds of things – he's a very busy man.”

Nora leaned closer to the woman.

”Could you call him, anyway? I'd like to talk with someone who can help me.”

The young woman could now see that the clerk was getting annoyed with her.

”Please, you have to understand that...”

Right then, an older man in corduroy pants and a blue sweater walked past the desk, apparently en route to the staff area. There was a staff ID card hanging around his neck.

The clerk looked at the man.

”Jyri.”

As the man turned at the clerk, she said something to him in Finnish, nodding at Nora. The man, Jyri, took a sort of pained look at her and appeared to sigh. Then he nodded.

”This is one of our researchers, he can talk to you for a moment.”

The man held out his hand to Nora. He was in his sixties, and slightly overweight. His hair was almost white, and he had an impressive full white beard. Nora had immediately thought about Santa Claus upon seeing him.

”Rantanen”, the man said, shaking her hand.

”Follow me.”

Nora did that, walking after the man along a long corridor. In here, it was even more obvious that the building was brand new. There were electricians here in blue overalls doing some wiring work. Looking out through an open doorway to the left, Nora could see racks of computer equipment with blinking green and yellow lights. A technician in a white coat stood there, fiddling with a laptop.

On his white coat, he had the jagged S and T logo.

Systek, said the text below it.

Rantanen led Nora to what apparently was his office. It was a newish room, with a large desk and some bookshelves. Despite its newness, the room was overflowing with folders, files and books. The bookshelves were full of them, and so was the work desk. Looking slightly apologetic, Rantanen picked up a bunch of folders from the chair in front of the desk, and without anywhere else to put them, gingerly placed the teetering pile next to his desk.

He nodded towards the chair.

”Please, sit down.”

The man took a seat himself, and then looked at Nora with eyes she thought reflected tiredness as well as genuine compassion.

”So you are here to find out about your family, eh?”

It turned out that Jyri Rantanen was a researcher and administrator working with the National Archival System, and that he was currently engaged in getting the new Leppävaara Unit up and running. Apparently, the Unit had only opened last year, and the transfer of files and materials from the old archive was still a work in progress.

”It's several archives, in fact”, the bearded man told her, ”now concentrated here and digitized. Massive Information, you know?”

MassInfo was the recent buzzword in information management. Several companies were at it around the world, the management and utilization of great amounts of data for various purposes not possible before recent advances in computing and programming. And practical access to the data of millions of people, of course.

”Everything we have will be digitized. For easy access and searchability, you see. To better serve the public, they say. It is a massive undertaking, and we have hundreds of people around the country just using scanners and working in information input.”

Nora did not understand.

”You do this for better access, and yet you have this – pardon my French, now – bullshit system where I can't access to files right here but would have to go bodily to another unit of the System?”

”Ah”, the man said, scratching his head, ”that is partly tradition – but it is also connected with the partnership the Archival System has with Systek. They are building much of the new archival system for us, you see, in public-private partnership like it is called. But for their support for this work, they also get some benefits. As a matter of fact...”

The man suddenly went quiet, as if realizing he might be saying too much. He glanced out of the open door into the gleaming new hallway. Then he smiled a sheepish smile.

”I shouldn't say any more about that. Let's talk about you instead. What is it exactly that you'd like to find out in our files?”

Nora Farrah laid out her plans to this rotund, bearded man who somehow felt like the most reliable person she had met in Finland so far. The man nodded and took notes. He then got up, pulled a couple of books off the bookshelf to his right and consulted them.

Then he looked up and smiled.

”I think I can help you. But you need to give me a couple of days. And then I think we should meet off-campus, as it were.”

The man glanced again to the corridor, and only now Nora realized that there was a row of discreet domes for security cameras running across its length.

…


Out in the parking lot by the big, rust-coloured building, two men in suits sat in a car. The younger one of them kept his eyes on the entrance of the building while the older one was reading a newspaper. He then folded up the Uusin Suomi[2] and reached for a big bag of candy.

”Why exactly are we keeping an eye on this girl, anyway?”, he asked his partner, a traditionally handsome man in a severe coal-grey suit.

”You don't need to know that”, he said, ”we're just following orders. I'm sure the boss has good reasons for the surveillance.”

The older man munched on some Nami-Mättö licourice candy, swallowed and grimaced.

”You're no fun at all, you know that, Jänö?”

...


Notes:

[1] Isänmaanaukio.

[2] ”Newest Finland”.

...

To Be Continued

 

[Pexa]

Connecting the North. Ericsson.

Evil, evil, evil! I like it.

”Massive Information – Massive Improvements.”

They are building much of the new archival system for us, you see, in public-private partnership like it is called. But for their support for this work, they also get some benefits. As a matter of fact...”

Tech-no-dystopia, here we come. Now if only we can add some more chrome on it, it will turn out to be cyberpunk

 

[DrakonFin]

Seventeen: Monsters

…


Otto

It was as he had long feared. Three stone-faced NKVD men with their blue-topped caps stood outside his door.

”Comrade Kuusinen, it's time.”

Looking at the NKVD officer with a resigned look on his face, Otto Wille Kuusinen just nodded and reached for his overcoat and hat in the foyer. He glanced to his right, to see his live-in lover, Marina Amiragova, stand there in the doorway, half-dressed, clutching a teacup in her hand.

They had been in the middle of their breakfast.

”Go back to the kitchen, Marina”, Kuusinen said, but she just stood there, staring.

Kuusinen's wife had been arrested in 1938. He had been living with Marina since.

The NKVD officer looked at Kuusinen meaningfully, and the sort of elfin-looking slight man walked out of the door with his shoulders hunched.

Behind him, Kuusinen could hear a teacup shattering on the floor.

Out on the street, a dark sedan stood waiting, with a driver. The NKVD men stuffed Kuusinen to the back seat and two of them sat on his both sides, with the officer taking the seat next to the driver.

Nobody spoke as the car took off into the morning traffic, leaving the Moscow suburbs towards the centre of the Soviet capital.

After a minute, a sudden panic grabbed Kuusinen. A cold sweat started rising on his forehead.

”You're taking me to Lubyanka, aren't you?”, he said weakly, getting no answer from the four men in the car, smelling of makhorka and sweat. Kuusinen suspected he himself smelled like fear.

They say the NKVD can smell fear, after all.

There was no answer.

”I am the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, you know”, Kuusinen said and then immediately realized how hollow his attempt at special pleading sounded. The NKVD personnel served at the pleasure of Comrade Stalin – like anyone else working for the Soviet state apparatus did. These men were not concerned with the positions of lesser comrades, no matter how fancy their titles were. They were just carrying out their orders.

Clutching his knees with white knuckles as the car pulled into the Garden Ring, Kuusinen was painfully aware that they were now only some blocks from the feared headquarters of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. To be honest, Kuusinen had already hoped that after Yezhov was reassigned from his post at the head of the okhrana, the position of himself and those few other Finnish emigres that had escaped the purges so far would become easier.

Little did he know, then.

In a minute the car rolled through the Meshchansky District and by and by then arrived at the Lubyanka Square. As the driver slowed down, the Finnish Communist looked up to the pile of a Tsarist-era building some said they were just about to start expanding to accommodate the ever-growing role of the state security apparatus in the Soviet Workers' State.

Just as Kuusinen started preparing for the car to pull into the Lubyanka building itself, the driver suddenly accelerated again and started taking the vehicle into another direction.

Kuusinen felt confused. What were they trying to pull now?

After a while, though, he started feeling a steely sort of relief. Slowly he realized where they were actually going.

When the car finally pulled up at the Kremlin, Kuusinen was sweating heavily, now out of pure, unadulterated relief.

After the customary walk through the corridors, the man was led directly into the heart of the Kremlin. Escorted by a guard into the General Secretary's office. As the serious young man with a square jaw closed the door behind him, Kuusinen gingerly walked on, towards the two men in the front of the room.

Josef Stalin was consulting some papers. He puffed on his pipe thoughtfully as he did so, with another man hovering next to him.

Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's loyal retainer, was first of the two to look at Kuusinen as he approached. After a few seconds, the Soviet leader also appeared to notice his arrival.

”Ah, Comrade Kuusinen”, Generalissimus Stalin said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

”What took you so long? Been seeing the sights of Moscow this fine morning, have you, comrade? It is a glorious August morning out there to be sure.”

Only now that Stalin said it, Otto Wille Kuusinen realized what a delightful morning it was outside. It had been raining the night before, but the morning had risen bright and crisp. For some reason, any musings about the Moscow weather today had not had any space in his thoughts by now.

”Good morning, Comrade General Secretary”, Kuusinen said, nodding, ”Yes, I took a little drive through central Moscow just now. Very, ah, invigorating.”

He made eye contact with the other man, too, to acknowledge him as well.

”Comrade Molotov”, he said, nodding.

Stalin smiled to him genially.

”It does make one happy to be alive, doesn't it, to see a morning like this one unfold? Do take a seat, comrade”, he said, pointing with his pipe.

It appeared very much so that Josef Stalin was in high spirits this morning.

The man pushed aside some of the papers on the table and fixed his gaze on the Finn.

”No beating around the bush, comrade Kuusinen – there is a reason I called you here today.”

He paused, as if gathering his thoughts.

”You must have heard the news from Finland, right? A frightful accident has claimed the lives of several members of their government, and left several others maimed, perhaps for life.”

Kuusinen nodded.

”Yes, I've heard of it. With some of them, like Mannerheim, some could call it poetic justice.”

Stalin looked at him with a scolding look on his face.

”Now, now, comrade. We wouldn't want to hope for people to lose body parts to errant artillery fire, would we? Are we monsters, Otto Wilhelmovich? No, we are not.”

Stalin paused to suck on his pipe.

”This... accident... however – it gives us an opportunity and an opening. I do believe we need to push our advantage in terms of Finland. Comrade, you are to reach out to all your contacts in Finland at once and help us get an understanding of the situation on the ground. As of late, the Finns have been quite... recalcitrant towards some of the things we have been suggesting to them. It is to be hoped that under these new circumstances, they would prove more... understanding towards the views of the USSR.”

Kuusinen nodded, thoughtfully.

”I will do that, certainly. The situation in Finland appears quite chaotic, to be honest. It is certain that it could all work to our advantage.”

Again, Stalin smiled.

”Indeed. Several things are happening on that front, stand assured. Once we have our matters concluded with the European powers, once we have our foreign relations in order, we can afford to take an interest into our own backyard as well. And do some weeding and pest control, perhaps.”

Kuusinen looked at Molotov who had by now said nothing.

Now the man seemed to be chuckling. Stalin glanced at him and then looked back at Kuusinen.

”Comrade, a piece of advice: one of these days, you might find yourself with new responsibilities – perhaps an entirely new position, what? If I was you, I'd start making arrangements for that.”

Stalin suddenly stood up, gathering a pile of papers into his hands.

”That's it, for now. I have pressing matters to attend to, with Vyacheslav Mikhailovich here”, he said, nodding to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

"Finland, comrade Kuusinen. Get to it, and don't let me detain you.”

As Stalin turned away, Otto Wille Kuusinen understood that it was his que to leave.

Minutes later, Kuusinen again found himself on the streets of Moscow, with the sun shining from a cloudless sky. The Finnish Communist took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the for once fresh and high-oxygen Moscow morning air.

Only now he did truly realize what a wonderful day it was.


…

Shout, shout for joy!

Shout, shout for freedom

And shout, shout for happiness.

And you can leave with a smile on your face.

Shout, shout for joy!

Shout, shout for freedom

And shout, shout for happiness!

And you can go on on lying

Or you can know the truth.

…


To Be Continued

 

[DrakonFin]

​

Eighteen: Veli, Sisko and Arvo

…


Veli

Veli Vaara felt tired, hot and dirty as he walked home with his younger brother. The harvest bee [1] had been at the Keinänen farm today, and he had worked the whole day under the hot sun, first cutting wheat with a sickle, then operating the threshing machine with Jalo Keinänen, the farmer himself.

”Thank you again, Veli”, Keinänen had said as the younger man was leaving, with his brother some of the last villagers to do so.

”Don't mention it”, Veli said, ”you already helped at Vaarala last week, so we're even now.”

Keinänen smiled.

”Even and even. Your Jorma did a lot of work this time around, he's already a man grown isn't he? Fancy the time passing so fast.”

Veli glanced towards the barn to see his brother Jorma, turning 18 next year, talking to a couple of the Keinänen boys, younger than him.

”Say that again. But then he'll be leaving for the army next fall, so then we'll again be one short.”

Keinänen, dirty, sweaty and already a bit weary himself, scratched his head.

”Oh, I had forgotten that. The Vaara family's really going all out to support the military, isn't it?”

Arvo's role in the relief effort for the artillery accident near Viipuri was the talk of the town. Some already called him ”the man who saved Mannerheim's life”. Veli did not really know how to take it all, and it appeared to him his father was having similar problems.

”I guess so”, Veli just answered to the man who was known as a good farmer and for his prodigious ability to father sons. Seven sons he had, and not one daughter. It was a common joke in Hirvilahti[2] that one of these days, Jalo's sons would marry all the girls in the village, and they would have to rename Hirvilahti into Keinälä.

”Isn't your Mikko turning 18, too, next year?”

”That's true. But then I have reserves, don't I?”, Jalo Keinänen said, smiling and winking, ”I can afford to send one of my boys to be dressed in military grey, with no major shortfall in workforce.”

Veli rather liked the man. He was decent, and a hard worker. And then he had the presence of mind not to borrow money from Salomo Vaara. It made it much easier for Veli to deal with Keinänen, not to have the shadow of financial affairs hanging over their dealings like he did with several other men in the village.

Keinänen was also one of the farmers in the village who had been only lightly hit by the Sylvi storm. Several farms had lost a lot of their crops in just a matter of hours. Vaarala itself was hit hard, too.

That made things wrought between Veli and his father. Well, more wrought, that is.

”What are you thinking?”, Jorma asked, rousing Veli from his thoughts.

”Oh, nothing”, the older brother said, looking beside him.

”How's your hand, by the way?”

Jorma had hurt himself starting the agricultural engine to run the thresher. It wasn't bad, but it appeared the event had hurt the young man's pride a bit.

”It's fine, stop asking about it”, Jorma said, sullen.

”Let Mum look at the wound in the evening, we don't want it to get infected now.”

Jorma kept his eyes on the road as he walked on.

”Yeah. I'll do that.”

Veli glanced at his grumpy little brother and smiled.

Life's hard, isn't it?

Passing by the Kerman farm to the left, only a little way to go to Vaarala, Veli let his eyes wander to the neighbour's fields. To his surprise, he suddenly realized that he was looking at a dark-haired woman walking up the path from the lakeside to the Kerman farmhouse.

By the looks of it, Emma Kerman was returning from the sauna, her hair still wet and her cheeks red. She didn't look at the two Vaara brothers passing on the road, but appeared to be deep in thought.

Jorma had noticed her, too. He nudged Veli with his elbow.

”A pity we didn't happen to pass by when she was swimming...”

Veli let his mind wander in that vein. Right then Emma looked directly at him, probably catching a goofy smile on his face. Feeling silly, Veli raised his right hand to the girl.

Emma just frowned at him.

”Go home, boys, and get washed. You're dirty like animals!”[3], she hollered at the Vaara brothers.

Was there a hint of a smile on her face when she turned away?

”She's got a point, you know”, Jorma said to Veli.

”The sauna's bound to be ready for us, anyway.”​

​

…

"Miscellanious photos from Finland: Harvest time."

Photo by Barbara Wright, US Library of Congress Photographic Collection.​

...


Sisko

Sisko Vaara sat in a table at the Kappeli terrace in the Esplanadi park in central Helsinki, just off the Market Square. In her hand she had a glass of cold white wine.

This afternoon, the terrace was packed. The weather was fine, and people were trying to get what the could out of the last weeks of summer. People wandered past into the park. The general feeling in the Finnish capital was sort of subdued, though, Sisko Vaara thought.

For obvious reasons.

Sisko looked at the man sitting across the table from him. The man was sipping a glass of wine as well, absentmindedly eying the people passing the restaurant.

There was something in the man Sisko found different from the last time she had seen him.

Arvo Vaara turned his gaze towards his twin sister and raised his eyebrows.

”My brother, the celebrity”, Sisko said, and ironically raised her glass.

Arvo put on an ”aw, shucks”-face and waved his free hand.

”It's not that big a deal.”

”Not a big deal?”, Sisko asked, raising her voice, ”they went and put your face in the paper! And you'll get an actual medal tomorrow. It is kind of a big deal, whether you think so or not.”

The man in a spotless cavalry uniform smiled but said nothing. And that was what was different. Somehow, Sisko thought, her brother now seemed less pointed, less eager with quick comebacks then he used to be.

Is it because he is finally growing up? Or is it just shock from what he had gone through in Viipuri?

Arvo was certainly distracted. There was as if a shadow would have landed on him, and he could not shake it off. Sisko had been apprehensive about meeting his brother, due to the argument Arvo and Veli had gotten into back in Vaarala, but then when she brought it up, Arvo had claimed he had already made amends with his brother.

When would he have had the time?, Sisko wondered.

The military officer drained his glass and called over a waiter, ordering the same again.

”You're putting it away fast today”, Sisko observed. His brother appeared annoyed at the comment.

”I've still three days of my leave left before I have to get my sorry behind back to the barracks. I intend to make the best of it, sis. It might be a while before I get to visit Helsinki again, anyway.”

Sisko Vaara smiled to her brother, and stood up.

”You want to see Helsinki? Tell you what, brother – there's a party at the New Student House, put together by some of the guys at the Savonian Nation. It's starting any moment now. You want to have more to drink? There'll be cheaper drinks there.”

”Money's no issue to me, you know that”, Lieutenant Arvo Vaara said, straightening his back, ”but if you really want to show me how you academic people party in this here town, well, I am not going to put up a fight.”

Arvo stood up and offered his arm to his sister, who grabbed his brother with exaggarated vigor. The two then walked off.

Some seconds later, the young male waiter arrived with the glass of German white wine, to find the table empty. Annoyed, he took the glass back to the kitchen. He was pissed off for the stunt the young officer had pulled on him, but then he guessed the man was some sort of a celebrity. They had a habit of doing stuff like that.

And, anyway, it had been a very good-looking couple. That the waiter had to admit, despite everything.

"The Kappeli restaurant at the Esplanadi park was a popular summer spot in 1930s Helsinki."

Photo: The Finnish Military Museum.​

…


The old man with a respectable-sized mustache sat in a wheelchair. He didn't like it, but then his doctor had insisted on it.

”Mister President”, the man had said, looking at him gravely, ”I will not have you putting yourself into any unnecessary physical exertion. I will not have your death on my conscience, if I can help it at all.”

So, he sat in a wheelchair, and the President's Office had assigned a man to push him around in it. The man was a police officer, broad of shoulder and strong as an ox. It made Kyösti Kallio happy that he was also from the Ostrobothnian area like he was. Listening to the man's accent made him feel at home.

Now, though, the president had no time for idle talk. He was getting a visitor.

Positioned strategically in the hall, with his aide de camp standing by in the corner should anything be needed. Kallio watched the man enter the room. The presidential chauffeur had brought him over just minutes before.

It was a younger man than the president was. Well over a decade younger, in fact. The two men had a lot of history, though, having served together in the Eduskunta as early as 1907 – ten years before Finland's independence.

Sometimes one has to admit to being ancient, Kallio thought as his guest approached him.

”Mister President”, the man said, nodding.

With the help of his aide de camp and his ”bodyguard”, Kallio stood up from the wheelchair and shook the man's hand.

”Welcome to the Palace”, he said.

He then sat down, again helped to the wheelchair.

Together, the small entourage moved to the president's study, where Kallio asked his guest to sit down.

”I trust you know why I asked you to come here”, President Kyösti Kallio said to the younger man, who then nodded to him with serious look on his face.

”I think I do. But then, if you don't mind, I would very much like to hear it from you personally.”

Kyösti Kallio couldn't blame the man. These were strange days, and there were many rumours going around.

”All right. The long and short of it is that I want you to be the next Prime Minister of Finland. You know that we are in sore lack of one, due to very tragic circumstances, and I would be amiss of my duties as president if I did not appoint a new cabinet as soon as possible."

Juho Kusti Paasikivi nodded to the President of the Republic.

”I see. And what do the parties say?”

Kallio smiled.

”The Agrarians and the SDP are ready to support you. I've already assurances of that, I've spoken with Tanner and my own party's leadership. You'll have to talk with the National Coalition yourself, it being your own crowd. But I can't see them opposing you, honestly speaking. The rest is on you.”

”I see”, Paasikivi repeated. Kallio could see the wheels turning inside his head.

Then, the diplomat looked up and frowned to the man in the wheelchair.

”No perkele”, he said and shook his head.

”It can't be helped. I'll take up the offer, Mister President. So help me God.”

….

"The new Finnish Prime Minister, J.K. Paasikivi.
Paasikivi, who just recently worked as the Finnish ambassador to Sweden, will lead a coalition cabinet of his own National Coalition Party, the Agrarians and the Social Democrats."

Dagens Nyheter, August 22nd, 1939.​

....


Notes:

[1] Talkoot. Finnish harvest in the 1930s worked through a system of mutual assistance where the villagers helped each other out in turn, to make it possible to have a large-enough workforce at each farm without needing to hire extra workers for the harvest season. The people taking part in the harvest bee did not get paid, but the master of the farm was responsible for providing hearty-enough meals to give them energy to complete a heavy day's work.

[2] The village's name translates literally into ”Moose Bay”.

[3] ”Menkee pojat kottiin ja pesulle. Työ ootta likasia ku elukat!”


...

To Be Continued

 

[Utgard96]

"The new Finnish Prime Minister, J.K. Paasikivi.
Paasikivi, who just recently worked as the Finnish ambassador to Sweden, will lead a coalition cabinet of his own National Coalition Party, the Agrarians and the Social Democrats."

oh dear

 

[DrakonFin]

SOURCES FROM THE FINNISH NATIONAL ARCHIVAL SYSTEM

Vol I.


The Second Paasikivi Cabinet

Prime Minister: Juho Kusti Paasikivi (National Coalition Party)

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Väinö Voionmaa (Social Democratic Party)

Minister of Justice: Oskari Lehtonen (National Coalition Party)

Minister of the Interior: Mauno Pekkala (Social Democratic Party)

Second Minister of the Interior: Urho Kekkonen (Agrarian League)

Minister of Defence: Arvi Oksala (National Coalition Party)

Minister of Finance: Risto Ryti (Progress Party)

Minister of Education: Uuno Hannula (Agrarian League)

Minister of Agriculture: Viljami Kalliokoski (Agrarian League)

Second Minister of Agriculture: Juho Koivisto (Agrarian League)

Minister of Transport and Public Works: Väinö Salovaara (Social Democratic Party)

Minister of Trade and Industry: Pekka Heikkinen (Agrarian League)

Minister of Social Affairs: Karl-August Fagerholm (Social Democratic Party)

Second Minister of Social Affairs: Oskari Reinikainen (Social Democratic Party)

Minister of Supply: Rainer von Fieandt (unaffiliated)[1]

Minister without portfolio: Ernst von Born (Swedish People's Party)[2]


Comments:

"President Kyösti Kallio bestowed the responsibility to put together a new Finnish cabinet to J.K. Paasikivi on August 18th, 1939, three days after he had regained consciousness following his stroke and accident in early August. According to extant sources, Kallio arrived to Paasikivi as his first choice after conferring with remaining members of the Cajander cabinet, with the leadership of the major parliamentary parties, and with the chairman of the Defence Council, C.G.E. Mannerheim. In retrospect we can say that Mannerheim's opinion probably had a lot of weight. Per Kallio's own diary notes from August 16th, the wounded Field Marshal counselled the president (via telephone) to choose a "reliable old hand" who could keep his head cool in difficult circumstances. The recent demands by the Soviet Union, and the deterioration of the political situation in Europe were also significant matters in terms of the president's decision...

...While the name of the Prime Minister found its way to the press already on the 22nd, the entire composition of the Second Paasikivi Cabinet would only be made public in the afternoon of August 23rd...

...The Paasikivi cabinet was made of ministers from most parties in the Eduskunta. The cabinet was in significant ways based on the previous Cajander cabinet, with eight of its ministers having portfolios also in the new cabinet. The biggest change was replacing positions previously held by the Progress Party with the National Coalition Party ministers in the cabinet coalition, a change that raised some bitterness among the Progressives, especially in the wake of Cajander's death. The NCP's Oskari Lehtonen replaced the unaffiliated professional Rautavaara as the Minister of Justice, and the party's Arvi Oksala took Niukkanen's now vacant spot as the Minister of Defence. The Progress Party's Eljas Erkko, for a handful of days the Acting Prime Minister of Finland, relinquished his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs to the SDP's Väinö Voionmaa. The bargain that finally pacified the Progressives, to an extent, was Väinö Tanner's personal decision to relinquish his position as Minister of Finance to the Progress Party's rising star, Risto Ryti, until then the Governor of the Bank of Finland...

..In the new cabinet, the position of the Agrarians weakened somewhat. Not only did the party lose Defence, but Urho Kekkonen also lost his position as the Minister of the Interior, due to his campaign against the nationalist right having hurt his political standing. The Ministry of the Interior was taken over by SDP's Mauno Pekkala. In the interest of continuity, though, Kekkonen was kept on as the Second Minister of the Interior. Another sop to the Agrarian leadership was bumping Pekka Heikkinen to the Minister of Trade and Industry to replace SDP's Voionmaa, while Viljami Kalliokoski took Heikkinen's position as the Minister of Agriculture...

...All in all, the new cabinet included five Social Democrats, five Agrarians, three National Coalition ministers, one Progressive, one member of the Swedish People's Party and, in time, one unaffiliated professional minister. Only the right-wing Patriotic People's Movement was excluded from the coalition several foreign papers called a "true popular front" in the days after it was first announced..."

(Comment excerpts from Juuso Kiveliö: Ojasta allikkoon: Cajanderin hallitus ja elokuun kriisi uudessa tarkastelussa [3], Uusin Suomi Kustannusosakeyhtiö, Helsinki, 2006.)

...

"The situation remains unclear."

Helsingin Sanomat, page 2, August 21st, 1939.​

Notes:

[1] The Ministry of Supply (Kansanhuoltoministeriö, Folkförsörjningsministeriet) would be founded in early September 1939 "to secure the well-being of the population, and to safeguard the economic affairs and the material defence preparedness" of Finland.

[2] The addition of von Born, the chairman of the Swedish People's Party, as a minister without portfolio was a concession towards the SPP in the interest of national unity.

[3] ”Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: A new look into the Cajander cabinet and the August Crisis”.

...


To Be Continued

 

[Utgard96]

So she got in? Or is this just a framing device?

 

[DrakonFin]

So she got in? Or is this just a framing device?

It is basically a framing device. More "sources" will appear in the future as well, in the same style.

As for Nora's efforts, to quote the Helsingin Sanomat, "the situation remains unclear".

 

[DrakonFin]

"A farmer's daughter taking a break from harvest work in North Karelia."

​

”When I finally left behind the land of the Soviets and returned to Finland in the dying days of August, what did my homeland look like? I must not lie to you: it appeared to me like a mirage. It glowed in my eyes like a dream. It was like a young maid at the crossroads, sweet, honest, and unblemished. Something precious, yet something that would, could not last as it was for much longer.”

Olavi Paavolainen: Sirpein ja vasaroin (”With Hammers and Sickles”), 1947.



Nineteen: The Maid at the Crossroads

The traditional personification of Finland is the Maid of Finland. Used in fiction and art since the 19th century [1], the Maid makes one of its earliest truly iconic appearances in Edvard Isto's painting Hyökkäys (”The Attack”) in 1899. In the painting, the determined young woman, with a flowing straw-blonde hair, a white dress and a blue sash flying in the wind, protects the traditional Finnish laws and rights (represented by a heavy book titled ”LEX” in its arms) against the aggression of a two-headed eagle which can be seen looming ominously over the Maid with its wings outstretched. The belligerent eagle is of course Tsarist Russia and the context of the painting is the first period of Russification Finland was subjected to during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II at the turn of the century.

Since Finnish indepence was won, the Maid of Finland was usually depicted accompanied with the white and blue cross flag of Finland. The Maid was thought to represent the very physical shape of the Republic of Finland, too, inside its 1920 borders reminescent of a female figure in a dress, tipping one of its toes into the Baltic and extending its hands up towards the Arctic Sea.

In June 1939 Finland was visited by General Sir Walter Kirke, the British officer who had already in 1924-25 worked in Finland to offer assistance in developing the young republic's armed forces.[2] During a dinner with then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eljas Erkko, Kirke told those present that since his last visit, ”Finland has come of age as a beautiful young lady”. How well Kirke was in the know about the domestic depictions and understanding of the Maid of Finland is not known, but it was the context in which his comment was understood by the hosts. ”The number of suitors, though”, continued Kirke, ”seems to have grown uncomfortably large for the maid. But I understand that she considers the weather too hot for the touch of a dance partner's hand. She does not particularly care to join anyone for a dance, but would rather sit the next dance out”. Kirke ended his comment by saying that Britain understands the need to maintain the honor of this Maid of Finland, a view in which the Finns present could join with the hearty applause.

In his 1947 book Sirpein ja vasaroin, the Finnish writer Olavi Paavolainen invokes this same image of Finland as an innocent maid, ”sweet, honest and unblemished” as he saw the nation in late summer 1939. This view is quite understandable. Paavolainen had spent several months in the USSR in 1939, to gather material for a new travel book to follow his well-known collection of reportage and essays, Kolmannen valtakunnan vieraana (”As a Guest of the Third Reich”), from 1936. The Soviet reality, had made a distinct impression on Paavolainen during his stay, perhaps violently so. In the event, upon hearing the news of the events in Finland in mid-August, Paavolainen finally decided to return to his home country on the last week of August. By all accounts, the writer's acclimatization back to the Finnish reality took some time and effort.

Due to various reasons, though, Paavolainen's planned book about Stalin's USSR, for which he had many notes and a lot of material, was not realized as planned. The book would be completed only in 1947, and then in a quite different form from what the member of the Tulenkantajat literary group [3] had originally planned. The 1947 book is a reflection of the Soviet realities of 1939, taken together with the events of the Second World War that followed, and mixed with influences from Paavolainen's previous experiences in Hitler's Germany as well.

Paavolainen the writer and keen observer of things had returned to a Finland where the news of the signing of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany on August 22nd had already been mulled over for a few days. For many a Finnish layman who had recently been worried over the growing international tensions in Europe, the pact between the two totalitarian powers seemed like a relief. The German and Soviet regimes were natural ideological enemies, and in the prevailing conditions it would thus seem that a war between the two nations would be a realistic culmination to the political trouble Europe was experiencing. With the pact, this particular threat appeared to diminish significantly.

But then this view of European politics would have been myopic at best. In June, at the same diplomatic event General Kirke had appeared in, Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim had outlined the three options he saw for the political development between the major powers in Europe in the recent future to the British ambassador to Finland, Thomas Snow: one, a treaty between Britain and the USSR; two, a treaty between Germany and the USSR; and three, no binding treaties being agreed to between the powers at all. Like Mannerheim said to Snow, the second option would be the most dangerous for Finland. Now, just two months later, the most dangerous option for Finland had just been realized.

When the so-called Oslo states's foreign ministers met in Brussels on the 22nd, Finland did not send a minister of its own to the event due to the ongoing cabinet reshuffle. The new Foreign minister could not then start his stint with joining other Nordic governments and the king of Belgium in their pious joint wishes for peace and harmony in Europe. When the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, then visited Finland on August 24th, though, Voionmaa could meet him to receive an American ”thank you” for the well-known debt-paying nation of Finland.

The implications of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed by the German and Soviet high contracting parties in the early afternoon of August 22nd, did raise some discussion between the Finnish political and military leadership on the last week of August, a week of summery heat and packed beaches by the sea across Europe. The newly-appointed Foreign Minister, Väinö Voionmaa, summoned the German ambassador to Finland, Wipert von Blücher, to his presence on August 25th to allow him to shed some light into the recent German-Soviet deal. Von Blücher, by all accounts in personal terms a sincere friend of Finland, was quick to assure Voionmaa that the pact would not incur negative consequences for the Finnish nation. For the benefit of von Blücher, it needs to be said that the ambassador did not at this time yet know of the secret additional protocol to the pact, famously dividing Eastern Europe into mutually agreed spheres of influence for Germany and the USSR, and did thus not need to actively deceive the Finnish minister.

Rumours that the German-Soviet pact did in fact include designs upon Finland and the three smaller Baltic states did make their appearance in the Finnish press and public discussion already in the last week of August, though. The Aamulehti of Tampere for example speculated in its editorial already on the 23rd about the potential concessions the Germans had made to Stalin at the expense of the smaller nations to get their bargain with the Soviet dictator. There were views about among the Finnish nationalist right to the effect that Germany had already ”betrayed” Finland. This view of course includes a clear error: Finland was not a German ally, but had consistently through the thirties tried to distance itself from German influence, aiming for neutrality and orienting itself politically towards the Scandinavian states. Germany owed nothing to Finland, and it thus was actually the Finns who had betrayed themselves by thinking that in all conditions, it would be in the German interest to try to oppose any and all growth of Soviet influence in the Baltic Sea area.

Unlike for much of the ordinary people, still on their summer holidays, the last week of August was a week of hard work for the diplomats and top politicians of Europe. In a few nations, it was a very busy one for the soldiers as well. While there were some rather desperate last-minute attempts to broker a mutually acceptable solution for the outstanding issues between Poland and Hitler's Germany, and between Germany, Britain and France, at this point nothing would stop Europe's descent into war. After Stalin had snubbed the British and the French advances for mutual defensive arrangements, and after the last-minute deal between Hitler and Stalin had been struck, the German Führer was now ready to start realizing the plans and designs he had towards Germany' eastern neighbour. The date for the German attack had been originally set for the 26th – in the event, the objective conditions on the ground conspired to move the date forward a few days. On August 30th, then, at 4.30 in the morning, the German war plan was put practically into motion.

The war caught the maid of Finland, like most of Europe, in her bathing suit.

…

"Beach life in summery Helsinki in August 1939."​

...


September 2009

The young woman hesitated at the street corner. The Finnish street names said nothing to her, and neither of the crossing streets sounded like the one she had memorized at the hotel. The one she thought she had memorized.

Maybe someone, like Ericsson or, what, Tohatsu, could invent a map they could put in a phone one of these days?, she thought to herself, or a program-thing that tells you where you are and where you should be going through an ear piece or something? It would help stupid people who neglect to grab a tourist map along when they leave their hotel.

Just a thought.

Flipping a coin in her mind, she settled on the option on the left.

Passing the incongruous collection of buildings this part of the city seemed to be made of, derelict-looking post-war apartment buildings alternating with hypermodern boxes of angular, reinforced glass and faux-rusty steel, the architectural style that had apparently grabbed all of Europe by storm since 2005 or so. The young woman had for long assumed that somewhere in Brussels or Geneva, maybe, there was a shadowy a cabal of middle-aged men in corduroy jackets, goatees and thick-rimmed glasses who decided on these things, chain-smoking French cigarettes as they did so.

A gamut of Gauloises geeks, the woman thought and smiled to herself. Maybe any year now, one of them would spill his wine, or stumble on a poodle, and they would then accidentally nudge Europe on another architectural track.

Nora had walked here through a part of town they called Töölönlahti, a collection of angular city blocks apparently undergoing a major rebuild. Now, just before the major north-south Liberty Boulevard [1] running to the city centre, she arrived to the area where she was supposed to go.

Or so she thought.

It was early afternoon on a Saturday. There were people about, but then for someone who had lived most of her life in Brooklyn, it seemed pretty placid, for a weekend. As Nora crossed the street at random street lights, she almost bumped into a knot of sports fans. There were groups of young men about, in color-coded clothing, brandishing scarves and chugging beer from cans they carried around. Nora thought she saw fans of two teams- a red-white one, and a yellow-black one. She had no idea what sport they were all about, and wasn't really invested in the thing enough to stop one of the small groups of men to ask them.

Some of the men tried to make Nora to stop, though, and offer beer to her. She just gave them the cold shoulder. Nora used to say yes to free beer back in the day, every time it was even remotely possible, or to any free drink at all, but now things were different.

Maybe in another life.

After another seemingly random choice of turns, Nora arrived to a small open area between lines of buildings. It was park-ish, she thought and started looking for a street sign somewhere.

Sure enough, in a minute she found one that said Olympiapuisto.

Lo and behold, it was the right place.

Walking along to path towards the centre of the small park she looked around herself but her eyes could not pinpoint what she was looking for.

Soon she reached the concrete water feature in the middle of the park. Next to it was a large, newish metal plate with some text in it, and a picture of a buildind with a single elegant tower seemingly carved into the steel.

”In this location stood the Helsinki Olympic Stadium”, said the text, in Finnish and English. It said nothing more, and Nora felt kind of let down by it. Why pique my interest about a building that is no longer here? Why is it no longer here? What happened to it and why?

Come to think of it, Nora wasn't quite sure if there even ever had been Olympic games in Helsinki. But then an exhaustive supply of sports-related trivia certainly was not one of her strong suits, anyway.

Nora sat down on a modern-style bench some meters away from the water feature. There was nobody in sight but a small bunch of kids in black, hanging out in the corner of the small park. From where they were sitting, they looked very much like AnarGoths. They probably were AGs, she decided. There were AGs all over the world. A lot of people liked bands like the Messiah Moneylenders or the Krakd Skulls.

Sitting there on the bench all alone, Nora felt a familiar itch on her arm. Rolling back her sleeve, she again saw the uneven grid of criss-crossing scars there.

Don't scratch it, she told herself again, it'll only get worse.

It was psychosomatic, she had decided by now. It had been the same thing ever since she got out of jail.

Glancing again at the AG kids, especially the one girl that very much reminded Nora of a younger iteration of herself, she was distracted by movement in the corner of an eye. Off a side street, a red car had appeared, and it slowed down to stop by the side of the street. It was an older model European car, of the kind of ”boxy, rounded a bit around the edges” style late 70s European cars were. This one, though, was in a very good condition. By the looks of it, the car could have rolled off a production line if not yesterday, then probably last week.

Someone loves this car very much.

The car's driver got out, and it did not really surprise Nora to see that it was a familiar figure. The man took a look around himself, and then nodded to her. Closing the car door, he took off towards her across the otherwise deserted street.

”Hello”, the man said, ”is this seat taken?”

”Go ahead, sit down”, Nora answered to Jyri Rantanen, the white-bearded man from the Finnish National Archival System, ”I though you had forgotten our meeting.”

The man shrugged.

”Problem with the old thing”, he said, nodding towards the car, ”Sorry.”

The man sat down heavily and then looked at the sky, like expecting rain at any time.

The group of kids Nora had just been looking at now walked past them, some of them looking at Rantanen and his car. One of the boys, with a particularly nasty look about him, looked directly at the bearded man and suddenly threw up his right hand.

”Sieg heil!”, he yelled, his voice dripping irony, ”Nordlicht!”

Rantanen glared at him, but said nothing. He kept his eyes on the boy as he stalked off.

”The kids these days – what do they learn at school, exactly? I drive a god-damned VAU and he thinks that makes me a Fascist? Really, I am not even a Civil Guardsman!”

Nora didn't understand.

”What?”

”Those guys in grey uniforms, with an 'S' on their sleeves and on their vehicles. Civil Guard.”[5]

”It thought they were security guards, or something.”

”Well, they are, kind of. And then in some ways they are also like the police. Sometimes.”

Nora shook her head.

”They can't be both, that doesn't make sense.”

Rantanen smiled.

”Well, you're an American. Unlike our Finnish youth, you have an excuse to be ignorant of our history. They didn't teach Finnish history in your school, did they?”

I didn't much care for learning about American history those days, either, Nora thought but said nothing. She looked at Rantanen's briefcase instead, meaningfully.

The man smiled.

”There's something I can do for you... But it will cost you.”

”Money's no object to me. I learned that a few weeks go, actually. For the first time in my life.”

The inheritance had certainly been a surprise. Nora wasn't quite sure how to take it even now.

Rantanen's smile grew wider.

”I am... kidding, isn't that how say it. I am not going to charge you any money, not really. As far as I am concerned, it...”

Rantanen's voice was cut out by the sound of an explosion. It could not have been more than some hundred meters off, Nora thought later. A rush of adrenaline washed over her.

After a brief silence, there was the sound of shouting, and some car horns. And then she heard emergency vehicles.

Rantanen shook his head mournfully.

”Not this again.”


…


I am a friend of bruises

I just can't get enough of them

And so why even a shark or a bull

Would not keep playing with you

Here I am again without a helmet


And soon I'll be licking new wounds

Deep and salty ones

When nothing feels like anything

Pain is a substitute for a friend

...


Notes:

[1] At this time, apparently, sometimes called Aura after the Aura River running through the city of Turku, the centre of the traditional province of Finland Proper.

[2] One of the most well-known recommendations of the Kirke Committee was to base Finnish military aviation predominately on bombers and recon aircraft, floatplanes operating out of coastal and lakeside bases. The plan, which was welcomed by the Finnish Air Force at the time, was in retrospect very appropriate for the time when it was made.

[3] A group of young writers and artists, seeking to ”let some air” into the stuffy Finnish cultural milieu by ”opening windows to Europe”. Paavolainen and Mika Waltari were among the best-known members of the group.

[4] Vapauden puistokatu.

[5] Suojeluskunta.


...


To Be Continued

 

[Pexa]

Olavi Paavolainen: Sirpein ja vasaroin (”With Hammers and Sickles”), 1947.

Ah, perhaps he will be a bit less divisive, then. Or even more so, should he aim for controversy (as he is often said to have done). Unless this is as heavy a brick as the OTL Synkkä Yksinpuhelu is...

And now, the WAR!