krimsonglass51 wrote:To any of the Finnish forum members, if Glantz's work does not do an adequate job at detailing the Finnish front, are there any general histories of the Eastern Front that do?
I'm not sure if any of these works have appeared in English. But, there was a glut of, Finnish language, research coming out (semi-) recently trying to "correct" Cold War misconceptions of Finnish World War 2 history, in particular focusing on German involvement in the summer of 1944. The most Finnish Stronkian of these researchers even came up with a term
torjuntavoitto (which I'm not going to translate as it doesn't make any sense in English) implying that Finland won WW2.
Their main point was that Finland had some censorship going on post WW2, which was a fair enough point. Historical relations between Finland- Nazi/ Imperial Germany had been downplayed for political reasons (also pretty much true) and that the "victory" in eastern Finland in 1944 was due to the Germans, which is extremely problematic/ totally wrong on multiple levels.
As I said, I'm not sure if that kind of stuff has been translated. Also I wouldn't be surprised if older material, translated from Finnish to English, concerning Finland in World War 2 has a massive political bias (in my experience mainly hard Left/ seriously hippy, new Marxist "Nordic third way")/ has been censored.
As for Glantz, judging from the quotes he has seemed to have watered down the Pravda approved cool-aid he's been drinking. But, he still uses the word sordid to describe the relationship between Finland and Nazi Germany, which is enough for me to not read anything else he writes.
Sid Guttridge wrote:Hi Art,
If you scroll to the notes at the bottom of Ziemke's account, you will see that he cites only a single Soviet source, and that is not a primary one.
I would suggest that Ziemke's account might suffer even more from "one-sidedness" than Glantz is being accused of!
Cheers,
Sid.
That's the disappointing thing, for me, with that extract of Ziemke that Art posted. Very one-sided i.e. all German, and while his German sources may have understood the situation in Finland in the summer of 1944 well, don't think Ziemke really understood what his sources were saying.
Starts off with talking about how Finland had been left behind by the technological advances of the war (fair one) then goes to talk about how they'd misinterpreted Russian SIGINT, which, as far as I'm aware was a technological area that Finland was quite excellent at (Finns were/ had been stationed in Germany running training courses for Germany Sigs/Int personnel).
He seems to be aware that East Karelia was a war aim for Finland, but doesn't correlate that with the Finnish Army's lack of strength on the Karelian Isthmus. He mentions Finnish units getting transferred from eastern Karelia into the Karelian Isthmus, but doesn't seem to get how that changed the balance of forces in the later stages of fighting.
As with, seemingly, every account of summer 1944, he mentions the E-boats rushing panzerfausts/shrecks to Finland. In common with every other account, he doesn't mention that most of these never made it to the front and that the majority of handheld AT weapons that were used had arrived much earlier. He also mentions shipment of tanks, without the caveat that the tanks used in combat had arrived in 1943, the 1944 shipments entered service post war. He claims the German 112 DIv repulsed the landings in Viipuri bay, which is a very problematic claim. Furthermore he describes this division as having just arrived, which is true. He doesn't mention that even before it "repulsed" the landings it had been ordered to leave Finland, which it did straight after that battle.
Finnish sources barely mention the 112 division. If there was one thing the Finnish army wasn't short of in mid/ late 1944 it was understrength inf divs and it's involvement was short and not particularly meaningful. Finnish sources do mention (not always favourably) the 303 Assault Gun Brigade, the Germans only other ground contribution to the fighting there then, which was used in vitally important battles. Also the air detachment gets a lot of attention in Finnish sources. It's contribution was very valued.
To give credit to Ziemke, he does mention food, which is often ignored by non Finnish (and some Finnish) sources as being shipped to Finland from Germany to FInland in summer 1944. The better Finnish sources I've read discuss the food situation extensively.
Oh yes, and from the Finnish perspective, the extract of Ziemke stops just when the fighting got really, really, really serious.
Even worse, the next chapter in the extract Art posted discusses Partisan's. Opposed to what Hollywood will tell you, Soviet Partisans were sub ISIS level "human" filth who specialise in raping and murdering children.
So, yes a B for effort (read a lot of reasonably accurate German sources) for ZIemke, a D+ for effect.
P.S.
Torjuntavoitto = Defensive Victory, which can (I suppose) be considered two words which can be compounded together to create a grammatically correct, logical, concept. There is no word for oxymoron in Finnish.