Steady wrote:Accounts of shootings of wounded soviets are very common in Finnish war stories. Normally it goes about like this:
Finns advance, and capture Soviet positions with casualties inside. Some of the "dead" turn out to be faking it, and start shooting when finns inspect the casualties. In many of the stories, one of the finns gets hit. After this finns shoot everybody twice to make sure they dont do that again.
I believe these stories are true for the most part, since stories of soviets fighting till the last breath, refusing to surrender etc. are also common.
This has been a very interesting reading. While the details of Lemmetti encirclements cannot be known for sure, we can try to emulate the historians, as there are I believe two "schools" of them.
First school is about the exact information that can be found and be validated from the trusted archives. What can be validated is the truth. Second school is the same, except the conclusion is not the sheer facts, but thesis as what was the
likeliest event that took place.
A well known example of these two schools arguing with each other is the discussion w. Heikki Ylikangas vs his opponents: how many own soldiers did the Finns execute? Ylikangas argues: likely ca. 250. His opponents argue that only the 62 (was that the number they state) is the truth and nothing but the truth.
I do not know, generally speaking I tend to think along the lines of "likeliest" history.
Likely, the number of exectuted soldiers is 62 >
X < 250 ?
Here is a very interesting Thesis I found from another thread in War Crimes section some time ago. I believe it is well worth the read: American Soldiers and POW Killing in the European Theatre of World war II.
http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cgi/viewcon ... xt=histtad
I try to emulate the thesis. Questions as well as answers are my beliefs at the time of writing:
Did Finnish Army order executions of (at least certain elements of) Soviet Army? I have never heard they have given an order like this. This has not even been hinted anywhere?
Did certain units, at times, decide "no prisoners today"?. I believe it is likely this might have happened.
Did Soviet POWs face fatal consequences if they did not fight / surrender in "fair" manner as from the Finnish point of view? I have read several accounts of this. For example the Soviet groups of men escaping away from Raate road, met wondering lost in forests: I read that the whole group was often gunned down if one of them refused to surrender.
Was the Soviet POW hanged upside down from a tree, as he was found wearing Finnish boots? I see it likely this happened. Not a good idea to get captured wearing dead opponent's boots?
And finally: do these events darken the image of the "Good War" (from thesis), the justified war the Winter War is cosidered among Finns? Absolutely not. The more we learn, the more we can apppreciate the appaling condition people lived in the front lines.
I am sure isolated atrocities happened also in Finno-Soviet front, on both sides, although neither Army had a "no prisoner" order at any time?
As for Lemetti, the likely explanation is that the hospital bunker was destroyed among other bunkers as the battle raged on, either without realisation it was a hospital or because it was defended as any other bunker?
Mutilated bodies, ten or twenty of them? It seems plausible some individual(s)
could have done that, having entered the brutalization phase discussed in the Thesis. Or propaganda? Difficult to know
for sure? Then again, I've seen a picture of a captured Finn, made to walk bare foot on snow, eyes pearced via bayonets, before having been executed. if that happened, as it did
for sure, it
seems plausible that there were mutilated POWs in Lemetti as well? But I have seen absolutely no evidence killing POWs was a common practice by the soldiers of Finnish Army. Isolated events, yes, likely they happened
in more numerous cases than what we have learned so far.
But the morale of the Finnish Army as a whole did not break at any time on a general level.
Just my laymans take on this. I am happy to learn more. Pls read the thesis before answering though, so you understand where my points come from.
(Edit: fixed some typos)