And now back to real English:
@JariL
“Finland fought with the Nazis ergo Finnish leaders were Nazis or at least Nazi sympathizers”. To me that explanation is far too simple and it’s consequence is that there were only a few bad individuals that are to be blamed. Shame to the leaders and absolution to the people;-)
Well, "the people" can hardly be blamed for much with the way they were kept completely in the dark by the leadership (often for good and justifiable reasons, I may add), not just as things were happening but in fact all the way up to the most recent times.
So if we want to analyse responsibility, we can't avoid going to the leaders. But that doesn't mean we need to adopt an "either-or" attitude. They may have done some things right and other things wrong. Or they my have done too much of this and too little of the other.
In my book this issue is looked at in the chapter called "The Finnish Choice", particularly the sub-chapter headed "A Question of Degree" (p. 168).
It was this way of viewing things that I grew up with in relation to my own country's traumatised and morally confusing WWII history, and so it became one of the alternative approaches I felt that I, as a Danish person, perhaps had to bring to the table when I wrote the book we're discussing here. It's just a little unpleasant to go to a dinner party where all the other guests have to say is: "Either you lick our Finnish arse and lick it completely clean with no questions asked, or we shall hate you and refuse to listen to you anything you have to say and we shall chase you out of the building with any means available to us."