Russian POW's

[Andy H]

How many Russians were taken prisoner in the Continuation War by the Finnish?

Also, were those Russians captured by the Germans in the 20th Army sent to German run camps or handed over to Finnish authority's?

Andy H

[Rarog]

How many Russians were taken prisoner in the Continuation War by the Finnish?

Also, were those Russians captured by the Germans in the 20th Army sent to German run camps or handed over to Finnish authority's?

Andy H

Acc. to Finnish sources out 64.188 POWs 18.700 died in captivity. 14232 POWs died in the first year of war.

I believe they were under Finnish authority.

[KalaVelka]

How many Russians were taken prisoner in the Continuation War by the Finnish?

Also, were those Russians captured by the Germans in the 20th Army sent to German run camps or handed over to Finnish authority's?

Andy H

Acc. to Finnish sources out 64.188 POWs 18.700 died in captivity. 14232 POWs died in the first year of war.

I believe they were under Finnish authority.

These numbers are from hardcore Finnish commie L-M Mikkola so I would not trust them.

Kasper

[Rarog]

How many Russians were taken prisoner in the Continuation War by the Finnish?

Also, were those Russians captured by the Germans in the 20th Army sent to German run camps or handed over to Finnish authority's?

Andy H

Acc. to Finnish sources out 64.188 POWs 18.700 died in captivity. 14232 POWs died in the first year of war.

I believe they were under Finnish authority.

These numbers are from hardcore Finnish commie L-M Mikkola so I would not trust them.

Kasper

First of all, how does political views of a researcher discredit the presented facts?

Second, those numbers were taken from a Finnish article by Pietola, not from the book of Mikkola.

[KalaVelka]

First of all, how does political views of a researcher discredit the presented facts?

Are you kidding me? So all the BS (if you wanna examples, just look at the other topic started by Aleksei (hidden origins of winter war) that Molotov and pals spread in the late 30's and 40's had nothing to do with that they were hardcore commies which commanded the most bloodthirsty nation ever?

Second, those numbers were taken from a Finnish article by Pietola, not from the book of Mikkola.

Didnt it turn up in the "Finnish death camps" in the H&WC section that those numbers were from Mikkola?

Kasper

[cyberdaemon]

if 14232 out of 18.700 POWs died in the first year of war ? what about other years of war ? then the dying suddenly stoped ? or finns captured
POWs only in first year of war ?

[Mikko H.]

if 14232 out of 18.700 POWs died in the first year of war ?

Rarog stated that during the Continuation War Finns took 64,188 POWs, and 18,700 of them died in captivity. 14,232 POWs died during the first winter of the war (1941-42). These numbers sound about right, but I don't have any sources at hand here at work.

what about other years of war ? then the dying suddenly stoped ? or finns captured POWs only in first year of war ?

Finns captured most of the POWs during the early, offensive phase of the war from July to December 1941.

As is obvious from the numbers quoted above, for the Soviet POWs the first winter was the worst. Finns were ill prepared to receive such numbers of POWs, and things were made worse by the bad food supply situation in the country. Even the official Finnish history of the Continuation War uses the word 'catastrophe' to describe what took place. After Mannerheim found out what was happening in the POW camps, he intervened and conditions improved.

[Juha Hujanen]

Some 64000 Russian POW's were taken by Finns between 41-44.18550 of them died during their imprisoment (29%).

Most of POW's were captured during 41:

July-c.1000
August-c.15300
September-20447
October-12013
November-4876
December-3082

Between 42-June 44 only few hunreds POW's /year were captured,because there were no major battles.In summer 44 a bit more POW's were captured but not many because Finns were on defence.

Deaths among POW's between 41-44 were:

June 41-November 41:980
December 41-May 42:12171
June 42-November 42:3907
December 42-May 43:643
June 43-November 43:244
December 43-May 44:162
June 44-November 44:160

Source-Jatkosodan Historia 6

POW's captured by German 20th Army were kept in German run POW camps and Finns had no authority to them.Some 18000 Russians POW's were under German control in North.Russian POW's captured in North were send to other areas and likewise transfered to North.

Cheers/Juha

[JariL]

Hi,

The 64.000 number of POW's is for the Winter War and the Continuation War put together. Number of POW's in the Continuation War was about 57.000 as Juha already pointed out.

POW's were treated very well during the Winter War. Actually so well that it led to bitter comments from the men fighting at the front who thought that it was intolerable that the prisoners were for example eating better than Finnish front line soldier. It was not that simple in reality of course but the image prevailed. But Soviet POW's actually sent a letter addressed to Marshall Mannerheim where they thanked for the good treatment before they were returned to Soviet Union after the war.

In the beginning of the Continuation War things turned out very different. The biggest surprise for Finns was the large number of prisoners. It was not expected based on the experiences of the Winter War where encircled Soviet troops were extremely reluctant to surrender. Not so during Continuation war where whole divisions surrendered. This was partly the effect of wide spread defaitism due to German success, partly thanks to the increase in the fire power of the Finnish artillery that could "soften up" any encircled troops.

The second factor was that there was no centralised administaration for POW's. The task was given on ad hoc basis to the Civil Guard (Suojeluskunta). I don't doubt that the attitudes towards the Soviet POW's had also hardened after the Winter War and that some of the people responsible for the POW's also remembered the negative reaction of the front line soldiers during the Winter War.

I also suspect that the authorities actually believed that they would be relieved from the POW's very soon, because Germany would win the war and the POW's would go back home. In addition the prisoners were categorised by their national background and their ratios reflected this -"Russians" getting the smallest rations and those of "Finnish" origin the biggest. This could perhaps be called Finnish version of what the Japanese called the "victory disease".

Then you add the effects of the general lack of food in the country and it is not hard to see why the consequences were what they were. As has been stated already on many occasions the situation improved very quickly when the military took over the command of the camps.

How many actually died is a bit open question but the estimates have varied between 15.000 and 18.000+. Why the numbers differ is something that researches have to answer. It may for example be that volunteers and some of the prisoners exchanged with the Germans cover the difference. It can also be that some of the volunteers were later on marked as "dead" to make it easier for them to avoid being sent back to Soviet Union. But in any case the mortality of Soviet POW's in Finland was very large (ca. 30 %) during the first six months of the war and declined very rapidly after that to levels that can be called normal. Death also took the biggest toll among those POW's that belonged to category "Russians".

Regards,

Jari

[Topspeed]

Acc. to Finnish sources out 64.188 POWs 18.700 died in captivity. 14232 POWs died in the first year of war.

Slightly over 13 000 died outa 56 718 pows during the first year.
During the first year 23% died, which is agreeably 13 151 too many.

Source: Jatkosodan Historia part 6

Nothing even remotely close to what happened in the Soviet camps to the finnish pows.

[cyberdaemon]

i did read from winterwar book that from some 500 russian POWs was asked if they would like to fight against soviet union.some 450 agreed , others didnt or were afraid.there comes two questions : is was there any units formed and used in CW and is that fact i told you true ?

[Sami_K]

Another point, not to be overlooked in this issue is that in many cases, after the Finnish "blitzkrieg" ( ) had routed the Soviet forces, large groups of Red Army soldiers simply escaped into the forests. In time, these groups emerged from hiding, often because of hunger.

The rations, calculated to keep a man alive, were inadequate if the person was already suffering malnourishment. This was another mistake made by the ad hoc adminstrations, not taking into account the possible 'bad shape' (nourishment wise) of the prisoners when captured.

Cheers,
Sami

[Chinaski1917]

I'm looking for information from anyone who may know on:

a.Finnish Intelligence against Soviet Union during the WWII

b.the fate of Russian POWs after the armistice of September 1944.

c.In particular im interested in the case of Stepan Petrichenko, Петриченко , Степан Максимович , a then GPU member arrested in 1941 in Finland. He was the leader of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 in Soviet Union. He was sent back in S.Union in 1944 and then arrested again in 1945 for reasons of counter-intelligence against the Soviet Union and participating in a terrorist counterevolutionary organisation and in favour of Finland.
Was the accusation true or false ? Are there other similar POWs ? Russian name of prosecutors do pop up in my search.

So far I have collected info on Stepan Petrichenko from these sites

in Russian
Russian wiki entry (url too long but easy to find)
http://militera.lib.ru/bio/sokolov/06.html
http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/drabkina_ea/01.html
http://militera.lib.ru/research/semanov_sn/index.html
http://www.hronos.km.ru/biograf/bio_p/p ... ko_sm.html
http://spymania.narod.ru/articles/spypl05.htm
http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/tulenev_iv/05.html

in English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Petrichenko
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html
http://www.marxist.com/History/Trotsky_was_right.html

in French
http://groupecri.free.fr/article.php?id=252#footnote17

in Spanish
Paul Avritch book Kronstadt 1921
http://athens.indymedia.org/local/webca ... jxrtxz.pdf

in Swedish
http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-40997/IJKron1921.htm



Thanks in advance for any comments.

[Tero T]

Some pictures of one POW camp somewhere in Karelia. Tero T

[Tero T]

Two more of same camp. These are from one photo album I have. I suspect these have been published before as I believe I have seen these in a book in the past. Regards Tero T