Finland's Nazi Past

Serbianna ^ | September 13, 2006 | Carl Savich

[Bokababe]

Martti Ahtisaari and Finland’s Nazi Past

At the time of the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 when Martti Ahtisaari was the President of Finland, his government sought to commemorate and to honor Finland’s Nazi SS volunteers from the Holocaust. This offers irrefutable evidence of Ahtisaari’s direct links for support of Nazism and Nazi revisionism. If Ahtisaari had bothered to check the decisions of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals, he would have found that that court held that all Waffen SS troops were war criminals guilty of war crimes and guilty of committing crimes against humanity, namely the mass murder of Jews. Ahtisaari lacks even an elementary understanding of the Holocaust and the role of the SS in the Final Solution.

In 1999, Martti Ahtisaari’s Finnish government supported official government plans to honor and to commemorate Finland’s Nazi Waffen SS violunteers during World War II. The Finnish government plan was to mark the graves of Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers who had been killed in the Soviet Union. Finland had over, 1,400 Finnish volunteers in the Nazi Waffen SS, 300 of whom were killed in the Ukraine and in the Caucasus. Finland concluded a secret agreement with Nazi Germany before the invasion of the USSR that would allow Finland to secretly send Finnish volunteers to Heinrich Himmler’s Waffen SS forces. Himmler formed a Finnish Waffen SS Volunteer Battalion from these Finnish troops called “Nordost”. This Finnish Battalion was attached to the “Nordland” Waffen SS Regiment of the 5th SS Division “Wiking”, one of the most brutal and fanatical Nazi SS Divisions of World War II, commanded by Felix Steiner.

Finnish Nazi SS troops formed the vanguard and spearheaded the German Wehrmacht assault against the Stalingrad and Caucasus regions in 1942 and advanced to the Grozny oil fields in Chechnya. This was the farthest Nazi advance into the Soviet Union by the Axis, spearheaded by Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers. It is important to remember that the Finnish government of Risto Ryti sent the Finnish Nazi SS volunteers. There was government action on the part of Finland. Ryti should have been prosecuted for war crimes and for genocide. But he never was. Finland’s Nazi past and role in the Holocaust was blurred and obscured by Finnish propaganda.

The memorial would consist of a small monument or plaque erected by Ahtisaari’s Finnish government at a burial site in southern Ukraine where the remains of 150 Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers are buried. Finns were initially considered non-Aryans because they belonged to the Finno-Ugric language group, not regarded as Indo-European under Nazi racist policy. Nevertheless, Himmler accepted Finns into the elite, racially pure, Waffen SS, as belonging to the Nordic racial stock and regarded Finns as among his best SS troops.

Finland’s Jewish groups protested to President Martti Ahtisaari because his government was subsidizing or financing the project. Gideon Bolotowsky, a Finnish Jewish leader, accused Ahtisaari of financing Nazism. Bolotowsky told Reuters: “They (the government) are giving money to a Nazi cause. They did not fight for Finland. …It is a mistake of the government.”

What is remarkable is that Ahtisaari’s government defended this honoring of Finnish Nazi SS war criminals. In a May 10, 1999 Reuters news story, it was reported:

“Officials defended the plan to commemorate the SS men, saying it would be a gesture of remembrance rather than approval.

‘All governments erect monuments or plaques to their war dead,’ said Heikki Hakala, executive director of the Society for Remembrance of the War Dead. ‘This (momument) would be to honour the fallen soldiers, not for any particular deed…’

An official at the ministry of education, which donated 500,000 markka ($91,000) to the society, said the government saw nothing wrong with the plan as there was no evidence the Finnish SS battalion was involved in any Nazi attrocities.”

In 1958, the Finnish government completely exonerated the Nazi SS volunteers and gave them full “combatant rights”.

Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement: “Just when the German government is applying legislation to strip such volunteers of their war pensions, Finland is acting to effectively vindicate Nazi units associated with war crimes and thus to balances the Holocaust by equaling perpetrators and victims.'’

Samuels asked Martti Ahtisaari to use his influence with the government to “desist from this act of historical revisionism.'’

Martti Ahtisaari and his governemtn defended the plan: “Officials defend the plan to commemorate the SS men, saying it would be a gesture of remembrance rather than approval.”

Samuels told Reuters that he had written to President Martti Ahtisaari that honoring Finnish Nazi SS volunteers would “betray the image of Finnish neutrality as much as it (would) offend the honor of the victims of Hitlerism.'’

The Paris-based European Jewish Congress said in a statement that Ahtisaari’s commemoration of the Finnish Nazi SS war criminals “is an offence to all victims of the Nazis and jeopardizes the educational objectives of the European Union member countries to combat racism and anti-Semitism.”

The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal held all Waffen SS members to be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why doesn’t Ahtisaari know this? Is he that ignorant? The Finnish Nazi SS volunteers enabled Hitler to murder Jews, Russians, Roma, and Sinti. Didn’t the Finnish leaders know about the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler? Didn’t they know about Kristallnacht in 1938 or the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935? Didn’t they know what Hitler intended to do with the Jews in the Soviet Union? Didn’t the Finnish government know about Hitler’s concept of lebensraum, under which he planned to exterminate the Russian population and settle Russia with ethnic Germans? Of course, Martti Ahtisaari doesn’t know about any of this?

If this doesn’t finally discredit the ICG and put the last nail in its coffin, nothing will. Fact is stranger than fiction. You could never make this up.

Martti Ahtisaari, as President of Finland, sought to honor and commemorate Finnish Nazi SS war criminals, war criminals held guilty by the Nuremberg Tribunal of committing crimes against humanity and of participation in the Final Solution, the genocide of European Jews. This supporter and financier of Nazi war criminals and of genocide is deciding the future status of Kosovo? The irony is unbelievable.

[TEXASPROUD]

The story of Special Forces very own Larry Thorne is in a book called, "Under Three Flags".

[kronos77]

True Nedic cooperated with Germans, but only in Serbia. Germans alocated small arms to Nedic and he formed his units that were only armed with light armsa nd largest they hade was 50 mm mortar. Nedic was rare man that said NO to Hitler. Hitler asked him to form unit for Eastern front, but he declined, saying "Ask for more labour force, ask for more ore, ask anything BUT THAT"

Ljotic was fascist, he formed ZBOR and even tried to rain units for eastern front, but Serbs refused to fight against Russians and he was forced to use them mostly as translators and aid to germn occupators, Ljotic was hated by Serbs.

here is a excerpt from book by Ruth Mitchell, She was sent in Serbia to fight with Chetniks of Draza Mihailovic

NOTE: Ms. Ruth Mitchell was a sister of General "Billy" Mitchell - the father of U.S. Air Force.

The Serbs choose war

pp 260-264

Document IV

A Jewish physician

"Thanks to the Serbs, the Yugoslav Jews had succeeded in saving and rescuing many of their compatriots from Germany and German-occupied countries... In Serbia... anti-Semitic feeling has never had any root. No German measures in Belgrade were able to upset the friendly relations between the Serbs and Jews... during the period when Serbian students and peasants were hung in the main square in Belgrade, the Serbs of the capital had sufficient courage to protest publicly their indignation at the treatment of the Jews.

The example of the Serbian people with regard to the Jews is unique in Europe...

Jews ...should show gratitude to the Serbian people, pointing out their noble acts, their humane feelings, and their high civic consciousness and culture...

pp 264-265

The preceding documents, only a few of many, give some indication of the extent and ferocity of the Croat crime against their utterly defenseless fellow countrymen and also of the really magnificent spirit of our allies and brothers, the Serbs. The thought of what the result will be is truly terrifying.

There is not a Serb alive who has not lost some relative dear to him murdered, with unimaginable torture, by a race whom the Serbs themselves rescued from what the Croats then called their "oppresor", Austria by those same Croats, even the identical men, who only twenty-three years ago received their "dear deliverers," their "dear brother-Slavs," with fervent aclamation and expressions of "undying gratitude and love."

If ever revenge massacres were justified they are justified in this case. But in the interests of world peace and of the remaining Serbs themselves, our splendid allies, every one of whom we value and want to save alive, we must prevent a postwar war of revenge in the Balkans

http://www.suc.org/culture/history/The_Serbs_Chose_War/mitchell.html

http://deuceofclubs.com/books/012serb.htm

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/mitchell.html

[kronos77]

Comparing hawaiians with islamic murderers_
Jesuss!

Anzway, Kosovo is part of souvereign nation, but Hawaii WERE independant before joined USA.

[finnman69]

From what I hear from relatives, at least the Finns are sitting up and paying attention to the recent muslim immigrant invasion of Swedish that is a cultural disaster for that country.

Perhaps it will spur a return to their core values, other than Nokia phones.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. also

2006israelwar or WOT

..................

[Levante]

Ah, yes. The Winter War. Finland lost 25,000 dead; Russia lost 200,000 dead.

[rmlew]

Excuse me but the Finns were in the Waffen SS, not the Death Squads or Concentration Camp service.
The Wafen SS were foreign volunteers, who signed up to fight the communists.
Finns had good reason to hate the communists. The USSR invaded neutral Finland in 1939.
Although the Finns fought valiantly, they lost. In 1941, Finland declared war on the USSR to regain territory recently lost and to liberate the Karelians, who had suffered horribly under the communists. Finland lost this war too. However its German allies, refused to leave Finland, leading to the Lapland war. Some Finns refused to end the fight against the USSR and joined the Germans here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Finland_in_World_War_II

Finns including JEws ended up fighting alongside Nazis only because the USSR had invaded in 1939.

[Little Ray]

I would go ahead and put up the memorial and tell the Jews to bugger off.

The Soviets invaded Finnland and the only folks who would help 'em were the Nazis. The allies wouldn't send them any aid 'cause the Swedes threated to join with the Germans (or something like that) and help them invade Norway. The Finns didn't really have any alternatives. The Finnish SS troops were fighing a brutal foe in defense of their homeland and have nothing to regret except their defeat and its consequences.

Put up the memorial.

[archy]

Finland's alliance with Germany during World War II was not motivated by any real support for Naziism among its people. It was a desire for retribution against the Russians. In 1939, the Russians launched an unprovoked invasion on Finland, known as The Winter War.

Known to Finns as the Winter War, or Talvisota. The Soviet Russians generally referred to it as the belya smert, the white death.

The badly outnumbered Finnish military put up a brave fight and inflicted tremendous casualties, but could not withstand the far larger Russian army.

Including foreign volunteers and recalled reservists, the Finns numbered around 200,000 soldiers in all branches of service. The initial Soviet invading force of 30 November 1939 was around a million, later reinforced with about 750,000 more before the effective cessation of hostilities on 13 March 1940. In that four month period, the Finns managed to inflict approximately a million casualties on the invaders, though Soviet propaganda attempted to minimize the numbers.

That was even more incredible considering that some of the worst of the fighting took place during the coldest European winter in 50 years, and near enough to the Arctic Circle that there was but 4 or 5 hours of sunlight for the riflemen and gunners to do their work. That did not deter the Finns, who found that night attacks that cut large Russian convoys into isolated pockets of resistance that could he dealt with one-by-one [mottis, meaning firewood stacked ready for burning] was just the way to do business against the invaders.

A great deal of resentment was caused by this, so when Russia was attacked by Germany, Finland naturally agreed to help.

It's probable that Hitler and the German planning staff saw the success the Finns had against the Red Army and figured that his professional Wehrmacht Blitzkrieg would fare even better. And so they did, at least until Stalingrad and Kursk, where the Russians showed that had learned well the expensive lessons they'd been taught by the Finns.

The Finns referred to the second phase of their continuing war against the Soviets as the jatkisota, the War of Continuation.

[archy]

The story of one of these guys is quite the epic.

Google Lauri Tornii (Larry Alan Thorne)..

Concur. And his Mannerheim Cross looked particularly impressive on either his Class-A Khakis or Dress Green uniform.

[Smartass]

UGHHH, HAVE YOU EVER
SMELLED a HOPLITE???

 

[tophat9000]

Man... nazi is just that...nazi, no exusess...

Well then the Soviet Union was a Nazi allies in the invasion of Poland

So you want to jump on the Finn for being Nazi allies to fight the Soviet Union (after the Finns were attacked by the Soviet Union first) but forget the Soviet Union attacked the Poles with the Nazi

Real world is a Finn were a little country surround by a couple of aggressor country's, the Soviet Union & Nazi Germany... they were nomanly allies at best of Germany and only in the fight with the Soviet Union....

Can no more dam the Finn for being Germany allies then us for being Soviet Union allies in WW2

[kronos77]

Man I thought that you are desriving Serbia... Like in 1999.

[tgambill]

Some folks on here actually make me smile in wonderment....:))

[drlevy88]

At the time of the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 when Martti Ahtisaari was the President of Finland, his government sought to commemorate and to honor Finland’s Nazi SS volunteers from the Holocaust.

Can't make heads or tails of this. Were the proposed honorees Nazi fighters against Russia who were later consumed by other Nazis in the Holocaust (for not being Nazi enough) or were these direct Holocaust perpretrators.

[Dustbunny]

Stupid is as stupid does!

[Bokababe]

Finland was attacked by Russia, and according to history joined the Nazi Waffen SS to protect themselves from Russia. Apparently, Finns did not persecute Jews in their country. Yet post-war, all members of the Waffen SS, without regard to country, were indicted at Nurenberg for aiding the enemy.

In 1999, Marti Ahtesaari was the first Finnish president in 55 years to try and honor those of this group of Finns who had joined the Nazis. A number of Jewish groups objected, including the Simon Weisenthal Institute.

Ahtesaari is now the UN mediator for Kosovo.

During WWII, the Kosovo Albanians were also the Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" of the Nazis and they did kill Jews and a large number of Serbs.

Ahtesaari has blatantly favored the Kosovo Albanians and made some racist remarks referencing "collective guilt" of all Serbs for Kosovo that shocked even the Swiss negotiators.

The direct thread between those two points you mentioned was that Ahtesaari had sought to honor a Nazi Waffen SS group in Finland, at exactly the same that NATO was bombing the Serbs to defend the Kosovo Albanians who once had their own Waffen SS Division. As far as I was concerned, the point here was Ahtesaari's resume in defending Nazi legacies, not some gross indictment of Finnish history.

The 15th century Serbian Orthodox Devich monastery was blown up during WWII by the Nazi Albanians.

It was rebuilt starting in 1950, where it stood unmolested until the 1990's.

Beginning in 1998, the Muslim Kosovo Albanians started desecrating the monastery and raping the nuns

In March of 2004, the Albanians finished the job, while under the noses of NATO forces, they were allowed to burn the place to the ground.

The link between Ahtesaari's defense of Nazis (for whatever reasons), his defense of Albanians and racist remarks toward Serbs, the destruction of this and many Serbian monasteries right under the noses of everyone, and now, German troops and a German Administrator for Kosovo could not be more evocative of WWII Nazi occupation if they tried.

[1rudeboy]

Ah, collective, inherited guilt. One of mankind's best ideas.

This thread is a time-warp. We have Communists fighting Nazis all over again.