Finland was no exception to this rule, especially during her Continuation War 1, the war against Russia fought as Germany’s co-belligerent from 1941 to 1944. This conflict was harder to cast as a struggle between democracy and Soviet communism than the Winter War had been, considering the aggressive war aims of many leading Finns and the anti-democratic views of Hitler’s Germany. Thus, there was a need for propaganda, not only aimed at undermining the Russian troops but also to keep up morale among the Finnish army’s own soldiers and the folks back at the home front.
The Birth and the Structure of Finland’s Propaganda Unit
The Development of Finnish Propaganda Before the Continuation War
Though propaganda had been used in great quantities and often to good effect in the First World War, the military of newly independent Finland didn’t pay great attention to information warfare until the world situation again began to heat up in the 1930s. There was, however, a private organization of advertisers, newspaper editors and reporters – The Propaganda Union 2. The initial purpose of the Propaganda Union was to prepare the promotion of Finland’s planned Olympic Games in 1940, but as the possibility of war increased, the organization had to change its direction. Without this organization, Finland’s attempts at conducting information warfare would most likely have been stillborn (Salminen and Suvanne 19).
The Finnish Defense Department understood the pressing need for people capable of information warfare in the mid-1930s and established its own news agency. With the help of the Propaganda Union, it began to offer training on the subject, but on the eve of the Winter War, in October 1939, it had only managed to train a few dozen men, and only a small part of these were advertisers or other media experts. There was also an urgent lack of people who could speak Russian – essential considering the propaganda aimed at the enemy – and a crippling need of equipment, especially loudspeakers. Later calculations have shown that an effective propaganda operation would have required between 700 and 800 men. Nevertheless, the Finnish military established a propaganda department, which was attached to its headquarters. During the Winter War, most of the newly trained propagandists worked there (Salminen and Suvanne, 20-22).
The Winter War showcased the lack of preparations for a modern information war. There was an overlap between the duties of the military clergy and the information officers, as the chaplains often had to work as information officers, keeping up the troop morale and instilling faith in Finland’s war goals, in addition to their duties as spiritual caretakers. The propaganda department was given little funding, though during the Winter War the situation improved somewhat, as more loudspeakers were acquired and the Finnish army captured prisoners of war who were willing to speak against their own system in their own language (Salminen and Suvanne 22-26).
However, it was only during the short interval period between the Winter War and the Continuation War that the Finnish army reorganized its information warfare operation. C. G. E Mannerheim, the Marshall of Finland, who had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish army during the Winter War and still retained this title, gave Captain Kalle Lehmus, the organizational secretary of Finland’s Social Democratic Party, the task of drafting a new plan for the army’s propaganda unit. Lehmus was sent to Germany to learn more about the German military’s plans for a propaganda war. During the Spring of 1941, the headquarters began the reorganization of the propaganda unit according to Captain Lehmus’ plans. A Department of Information was established and attached to the headquarters, along with Information Companies that would operate under it, on the front (Salminen and Suvanne 46-48).
The Information Companies
The regulation size for an Information Company was 40 men – mostly officers and NCOs. The crew of the Information Companies consisted of war correspondents, photographers, graphic artists and such – many Information Company men (hereafter referred to as IC-men) already had journalistic experience, having worked for big newspapers such as Aamulehti and Helsingin Sanomat (Perko 24-28, 34-48).
The IC-men provided newspaper articles, photographs and drawn images of the battle, which were then printed in both military and civilian newspapers. They had some control over what newspapers would print their articles, and often preferred the newspapers they had worked for before the war. The writers sometimes tended to confuse their military terminology or reveal information that the headquarters didn’t wish to be revealed. Thus, the articles were usually heavily edited at the headquarters before their release. The IC-men also drew and designed many of the propaganda leaflets that were used against the Soviets (Perko 52-69, Salminen and Suvanne 49).
The Basic Use of Propaganda
The Finnish army used propaganda in three different ways during the Continuation War. There was propaganda used against the invading Soviet troops, with the aim of eroding their morale, causing discontent and possibly inducing them to surrender to Finns. There was propaganda meant for the Finnish troops, with the opposite aim – improving their morale and removing any possible doubts about Finland’s war aims. And there was propaganda for the civilians back home, to make sure that they, too, stayed loyal to the war effort.
Propaganda Used Against the Soviet Troops
The widespread image of propaganda that has taken root after the Second World War is of leaflets and broadcasts aimed by one nation’s army at the other. This sort of propaganda was used in large quantities by both sides in the Continuation War.
Propaganda leaflets were the Finnish army’s most widely used form of propaganda. Some 33 million leaflets of 167 different kinds were printed during the initial attack phase in 1941, and 40 million leaflets of 140 types were printed during the trench war phase of 1941-1944. Some were designed and printed by the Information Companies and some by the Department of Information. The most common means of spreading the leaflets was via airplanes, though reconnaissance patrols usually also took some leaflets with them, to leave on land held by the Soviets. Both methods had also been widely used in the Winter War. Propaganda rockets were tested but didn’t gain widespread use, and at the Hanko front and Lake Äänisjärvi, the Finnish army sent leaflets by bottle post, as there were large bodies of water present at both fronts, making them ideal for this sort of experiment.
Loudspeaker propaganda was also important. During the Winter War, there hadn’t been many loudspeakers to use, and the few that there were worked rather poorly. Towards the end of the war the situation improved, but the lack of loudspeakers continued to hamper the Finnish propaganda offensive throughout the war. In the Continuation War, the Finnish army had 14-18 heavy loudspeakers. The most typical way of using loudspeakers was simply having people speak through them in Russian. The Finnish army often used its Soviet prisoners-of-war for this, as some of them were quite eager to speak against their country’s government (Salminen and Suvanne 22-24, 52-54).
 “I lost my wife and children for sorrow and chains” 3. An example of the propaganda Finns aimed at Soviet soldiers (Salminen and Suvanne 80). |
 “A politruk is worse than the enemy – he’ll shoot you in the back.” 3 Finnish propaganda often attacked ‘politruks’, the political officers of the Red Army (Salminen and Suvanne 141). |
 An example drawing of a war correspondant, by an IC illustrator. The drawer of this image was the famous Finnish cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, who served in the Continuation War in an Information Company. The picture is an example of the kind of work these drawers could produce in the conditions they were serving in (Suomalainen 115). |
The intent of this sort of propaganda was to break the morale of the Soviet troops. The Soviet soldiers were encouraged to turn their arms against their commanders and political officers (these ‘politruks’ were a particularly popular target for Finnish propaganda). Surrendering to the Finnish army was portrayed as an appealing alternative. The Soviet system was unfavorably compared to Finland’s liberal democracy, and the Soviet government was shown to be lying about its proclamations of respect for the rights of small nations. Spreading fear and terror was also important, with figures of massive Soviet losses and images of piled up bodies being popular themes (Salminen and Suvanne 24-29).
The Finns appealed especially to the ethnic minorities of the Soviet Union. Specific leaflets were created which targeted the Caucasian Turks, Ukrainians and other such groups which the Finnish army considered to be particularly receptive to propangada, as there was still resentment in these nations about the way they had been treated in the Soviet Union. Particularily targeted were the minorities which spoke Fenno-Ugric languages, such as East Karelians, Mordvins and other nationalities that the Finns viewed as kindred, mainly because of the language ties4. Most of the leaflets created for specific groups were made at the front by the Information Companies, while the propaganda coming out of the Department of Information was more generic and aimed at all Soviet soldiers (Salminen and Suvanne 24-29).
Finland’s co-belligerency with Germany presented both new options and problems for Finland’s propaganda operation. During the initial attack stage of 1941, and during the early trench war of 1941-1942, Finnish propaganda used the quick German gains to good effect. As the Germans pushed on toward Moscow, the war’s end began to seem inevitable, and the Finns continually predicted a general collapse of the Soviet army, that would be forthcoming at any moment. However, as the tides of war began to turn in 1943, references to Germany were drastically cut back, and generally propagandists were instructed to blunt their harshest attacks against the Red Army and its leadership, as it was seen that these could cause a backlash if Soviet Union should win its war against Germany and Finland (Salminen and Suvanne 49-52).
Propaganda for the Finnish Army’s Own Soldiers and for the Home Front
Just as it was important to try and break the morale of the Soviet army, it was also important to keep spirits high in the Finnish army. This often required efforts that were propagandistic in nature. This kind of propaganda had been used in Finland from 1918 on, mainly by the Civil Guard. One of the aims of the Civil Guard, a paramilitary organization that had been established in 1917 as a response to the period of unrest that preceded the Finnish Civil War, was to instill patriotism and martial spirit among its members. When the Finnish army was established in the mid-1920s, the Civil Guard, which had many connections to the military, took over this function in the army (Salminen 22-25).
In the late 1930s, the European situation was growing increasingly dire, with thebelligerent German foreign policy causing tensions. Preparing for the possibility of a great European war, the Finnish army began to train information officers to look after the troop morale. These officers were thus counterparts to the Soviet political officers, the ‘politruks’ – something that didn’t escape the troops’ attention. The information officers were generally chosen for their commitment to nationalist causes such as making East Karelia a permanent part of Finland. Belonging to far-right, revanchist organizations, such as the Akateeminen Karjala-Seura 5, was also seen as a positive qualification. The Winter War clarified the information officers’ mission – to watch over and improve the troop morale, to provide entertainment, and, if possible, to edit the unit’s front newspaper. However, again the Finnish army lacked the resources to efficiently use these officers, and their work was often left to the military clergy, who already had their work cut out for them in administering to the spiritual needs of the soldiers (Salminen 47-56).
The information officers were given the main role in building up the army’s morale and instilling faith in Finland’s war goals. Many soldiers had supported taking back the areas lost in the Winter War during the early attack phase, but as the war progressed, they began to develop doubts about whether crossing the old border between Finland and Russia and progressing into East Karelia6 had been the right decision to make. The soldiers often had expected the war to end soon after the old border was reached. However, as the trench warfare phase began, and it became obvious that the war was going to last for longer than a few months, war weariness began to set in. Some soldiers chose to desert – the month of October 1941, for example, had 268 cases of desertion (Salminen 98). Furthermore, the soldiers began to wonder whether a long war might be serving Germany’s interests more than those of Finland (Salminen and Suvanne 62-63).
Thus, the most important mission of the information officers became to convince Finnish soldiers of the rightness of the Finnish cause. The information officers strived to represent the occupation of East Karelia as a defensive maneuver or a guarantee of an easily defensible border, but also spoke of a crusade to eradicate Bolshevism and incorporate the East Karelians into the Finnish nation. Needless to say, this sort of talk didn’t go over well with the troops. During the early phase of the war there was talk about distributing East Karelian land to the veterans who had fought in the war, but as the war drew on, talk about crusades and land distribution petered out. All these themes were also present in the articles written by the IC-men for newspapers, both for the soldiers and the civilians (Salminen 68-71, Perko).
Another part of the information officer work was providing entertainment for the troops. Sports competitions and other such events were organized, and newspapers, radios, literature and games were provided, as well as tobacco. Many popular artists were brought on tours to the frontlines, though often the army had to rely on less stellar performers to provide music for the troops. The headquarters always strived for the entertainment to be “healthy, vigorous and uplifting,” including humor but never forgetting the serious matters and the spiritual side. This all connected with the general purpose of keeping up the army’s morale (Salminen 139-143).
Quite important in Finnish propaganda of this sort were the newspapers which were printed at the front and distributed among the soldiers. Many of these newspapers had been established well before the war as barracks newspapers, and had served to promote patriotism, national pride and hatred of the Russians (Salminen 82-85, 117-131). Some of the biggest front newspapers were Karjalan Viesti, with a distribution of 26,000 and Tappara and Jousimies, both of which had distributions of 15,000 (Salminen 84). The Swedish-speaking troops had their own paper, Karelens Kurir. The radio was also used for propaganda, with the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation including army broadcasts on its schedule. A new radio station, Radio Aunus, was established in the city of Petroskoi, the capital of East Karelia – this radio station would broadcast to the Finnish soldiers and to East Karelia’s local population (Salminen 85-87).
The military clergy also had a crucial part in morale building. The military clergy had always played an important role in the Finnish army. During the Winter War it had been noted in the headquarters that visits to the front by chaplains from the soldiers’ home towns noticeably improved the soldiers’ spirits and made them fight better. The chaplains also often shared the belligerent worldview of the officers, as they saw the war against the Soviet Union as a “crusade to root out godless Bolshevism” – thus their sermons often were politically charged. The troops, however, usually just wanted pastoral care, and the chaplains could easily lose the trust of the men if their sermons became too politically charged (Salminen 88-95, 143-151).
The Finnish army also supplied propaganda to be used in the newspapers back on the home front. Civilians, too, needed to be convinced about the “rightness” of Finland’s war aims, especially as the Continuation War didn’t turn out to be as popular as the Winter War had been. Many of the Finnish Social Democrats had been against the war before it started, and as the war progressed, they formed the nucleus of the “peace opposition”. Thus, the civilian newspapers needed articles to prove that Finland’s war was being fought successfully, and one of the most important functions of the IC-men was to produce such articles 7 (Perko).
It was seen as crucial to recreate the spirit of unity that had swept across Finland during the Winter War. To do this, portraying the Soviet Union as the attacker was important. Some of the first articles written by IC-men were about the Soviet bombings of Helsinki and Lappeenranta, right at the start of the war. The themes of Russians as Finland’s ancient enemy and a crusade to free Europe from Bolshevism were used with civilians as much as they were with the troops, and information about Soviet war preparations in the Karelian Isthmus was employed for this purpose (Perko).
As the Finnish offensive began, the theme shifted to the success of the Finnish soldiers. Of course, the IC-men had to tread carefully – they couldn’t talk too much about the inevitable losses the Finnish army suffered, as that might have eroded morale back home, but neither could they minimize the deaths, as that would have led to a loss of believability. Most of the articles written by the IC-men, especially during the initial attack phase, took an eager and enthusiastic tone, taking pleasure in reporting the massive Soviet losses and the Finnish army’s relatively quick advance. Such articles were spread to many newspapers, but the headquarters didn’t let through articles that spoke too openly about hatred of the Russians or belittled the enemy forces. Eventually, as the trench war phase began, the IC-men started to cover the fighting less and concentrated more on the life of the troops (Perko 80-149).
Some IC-men were assigned to write about the efforts of the home front, about the people working in the factories to produce the weapons and the goods the soldiers needed. The IC-men with such assignments often complained about them, wishing to write about the battles and the soldiers instead, but the headquarters saw it essential that the whole nation was made to feel as if their efforts mattered. Likewise, the road-builders in the North, the air watchmen, and the “Lotta Svärdh” – the Finnish army’s women’s auxiliary troops – were also covered (Perko 106-109).
The Importance of the Finnish Propaganda Operation
In the end, it is hard to say how important the Finnish propaganda operation was to Finland’s conduct in the Continuation War, but information warfare probably played some part in it.
It is known that 64,000 Soviet soldiers surrendered to Finns between 1941-1944. In 1942, for example, there were 266 defecting Soviet soldiers who had been enticed mainly through Finnish propaganda, and undoubtedly propaganda played a part in making the decision to surrender with many other Soviet soldiers (Salminen and Suvanne 52). Of course, when it came to the battles of 1944, which probably saved the Finnish independence, propaganda played only a small part – all available resources had to be used to directly fight the Red Army.
Notes:
- “Continuation War” is the standard Finnish term for Finland’s war against Russia as a part of Operation Barbarossa, from 1941 to 1944.
- The word ‘propaganda’ had yet to acquire the connotations of underhandedness it has these days.
- Translation by the author, from Salminen and Suvanne.
- The Finnish language belongs to Fenno-Uralic language group, which also includes East Karelians, Mordvins and other nationalities in areas currently controlled by Russia.
- This particular organization, for example, consisted of former and current university students, and supported Finnish expansion eastwards. There were many such organization from all walks of life in Finland during the 1930s.
- Area to the east of Finland. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:East_and_West_Karelias.png.
- An example of a Finnish civilian newspaper, printed in 1941, can be found at http://www.koulukanava.fi/historia/ww2/propaganda/lehti.htm (in Finnish).
Works Cited:
Perko, Touko. TK-miehet jatkosodassa. Helsinki: Otava, 1974.
Salminen, Esko. Propaganda rintamajoukoissa 1941-1944. Helsinki: Otava, 1976.
Salminen, Esko, and Kauko Suvanne. Kuvien sota 1939 -1945. Helsinki: Otava, 1989.
Suomalainen, Kari. Karin Sota. Klaukkala: Recallmed, 1987.