The Civilian Costs of the Soviet-Finnish Wars

The Finnish-Soviet wars will seem like an esoteric topic and a slight departure from the things I usually write about. I am doing this because of my interests in war and health in a general sense, particularly how conflict-related stress and malnutrition may affect long-term health. It’s important to remember that not all places are affected by war equally, and local details are essential. This is just a place for me to make some notes about how Finnish civilians, especially food supplies, were affected by the different wars from 1939-45. The main source is Olli Vehviläinen’s 2002 book Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, in particular Chapter 7, “A Society Under Stress.” I’m also including some relevant photos from Thérèse Bonney’s 1943 photo-essay book “Europe’s Children.”

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The Finnish example is interesting for at least a couple of reasons. For one, it is considered somewhat separate from the rest of WW2. Also noteworthy is the fact that Finland fought both with and against Nazi Germany at different times.

The Winter War began in late November 1939, with the Soviet invasion of Finland and the aerial bombing of Helsinki. This galvanized and unified a country divided among “reds” and “whites” to defend itself. Vehviläinen colorfully described the Finnish army as “a band of small farmers and lumberjacks, inured to hard work in the bitter cold and deep snow, well-trained, reasonably well-armed with infantry weapons, but utterly under-equipped in artillery and air power.” This was in contrast to the Soviets, “a modern mechanized army of a great power with almost unlimited technical resources at its disposal and immense human reserves behind it” (p. 50). Despite such disadvantages, the Finnish army (and the cold) inflicted significant losses on the Soviets, perhaps 100,000 troops altogether, versus 23,000 Finnish soldiers lost (p. 70). However, the more powerful Soviet military managed to secure significant Finnish territory for itself, including the important Karelian isthmus.

At the end of three months of fighting, the Finns were exhausted. With the remote prospect of Western nations sending troops to Finland (p. 64-5), the Soviets also had reasons to want peace. From the position of the Finnish government, “they could save the country by cutting off one limb” (p. 65) and concede territory, perhaps to be won back another day. With the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty on March 13^th 1940, Finland had lost about a tenth of its territory and economic capacity. This would become important, as Karelia was considered one of the more fertile regions of Finland, and agricultural production would fall by a quarter by 1940 (p. 109).

The Continuation War

After more than a year of relative peace, a second conflict with the Soviets began in the summer of 1941, this time with the Finns on offense. However, this was sold to the population as a extension of the previous defensive conflict and thus called “the Continuation War,” which lasted until September 1944 (and thus the longest of the three conflicts, with the subsequent Lappland War to follow). To Vehviläinen, Finnish motives behind this were to reclaim lost territory, to bring their Finnish-speaking relatives in Karelia back into the fold, and to push their border with the USSR eastward to the Svir river in order to have a smaller area to defend: “a short border—a long peace” (p. 91-2). This was spurred by the eastward Nazi German advance into Ukraine and other Baltic countries, which the Finns saw as an opportunity. According to Vehviläinen they partnered with Germany not in an official capacity as allies, but as a “co-belligerent” with their own motives (p. 91), though German troops were stationed on Finnish soil. Vehviläinen notes that during the interim peace, the Finnish military had increased its strength dramatically since the Winter War, in both available personnel and artillery.

Civilian Costs

Again, I am not a historian. My primary focus is how wars impact civilian lives and short- and long-term health. Vehviläinen listed several ways that the wars impacted Finnish society:

• Vehviläinen wrote that “the war was not as economically catastrophic for Finland as it was for many European countries” (p. 113). Soviet bombing of Finnish cities, such as in Feb 1944, did fairly small damage. About 2.4% (84,000) of the population of Finland died (p. 113). As a percentage, this is much less than Poland (18.8%), the Soviet Union (14.8%), Germany and Austria (11.1%) and others, but comparable to China (2.9%), Albania (2.8%), Czechoslovakia (2.4%), the Netherlands (2.4%), and Korea (2.2%). Civilian casualties in Finland were said to be minimal. However, they faced many other significant problems.
• As is true of many wars, a significant proportion of the population was mobilized and therefore removed from the normally functioning economy. For example, approximately 130,000 people were employed in the munitions industry. Of a population of 3.7 million people roughly 12% of Finnish society was part of the armed forces, including 420,000 men and 26,000 women (mainly in the Lotta Svärd auxiliary support, p. 109).
• As mentioned above, Finland lost a substantial amount of fertile land in Karelia in the 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty. This contributed to declines in agriculture. Vehviläinen wrote that agriculture and forestry in Finland were a large percentage of the economy. Since they were unmechanized, they required intensive labor (p. 109).
• Perhaps 70% of the agricultural labor force was requisitioned into the army (p. 110).
• By May 1940, following the Moscow Peace Treaty, food rations were already necessary including cereals, fats, meat and milk (p. 110).
• In the winter of 1941, which was a bitterly cold one, Finns faced “a real food crisis,” with only a few days of food in stores (p. 110).
• The domestic harvest met about two-thirds of national needs. Famine would have been likely without imports (p. 112).
• New textiles were minimal, and clothing was rationed. People used wooden clogs for shoes and paper sheets (p. 110-111). This reminded me of a of a photo of an infant wrapped in paper from Bonney’s 1943 book I had seen years ago. After double-checking, the photo was from Finland (below).

• The food situation became “tolerable” in 1942 due to imports, largely from Germany. Trade with Britain had been cut after Finland partnered with Germany, so imports from their new “co-belligerent” provided the bulk of non-domestic food, with a small percent coming from Sweden (10%). Staples were rye bread, potatoes, milk and butter. The Ministry of Supply had food quotas to distribute, rationing cereals, milk, fats, meat, fish, and sugar. Rations varied from 1,000 to 1,500 calories for people doing light labor and 1,950 to 2,800 calories for those doing very heavy labor. Finnish dependence was part of German strategy. Finland eventually severed their relationship with Germany in Sept 1944, but only after Sweden agreed to supply Finland with grain and coal (p. 110-12).
• As an example of heavy labor, all able-bodied adults had to cut firewood for heating and to help meet lumber quotas agreed to for export to Germany (p.111).
• Carrots, turnips, and potatoes went unrationed. Research from the time found that roughly two-thirds of the population had money to purchase supplementary food on the black market, but this suggests that one-third could not afford it and faced hunger (p. 111).
• By 1943, things had improved. In 1940, the military took up 4% of GNP; by 1943 it was down to 25% (p. 110).
• After Finland and the Soviet Union made peace, German soldiers on Finnish soil –who were primarily stationed in the northern part of the country – were expelled in the Lapland War. Vehviläinen wrote that German soldiers “laid waste” to the area (p. 113).

Food shortages and other stresses of war were so daunting, particularly in 1942, that 70,000 Finnish children were sent abroad to Sweden and Denmark, without their parents (Pesonen and Räikkönen, 2012). In their review, Pesonen and Räikkönen looked at studies that followed up on the long-term effects of this separation, using the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study (HBCS). They reported that, decades later at various ages, children who had been separated from their parents were more likely to have depressive symptoms, various mental disorders, an altered stress response including higher salivary cortisol, score slightly lower on cognitive tests, and earlier menarche (among women).

The menarche observation is an interesting one. It was explained within a life history theory framework, since “uncertain environment during childhood may lead to reproducing early in life in order to maximize the probability of leaving descents.” However, I wonder if we could flip this argument on its head. Is it possible that the poorer nutritional environment in Finland could be a reason for later menarche in non-separated girls?

I’ve focused on the impacts on Finland, but I think it’s necessary to mention one more impact of the wars on long-term health. In the Continuation War, Finland retook part of the Karelian isthmus. German troops also launched part of their siege of nearby Leningrad from Finnish territory (Finland did not participate directly in this). This siege lasted roughly 900 days. At its height from November 1941 to February 1942, daily rations provided a meager 300 calories per day, with virtually no protein (Stanner et al., 1997). Estimates vary, but perhaps roughly one million people died, mainly from starvation. Two studies (Koupil et al. 2007 and Stanner et al 1997) found that among middle-aged Russian adults who had been exposed to the siege prenatally, in infancy, and childhood grew up to have higher blood pressure and glucose concentrations, as well as higher mortality from ischemic heart disease and stroke.

To me, these studies help underscore the fact that wars exact a humanitarian and long-term toll on health, regardless of the motives or political stances of the parties involved. Whether international or civil, or whether the belligerents are left, right, or center, secular or religious, or motivated by ethnicity, power, or resources, or territory, war incurs large costs on the people on the ground. Wars impacts on a population reverberate through the years, even after the guns have gone silent and the peace treaties have been signed.

References

Bonney, Thérèse (1943) Europe’s Children. New York: Plantin Press.

Koupil I, Shestov DB, Sparén P, Plavinskaja S, Parfenova N, Vågerö D. 2007. Blood pressure, hypertension and mortality from circulatory disease in men and women who survived the siege of Leningrad. European Journal of Epidemiology 22(4):223–34

Pesonen, Anu-Katriina, and Katri Räikkönen. (2012) The lifespan consequences of early life stress. Physiology & behavior 106(5): 722-727.

Stanner, S.A., Bulmer, K., Andrés, C., Lantseva, O.E., Borodina, V., Poteen, V.V., & Yudkin, J.S. (1997). Does malnutrition in utero determine diabetes and coronary heart disease in adulthood? Results from the Leningrad siege study, a cross sectional study. British Journal of Medicine, 315, 1342-1348.

Vehviläinen, Olli (2002) Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia (translated by Gerard McAlester). Palgrave.