Page 409 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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its efforts. In citizens opinion, the conditions of peace were hard and the outcome a surprise.
They had got news of victories along the roads in the deep snowy forests, but knew nothing
about the severe situation on the Carelian Isthmus. For them it was an unfair outcome and it
was mirrored in the name interim peace . After the war the Finns had a feeling of being left
3
alone against the Soviet Union. It was there the germs of a new war were.
In the minds of the citizens, the Continuation War began as the previous one, the Soviet
th
Air Force bombed Helsinki and some other Finnish towns on the morning of 25 of June
1941. Operation ‘Barbarossa’ had started a couple of days earlier. Amongst the hopes, there
were now critical discordant notes, and deserters hiding in the forests. The information the
citizens got during the Continuation War was scarce, censored and politically correct. The
insecurity of the outcome of the war gnawed the minds.
The Control Commission of the Allied, led by colonel-general Andrei Ždanov, came to
Helsinki in September 1944. It restricted the living of the people and dictated many times
what the Finns had to do in order to fulfil the terms of the interim peace treaty. It forced Finns
to start a real war in Lapland against the Germans. It was out of necessity, not out of desire.
Some Finns considered it shameful. The Civil Guards and some other organisations were
suppressed. the trials against the political leadership and persons who cached weapons were
by the majority considered unfair, they caused fear: what next?
When the Control Commission left the country three years later in September 1947, the
Second World War had ended on the part of Finland. One could hear a sigh of relief: Finland
was not conquered, nor occupied.

iMPacts during the wars
The war was somewhere there. The maximum number of people on the front reached
at its peak some 16 per cent of the population. Practically no one came back with health in
existence.
The war-morale and changes in the mood on the home front as well as on the front was
followed by authorities. Marshall Mannerheim put the reason this way:
“The army is not a machine, which only fights. It also thinks and feels. Thousands of ties
bind the home front and the war front. When anxiety is rising on the home front, it will spread
anxiety and uncertainty among the troops.” 4
The anxiety might have been even greater if getting first hand information from the family
members had not been possible. It was done via letters and they diminished the fear. Espe-
5
cially, under heavy fighting a letter sent said: “I am still alive” . So the letters had a triple
function: they reduced the fear, kept up the morale and brought the home front and battlefield
closer to each other.
During the Continuation War the mood on the home front changed from optimism to pes-
simism, between fear and trust. At the beginning of 1944 there was a crucial change in the
mood: the atmosphere became worried and timid. However, the underlying tone was trust in

3 Arimo 1984, p. 35.
4 Arimo, 1984, p. 34.
5 Ibidem.