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▲ 3 r/MilitaryHistory

Hostages in Tornio 1944

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During the battles of Tornio, the Germans took more than 200 Finnish civilians hostage. A total of 232 Finnish civilians were threatened with execution unless German prisoners of war who had surrendered to finns during the fighting, were returned back to German side. The demand was delivered to the commander of the Finnish forces, He was Hjalmar Siilasvuo, who read the documents and give his answer. The Finns' reply was delivered very quickly to the German commander and it says : If anything happens to Finns or Finnish property, he will have all the German prisoners of war in her custody shot, as well as the staff and patients of the German military hospital in Tornio. The Germans were shocked and let the Finnish civilians go unharmed.

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u/elokuinenehtoo — 6 hours ago
▲ 21 r/Finland

Hostages in Tornio 1944

During the battles of Tornio, the Germans took more than 200 Finnish civilians hostage. A total of 232 Finnish civilians were threatened with execution unless German prisoners of war who had surrendered to finns during the fighting, were returned back to German side. The demand was delivered to the commander of the Finnish forces, He was Hjalmar Siilasvuo, who read the documents and give his answer. The Finns' reply was delivered very quickly to the German commander and it says : If anything happens to Finns or Finnish property, he will have all the German prisoners of war in her custody shot, as well as the staff and patients of the German military hospital in Tornio. The Germans were shocked and let the Finnish civilians go unharmed.

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u/elokuinenehtoo — 6 hours ago
▲ 528 r/OldSchoolCool

Rikhard Sotamaa, finnish combat doctor during ww2

The Red Army’s massive offensive on the Finnish front began on June 9, 1944, and those grueling days of the offensive demonstrated that Rikhard Sotamaa was brave, unyielding, and skilled. Thanks to him, many wounded soldiers—especially the seriously wounded—were saved.

"That was where I faced the hardest work of my life," Sotamaa recalled.

"It was terrible. There was a constant queue of 80 to 100 stretcher cases waiting, even though we were only operating on those with abdominal wounds."

Sotamaa operated non-stop for ten days, day and night. While the nurses prepared the next patient for the table, Sotamaa would doze off for that brief moment.Sotamaa soon had the hospital moved closer to the front line, to Lottola, by the road to Antrea.

"Unusual—closer to the lines," remarked the person keeping the field hospital’s war diary. Sotamaa had his reasons. He had learned during the Winter War that rapid access to treatment was crucial.

"If we could get a patient with an abdominal wound into surgery within two or three hours, the majority survived. That was when I decided that if I ever found myself in the same situation again, I would place the field hospital as far forward as possible," Sotamaa recalled in an interview with the Rukajärvi Sector History Committee.The most severely wounded soldiers from the defensive battles of Tali-Ihantala were treated at the new field hospital set up in the Lottola elementary school.

"That was where I faced the most grueling work of my life," Sotamaa recalled.

"It was horrific. There was a constant queue of 80 to 100 stretcher cases waiting, even though we were operating only on those with abdominal wounds."

Sotamaa operated ceaselessly for ten days and nights. While nurses prepared the next patient for the table, Sotamaa would snatch a brief moment of dozing.

He recalled performing over 60 bowel resection surgeries on patients with abdominal wounds between July 10 and 15. Although 1940s medicine lacked antibiotics, 60 percent of the patients—initially deemed hopeless cases—survived. Yet, the sleep deprivation became unbearable. It became necessary to resort to methods that would be considered appalling today. "I took about 100 Pervitin tablets to stay awake, and the nurse would light a new cigarette whenever the previous one went out," Sotamaa recalled of that most intense two-week period.

Eventually, Sotamaa’s superior came to inspect the field hospital.

"He could probably tell from my eyes that I was high, and he said, 'Right now, you’re going to bed.'"

u/elokuinenehtoo — 2 days ago
▲ 11 r/WorldWar2

Interesting incident from the Lapland War

The battles in the Tornio 1944 saw both a tense hostage standoff and a drunken episode reminiscent of the out-of-control celebration followinf the capture of Petrozavodsk 1941.

One hundred German prisoners of war were in Finnish custody. Colonel General Lothar Rendulic, commander of German forces in Lapland, sought to back up his demand for the prisoners' release by taking 130 civilians hostage in Kemi and another 132 in Rovaniemi.

If the Finns did not release the Germans, Rendulic threatened to have the hostages shot.

The actions taken subsequently by the Finnish commander, Siilasvuo, could be viewed as either cool-headed or cold-blooded.

Siilasvuo refused to release the German prisoners. The response was conveyed to the Germans by Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Halsti, who warned that the execution of even a single Finn would result in the execution of all one hundred Germans. Furthermore, every German patient in the military hospital held by the Finns would be executed.

The volatile situation was defused when Germany released all the hostages. In a high-stakes standoff like this, a different outcome had also been possible.

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u/elokuinenehtoo — 2 days ago
▲ 131 r/Finland

Finnish troops prepare to cross the river on October 5, 1944, as they advance towards Kemi.

u/elokuinenehtoo — 2 days ago