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“Soldaten wie andere auch”: Finnish Waffen-SS Volunteers and Finland’s Historical Imagination

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Finland’s Holocaust

Part of the book series: The Holocaust and its Contexts ((HOLC))

Abstract

Some years ago in the regional newspaper Turun Sanomat, a former Waffen-SS volunteer reflected on the experiences of the Finnish contingent, the Finnisches Freiwilligen Bataillon der Waffen-SS, on the Eastern Front: Nobody talked about politics to us. We were Germany’s elite soldiers. . . . Waffen-SS had nothing to do with Allgemeine-SS, which was political. Not a single man from the SS Viking division [in which a number of Finnish volunteers had served for a time] was sentenced for war crimes in the postwar trials. It’s wrong that we are mixed up with the brutality of Algemeine-SS [sic]. We were soldiers under the Wehrmacht command and fought against the same enemy as Finland.1

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Antero Holmila
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, Finland

    Simo Muir (Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies) (Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies)

  2. Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

    Hana Worthen (Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies) (Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies)

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© 2013 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Holmila, A. (2013). “Soldaten wie andere auch”: Finnish Waffen-SS Volunteers and Finland’s Historical Imagination. In: Muir, S., Worthen, H. (eds) Finland’s Holocaust. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302656_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302656_10

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45390-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30265-6

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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