Ordinary Men or Ideological Executioners?: Finnish SS Volunteers and the Atrocities on the Eastern Front

Abstract

Finland joined the German invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941. The alliance between Finland and Germany was never formalized in any written document, and from its inception until today, this alliance has sparked heated debates among scholars, who question the moral essence of Finnish-German military and political cooperation and the extent of Finnish troops’ involvement in atrocities initiated by the Germans. Finnish troops fought independently under the command of Field Marshal Mannerheim with one exception: the Finnish SS battalion, which was integrated into the multinational Wiking division of the Waffen-SS.

In spring 1941, approximately twelve hundred Finns volunteered for the Waffen-SS and subsequently took part in the German attack on the Soviet Union. Some of these men were also involved in the Holocaust. In this article, I will examine the ideological preferences of the Finnish SS volunteers and analyze the extent to which their ideological involvement influenced their willingness to participate in atrocities. Were the Finnish SS men involved in atrocities as ordinary men, just like the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 studied by Christopher Browning,¹ or were they committed Nazis, willing executioners motivated by ideological factors, first and foremost antisemitism?²

I begin with background on Finnish-German political and military relations and the formation of the Finnish SS battalion and then present my theoretical framework. Thereafter, I describe the recruitment process of the Finnish SS, examine their political preferences, and analyze the volunteers as perpetrators of atrocities. Finally, this article applies my theoretical framework to the Finnish SS men, and I present my conclusion.

This article draws upon archival material from the National Archives Finland (SS-Aseveljet ry:n arkisto, Mauno Jokipiin tutkimusarkisto), the Swedish State Commission for Foreigners (Statens Utlänningskommission) archives, and scholarly and autobiographical literature. Ultimately, this study will measure Browning’s perspective against Goldhagen’s to probe the motivations of the Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers who took part in the Holocaust.

Finland and Germany—a complicated alliance

Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939. In a secret addendum, they agreed that Finland would fall under the Soviet sphere of influence. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact shocked pro-German Finns, who were accustomed to viewing Germany as a friendly country with deep cultural and economic ties to Finland.

Germany had helped Finland secure independence from Russia in 1918 by sending troops to reinforce the Finnish White government, which fought against the revolutionary Red troops in the Finnish Civil War. Russian Bolsheviks aided the Finnish Reds, while Jägers formed the core of the Finnish government troops. The Jägers were Finnish volunteers who had clandestinely traveled to Germany during the First World War to receive military training and combat experience in the German army. Arguably, they were a precursor to the Finnish SS battalion.

Germany’s defeat in World War I finally shattered the country’s plans to install a German prince as king of Finland, and Finland became a republic instead. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the victorious Whites revered the Finnish-German military and political brotherhood of 1918 and looked up to Germany. Thus, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was widely regarded as an incomprehensible German betrayal.

Stalin was quick to state his territorial claims, which dealt ostensibly with the security of Leningrad, which was within range of Finnish artillery on the Karelian Isthmus. When Finland refused to cede territories, the Soviet Union launched a full-scale invasion on November 30, 1939. Finland was heavily outnumbered and outgunned, but a combination of desperate determination and resourceful tactics managed to halt the invading Red Army. The Winter War lasted 105 days, but Finland had to sue for peace. The Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940 left Finland truncated with four hundred thousand internal refugees fleeing the territories taken over by the Soviet Union. Finland nevertheless managed to halt the invasion and retain its independence.

The feats of the Finnish army seemed to impress Hitler, who started to regard Finland as a potential resource. The Finnish political and military leadership welcomed covert Finnish-German rapprochement because they were desperately looking for international support as they feared renewed Soviet aggression. With the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact still formally in force, German overtures were cautious and hidden.

As a token of Finnish-German reconciliation, Heinrich Himmler advanced his plan to extend foreign recruitment for the Waffen-SS to Finland. From the end of April to the beginning of June 1941, roughly twelve hundred young Finns were recruited for the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS. The battalion fought as a subunit of the multinational SS Wiking division on the Eastern Front, advancing through Ukraine to the Caucasus.

The alliance between Finland and Germany was unofficial, with no signed formal commitments. For both countries, the Finnish SS battalion was a pawn—the volunteers were a symbol of the alliance, and their service in German uniform would also guarantee that Finland stood by its commitments. On the surface, Finland tried to maintain a certain distance from Germany as the official Finnish stance was that the two countries were fighting simultaneous, but separate wars against a common enemy. With German troops on Finnish soil, this argument was clearly not valid. Finnish-German secret cooperation went deep into security and political considerations, as well as matters of racial policy.

After Stalingrad, the Finnish government started to feel uneasy and began to create an exit strategy that included repatriating and disbanding the SS battalion in summer 1943. The alliance between Finland and Germany lasted until September 1944, when the pressure of the Soviet summer offensive depleted Finland’s military resources. As a condition for the armistice, Finland had to sever its ties with Germany. All organizations the Soviets deemed fascist had to be disbanded, including the association of the former Finnish SS men. For the latter, this dissolution entailed an abrupt change of status from national heroes to shunned villains.

After the war, the memories of both far-right politics and atrocities were silenced, and the Finnish SS volunteers were portrayed as nonpolitical patriots, and an exception within the Waffen-SS. The government vehemently denied that the group was involved in atrocities. This narrative changed in 2018 when the publication of the study Hakaristin ritarit (“Knights of the Swastika”) challenged this official view.³ An ensuing letter from the Simon Wiesenthal Center prompted the Finnish president to initiate an official inquiry into the matter. The president assigned the task to the National Archives of Finland, which in turn appointed Professor Lars Westerlund to lead the investigation. Professor Westerlund’s findings confirmed that Finnish SS men were involved in atrocities. Still, at the same time, Westerlund played down the influence of Nazi ideology, antisemitism, or other extreme political views as major factors in the ideological makeup of the volunteers.⁴

Ordinary men or genocidal antisemites?—a theoretical perspective

This study draws its theoretical inspiration from two diametrically opposed approaches to the Holocaust. According to Christopher Browning, the men of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 were “ordinary men” who engaged in acts of mass murder through a multilayered set of motivations, including conformity, peer pressure, and deference to authority combined with the effects of war, racism, and antisemitic propaganda.⁵ Browning did not discern any selection of personnel particularly suited for mass murder. On the contrary, he observed that the battalion’s middle-aged, working-class men were a “negative selection for the task at hand.”⁶ Browning noted, however, that 25 percent of the battalion’s rank and file were members of the Nazi Party.

Countering Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men was not one scholar, but a group of scholars who emphasized the importance of antisemitism as the driving motivational factor for those who perpetrated the Holocaust. Daniel Goldhagen initially advanced this argument in his highly controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners.⁷ In Goldhagen’s view, there was a particular German eliminationist antisemitism, which was the driving force behind the Holocaust and “belief governed action.”⁸ He criticized Browning, writing that more than just peer pressure was necessary to make ordinary men shoot innocent people. Goldhagen found no evidence to support the claim that the men in Browning’s study were opposed to the slaughter, but took part so that they would not leave the unpleasant task for others to perform.⁹ For Goldhagen, ideology was the driving force behind the willing participation of Germans in the Holocaust.

Goldhagen was severely criticized for offering a monocausal explanation and for other flaws in his scholarly work.¹⁰ Other scholars, however, expanded upon Goldhagen’s thesis, and there is now an adequate pool of reputable historians who argue that ideology and antisemitism were of paramount importance for the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Paving the way for the return of antisemitism as a key explanation of the Holocaust, Goldhagen thus became a notable foil to Browning.

Michael Wildt, author of a study of the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office) leadership, credits Goldhagen for reemphasizing the importance of antisemitism in Holocaust scholarship.¹¹ Israel Gutman, Holocaust survivor, historian, and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also emphasizes the relevance of Goldhagen’s question: “What is the relationship between anti-Semitism, deeply rooted in the national consciousness and the social and political culture of the West, and the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust?” According to Gutman, the rejection of Goldhagen’s work was too hasty. Gutman noted the fervor of Goldhagen’s critics: “After all, the question is: If Goldhagen’s book is really worthless and undeserving of attention, why all the fuss, and why have so many authoritative people mobilized to attack and dismiss it?”¹²

Dalia Ofer writes that Goldhagen rejected “the tendency to turn the Holocaust, perpetrators and victims, into an abstraction.” Ofer elaborates further: “The notion of the ‘banality of evil’ falls down in the face of the evidence of sadism and cruelty exhibited by many of the perpetrators, far beyond what was needed merely to put their victims to death.”¹³ Saul Friedländer also underscores the importance of antisemitism, emphasizing the centrality of a special form of redemptive antisemitism to the Holocaust.¹⁴ Other scholars such as István Deák and Robert E. Hertzstein also offer support for a renewed focus on antisemitism in Holocaust studies.¹⁵

This article focuses on Finnish SS volunteers, who participated in atrocities on the Eastern Front to find answers to the following questions: Is the eliminationist or redemptive antisemitism perspective applicable in this case? Was genocidal antisemitism a primarily German phenomenon, or did citizens of other nations share it? Goldhagen himself addresses the question of non-German participation in the Holocaust, as Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian perpetrators came from profoundly antisemitic cultures, whereas the Danes showed a completely different mentality when they rescued the Jews living in their country.¹⁶

Claus Bundgård Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen, and Peter Scharff Smith, however, scrutinize Goldhagen’s claim about a distinct Danish mentality. Their work demonstrates that Danish SS men took part in the Holocaust. They state that the motivation of the Danish volunteers to join the SS was not genocidal, but rather that “Danish Waffen-SS volunteers did not differ significantly from the general Danish population. They were not psychopaths or criminals, and they represented a reasonably broad spectrum of professions and social groups…. In this sense the Danish volunteers resembled the ‘ordinary men’ from a German working-class background,” similar to the battalion studied by Browning.¹⁷ Christensen, Puolsen, and Smith nevertheless add that a considerable number of Danish SS volunteers endorsed Nazi ideology and antisemitism in their letters and diaries.¹⁸

For the purposes of this article, I analyze the Finnish SS battalion to understand how antisemitism may or may not have impacted their actions. To do so, I look for signs of Nazi ideology in the words and deeds of the Finnish SS volunteers who committed atrocities. At the same time, I also search for indications of peer pressure and deference to authority, combined with the absence of major ideological involvement, and examples of Finnish volunteers shirking from atrocity-related tasks.

Browning’s and Goldhagen’s perspectives represent two different theories about Holocaust perpetrator motivations. Though these perspectives are still very much juxtaposed, aspects of each viewpoint may be valid and represent the experiences of Finnish SS volunteers.

The recruitment process

At the end of January 1941, Heinrich Himmler obtained the Führer’s permission to recruit Finns into the SS. Himmler delegated the task to Gottlob Berger, head of the SS-Hauptamt.¹⁹ Berger visited the Finnish ambassador in Berlin. The Finnish government chose the former chief of the Finnish security police, Esko Riekki, to head the negotiations and the practical implementation of the recruitment process. It is likely that a tight inner circle of officials—including President Risto Ryti, Field Marshall C. G. E. Mannerheim, and the minister of defense—made decisions about SS recruitment. Even Prime Minister Jukka Rangell was, according to his postwar statement, unaware of the recruitment plans. He was informed only after they had started.²⁰ Officially the Finnish government played no part in the SS recruitment, though private individuals could volunteer at their own volition. In fact, the Finnish state backed SS recruitment; however, the competing interests of various Nazi administrative organizations complicated the process. For example, the German Foreign Ministry disliked the notion of the SS meddling in foreign policy and matters outside the Reich, whereas the SS wanted to expand its influence abroad.

On the Finnish side, various political parties and organizations on the extreme right tried to influence the future battalion’s composition. Esko Riekki was not eager to let small Finnish Nazi organizations have a hand in the project. He was bent on relying on the IKL (Isäänmaallinen Kansanliike, The Patriotic People’s Movement), a nationwide Fascist party with a sizable representation in Parliament. The IKL was known for its uniforms, black shirts and blue ties, and military-style organization. Riekki was also eager to include the Social Democrats to obtain a solid political base for the project.²¹

Previous accounts of SS recruitment in Finland have maintained that Esko Riekki tried to minimize all extreme rightist influences in the recruitment process, but in fact, Riekki’s original plan was to rely on the IKL for all practical purposes. When Himmler learned that Riekki was starting to make demands concerning the deployment and allegiance of the Finnish SS men, he confronted the Finns. Himmler stressed that the Finns had to swear their military oath to the Führer and were in no position to make demands. They could either accept the SS’s conditions or be left to face the Russians without German support—that was Himmler’s final word. Himmler sent German SD representatives to Helsinki to ensure that the recruitment process followed his guidelines.²² The SS and SD personnel in Helsinki were to contact local Finnish Nazis, make sure that the German demands were met, and, if need be, circumvent Riekki and his committee. Thus, Finnish and German Nazis were involved in the recruitment. The former’s political ideology was quite similar to that of the IKL, but their organization strove to emulate the German Nazis more closely.²³

In Helsinki, the recruitment was hidden behind a front office, the engineering bureau Ratas. Ragnar Nordström, a retired lieutenant-colonel and wealthy shipowner with extreme rightist political sympathies, financed the recruitment. Nordström had a background in the Jäger movement and donated more than one million Finnish marks toward SS recruitment. This sum covered almost all the organization’s expenses.²⁴ Riekki managed the provincial recruiters, though the Finnish Nazis operated their own local branches and managed the recruitment in accordance with the instructions they received from the German SS and SD. Many of these trusted right-wing activists throughout the country were affiliated with the IKL. In Helsinki, the engineering bureau started to receive recruits on April 21, 1941. April 20 would have been a symbolically opportune time, since it was Hitler’s birthday, but because it fell on a Sunday, the engineering bureau was closed and would thus have attracted undue attention if there was a steady stream of young men entering.²⁵

On the first recruitment day, twenty-eight young men came to the bureau. Many of them were active in Nazi organizations. The self-described “first volunteer,” Unto Boman (later known as Unto Parvilahti), was active in the Swedish-speaking Nazi organization Samfundet Folkgemenskap. This organization lacked parliamentary representation, but it included influential and wealthy Swedish-speaking aristocrats and industrialists who were keen to bridge the gap among the linguistically divided Finnish Nazis. Samfundet Folkgemenskap was ready to make compromises to retain the status of the Swedish language at the local level and give Finnish the status of the nation’s sole national language. These overtures remained, however, theoretical points on the party program. Efforts to unify the Finnish far right failed.

Along with Boman came Olavi Karpalo, Ilmari Autonen, and Leo Porttinen, who had also obtained information about the SS recruitment through Folkgemenskap. Finnish-speaking Nazi organizations brought in Tauno Aarni, Mauno Alhainen, Yrjö Siitoin, and Thor-Björn Weckström. The IKL was the preference of seven recruits on the first day. Two recruits, Jouko Itälä and Heikki Mansala, stated their political party preferences as “Antisemite.” On the first day, the rest of the recruits stated their preferences as generic rightist or did not state any party preference. The composition of the first batch of recruits was nevertheless crystal clear: some of the most prominent Nazis among the Finnish SS men were the first to be recruited. Another obvious trend was that the sons and relatives of the leadership of the recruitment organization received preferential treatment. Tero Riekki (son of recruitment leader Esko Riekki), Pertti Backberg (son of Harry Backberg, manager of the engineering bureau), and Uuno Lehmus (nephew of Kalle Lehmus, the only Social Democrat politician involved in the recruitment) were all admitted on the first day. These three “nepo” SS volunteers stated no political preference.²⁶ The following day, three additional recruits showed up. On April 23, there were thirty-six. During the first week, the organization admitted a total of 114 without any screening. Two additional recruits, though admitted, did not show up when the volunteers were shipped to Germany, and on April 27, another two applicants were rejected and two dropped out.

The first week of recruitment saw an influx of ideologically committed Finnish SS recruits, and the demands of the SS and SD prevailed. The Germans were clear about the need to admit ideologically acceptable recruits, and Riekki was forced to accept and admit them regardless of whether they met the formal criteria. For example, recruiters overlooked height requirements. Formal recruitment criteria included a minimum height of 170 centimeters, with exceptions for individuals of 169 or even 168 centimeters if they were otherwise exceptionally qualified. In the case of artillery officer Kaj Duncker, who was recruited on April 23, the exception was quite flagrant (see Figure 1). Duncker was only 165.5 centimeters and should have been rejected. Having attended Nazi political courses offered by Aktiva Studentförbundet (a Swedish-speaking student organization with a pronounced Nazi platform), Duncker seemed to be ideologically acceptable, and so the SS admitted him. Eric Fock, a committed Nazi, taught these political courses.²⁷ Fock developed an interest in politics as a teenager. Medically unfit for military service, he envisioned a career as a professional Nazi politician. Big dreams turned into a rather mediocre position in Aktiva Studenförbundet’s newspaper; however, Fock was well-connected, and he kept in touch with Nazi organizations in Sweden and Norway.

Figure 1.

Image of SS-Obersturmführer Kaj Duncker, circa May 1942. SLS 005, Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLSA 898 Dunckerska släktarkivet, photographer unknown.

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Besides Kaj Duncker, several other recruits did not meet the criteria of the SS. Bertel Gyllenbögel, for example, born in 1907, was almost ten years above the age limit. Gyllenbögel had to apply twice, and because he was a veteran of the Finnish Nazi movement, was finally admitted. An even stranger exception among the recruits of the first week was Toivo Vaaramo, whose father was Jewish. Vaaramo’s original surname was Warzabu. An ardent supporter of the IKL, as well as a former member of his high school’s Karelia Society (a nationalist youth association promoting the liberation of Karelia from Bolshevik rule and the creation of a Greater Finland), Vaaramo arguably embraced the SS to escape his Jewish roots.²⁸

The SS and SD introduced the German Foreign Ministry’s screening requirements from Himmler on April 28, only after the first week and after admitting the ideologically selected core group. Though there is no evidence that the organization rejected applications on political grounds, Esko Riekki still claimed that he succeeded in reducing the extreme rightist component of the battalion. Handwritten notes on the rejected application forms deal exclusively with physical defects, insufficient height, and an excess of career officers. In other words, the SS wanted rank-and-file recruits because it disliked the notion of giving the SS officer’s insignia to Finnish officers who had not undergone the SS’s own officer training.

Political party preferences of the Finnish SS volunteers

The Finnish debate concerning SS volunteers has centered on their participation in atrocities and their political involvement. Professor Mauno Jokipii presented the traditional view, which maintained that the Finnish SS men were not politically motivated, but rather “ordinary men” and simple apolitical patriots. He downplayed any overt adherence to Nazi ideology among the volunteers..²⁹

The Germans indicated that they wanted at least 66 percent of the recruits to have a National Socialist or “Greater Germanic” political orientation. To analyze the political makeup of the organization, Professor Jokipii reviewed membership cards of SS-Aseveljet ry, or the SS veterans’ association founded in 1943 after the battalion was repatriated and disbanded. The membership cards revealed that the recruits participated actively in ideological associations, whereas the SS recruitment forms only had a space for party preference. Jokipii disregarded the recruitment forms. According to the veterans’ association, only 20 percent of recruits had been members of various fascist parties; however, the recruitment forms showed that 35.9 percent showed a preference for the IKL, and 9.9 percent for the various Finnish Nazi parties. Thus, roughly 46 percent of the volunteers supported fascist organizations, only 4.9 percent supported the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), 36.1 percent of volunteers stated no party preference, and all other parties received only marginal support.³⁰ As Matti Lackman has aptly described, joining the SS was itself a statement.³¹ Quite a few volunteers did not subscribe to any particular party, but stated their ideological preference as “Patriotic.” If the Germans counted the latter as outspoken fascists, they would have been pleased to have nearly achieved their aforementioned goal of 66 percent.³²

The SS sent volunteers to Germany in five contingents from May 6 to June 5, 1941. Roughly a third of the volunteers were scattered among various units of the multinational Wiking division of the Waffen-SS. Alternatively, roughly eight hundred volunteers (about 66 percent) stayed in the Finnish volunteer battalion to receive training at a German base before going to the front. Nominally, the four hundred men sent directly to the front had proven combat experience, but that is not the whole picture. For instance, Tauno Aarni had been in administrative civilian duties in the Finnish industry during the Winter War of 1939 to 1940, but he was nevertheless included in the reconnaissance unit of the Wiking division and thus deployed directly at the onset of Operation Barbarossa. Alternatively, there were veterans of the Winter War who were sent to basic training, which they regarded as a total waste of time. One might ask, if other factors, possibly ideological commitment, were behind the selection of who was to go directly into combat and who was to take part in basic training.

Finnish SS men as perpetrators of atrocities

As a starting point, Lars Westerlund’s study concluded that the following Finnish SS men most likely participated in atrocities on the Eastern Front: SS-Oberscharführer Thor-Björn Weckström, SS-Sturmmann Ilmari Autonen, SS-Unterscharführer Olavi Karpalo, SS-Untersturmführer Unto Boman, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Erik Ladau.³³ Later research has added the names of SS-Sturmmann Tauno Aarni³⁴ and SS-Untersturmführer Lennart Kihlström³⁵ to the list. Through his research, Westerlund strives to understand the wider context that led these men to participate in the Holocaust and German racial warfare. Expanding upon Westerlund’s research, I also consider the impact of ideological factors on the willingness of volunteers to commit atrocities.

Tauno Aarni described one of the earliest Finnish encounters with racial warfare and atrocities on the Eastern Front. Interrogated by the Swedish police after the war, he told the police that his unit, the Aufklärungsabteilung (reconnaissance unit) of the Wiking division, was deployed near Lublin before the start of Operation Barbarossa. According to Aarni, German non-commissioned officers dragged Jews stuffed in sacks to the company’s party. The soldiers then kicked these living sacks and abused the Jews in all imaginable ways. In the end, according to Aarni, the Jews were probably killed.

Aarni raised Swedish authorities’ suspicions when he told the Gävle police during postwar interrogations that he had shot Jews during the war, exclaiming, “Om ni visste hur många judar jag skjutit” (If you only knew how many Jews I have shot).³⁶ In addition, he also divulged that during the first week of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis had told the Finnish SS troops to kill all Jews. It is possible that Aarni may have imagined that the police shared his values, but the interrogator reacted with dismay. Over several interrogations, Aarni’s statement changed several times. At first, he stated that he had only killed in self-defense and that those he shot happened to be Jewish Red Army soldiers. Another time he said that he had not killed Jews, but then admitted to administering a mercy blow to a Jew lying by the side of the road, who had been shot in the back or neck. Later, Aarni clarified his statement, saying that the previous self-defense comment was theoretical. If necessary, he would have shot in self-defense, but he had not been in a situation where he would have been forced to shoot. Aarni’s final version was that he hadn’t killed anyone. Instead, he described in detail the cases of abuse he had seen in which the perpetrators were Germans. In the Lublin region, Aarni had seen how German Nazis had doused the beards of Jews with gasoline and set them on fire. In addition, he had seen German Nazis carving swastikas into the heads of Jews with knives and crushing their skulls with shovels. Aarni had photographed the brutal attacks against Jews, but he told his interrogators that the photos had disappeared, and their current location remains unknown. He stated that when he had criticized the inhumane behavior of the Germans, they merely stated: “Why are you here? There is no humanity in the SS.”³⁷ According to his own statement, Aarni had formed his negative opinion of Jews as a schoolboy in Helsinki in the 1930s; however, he could not accept the actions of the Germans, and he reiterated his claim that he had not participated in the abuse or killing of Jews.³⁸

After the war, the Finnish security police interrogated another likely perpetrator, Thor-Björn Weckström. Weckström told the interrogators that he had deliberately missed when he was ordered to execute Jews. The executions were revenge for the July 2, 1941, killing of Hilmar Wäckerle, the commander of the Westland regiment, who was shot by a Soviet sniper. Company commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfred Schade, a committed National Socialist, gave the mass execution order. A Nazi party member since May 1, 1932, Schade joined the SS on March 11, 1932, and subsequently took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland and Austria. In a personal evaluation, General Felix Steiner, commander of the Wiking division, characterized Schade as an officer with good theoretical and practical skills along with a National Socialist attitude.³⁹ Following Wäckerle’s murder, Arthur Phleps, an ethnic German from Romania, succeeded him as the new regimental commander. Phleps had joined the Waffen-SS as late as June 30, 1941. As a former general of the Romanian army, he was given the rank of SS-Oberführer.⁴⁰ As a newly arrived Volksdeutsche Phleps had not had the time or opportunity to be an early member of the German National Socialist movement, but from the early days of July 1941, he received intense training in National Socialist racial warfare.

Thor-Björn Weckström had the full approval of his superiors, including the commanders of his company and regiment, when he stood facing the Jews he was about to execute. He was part of a group of six to seven men who ordered the Jews to line up next to the pit. On his recruitment form, Weckström wrote “politics” on the line where he was supposed to outline his hobbies and special interests. In addition, he wrote “National Socialism” as his party preference on the same form, and his fellow volunteers characterized him as an eager Nazi fanatic. At this moment, politics translated into action. One by one, the Jews were ordered to the edge of the pit and executed with rifles. After five waves of executions, another group of executioners replaced Weckström and the other men. According to his statement, Weckström said that after leaving the execution site, he went to the other Finns in his unit and told them that the task had been very unpleasant, but at the same time added that orders had to be obeyed. He also claimed to the interrogators that he missed on purpose because the task was repulsive. Though Weckström admitted that he had never liked Jews, he said that he disliked inhumane actions. Given that only Weckström’s statement about this incident exists, I must measure his account’s credibility against his own need to exculpate himself or minimize his actions.⁴¹

Some perpetrators were never interrogated, and their actions were not reported after the war, as in the case of Lennart Kihlström, whose wartime diary survives in the National Archives of Finland. Though Westerlund overlooked one crucial entry in Kihlström’s diary about a shooting, it became public after Lennart Kihlström’s son, Lars, discovered it. Marko Junkkari, a Finnish journalist, analyzed the case in a newspaper article in Helsingin Sanomat. The diary entry suggested that he had been involved in the shooting of four Jews. On July 2, 1941, Lennart Kihlström wrote in his diary: “Four Jews were shot.”⁴² Kihlström wrote the entry in the passive voice, making his involvement ambiguous. While it is not possible to confirm that Kihlström was part of the group that shot the Jews, such actions were done collectively, and the executioners functioned as a group and thus shared moral responsibility.

During the early days of July 1941, the Wiking division marched through Galicia and perpetrated countless murders and atrocities against Jews (see Figures 2 to 5). Among the Finns scattered throughout the division’s three regiments was Unto Boman, who had burned synagogues in Ozerna, Ukraine between July 3 and July 5, 1941.⁴³ Along with Finnish perpetrators came those who observed the devastation, but did not actively take part in the gruesome acts of mass murder. SS-Untersturmführer (later promoted to SS-Obersturmführer) Kaj Duncker belongs in this category. He was present in Lemberg (Polish: Lwów; Ukrainian: Lviv) where local Ukrainians, as well as troops from the Waffen-SS and Einsatzkommandos participated in the mass murder of Jews. Duncker took photos at several locations, which captured both locals and Germans chasing Jews in the streets. Other photos show murdered women (probably in Husiatyn, Ukraine, on July 6, 1941). The same murdered women appear in pictures taken by other people, which indicates that this event held significance.⁴⁴ Duncker wrote in his diary about the mass murder and “excesses.” In his photo album, he labeled one incident in Swedish as Judejakt (Jew-hunting). There are no signs of criticism, disgust, or remorse in Duncker’s diary. His photos indicate the presence of Wiking division soldiers at the scenes of atrocities. Two motorcycles with license plates numbered SS 107 606 and SS 104 962 belong to the artillery and Westland regiments of the Wiking division.⁴⁵ Another of his pictures taken in Husiatyn shows a license plate with the number SS 107 601, which belonged to the Wiking division artillery regiment.⁴⁶

Figure 2.

Troops and motorcycles from the Westland and artillery regiments of the Wiking division in Zolochiv. A pogrom is unfolding in the background, July 3, 1941. SLS 008, Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLSA 898 Dunckerska släktarkivet, photographer Kaj Duncker.

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Figure 3.

Pogrom labeled “Judejakt” (Jew-hunting) in Lemberg, July 1, 1941. SLS 009, Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLSA 898 Dunckerska släktarkivet, photographer Kaj Duncker.

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Figure 4.

Murdered women in Husiatyn, July 6, 1941. SLS 013, Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLSA 898 Dunckerska släktarkivet, photographer Kaj Duncker.

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Figure 5.

Death and destruction in Husiatyn, July 6, 1941. The vehicle belongs to the artillery regiment of the Wiking division. SLS 014, Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLSA 898 Dunckerska släktarkivet, photographer Kaj Duncker.

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One of the most significant cases involving Finns as perpetrators of the Holocaust comes from a letter by Olavi Karpalo to SS-Untersturmführer Ensio Pihkala, Finnish military chaplain and liaison officer in the Wiking division. Dated July 24, 1941. Karpalo wrote that “poorer shooting-skills than ours are enough for executing Jews.”⁴⁷ He and the letter’s co-signers were repairing vehicles in the Werkstatt-Kompanie of the Wiking division. Instead of executing Jews and repairing cars, Karpalo longed for front line duty and real combat with the opportunity to fight Russians. A veteran of the Falangist side in the Spanish Civil War, he had also tried to become a Luftwaffe pilot. Lars Westerlund links Karpalo’s letter to the killing of Jews in Tarashcha, Ukraine, in late July 1941.⁴⁸ The letter was the first piece of evidence that led to a reassessment of the role of Finnish SS men in the Holocaust.

Another piece of evidence is a letter written by Ilmari Autonen. He was involved in the execution of a Soviet political commissar. Lars Westerlund concludes that the killing took place in August 1941 in Dnipropetrovsk. Autonen wrote a letter in which he boasted that he had taken and written on a paper from a commissar on the bank of the Dnieper, saying that the commissar “didn’t need it anymore for obvious reasons, the only thing he needed was 60 cm of soil on top his snout.”⁴⁹ As Karpalo did in his letter, Autonen writes in somewhat ambiguous terms. The letters allude to killings, but ascribing culpability is slightly elusive.

According to Westerlund’s work, atrocities paralleled the deployment of the Finnish SS forces at the onset of Operation Barbarossa. Only one documented case took place after the Finnish battalion reached the front.⁵⁰ The battalion went to the front in December 1941 and advanced with the division from Ukraine and the Caucasus. After the war, SS-Rottenführer Paavo Merelä, a former Finnish SS man, reported to the Finnish security police (Valpo) on these atrocities and recounted episodes in which Finns executed prisoners and civilians. On December 31, 1942, in the village of Toldzgun in the Caucasus, Finnish SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Erik Ladau ordered a Finnish pioneer platoon to execute seven villagers, as well as five Russian defectors who had been taken as prisoners of war. For a long time, Merelä’s report was the only information about the executions in Toldzgun. Westerlund’s study, however, incorporated additional sources, including the diary of SS-Unterscharführer Jaakko Hintikka, whose diary entries confirmed that the executions took place. Although Ladau is not directly mentioned in Hintikka’s diary, it is nevertheless apparent that the executions took place on Ladau’s order.⁵¹ The Finnish SS battalion retreated from Toldzgun during the night after the executions, and a logistical problem likely motivated the executions—the retreating battalion could not transport the prisoners, nor could the prisoners be released, as they could have told the enemy about the withdrawal and jeopardized the whole battalion. If the reason for issuing the execution order was indeed the retreat, the reason was tactically understandable, but ultimately illegal. The Finns’ retreat began on January 1, 1943, at 2:30 am without fighting, and without the enemy noticing their departure. Together with the division crossing the river Don, the battalion retreated, and by summer 1943, the latter was repatriated. After Stalingrad, the Finnish political leadership was reluctant to renew the contracts, as their original service was for two years.

Applying the theoretical perspectives

Were the previously examined Finnish SS men “ordinary men,” or were they willing or ideological executioners? The majority of the Finnish SS men suspected of atrocities applied for service and were accepted on the very first day, including Tauno Aarni, Ilmari Autonen, Unto Boman, Olavi Karpalo, and Thor-Björn Weckström. All of them stated “National Socialism” as their political preference, though Olavi Karpalo wrote only the word “National,” likely omitting Socialism. In a previous study, however, I lumped Karpalo with those volunteers who expressed some generic patriotic ideology instead of an explicit party preference, though subsequent research has caused me to reverse my findings.⁵² Among the National Socialists, Tauno Aarni was a member of Arvi Kalsta’s Finnish Nazi organization, whereas Unto Boman stated the Swedish-speaking Nazi organization Samfundet Folkgemenskap as his preference. Autonen and Karpalo were also on the list of Samfundet folkgemenskap. Karl-Erik Ladau was recruited on April 23, 1941, and Lennart Kihlström on April 25. They did not state any party preference on their recruitment forms.⁵³ Gunnar Lindqvist, one of the most prominent antisemites in Finland, headed Samfundet Folkgemenskap. His father, Rafael Linqvist was the man behind one of the earliest translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Swedish translation published in Finland in 1919). Later, Gunnar published another edition of the Protocols with his own preface. Just like Eric Fock and Arvi Kalsta, Gunnar Lindqvist was an active SS recruiter who brought in volunteers who would later be connected to atrocities.

All seven Finnish SS men connected to atrocities were recruited during the first week of recruitment before any screening was introduced. This early enlistment makes them part of the ideological core of the Finnish SS. A variety of sources uphold their ideological commitment. Both Tauno Aarni and Thor-Björn Weckström told their interrogators after the war that they had never liked Jews. Unto Boman showed clear antisemitic tendencies when he wrote in the 1950s about his experience in the Waffen-SS. Boman, who had changed his surname to Parvilahti, had survived several years of imprisonment in Stalin’s Gulag. Parvilahti wrote about the pogrom he had witnessed in Lemberg and stated that Jews were responsible for establishing the Soviet Union. He wrote further that the killing of Jews was an understandable reaction against the purported offenses that Jews had committed against Germans and Russians.⁵⁴ Tauno Aarni said in his postwar interrogations that the German atrocities against Jews horrified him, but they did not prevent him from taking part in the spring 1944 Hitlerjugend’s leadership course in Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany. By 1944, Aarni was no longer in the SS, and his participation in the course was entirely voluntary. Apparently, his experience on the Eastern Front had not shaken his conviction in National Socialism. Of the other Finnish SS volunteers, Weckström was open and vocal about his Nazi sympathies.⁵⁵ Esko Riekki, organizer of the Finnish SS recruitment, in a private letter, described Ilmari Autonen as a Nazi fanatic.⁵⁶ There is also strong evidence to indicate that Karl-Erik Ladau also belonged to an inner circle of devoted Nazi followers.⁵⁷ On the other hand, Lennart Kihlström remains somewhat of a puzzle, as there is little information about his ideological outlook.

Some indicators, however, lend credence to Browning’s “ordinary men” theory. Though Thor-Björn Weckström was part of a group that executed Jews, according to SS-Rottenführer Sakari Lappi-Seppälä, another group of Finns purportedly refused to take part in the killing of Jews. Lappi-Seppälä wrote a critical postwar account of his experience in the Waffen-SS. He was recruited on May 2, and stated National Socialism as his political preference. After the war, Lappi-Seppälä switched sides and became a Communist. In his postwar account, Lappi-Seppälä wrote that he and the other Finns blankly refused to execute Jews. The result was that SS-Hauptsturmführer Schade scolded the Finns severely and told them that they were cowards and totally useless. There were, however, no other serious consequences.⁵⁸ Lappi-Seppälä does not mention Weckström’s participation in the executions. He might have opted to protect Weckström’s reputation. In any case, Lappi-Seppälä received death threats from his former comrades-in-arms and likely did not implicate any Finns as a result. He placed the blame solely on the German SS men.

In his letter to Ensio Pihkala, Olavi Karpalo reveals another indicator that supports Browning’s perspective. According to his letter, Karpalo wanted to transfer to a combat unit that would give him the opportunity to shoot Russians. Executing Jews was apparently an inferior task in Karpalo’s opinion, even though he did not condemn these executions.

Yet these few examples do not alter the obvious fact that the Finnish SS volunteers that I have linked to atrocities were also the ideologically committed first recruits. Their commitment to National Socialism and antisemitism was evident and intense. It would, however, be inaccurate to say that killing Jews was the primary motivation for Finnish men to volunteer in the SS since they were not aware of such scenarios when they volunteered. Many factors contributed to the volunteers’ motivations to join the SS. Patriotism, adventure, comradeship, a desire to acquire and refine professional military skills, political idealism, anti-Soviet attitudes, future career advancement in Hitler’s “New Europe,” escape from troubles at home, and a mercenary’s salary were certainly among the mix of motivational incentives, which, to varying degrees, contributed an individual’s decision to enlist.⁵⁹ These varying, and at times mutually reinforcing, motives do not detract from the fact that joining the SS meant endorsing Nazi ideology, at least to some degree. Though the level of ideological commitment among the Finnish SS men varied, this study indicates that, among the Finnish SS volunteers, the perpetrators of atrocities were among the most committed Nazis.

Ideological commitment to National Socialism and antisemitism were crucial motivating factors for the Finnish SS volunteers who perpetrated atrocities. According to Martin Gutmann’s research, many Germanic volunteers in the Waffen-SS were ambitious, intellectual, and educated. They had mastered several languages and traveled widely. They also combined an international outlook with a domestic version of nationalism. According to Gutmann, Germanic volunteers “had developed an ideological inclination towards fascism in the years before their association with the SS.”⁶⁰ Gutmann rejects the binary myths of the SS volunteers as either traitors or heroes (the latter myth being propagated in pseudo-fascist, nationalist circles after the Second World War). Instead, he points to “the complexities of what were not monolithic caricatures of pure evil or good but real men.”⁶¹ As an example, Gutmann mentions the Danish author, journalist, traveler, and SS volunteer Flemming Helweg-Larsen. Helweg-Larsen spoke several languages and traveled widely, spending several years in South America.⁶² Men like Helweg-Larsen were at the same time nationalists and internationalists. They rejected the materialism of both Communism and Western liberal culture and capitalism. Gutmann writes about their “ideological predisposition toward ‘internationalist’ fascism, a worldview that “combined a cosmopolitan European outlook with a deep sense of patriotism.” Their internationalist fascist ideas “were informed by a transnational discourse and European-wide pressures.”⁶³ The Germanic volunteers positioned themselves in a cross-national alignment between their home countries and the greater Germanic Reich and the European fascist community, and “Classical elements of fascist ideology, such as anti-Semitism and a wish for a militarization of society, pervaded their thinking.”⁶⁴

In contrast to Gutmann’s ambitious and elitist Waffen-SS soldiers, there were also volunteers of lesser intellectual stature. Jean-Luc Leleu states that the SS reviewed four hundred and fifty thousand applications in 1940. Of these, only 82,833 were admitted to the SS and police.⁶⁵ In the Finnish case, the following year, the SS approved 1,192 applications, rejected 430, and 274 candidates did not appear.⁶⁶ Compared to the German Waffen-SS, entry into the Finnish volunteer battalion of the Waffen-SS was comparatively easy. The rank and file of the Finnish volunteer battalion did not necessarily represent the type of volunteer Gutmann describes. Often, they were poorly educated; most of them had never been abroad before joining the SS, but they did not lack ideological commitment. Ideology in this case meant endorsing a nationalist Finnish version of extreme right politics as represented by the IKL, the Patriotic People’s Movement. Even though pre-selection had occurred to some degree at the local level, the proportion of approved applications was strikingly high. Nationwide recruitment meant that many volunteers came from rural districts. Many of them were orphans. Approximately 41.7 percent of Finnish volunteers had grown up with just one parent or none.⁶⁷ I have previously suggested that one of the psychological factors behind the Finnish volunteers’ decision to join the Waffen-SS was the quest for comradeship. Male bonding in a military setting could provide a substitute for a missing father.

Though the typical Finnish SS volunteers bear little resemblance to the elite Waffen-SS soldier that Gutmann describes, the former, who were linked to atrocities, do reflect the typical Germanic SS volunteer. Olavi Karpalo had widened his international fascist horizons by fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He wrote a book about his experience (Sisulla sotaan, 1940),⁶⁸ illustrated with his drawings. Karpalo was also a set designer who worked for Finnish theaters and the opera. Working in the Werkstatt-Kompanie seemed to be a dead end for the ambitious Karpalo, and the rank of SS-Unterscharführer was probably also a disappointment. A man with Karpalo’s ambitions would have been looking for the insignia of an officer and not been content with settling as a non-commissioned officer. Karpalo wrote that his talents as an aspiring war novelist were wasted since he did not get to see front line combat.⁶⁹ In Finland, he had served in the air force during the Winter War, but in the SS, he ended up in the Werkstatt-Kompanie. Karpalo had answered affirmatively when an officer asked if there were any soldiers with mechanical skills present. Karpalo and his comrades had been under the impression that they were being selected for duty as mechanics in the Luftwaffe, but he was severely disappointed.⁷⁰ His high-soaring dreams were thus shattered. Big dreams were planted already in his full name, which was officially Olavus Gustavus Adolphus Karpalo. He was named after the seventeenth-century Swedish warrior king.

Tauno Aarni was another example of an intellectual, artistic, and worldly Germanic volunteer. Aarni was born to missionary parents in Amboland (German South West Africa, today Namibia). He was raised in Helsinki by a severe stepmother and a distant stepfather while his parents continued their missionary work in Africa. Aarni was an outcast in school. His male peers shunned him, so instead he sought the company of girls. After high school, Aarni pursued college studies in marketing. The distinction between commercials (the central theme of his studies) and propaganda was slightly blurred, and young Tauno was prone to brag about studying the making of propaganda. He was introduced to a circle of friends centered around General Lennart Oesch’s daughter. These friends were pro-German and politically on the extreme right, and Tauno Aarni joined Arvi Kalsta’s Organization of National Socialists (Kansallissosialistien Järjestö, KSJ) in December 1940.⁷¹ Arvi Kalsta was a former Jäger officer who had traded a less than successful military career for an equally dissatisfying political career. Kalsta’s Nazi party KSJ did not manage to gain a single seat in parliamentary elections.

Tauno Aarni was talented and artistically inclined. In the Waffen-SS, he worked as a photographer. After the war, Aarni moved to Sweden, turning photography into a profession. He had his own photo studio where he tutored some of the most famous Swedish photographers. He had a television show where he discussed the art of photography. In addition to this, Aarni studied comparative religion and wrote his doctoral thesis about the native religion of Amboland.⁷²

Unto Boman was also an ambitious character. What Boman might have lacked in refined cultural manners and intellectual air, he compensated with a profound interest in espionage and political intrigues. Unto Boman was involved in infiltrating pro-Soviet organizations in Finland, and he was a key player in the Swedish-speaking Nazi organization Samfundet Folkgemenskap. After summer 1941, Boman complained of an old war wound that hampered his ability to take part in long marches and got transferred to Berlin where he directed the Finnish SS liaison bureau. From this bureaucratic position of power Boman monitored the political reliability of the Finnish volunteers. He was in charge of censoring the letters sent by the Finnish volunteers. Boman also monitored the correspondence of the Finnish military attaché colonel Walter Horn, as well as the correspondence of other Finnish diplomats stationed in Berlin. Boman managed to attain the rank of SS-Untersturmführer, but his power was far more significant than his rank indicated. It can be stated without exaggeration that Unto Boman was the number one National Socialist among the Finnish SS volunteers.

Karl-Erik Ladau came from an aristocratic family with long military traditions. He was the descendent of Otto Reinhold Ladau, who was ennobled by King Charles XII of Sweden in 1718. Karl-Erik Ladau was the first Finn to command a company in the Waffen-SS. He was wounded seven times during the Second World War. Kaj Duncker’s family maintained an even more illustrious military tradition. His forefather, Lieutenant-Colonel Joachim Zachris Duncker, was one of the heroes of the Koljonvirta battle, where Swedish troops defeated the Russians in October 1808. Joachim Zachris Duncker died in the battle of Hörnefors on July 5, 1809, when Russian troops chased the remnants of the Swedish army from Finland to Sweden proper. He was commemorated in The Tales of Ensign Stål by Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Finland’s national poet, in the poem titled The Fifth of July. Both Ladau and Duncker were certainly motivated by the long and illustrious military traditions of their families, and joining the Waffen-SS seemed to offer an opportunity to continue these heroic traditions. Kaj Duncker stayed in the Wiking division’s artillery even after the Finnish battalion was disbanded.

Military traditions, albeit more modest, were also present in Lennart Kihlström’s and Sakari Lappi-Seppälä’s families. Lennart Kihlström’s father was a career officer, while Lappi-Seppälä’s father had taken part in the Finnish Jäger movement. Lennart Kihlström’s background included a romantic relationship with Marja-Liisa Vartio, a writer, poet, and pioneer of Finnish modernism in literature.⁷³ While Lennart lacked literary or artistic inclinations, Sakari Lappi-Seppälä was an extremely self-confident and worldly cosmopolitan with some literary talent.

Ilmari Autonen and Thor-Björn Weckström are the only two who deviate from the picture painted by Gutmann. Autonen has not left much of an imprint in the source material, and the few letters he wrote reveal a rather crude form of literary expression. The letters contain some bragging,⁷⁴ but his peers and superiors clearly disregarded Autonen. Weckström was an eager Nazi, but he was not renowned for bravery in battle. Both Autonen and Weckström can be described as followers rather than men of initiative.

There were several incentives for the ambitious Finns in the Wiking division to prove their ideological commitment. Finnish SS men with an officer rank were eager to obtain corresponding ranks and assignments in the Waffen-SS. Even though they were given the insignia of SS-Untersturmführers and SS-Obersturmführers they were initially deployed as observers rather than commanders of platoons or companies. Finnish non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were denied SS ranks due to an order issued by the commander of the Wiking division’s Aufklärungsabteilung, SS-Hauptsturmführer Albin Freiherr von Reitzenstein. He announced that the Finnish NCOs were enrolled with the rank of SS-Rottenführer. After a three-month waiting period, their companies would evaluate them and those found eligible would be promoted to NCOs.⁷⁵ Freiherr von Reitzenstein was responsible for the atrocities committed by his unit, the Aufklärungsabteilung. His political outlook was decidedly National Socialist. Reitzenstein joined the Nazi party directly after finishing high school at the age of nineteen. He had been an NSDAP member since June 1, 1930, and a member of the SS since November 5, 1930. Reitzenstein became an officer in the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in 1933.⁷⁶

How do Gutmann’s and Goldhagen’s perspectives intersect? The Finnish SS volunteers linked to atrocities seemed to be people seeking a role to fit in. Both the cosmopolitan men who Gutmann describe, and the followers like Autonen and Weckström were individuals who sought to fulfill an expected role. John M. Steiner, Holocaust survivor and psychologist, spent several years after the war studying leading SS men, including Felix Steiner, commander of the Wiking division. He found several reasons why individuals assumed violent roles: the attraction of fulfilling military roles, pragmatic or mercenary reasons, or an ideological identification with the SS. Moreover, according to Steiner, “Institutional support for roles of violence has apparently far more extensive effects than generally realized.”⁷⁷ Thus, we can see how the theories of Goldhagen, Gutmann, and Steiner coalesce. Initiative and ambition, as well as ideology with eliminationist antisemitism, primed these volunteers to commit atrocities and acts of violence.

Conclusions

Ideological commitment to National Socialism and antisemitism motivated some Finns to volunteer for the Waffen-SS. As is clear from this study, recruiters deemed an ideological core group suitable for immediate deployment even though some volunteers did not meet the German SS’s physical and experiential requirements, such as height and previous military experience. Those volunteers with high levels of ambition combined with high personal qualifications (as described by Martin Gutmann) were keen to assume roles that would further their careers in the SS. In many cases, these roles involved extreme violence. The same was true for followers, who had the same level of ambition, but lacked the initiative and personal qualifications. They were keen to prove themselves useful in a role that benefited from adopting eliminationist antisemitic beliefs.

This ideology was also present among the key recruiters, including Gunnar Lindqvist, Arvi Kalsta, and Eric Fock, all of whom can be described as committed National Socialists and antisemites. In addition, ideologically committed SS officers such as Alfred Schade and Albin Freiherr von Reitzenstein backed the perpetrators. Thus, ideology was a driving force throughout: from recruitment, within the entire chain of command, and among the recruited SS men who pulled the trigger.

Some Finns tried to avoid executing Jews, but the evidence supporting Browning’s “Ordinary Men” theory is less compelling in this case study. Arguably this theory does provide some insight into the case of Finnish SS men to a degree, but the explanatory potential is less significant.

From this study, however, it is undeniable that all Finnish SS men connected to Holocaust atrocities on the Eastern Front derived from a core ideological group that was given preferential treatment during the first days of the recruitment process. Antisemitism and National Socialist ideology were clearly a driving factor among Finnish SS volunteers, as their beliefs and ideology governed their actions. Yet ambition and a desire for advancement also propelled Finns to participate in the mass execution of Jews. Thus, a combination of the initial theories of Goldhagen, combined with the comparative findings of Martin R. Gutmann, as well as the psychological insights of John M. Steiner, combine to underscore the importance of antisemitism as the driving force of this aspect of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, Gutmann, and Steiner coalesce. Initiative and ambition, as well as ideology with its eliminationist antisemitism, primed these volunteers to commit atrocities and acts of violence.

André Swanström is Associate Professor of Church History at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. He has studied SS volunteers, antisemitism, and extreme right politics in Finnish history. Swanström’s research combines church history, military history, and Jewish studies, and his findings led to a national enquiry and debate concerning the involvement of Finnish SS men in the Holocaust.

Footnotes