A Brief History
On April 27, 1945, Finnish soldiers were photographed proudly raising the Finnish war flag on top of a concrete cairn where the borders of Finland, Norway, and Sweden meet. A famous photograph, the shot is often called “Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn.”
Digging Deeper
An opportunistic bully, the USSR tried to capitalize on the chaos of World War II to expand their own borders, in Poland, the Far East, and in Finland. From 1939 to 1940, the Finns fought the Soviets in the Winter War, and again in the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944. During the Continuation War, the Finns were compelled by the situation to ally themselves with Germany against the Soviets. In 1944, the Finns then fought the Germans in the Lapland War.
The desperate battles for Finnish independence and territory cost 97,000 Finns their lives out of a population of only 3.7 million, while almost 400,000 Soviets died!
Note: Casualty numbers vary by source, and here they include civilians and non-battle deaths due to freezing, disease and accidents.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Why is the Finland Theater largely ignored in the US?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Campbell, David. Finnish Soldier vs Soviet Soldier: Winter War 1939–40. Osprey Publishing, 2016.
Campbell, David. Soviet Soldier vs Finnish Soldier: The Continuation War 1941–44. Osprey Publishing, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Väinö Oinonen (1897–1975) of Finnish soldiers raising the war flag at the three-country cairn between Norway, Sweden, and Finland on 27 April 1945, the end of World War II in Finland, is in the public domain in the United States, because it meets three requirements:
- it was first published outside the United States (and not published in the U.S. within 30 days),
- it was first published before 1 March 1989 without copyright notice or before 1964 without copyright renewal or before the source country established copyright relations with the United States,
- it was in the public domain in its home country (Finland) on the URAA date (1 January 1996).
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