1945-46 trial of Finnish leaders responsible for the Continuation War
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (June 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Wikipedia article at [[:fi:Sotasyyllisyysoikeudenkäynti]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fi|Sotasyyllisyysoikeudenkäynti}} to the talk page.
The war-responsibility trials in Finland (Finnish: Sotasyyllisyysoikeudenkäynti, Swedish: Krigsansvarighetsprocessen) were trials of the Finnish wartime leaders held responsible for "definitely influencing Finland in getting into a war with the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in 1941 or preventing peace" during the Continuation War, the Finnish term for their participation in the Second World War from 1941–1944. Unlike other World War II war-responsibility trials, the Finnish trials were not international. The trials were conducted from November 1945 through February 1946 by a special court consisting of the presidents of the Supreme Court of Finland, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland, a professor from the University of Helsinki and twelve MPs appointed by the Parliament of Finland. The accused were convicted and were imprisoned until they were eventually paroled and then pardoned.[1]
Background
The Moscow Armistice, signed September 19, 1944, contained the following Article 13:
Finland undertakes to collaborate with the Allied powers in the apprehension of persons accused of war crimes and in their trial.[2]
The Finns initially thought that the trials would be for conventional war crimes. However, as the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943 made clear, the Allied powers intended to prosecute for other actions as well.
The Allied Control Commission and the Communist Party of Finland raised the issue of the trials repeatedly during the spring and summer of 1945. When the Treaty of London (London Charter) August 8, 1945 defined three types of crimes, war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, it became evident that Finland could not be the only country fighting on the German side where leaders would not be convicted. On September 11, the parliament passed a law enabling prosecution of those responsible for war. The Supreme Court of Finland and leading judicial experts protested the law as conflicting with the constitution of Finland and contrary to Western judicial principles (it was designed to apply retroactively), but they did not comment on the political necessity of it. The Finnish public regarded it as a mockery of the rule of law. Juho Kusti Paasikivi, who was the prime minister of Finland at the time, is known to have stated that the conditions of the armistice concerning this matter disregarded all laws.[3]
The trial
The trials were conducted in Finland under Finnish (retroactive) law with Finnish judges. The law limited criminal liability to the highest leadership; only politicians and the Finnish war-time ambassador in Berlin, Toivo Mikael Kivimäki, were prosecuted. The consolidated trial started on November 15, 1945. The Allied Control Commission, which monitored the implementation of the armistice on behalf of the Allies, set up a committee to observe the trials and interfered on numerous occasions before the trials ended in February 1946.[4]
The accused
From the left: Henrik Ramsay, Tyko Reinikka, Antti Kukkonen, Edwin Linkomies, J.W. Rangell, Risto Ryti, Väinö Tanner and T.M. Kivimäki
On the negotiations between the leadership of the Communist Party of Finland and Andrei Zhdanov, the chairman of Allied Control Commission the question of removal of Väinö Tanner, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party, was raised. In his private notes Zhdanov wrote: "If Tanner is removed, the Social Democratic Party will shatter..." thus opening the road to Communist control of the left.[citation needed]
Reactions to the trial
Most Finns rejected the legitimacy of the trial, because ex post facto law was against the Finnish Constitution, and because only Finnish leaders, and not the Soviet leaders who had ordered the invasion of Finland in 1939, were held accountable for the charge of aggressive war.[5] The lack of public support for the proceedings led to the Finnish government paroling and pardoning each of the defendants who was sentenced to imprisonment.
The question as to whether Finnish officials had known about the extermination of the Jews, in the course of their collaboration with Nazi Germany, was not raised in the trial. While Finland managed to prevent the deportation and murder of almost all of its Jews during the war, the question as to whether the Finnish state knew about the Holocaust continues to be controversial inside the country.
After the Paris Peace treaty was ratified in the Soviet Union August 29, 1947, the Allied Control Commission left Finland on September 26, 1947. President Paasikivi paroled Kukkonen and Reinikka in October and Ramsay in December when they had served five-sixths of their sentences. The rest were granted parole in accordance with Finnish criminal law when they had served half of their sentences. On May 19, 1949 Paasikivi pardoned Ryti, who was hospitalized (his health collapsed during the imprisonment and he remained an invalid until his death in 1956). He also pardoned Rangell, Tanner, Linkomies, and Kivimäki, who were still on parole. That day, Paasikivi wrote in his diary: "[It was] ... the most noble deed, I have participated in, in the last five years."
^Immi Tallgren, "The Finnish War-Responsibility Trial in 1945–46: The Limits of ad hoc Criminal Justice?." in The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Oxford University Press, 2013) pp. 430–454.
^Immi Tallgren, "Martyrs and Scapegoats of the Nation? The Finnish War-Responsibility Trial, 1945–1946." Historical Origins of International Criminal Law (Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2014) pp. 493–538.
Meinander, Henrik: Finlands Historia. Part 4 pp. 279–282, ISBN9515008832
Rautkallio, Hannu: Sotasyyllisyysnäytelmä, ISBN951-35-2520-1, Savonlinnan Kirjapaino Oy, 1981
Rosendahl, Anja & Saija, Olavi: Ajasta Aikaan – Suomen historian käännekohtia (Turning points in Finland's history), WSOY 1995
Tallgren, Immi. "The Finnish War-Responsibility Trial in 1945-46: The Limits of ad hoc Criminal Justice?." in The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (Oxford University Press, 2013. 430-454).
Tallgren, Immi. "Martyrs and Scapegoats of the Nation? The Finnish War-Responsibility Trial, 1945–1946." Historical Origins of International Criminal Law (Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2014) pp. 493–538.
Turtola, Martti: Risto Ryti: Elämä isänmaan puolesta, ISBN951-1-11783-1, Otava, 1994
Further reading
Lehtinen, Lasse; and Rautkallio, Hannu; Kansakunnan sijaiskärsijät ("Scapegoats of the Nation"[1]), WSOY 2005
