Mediating for the Third Reich: On Military Translation Cultures in World War II in Northern Finland

Abstract

Finland was involved in three military conflicts in World War II: the Winter War (1939-40), the Continuation War (1942-4) and the so-called Lapland War. Unlike the Winter War against the USSR, in which international support had been minimal, Finland started the second war as an ally of Nazi Germany in its offensive to the East, that is, in Operation Barbarossa. In Finnish Lapland, the cooperation created an exceptional wartime context, ‘a Finnish-German zone, in which the military leadership was in the hands of the Germans but the civilian administration in those of the Finns’ (Lahteenmaki 1999: 241).1 Three years later, in autumn 1944, this alliance turned into a Finnish-German confrontation on Finnish territory, the so-called Lapland War, as the peace terms imposed by the USSR dictated that Finnish troops must drive the Germans out of Northern Finland.