Suomi saksalaisin silmin. Lehdistön ja diplomatian näkökulmia by Risto s> Peltovuori (review)

Abstract

360 SEER, 84, 2, 2oo6 Veesenmayer's persecution of theJews was always cloaked in contingencies, Matic'nevertheless does not leave the impression that it was less lethal or racist than that of dyed-in-the-woolideologues. When Regent Horthy asked Veesenmayer to exempt Christian Jews, professionals, or workers in the armament industry,Veesenmayer insisted on a consequent execution of the deportations.Furthermore,Maticd conclusivelyproves that Veesenmayerknew fromJuly I944 what awaited theseJews in Auschwitz. Still, he continued the deportations. The development of Veesenmayer'santi-Semitismover time is strikingand is not fully explained by the presence of a regime that rewardsanti-Semitic initiative and Matic"sreference to the career ambitions of the 'generation of objectivity'.One cannot help but wonder where this objectivityhad gone when all SerbianJews were declared Communist insurgents.And where was 'rationality'in the conviction that the deportation and murder of Slovakia's and Hungary'sJews could secure German victory as late as I944?Matic has shown that contingenciesneed not be divorcedfrom ideology, but in orderto make more sense of Veesenmayer's development, the course of the war and the natureof his anti-Semitismneed to be takeninto account. Germanvictory and the fate of Europe'sJews had become irretrievablylinked, and it seems that the brutalityof the war in the East and more so the looming apocalypse of military defeat unhooked any form of rationality from the decision to eliminate theJewish population. Yet, Matic does not write a historyof the Holocaust, but tells the story of Veesenmayer'slife. And he does it very well. Veesenmayer'svita is embedded in a concise political historythat introducesthe reader not only to the objectives of German foreignpolicy, but also to the personalitiesand local politics thatVeesenmayerencounteredat each turnof his career.Matic is thusable to consider the specific in the general, individualresponsibilitywithin structural determinants,and manages at the same time to recount an engaging storyin the very traditional(and modestly exciting)field of diplomatichistory. Histoy Department ULRIKE EHRET IKing's College London Peltovuori, Risto. Suomisaksalaisin silmin.Lehdistdn ja diplomatian ndkdkulmia. Historiallisia tutkimuksia, 223. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2005. 300 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliographicalreferences. Index. ?29.00 (paperback). THISbook is a study of German views on Finland whether from the press or diplomatic representativesin the vital six years before the outbreak of the Winter War. Having once written a thesis about British views on Finland before the First World War, the reviewer is all too aware of the difficulties arisingfrom the art of combining the official and unofficialin studies of this kind. It might be thought that the monolithic Nazi Germany would not present so great a problem of interweaving the two dimensions. But it is preciselyhere that Risto Peltovuori'swork shows its worth, for with regardto REVIEWS 36I Northern Europe, Nazi Germany was less monolithic than might at first be thought. Peltovuori thus distinguishes between traditional German conservative opinion and the Nazi ideological standpoint. In drawing this distinction, a factor of undeniableimportanceis that the Nordic stateswere not an integral part in Hitler's pre-war plans of conquest and hence the Nazi system could grant itself a degree of latitude when looking northwards.Anyway, most of Scandinavia was Nordically Aryan. But most of Finland was not. It was the same sort of problem that the Volksdeutscher Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi theoretician of race, was acquainted with vis-'a-vishis native Estonia. As far as the Finnswere concerned, Rosenberg pinched a way out from his contemporary Hans Gunther (not mentioned by Peltovuori, but discussed in Britta Hiedanniemi's parallel work),who had spoken of a nordischer Gedanke, which Rosenberg used to describe a politico-culturalidentity covering all the Finns. This glossed over a lot, including alleged Mongol origins, which Gunther himself had not ignored. In practice,too, traditionalGerman conservatismproved a usefullinkwith a section of the Finnishelite. 'Old man' P. E. Svinhufvud,presidentof Finland till I937, could be nicely compared with Hindenburg, whom he resembled. And the fact was that the Nazi regime itself employed a lot of conservatives. From 1935 onwards,the German ministerin Finlandwas Wipertvon Blucher, no Nazi. He and Rosenberg could neverthelessbe in full agreementabout the sterlingworth of the Finnsas enemies of Bolshevism.That had been proved in I9I8 when the German and Finns were Waffenbnider...