The combat in Finland from 1939 through 1945 is considered part of the Second World War….List.

In fact, Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany during the second world war not to prevent Soviet conquest but to win back territories lost to the USSR as a result of the winter war of 1939-40. The peace treaty that ended the war in March 1940 left Finnish independence intact.

At the beginning of the First World War, Finland was an autonomous Great Duchy within the Russian Empire. There were only 500 Finns that volunteered to fight in the Russian army in the autumn of 1914. They were joined by doctors and nurses who worked at the front.

Following the Finnish declaration of independence on December 6, 1917, the U.S. government was among the first to recognize it. The U.S. government resisted Soviet pressures to declare war on Finland, but on June 30, 1944, it agreed to sever diplomatic relations with the Finnish government.

Finland believed the Soviet Union wanted to expand into its territory and the Soviet Union feared Finland would allow itself to be used as a base from which enemies could attack. A faked border incident gave the Soviet Union the excuse to invade on 30 November 1939.

In March 1940, negotiations with the Soviets began, and Finland signed the Treaty of Moscow, which handed over control of the Karelian Isthmus. As tension increased between Germany and the USSR, Finland saw in Hitler a possible ally in gaining back its lost territory.

November 30, 1939 – M

After 15 months of Interim Peace, in June 1941, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa, and the Continuation War between Finland and the USSR began….

Finnish immigrants in the United States and Canada returned home, and many volunteers (one of them future actor Christopher Lee) traveled to Finland to join Finland’s forces: 8,700 Swedes, 1,010 Danes (including Christian Frederik von Schalburg, a captain in the Danish Royal Life Guards and later commander of the Free …