Finnish Army Maneuvers 1939 - Winterkrieg - Continuation War - Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

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Prelude to the Winter War

In the coming weeks we’ll be looking at plenty of stock footage from the Finnish Winter War that went from Nov. 30 1939 until March 13 of 1940 and then from the so-called Continuation War which covers Finnlands participation in the German attack on the Soviet Union which began in the Summer of 1941.

The footage for today is raw material of the Finnish army on Maneuvers in the Fall just before the Winter War kicked off. To put things into historical context at this time Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were still allies and Finnland literally stood alone. The run-time of the original is 10:01, it’s silent and it’s fantastic.

There’s something very soothing for me about watching the footage with only the background sound and no commentary. At around this point in the original some footage planes of the Finnish air force are shown. Unfortunately I’m not able to show that to you here because the planes were marked with prominent large blue swastikas on a white background - here.

But it’s not what you might think. The Finnish military had been the swastika since 1918, two years before the Nazi party in Germany formally adopted the swastika as their official symbol. In actuality the Finnish use of the symbol during WW2 had nothing to do with the Germans. As I said before, in 1939 Germany and Finnland were not allied. After WW2 they stopped marking their planes with the swastika however they continued using it in unit insignias and decorations all the way up until the summer of this year, 2020.

Before we finish off the footage of these 1939 maneuvers I’d like to ask you to subscribe to this channel. We’ve got plenty of great original material that will be presented that I’m sure you’ve find interesting.