Human Shields and Choice

[Tommi]

Finland was attacked by Soviet Union. Finland lost. Finland was decreed devastating reparation payments to a totalitarian country which had attacked Finland. This is akin to a burglar entering your house, and holding a gun in your head to make you pay. It's naught but extortion. Until the 80's Finnish foreign policy was largely dictated from Moscow. There's a reason Finlandization is a word. The smart thing would've been to turn west for help. Help to thwart the Soviet puppetstrings, and help to avoid paying the ransom.

As for the misquote, it was a two snippets edited to look like a phrase I wrote. I misunderstood it to question the suggested integrity the Finns maintained in WW2. Paying or not of war reparations is not part of WW2, but it's aftermath.

Technically yes we lost, because we had to buy weapons from Germany to be able to defend against the Russians. And IIRC we asked them to defend Finland, too, against this mutual enemy. When Germany lost, we lost too.

But I'd like to point out that the large scale Soviet Union assault was indeed stopped, and Finland was never conquered. They sent a commitee to oversee Finland for some time after the war, but it was recalled at some point. Perhaps after Stalin died, don't remember the history that exactly. We were an independent country the whole time, but had to keep good relationships to the Soviet Union, since we had some "mutual agreement" that if something strange would happen in Finland, the Soviets would come to "help" us. We ended that agreement when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 or so.

I don't believe that our foreign policy was dictated in Moscow, but it was a very good idea to keep good relationships to them. Although it could be called forced friendship, it's good to be friends with your neighbor anyway, right? We had to be careful for not upsetting the Soviets.

Cheers,

Tommi