Modern Finnish historiography: the Second World War — new approach to old topic

Abstract

This review focuses on a highly relevant monograph of a young Finnish researcher Ville Kivimäki ”Broken Minds. Battle for the Nerves of the Finnish Soldiers 1939–1945”. In his work, the author is the first in the Finnish historiography to consider psychological trauma among Finnish soldiers during the Second World War. In the book, the attention is drawn not to political or economic issues of war, but to the specific problems of the ordinary soldiers — how they handled the new conditions of life at the front, the horrors of war and the psychological problems that might appear. It is analyzed separately how the Finnish armed forces treated this new phenomenon, in particular how the military psychiatrists tried to treat psychologically damaged soldiers. Kivimäki seeks not only to describe the overall situation. His goal is to identify the specific causes of the ”crippled souls”. Scientific research of V. Kivimäki is based on a broad documentary base — case histories of psychiatric hospitals, as well as documents from the archives of the Military medical unit of the armed forces of Finland, research papers of the military psychiatrists and memories of veterans, stored in the archives of the Finnish Literature Society and the People’s Archive in Helsinki. Refs 11.