| Title | Chapter 9. All Quiet on the Eastern Front? The Finnish Army and Wildlife during World War Two |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Mauri Soikkanen (author) |
| Simo Laakkonen (author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.3197/63824846758018.ch09 |
| Landing page | https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.7193881.13 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ |
| Copyright | The White Horse Press |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2023-10-01 |
| Short abstract | Environmental history is a new way to explore WWII, the largest war that has taken place on Earth so far. This article focuses on the mobilisation of natural resources in Finland during this war. |
| Long abstract | World War II was arguably the most important event of the last century. The war was waged on almost all continents. It engulfed three-quarters of the world’s population and was the world’s most destructive war, claiming fifty to seventy million lives. In addition, the war injured hundreds of millions of people and innumerable other living creatures. Environmental history is a new way to explore the largest war that has taken place on Earth so far. This article focuses on the mobilisation of natural resources in this war. What role did hunting and fishing have during the Second World War? Depictions do exist in the memoirs of soldiers and officers from different countries, but hardly any historical studies have been conducted on these themes to date. This chapter is probably the first attempt made internationally to review the extent of hunting and fishing activity in wartime, and its importance both for military personnel and wildlife populations. It examines hunting and fishing along the thousand-kilometre border between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War Two. It focuses on the largest wilderness area in Europe where Finnish soldiers faced an oasis of wildlife that had disappeared from their own homesteads. However, within a short time period, this newly found wartime oasis disappeared too. |
| Page range | pp. 171–196 |
| Print length | 26 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 7 illustrations |
| 1 table |
| Landing Page | Full text URL | Platform | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.7193881.13 | Landing page | https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/jj.7193881.13.pdf | Full text URL | JSTOR |
Mauri Soikkanen, MA, is a retired journalist, editor and historian. Soikkanen studied natural history and biology at the University of Helsinki and worked as a geography assistant after graduation. He started as the first nature editor of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation in 1956, later becoming the programme manager. Soikkanen was the editor-in-chief of Finland's longest-running hunting and fishing magazine. He has written or edited over thirty books on the history of hunting and fishing, including one book on World War Two.
Simo Laakkonen (Dr.Sc.Soc.) is director of the Degree Program in Digital Culture, Landscape, and Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. He has explored the environmental history of the Baltic Sea as well as of World War II and the Cold War. Recently, he co-edited two books: The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War and The Resilient City in World War II: Urban Environmental Histories.