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Soviet Prisoners of War in Finnish and German Propaganda Photography 1941-1944
zines: Suomen Kuvalehti (‘Finland’s Illustrated Magazine’, the leading illustrated
magazine in wartime Finland, published from 1916 onwards) and Hakkapeliitta®
(a military illustrated magazine owned by the Civic Guard Organisation, published
weekly from 1926 to the autumn of 1944, when the Civic Guards were disbanded;
Pilke 2012: 37).
Methodologically, my work draws on visual history, a concept introduced by
the German historian Gerhard Paul in 2006. Visual history considers pictures as
an independent category of sources that are capable of transferring meanings and
ideological viewpoints. Photography and photographs have, until recently, seldom
been studied in the field of history. Perhaps this is because of the special nature of
the medium of photography: seemingly neutral, it captures moments and sights;
but in reality, the pictures we take are formed in our heads long before the shutter
closes. Thus, photographs can be considered products of the information, attitudes
and prejudices the photographer has collected (Paul 2014).
The photographs analysed in this chapter are considered propaganda material
created by state-controlled photographers in order to transfer and promote special
meanings. In this respect, captions linked to the pictures play an important role.
The captions not only affect the pictures’ reception, but also create a mental con¬
text in which the picture is embedded (Sontag 2011: 104; Glasenapp 2012: 5). By
analysing the captions, I attempt to reconstruct the context of the photos in order
to reveal the desired propagandistic message.
Similarities of Depicting Prisoners
Both Finnish and German propaganda troops took a great deal of pictures of sur¬
rendering enemy soldiers and long lines of prisoners being brought to POW camps
(see Figs 627 and 63°). Pictures of enemy soldiers being captured were often forged,
because it would have been dangerous to try to photograph such scenes at the
front. Pictures of captured enemies with their hands up and photos of large masses
of defeated prisoners tell us little about how to see ‘the enemy’, but are instead to be
seen as a visual proof of their own troops success. Pictures of long rows of prisoners
marching were also often taken in countries other than Finland and Germany (for
example Frolov 2012: 82-83; Blank 2003: 81-85).
Pictures of surrendering enemy soldiers and masses of prisoners were published
in all the Finnish and German magazines studied, although in Finland this was
done only occasionally. In Germany, pictures of crowds of prisoners and surrender¬
ing enemies seem to have had a much more central role as they were published very
frequently. During 1941 and 1942, some of these pictures even made their way
° Hakkapeliitta refers to a historical term for a Finnish cavalryman who fought in the Thirty Years’ War; it
has no meaningful translation into other languages.
7 Original caption: Vankeja tuodaan Karhumäestä. For translation here and after see captions below
illustrations.
$ Original caption: 5 venäläläistä antautuu. Vas. alikersantti Hautalammi oik. Hermanni Pihlajamäki.
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