Oldal 169 [169]
Soviet Prisoners of War in Finnish and German Propaganda Photography 1941-1944
images served one propaganda purpose: to demonise the enemy and serve as em¬
bodiments of any negative characteristics associated with the enemy (Vuorinen
2012: passim), which would visually underline the superiority of both the German
race and national socialist ideology. The prisoner photographed in Figure 67 is de¬
picted as a symbol of the sub-humanity of the Soviets. If the caption is read closely
enough, one will notice that it does not say anything about the crimes or murders
this particular prisoner has committed, but instead says that he must be a criminal
because all his kind are.
These Typenbilder were frequently published in all the German magazines stud¬
ied for this chapter, except Die Wehrmacht (for example Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung,
no. 29, 1941: Faces of the Soviet Army; Illustrierter Beobachter, no. 11, 1943: cover).
Surprisingly, even though the Finns did not have any German-like racial ideology,
they also took photos that at first glance resemble those of the German propaganda
troops, such as Figure 68".
These photos, like the German ones, show one prisoner; but the captions in
the Finnish photos are shorter and appear neutral: they do not comment on the
appearance, race or character of the prisoner in any way, negative nor positive.
Sometimes, they mention which race the prisoner belongs to; sometimes, they do
not. These pictures, even though they resemble the Zypenbilder at first glance, are
generally not taken at such close range. This might be because Finnish propaganda
was not, as already mentioned, based on a racial way of thinking as German propa¬
ganda was.
Because the concept of race did not play as important a role in Finnish society as
it did in German, it is puzzling why Finnish propaganda troops took such pictures,
even more so because they were only rarely published in the Finnish magazines
studied (for example Hakkapeliitta, no. 29, 1941: Meeting the first prisoners of this
war). This kind of photo was not mentioned in the instructions given to Finnish
propaganda troops either. One possibility is that, because the Germans were seen
as having top-of-the-line propaganda machinery and because Finnish propaganda
troops had not received any training in propaganda photography (Major Gunnar
Waselius’s travel report from Germany 1942), they based their own work on that
of their German colleagues, imitating their pictures.
Another possible reason for the Finnish ‘type photos’ is the great interest Finns
had in the areas they had occupied in East Karelia. These areas were to be unified
with the rest of the country after the war to form a so-called Greater Finland,
which was to be inhabited by Finns and Karelians. The Finns did indeed have
something that could be called a national, if not racial, policy. This, however, never
reached the extreme levels of German racial ideology. There was never a plan to,
for instance, exterminate people who were of the ‘wrong’ race. In short, Finnish
14 Original caption: Aunuksesta saatuja vankeja.
167