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168 Olli Kleemola propaganda aimed more at integrating the ‘right’ races (Karelians and other Finnic races) than at discriminating against the ‘wrong’ ones. The Finns hoped to find enough men of Finnic origin among their prisoners to take part in populating occupied East Karelia. Because of the interest in Finnic prisoners, all POWs were classified according to their nationality (Pimia 2009: 215). Those of a Finnic nationality were then interviewed in order to collect information regarding their language and culture (Ibid.: 204-229). The Finnish Typenbilder might have been taken to visually document the prisoners who had been interviewed. I consider the last explanation for the Zypenbilder improbable, however, because the photographs have not been captioned systematically, which would be considered a minimal requirement for scientific photo documentation. In most cases, the captions contain neither the name of the prisoner nor the race he belongs to. With regard to the fact that Finnish Zypenbilder were taken in remarkable numbers shortly after the beginning of the war, I suppose them to have been taken in imitation of their German colleagues’ work. In addition to the Finnish type photographs, another Finnish speciality was photos of captured Red Army soldiers who belonged to the Finnic nations, as in Figure 69. Figure 69 shows four prisoners sitting on the ground, looking into the camera. Despite the caption, only one of them is smiling. Pictures showing happy Finnic prisoners were occasionally published in Finnish magazines (for example Hakkapeliitta, no. 31, 1941: Fighting their way through to Karelia’ singing lands). Even though the Germans photographed quite a few civilians with Germanic origins in the occupied areas, no photos of POWs with German family ties are known. Due to the racially-founded enemy image present in German propaganda, photos of Germans serving the Red Army might simply have been so impossible a case for the national socialist propaganda machinery to handle that these photos did not pass censorship, if they existed at all. As mentioned earlier, Luostarinen (who has analysed Finnish wartime textual propaganda) has stated that, due to the long common history of Finland and Russia, the Finnish enemy image was not absolutely negative: Finns could also see comical, childlike characteristics in Soviet soldiers (1986: 417—419; see also Vares 2012: passim; Halmesvirta, this volume). This humorous viewpoint was reflected in Finnish propaganda photographs too, as seen in Figure 70'%. Figure 70 shows two Soviet soldiers, one standing, playing an accordion next to a truck, the other sitting on the ground and listening. The photo is not self-explanatory. After reading the caption, it becomes clear how absurd playing an accordion is when one has just been taken prisoner. Such comical sights were completely 5 Original caption: Tyyryväisiä ovat kaukaiset heimoveljemme, neljä tservissiä, antauduttuaan meikäläisten 8 p JJ J JJ vangiksi. 16 Original caption: Ryssä on luonnon lapsi. 3 päivän helvetin jälkeen hän soittelee haitaria.
