Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Oct 2025Welcome back to Part II of our biography on Lauri Törni / Larry Thorne with author and researcher Kari Kallonen. Today we are covering Thorne’s life and exploits after emigrating to the United States. He joined the US Army, then 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, and was one of the original Green Berets in Vietnam until his death in a helicopter crash in October 1965. His remains were only recovered in 1999, and Mr. Kallonen was part of the team that traveled to Vietnam for the recovery effort.
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March 4, 2026
Larry Thorne Biography Part 2: Green Berets in Vietnam
February 28, 2026
Lauri Torni Biography Part 1: Soldier of Three Armies
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Oct 2025Today is the first of a two-part biography on Finnish legend Lauri Törni, later known as Larry Thorne. He fought in the Winter War and Continuation War, and was awarded the Mannerheim Cross for his actions in the Continuation War. He also travelled to Germany between the two (and again after the Continuation War), spending some time with the German army. In the early 1950s he emigrated to the United States, joining the US Army and eventually serving several tours in Vietnam.
My guest today is Finnish writer and researcher Kari Kallonen, who has written several books on Törni and was kind enough to join me to share the man’s story …
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January 21, 2026
Soviet World War Two 50mm Light Mortars (RM-39 & RM-40)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Aug 2025The Soviet Union decided to adopt a 50mm light mortar in 1937 as a company-level armament. The first such weapon they used was the RM-38, introduced in 1938. It was a complex design, with a gas venting system to adjust range (200m – 800m), a bipod specifically set to either 45 or 75 degrees, and a recoil buffering system. This was clearly too complex, and it was replaced by the RM-39 the next year. This remained a well-made mortar, but now had a freely adjustable bipod. However it quickly proved too complex and expensive and it was in turn replaced by the RM-40.
The RM-40 is a much more efficient (aka, cheap) design. It used simple stamped bipod legs and a heavy stamped baseplate. It still uses adjustable gas venting to set range and retains a simplified recoil buffer, but it is a much more quickly produced weapon. A 1941 model of completely different design did replace it though, and by 1943 the Soviet Union moved to 82mm mortars for better effectiveness.
The Soviet mortars were generally well liked by German troops who captured them, as they were significantly longer ranged than the German 50mm mortar. They were also captured in large numbers by the Finns, who used them as well but found them underpowered. In 1960 some 1,268 Soviet 50mm mortars of all models were sold by the Finnish Defense Forces to Interarms to be imported into the US. Some were registered and sold as Destructive Devices and some were deactivated and sold as dummies.
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January 13, 2026
Navies in the news
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Konrad talks about the latest “OMG we’re all going to die!” pants-wetting over scary new hypersonic missiles as a threat to the navies of the west, especially the US Navy’s big carriers:
R.C. Maxwell @RCMaxw3ll
EXCLUSIVE: After Russia used hypersonics in western Ukraine, @RedState talked with senior executives from American startup @CastelionCorp, which is on the brink of finishing a comparable missile system that surpasses the capabilities of Russia & China.
This is insane and it’s great news for the U.S. Navy.
All the worst people keep telling me Trump-class battleships are “obsolete” because of hypersonic missiles.
Then this drops:
“Blackbeard, engineered from a clean-sheet design by former SpaceX alumni, will not only match but decisively outpace foreign systems … rapid iteration and scalable production. We’re not just going to provide a comparable missile. We’re going to provide better missiles.”
A tiny startup just told Russia and China’s entire missile-industrial complex: we can beat you.
That’s the tell.
If hypersonics were the unstoppable carrier-killers people claim, you wouldn’t see startups leapfrogging them in a garage with venture capital. You’d see locked-in monopolies and terrified Western navies.
Here’s what the hype crowd misses:
1) Future battleships won’t be naked.
They will carry layered anti-hypersonic defenses, directed-energy weapons, decoys, and interceptors specifically designed to kill these things.2) Hitting a moving ship at hypersonic speed is brutally hard.
No nation has publicly demonstrated a successful hypersonic strike on a maneuvering warship. China hit a fake carrier sitting still in the desert. That proves almost nothing.
Think about the physics.
Flying a kamikaze plane into a carrier was hard but pilots had eyes, brains, and real-time judgment.
Now imagine doing that blind, with sensors the size of a soda can, while the target is jamming, maneuvering, spoofing, and throwing decoys.
Now imagine the Honey I Shrunk the Kids laser made you the size of an ant and you are told to steer a bullet into a weaving jet ski.
Russia can hit slow oil tankers. If they could reliably hit moving ships bringing supplies into Ukraine, they already would have.
3) Hypersonics are scarce and insanely expensive.
Even if it took 100 missiles to score a hit on a battleship, that’s 100 missiles that aren’t hitting ports, refineries, factories, air bases, and ammo depots.
Most of those targets don’t shoot back. None of them weave like a battleship.
Battleships change the economics of war.
They force the enemy to burn their most precious weapons just to try to hurt one ship.
That’s not vulnerability.
That’s deterrence.Stop black-pilling naval power. The physics, the economics, and now the tech sector are all pointing in the same direction.
Also on naval matters, Matt Gurney at The Line talks about his unfamiliar feelings of hope that the Canadian government’s promised spending boost for the Royal Canadian Navy will not only happen, but that the RCN may generate significantly improved capabilities as a result:
Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship HMCS Harry DeWolf shortly after launch in 2018. The ship was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy in June, 2021.
A day or two ago, I found myself thinking about the state of the Royal Canadian Navy. Because, I mean, hey — who doesn’t?
Anyone who has paid much attention to my work will be aware that I’m not exactly bullish on our country’s ability to get much done — especially on the file of military procurement. Yet, a day or two ago, I found myself thinking about the state of the Royal Canadian Navy and feeling something almost like … hope? Is this what hope feels like?
There is a lot going on in Canadian naval news, and that fits a broader pattern. There’s a lot going on on the seas globally, and, somewhat to my surprise, Canada seems to be doing a pretty good job — could be better, but could be worse — adapting to the new reality.
[…]
So let’s talk about seapower. The U.S. has it — not as much as it wants, but it’s got it. It wants more. Even if that ends up taking some pretty weird forms. And others are racing to catch up.
Including, intriguingly, Canada.
Last week, Canadian shipyard Seaspan announced that it had signed agreements with both Finland and American shipyards to licence its design for Multi-Purpose Icebreakers to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Arctic Security Cutter Program. And while the “Elbows Up” crowd may look askance at the prevalence of the word “American” in that sentence, this is damned interesting — not only are we continuing to show interest in the Arctic, but we’re also trying to sustain real shipbuilding in this country. The situation in the White House is so bizarre these days that it’s hard to take any announcement like this to the bank, but it was notable. If nothing else, it would be nice to see more efforts like this — whether the plans work will, alas, largely be out of our hands.
In addition to that, a few more stories came to mind. The first was this announcement from a few months ago: the Irving Shipyards have begun work on the final Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship of the Harry DeWolf class. Irving is also getting started on the next generation of Canada’s main warships, the River-class destroyers. Canada is actively seeking a replacement, in far greater numbers, of its current fleet of problematic submarines. And there’s also growing talk about a new smaller, mid-range class of Canadian warship, dubbed, for now, the Continental Defence Corvette. (Which I guess rolls off the tongue better than the See, Trump, We’re Spending On the Military Now Program.)
It’s easy to be a cynic on Canadian defence procurement — I am cynical about Canadian defence procurement. But then I looked at the ships being seized by U.S. forces. At Russia cutting cables, China ringing Taiwan with missiles and the U.S. throwing fleets around like Theodore Roosevelt has something to prove. And I look at a plan to not only replace Canada’s (too small) fleet of warships, but to considerably grow it … and it’s hard not to see the bigger picture.
Reverting to a pre-1945 geopolitical reality isn’t going to be an exercise in vibes. It’s going to be an exercise in power — or at least attempts to wield power. Air forces matter, cyber matters, drones matter and Lord knows armies matter. But they matter locally. True global power, or at least the ability to give a global power some pause before they decide to whisk your el jefe off to a Manhattan courtroom in a tracksuit, requires the ability to control your coasts and all the ocean approaches to them.
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September 27, 2025
NATO – the alliance of paper tigers?
In UnHerd, Edward Luttwak suggests that despite President Trump calling the Russians “paper tigers”, the non-US members of the NATO alliance could more appropriately be described that way:
It’s been an open secret for decades that Canada’s NATO contributions are more rhetoric than reality, but it’s true of many of the European NATO allies, too.
… simply raising defence spending will not turn Europe’s states into genuinely effective military powers. For one thing, the GDP criterion is much too vague to mean much. Finland, for instance, spends only 2.4% of its GDP on defence and yet can mobilise some 250,000 determined soldiers. Other Nato members, which spend much more than the Finns, obtain far less for their money.
Moreover, focusing on GDP instead of force requirements — so many battalions, artillery regiments, fighter squadrons — is nothing but an invitation to cheat, an opportunity lustily taken up across the continent. The latest Spanish submarine, for instance, is not imported for €1 billion or so from Thyssen-Krupp, which supplies navies around the world with competent, well-proven submarines. Instead, it was proudly designed and built at the Navantia state-owned Spanish shipyard: for €3.8 billion, roughly the cost of a much bigger French nuclear-powered submarine. As a feeble justification for that absurdly high cost, Spain’s defence minister cited a supposedly advanced air-recirculation system — so greatly advanced, in fact, that it is not actually ready, and will not be installed even in the submarine’s next iteration.
Soon, though, Italy will outdo Spain’s platinum submarine: by including a new bridge to Sicily, set to cost some €13.5 billion, into its 2% of GDP Nato spending quota. The government’s excuse is that some 3,000 Italian troops may need to cross the Strait of Messina were the Italian army ever to be fully mobilised. But it would be much cheaper to fly them individually, each trooper in his own luxurious private jet. Even without the bridge, meanwhile, Italy’s cheating on the 2% target is bad enough. Most notably, much of the Italian Navy’s spending goes towards warships made by Italy’s state-owned Fincantieri shipyard. But there is not enough money for the fuel and maintenance expenses to operate more than half of them, meaning another industrial subsidy is camouflaged as defence spending. All the while, Italy refuses to increase its defence budget beyond the very modest target of 2% — which it has yet to meet.
As for Germany, three and half years since the start of the Ukraine war, with ever more ambitious rearmament plans loudly promised, the total number of personnel in uniform has actually slightly decreased. And, aside from beginning a multi-billion euro purchase on an Israeli missile-defence system, nothing much has happened. Despite its high demand in Ukraine, even the battle tank, that German specialty, is being produced in very, very small numbers: so low that the annual output could be lost in a morning of combat. In May 2023, indeed, a meagre 18 Leopard tanks were ordered to replace older models lost in Ukraine. The expected delivery date? Between 2025 and 2026! Then, in July, Germany purchased a further 105 advanced Leopard 2A8s. That is the number needed to equip a single brigade, the German force stationed in Lithuania — and they are expected to arrive in 2030!
The sad truth, then, is that Germany has yet to start working in earnest to correct the extreme neglect inflicted on its armed forces during the long Merkel premiership, when she kept saying that “even if we had the money we would not know how to spend it”. All the while, German helicopters lacked rotors and tanks lacked engines. The exceedingly slow recovery of the German army is especially frustrating because Nato is not actually short of air or naval forces. What it lacks are ground forces, soldiers more simply, or rather soldiers actually willing to fight. Having added Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the alliance, tiny countries with outsized defence needs, the alliance faces a severe troop deficit across the entire Baltic sector. The troops so far sent by Nato allies, such as visiting Alpini battalions from Italy, cannot improve the maths.
Update, 30 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
September 7, 2025
Up on the Mountain: a History of the Ski Cap
HatHistorian
Published 1 May 2025The ski cap, sometimes also called by its german name of Bergmütze, is a visored cap with ear flaps secured to the front by buttons or a buckle. Allegedly descended from eastern bashlyks worn by Russian soldiers, it was popular in the alpine regions of Germanic countries. First adopted by the AUstro-Hungarian Empire as a field cap, it was infamously worn by the Wehrmacht during WWII. It continues to be used as a field or dress cap by German, Austrian, and Hungarian armed forces, and civilian versions can be found around Central and Eastern Europe.
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July 13, 2025
Q&A: Finland and Finnish Small Arms (From Berdan to New Sako AR)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Feb 2025Today’s Q&A is brought to you by the fine folks at Patreon!
I figured that Finland would be a good subject for this month’s Q&A, as I am visiting the country to shoot Finnish Brutality this month. In fact, this video was filmed during the trip (the match took place last weekend, and its video coverage will be coming soon!).
00:39 – Development of the Suomi and PPSh-41 submachine guns
03:24 – Oldest guns used in Finnish Independence War
04:40 – Biggest strength and weakness of the Suomi
06:43 – Soviet use of captured Suomis?
08:52 – Finnish Maxim guns
11:41 – Finnish alcohol
17:05 – Finnish small arms that could have been globally popular but weren’t?
20:04 – Benefits of a small invaded country using the same weapons as its invader?
23:07 – Favorite and least favorite Finnish customs?
25:57 – Finnish Mosin Nagant book by Matt DiRisio
27:26 – Sisu movie
28:28 – Are the Finns masters of improving other peoples’ guns?
30:08 – Pre-independence Finnish arms production
31:47 – Shower beer or sauna beer?
32:20 – Why so few RK95 rifles made, and RK95 vs RK62M?
35:35 – Swedish Mausers in Finland
37:54 – Commercial Sako rifles before and after Beretta bought Sako
39:19 – Finnish gun laws, specifically CCW
40:58 – Interlude: Finnish Brutality 2025 match update w/ Jari Laine
42:24 – Did Finland improve the PKM and SVD like they did the AK and Mosin?
44:57 – 7.62x54R vs 7.62x53R
47:56 – Thoughts on new Sako AR for Swedish and Finnish militaries
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March 24, 2025
Canada could learn from the Finnish example
US President Donald Trump tossed several grenades into the still waters of Canadian defence platitudes and forcefully called attention to the clear fact that Canada has been a world-leader in defence freeloading since the late 1960s. In The Line, Tim Thurley suggests that Canada should look more closely at how Finland has maintained its sovereignty with a larger, militarily dominant, and unpredictable neighbour for more than a century:
Map of Finland (Suomen kartta) by Oona Räisänen. Boundaries, rivers, roads, and railroads are based on a 1996 CIA map, with revisions. (via Wikimedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Finland-en.svg)
Canadians pretended we didn’t need to take defence seriously. We justified it with fantasies — the world wasn’t that dangerous, threats were distant, and America would rescue us if needed. That delusion is dead. U.S. Republicans and some Democrats don’t trust us to defend our own territory. Trump openly floated annexation and made clear that military protection now comes at a price — potentially statehood. Canadian military leaders now describe our closest ally as “unpredictable and potentially unreliable”. And even when America was a sure bet, our overreliance was reckless. Sovereignty requires self-defence; outsourcing it means surrendering power.
We should take cues from nations in similar situations, like Finland. Both of us border stronger powers, control vast, harsh landscapes, and hold valuable strategic resources. We’re internally stable, democratic, and potential targets.
We also share a key strength — one that could expand our military recruitment, onshore defence production, rebuild social trust, and bolster deterrence: a strong civilian firearms tradition.
We should be doing everything we can to make that tradition a bigger part of Canadian defence, and a larger part of our economy, too.
That may sound absurd to some Canadians. It shouldn’t. Finland is taking full advantage by attempting to expand shooting and military training for civilians both through private and public ranges and the voluntary National Defence Training Association. Finland is seeking to massively upgrade civilian range capacity by building 300 new ones and upgrading others to encourage civilian interest in firearms and national defence, and is doing so in partnership with civilian firearm owners and existing non-government institutions.
Multiple other states near Finland are investing in similar programs. Poland is even involving the education system. Firearm safety training and target practice for school children are part of a new defence education curriculum component, which includes conflict zone survival, cybersecurity, and first aid training. Poland’s aim is to help civilians manage conflict zones, but also to bolster military recruitment.
Lithuania and Estonia encourage civilian marksmanship as part of a society-wide comprehensive defence strategy. The Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, one of the small nation’s most recognizable institutions, is a voluntary government-sponsored organization intended to prepare civilians for resistance to an occupying power. It has 15,000 members in a population of 2.8 million. The Estonian Defence League trains mostly-unpaid civilian volunteers in guerrilla warfare. It has an 80 per cent approval rating in Estonia, where over one in every 100 men and women with ordinary jobs have joined to learn defence techniques, including mastering standard-issue military service rifles that they may keep at home, ready to fight on a moment’s notice.
These strategies are modern. These countries are no strangers to cutting-edge modern warfare, necessitated by a common border with an aggressive Russia. But technologies like drones are not a replacement for a trained and motivated citizenry, as the Ukraine conflict illustrates. Against a stronger and more aggressive neighbour, these societies deter and respond to aggression through organized, determined, and trained populations prepared to resist attackers in-depth — by putting a potential rifle behind every blade of grass.
Canada, meanwhile, is spending money to hurt our own capacity. It’s coming back to bite us. The Trudeau government misused civilian firearm ownership as a partisan political wedge and ignored the grave flaws of that strategy when they were pointed out, hundreds of times, by good-faith critics. Thousands of firearm models have been banned at massive and increasing expense since 2020 despite no evident public safety benefit. In the recently concluded party leadership race, Mark Carney pledged to spend billions of dollars confiscating them. Government policies eliminating significant portions of business revenue have maimed a firearm industry that historically contributed to our defence infrastructure. Civilian range numbers, which often do double-duty with police and even military use, plunged from roughly 1,400 to 891 in five years. Without civilians to maintain ranges for necessary exercises and qualification shoots, governments must assume the operating expenses, construct new ranges, or fly participants elsewhere to train.
March 16, 2025
Fireside Chat – Winter War
World War Two
Published 15 Mar 2025Anna sits down to quiz Indy and Sparty about the Winter War! Did Simo Hayha really kill 500 men? Who’s to blame for the Soviet farce? And what was the Sausage War?
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March 7, 2025
Soviet Invasion of Finland: Winter War 1939-40
Real Time History
Published 18 Oct 2024November 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union have conquered Poland, and Germany is at war with France and Britain. Moscow is free to do as it pleases in Eastern Europe and sets its sights on Finland – but the Winter War will be a nasty surprise for Stalin.
Corrections:
02:19 The dot marking Leningrad is about 80km too far east, it’s of course directly at the far eastern end of the Gulf of Finland.
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December 1, 2024
“Huntziger must be shot!” – WW2 Commentary 1939-1940
World War Two
Published 30 Nov 2024Today Indy and Spartacus sit down to answer all kinds of questions about the first year of WW2. How phony was the Phony War? How do you go around the Maginot Line? And much more! Also, Indy sings a song about Charles Huntziger.
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August 27, 2024
Finland’s Prototype Belt-Fed GPMG: L41 Sampo
Forgotten Weapons
Published May 13, 2024During the 1930s, there was interest in Finland in replacing the Maxim heavy machine gun with something handier and more mobile. There were experiments with large drum magazines for the LS-26 light machine gun, but these were not satisfactory. Aimo Lahti began to work on a gas-operated GPMG, but lack of funding and competing priorities led to it having slow progress until the eve of the Winter War. By the time the gun was completed and the first preproduction batch ready for troop trials, the Continuation War was underway.
Twenty eight of the L41 Sampo machine guns were sent out to a variety of units for field testing in the fall of 1942, and the guns were generally well liked, although not perfect. Before improvements and full-scale production could begin, though, the Finnish military was basically distracted by an alternative possibility of procuring MG42 receivers from Germany and building them into complete guns in 7.62x54R. At least one such prototype was completed, and that project caused the L41 program to stall. By the time it might have progressed, the war was going rather badly for Germany and the possibility of getting receivers was basically gone. The L41 never did see further refinement or production, although the trials guns remained in service with their units, in a few cases right until the end of the war.
Mechanically, the L41 is a fascinating hybrid of Bren/ZB and Maxim elements, and incredibly sturdily built. Only seven are know to survive today, six in Finland and this one in the UK. Thanks to the British Royal Armouries for giving me access to it to film for you!
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July 12, 2024
New Canadian submarines and icebreakers promised at NATO Summit
Under reportedly intense pressure from NATO allies, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau grudgingly promises to begin the (usually decades-long) process of purchasing new submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy:
HMCS Victoria
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
The Canadian government announced today it is “taking the first steps” towards buying 12 conventionally-powered, under-ice capable submarines — a massive acquisition with numerous shipbuilders from the around world already eyeing the program reported to be worth at least $60 billion Canadian dollars.
“As the country with the longest coastline in the world, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines — and today, we’ve announced that we will move forward with this acquisition,” Bill Blair, minister of national defence, said in a statement published during the NATO Summit being held this week in Washington, DC. “This new fleet will enable Canada to protect its sovereignty in a changing world, and make valuable, high-end contributions to the security of our partners and NATO allies.”
Canada has been eyeing the acquisition of a new class of submarines to replace its four aging Victoria-class boats since at least April 2023, and Blair himself was the target of criticism earlier this year after he included language about the acquisition in a major defense policy document that critics labeled as “wishy washy”.
In an op-ed for Breaking Defense published ahead of the NATO summit, Blair said that Canada was still pursing the submarine plan, and emphasized that the investment would help his nation cross the 2 percent GDP target.
The government’s press release does not include a price estimate for the program, but the Ottawa Citizen has previously reported that the Royal Canadian Navy tagged the acquisition at $60 billion Canadian dollars ($44 billion USD).
Another item from Breaking Defence details a new trilateral agreement with Finland and the United States to develop a joint design for a “fleet” of icebreakers:
Originally ordered in 2008 for delivery in 2017, the CCGS John G. Diefenbaker is now expected to enter service in 2030.
Canadian Coast Guard conceptual rendering, 2012.
The US, Canada and Finland announced today a new trilateral effort, dubbed the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort or “ICE Pact”, to work together on the production of a “fleet” of new polar icebreakers, in what a US official said was a “strategic imperative” in the race of dominance of the high north.
The initiative, to be formalized in a memorandum of understanding by the end of the year, calls for better information sharing on ship production, collaboration on work force development — including better allowing workers and experts to train at each other’s yards — and an “invitation” to other allies and partners to buy icebreakers from ICE Pact members.
“Due to the capital intensity of shipbuilding, long-term, multi-ship orderbooks are essential to the success of a shipyard,” the White House said in its announcement. “The governments of the United States, Canada, and Finland intend to leverage shipyards in the United States, Canada, and Finland to build polar icebreakers for their own use, as well as to work closely with likeminded allies and partners to build and export polar icebreakers for their needs at speed and affordable cost.”
Ahead of the announcement, White House Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh framed the partnership as a commercial and industrial boon, but also one with national security implications: It is, in part, a message to Russia and China that the US and its partners “intend … to project power into the polar regions to enforce international norms and treaties that promote peace and prosperity in the arctic and Antarctic.”
July 10, 2024
Two World Wars: Finnish C96 “Ukko-Mauser”
Forgotten Weapons
Published Mar 27, 2024A decent number of C96 Mauser pistols were present in Finland’s civil war, many of them coming into the country with the Finnish Jaegers, and others from a variety of sources, commercial and Russian. They were used by both the Reds and the Whites, and in both 9x19mm and 7.63x25mm. After the end of the civil war, when the military was standardizing, the C96s were handed over to the Civil Guard, where they generally remained until recalled to army inventories in 1939. They once again saw service in the Winter War and Continuation War, and went into military stores afterwards until eventually being surplussed as obsolete.
One of the interesting aspects of Finnish C96s is that many of them come from the so-called “Scandinavian Contract” batch (for which no contract has actually turned up). These appear to be guns made in 7.63mm that were numbered as part of the early production in the Prussian “Red 9” series, probably for delivery to specific German units or partner forces during World War One.
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March 27, 2024
Civil Defence is a real thing in Finland
Paul Wells reports back on his recent trip to Finland, where he got to tour one of the big civil-defence shelters in Helsinki:
One of the best playgrounds for children in Helsinki is the size of three NFL football fields, dug into bedrock 25 metres below a street-level car park, and built to survive a nuclear bomb.
The air down here is surprisingly fresh. The floor-hockey rinks — there are two, laid end to end — are well maintained. The refreshment stands are stocked with snacks. The steel blast doors are so massive it takes two people to slam one shut.
Finland has been building civil-defence shelters, methodically and without fuss, since the late 1950s. This one under the Merihaka residential district has room for 6,000 people. It’s so impressive that it’s the Finnish capital’s unofficial media shelter, the one visiting reporters are likeliest to be shown. The snack bar and the jungle gym are not for show, however: as a matter of government policy, every shelter must have a second, ordinary-world vocation, to ensure it gets used and, therefore, maintained between crises.
The Merihaka shelter was one of the stops on my visit to Helsinki last week. The first anniversary of Finland’s membership in NATO, the transatlantic defence alliance, is next week, on April 4. Finland’s foreign office invited journalists from several NATO countries to visit Helsinki to update us on Finland’s defence situation. I covered my air travel and hotel. Or rather, paid subscribers to this newsletter did. Your support makes this sort of work possible. I’m always grateful.
The Finnish government used to build most of the shelters. But since 2011, the law has required that new shelters be built at the owners’ expense, by owners of buildings larger than 1,200 square metres and industrial buildings larger than 1,500 square metres.
The city of Helsinki has more shelter space than it has people, including visitors from out of town. Across the country the supply is a little tighter. Altogether today Finland has a total of 50,500 shelters with room for 4.8 million people.
That’s not enough for the 5.5 million people in Finland. But then, if war ever comes, much of the population won’t need shelter, because they’ll be staying groundside to fight.
Conscription is universal for Finnish men between 18 and 60. (Women have been enlisting on a voluntary basis since the 1990s.) The standing armed forces, 24,000, aren’t all that big. But everyone who finishes their compulsory service is in the reserves for decades after, with frequent training to keep up their readiness. In a war the army can surge to 280,000. In a big war, bigger still.
The Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939, during what was, in most other respects, the “phony war” phase of the Second World War. The Finnish army inflicted perhaps five times as many casualties on the Soviets as they suffered, but the country lost 9% of its territory and has no interest in losing more. Finland’s foreign policy since then has been based on the overriding importance of avoiding a Russian invasion.
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