Finnish Espionage WW2

I have been fascinated with Finland's involvement in WW2 but it is hard to find out much of anything in English except about the Winter War.

I know that Finland had excellent radio or signals intercept and decrypting capability. I know that the Finnish Army had some excellent long range patrolling capability with at superb portable radio. I recently saw on another post that Finnish agents opened and photographed the contents of Heinrich Himmler's briefcase on his visit to Finland.

How was Finnish espionage and counter espionage organized? Was it controlled by the Armed Forces or another branch of government or both? Were there Finnish operatives working outside of Finland? i.e. in the Soviet Union, Germany or Sweden? Were there any 'stay behind agents' left in those areas of Finland ceded to the Soviet Union after the Winter War? Is anything known about training camps or techniques? Lastly is anything known about any personalities involved in espionage? i.e. agents or there controlling officers or memoirs.

Regards,

John Dupre'

There exists some literature in Finnish but not much has been translated, or at least I don't know of any worthwhile accounts in English. Basically the counter-espionage was and is taken care by a unit under police forces. During the WWII it was called Valtiollinen Poliisi (VALPO), i.e. 'State Police'. Military interlligence and ranger activity behind enemy lines were taken care by units under the army HQ. AFAIK Finland didn't have much James Bond type agents (or then they were so good that we never hear of them but naturally collected information from several sources and sent agents behind the lines during the war time.

My educated guess (=couln't find the reference book from my messy 'archives' is that the basically military handled the military intelligence, the interior ministry the counter espionage and military and the foreign ministry took care of the espionage and related matters abroad.

On the military side, most notable names are colonels Reino Hallamaa and Aladar Paasonen. The former was the head of signals intelligence and the latter the chief of military intelligence. I believe both of them published memoirs, but I do not know if they are publicly available in any other language than finnish.

I do not remember reading anything detailed about the training operations - especially for espionage operations. There is lots of material available for long range patrols and signals intelligence, though.

Long range patrols were directlyy under the General HQ. Their missions were usually intelligence gathering and sometimes took them several hundreds of kilometres behind the enemy lines and lasted for several weeks. Divisional level patrols operated closer and were quite often used for destroying headquarters and supply dumps.

Internal security and counter espionage was mainly handled by the secret police (Valtiollinen poliisi = State Police). There is not much material available for their organisation, training etc. What is available is the successes they chose to publish (secret recording of Hitler's comments about the war against the Soviets in 1942, copying Himmler's documents in Helsinki, captures of Soviet trained spies and using a captured spy to report Helsinki as 'destroyed' after February 1944 bombing raids, just to mention some).

Radio and signals intelligence had a history from early 1920's. They had a lot of experience when the wars started 1939 and 1941. They employed a lot of mathematicians to perfect encryption techniques - in fact a lot of the Finnish documents and expertise was transferred to USA after the war.

Signals intelligence concentrated mainly on analysing and decrypting Soviet radio traffic. They were able to decrypt most tactical encryption codes and sometimes even the more secure higher level encrypted messages. They also worked on everything from listening into front line Soviet phone conversations to decrypting diplomatic messages.

During summer 1944 radio intelligence managed to provide accurate information for the defending Finnish forces - accurate enough that in some cases Soviet attacks were pre-empted by artillery barrages to the enemy headquarters and staging areas.

Almost the same organisations exist now. (From recent newspaper articles) The 'secret police' is Suojelupoliisi ('Protection police'. Signals and radio intelligence are names Viestikoelaitos ('Communications experimental facility' and Radiotutkimuslaitos ('Radio research facility'

says...

[snip]

Operation Stella Polaris transferred signals intelligence to Sweden before the end of the war (in 44) in order to continue fighting in case the SU tries to occupy Finland.

Sweden relayed the codes, with Finnish knowledge I belive, to the US.

Cheers,

Pekka de G.