The reparations paid from 1944 to 1952 amounted to an annual average of more than 2% of Finland's gross national product. War reparations were another burden for Finland. In addition to its human and physical losses, Finland had to deal with more than 400,000 evacuees from the territories once again lost to the Soviet Union. The end of hostilities in September 1944 found Finland in a thoroughly weakened state economically. After the Battle of Stalingrad, when it increasingly became obvious that Nazi Germany was about to be defeated in World War II, the Cabinet of Edwin Linkomies was appointed to seek peace with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union's disapproval ended the discussions on a Swedish-Finnish defence co-operation in 1940, the Scandinavist line had run into a blind alley and Fagerholm had no more say in the policy discussions that ultimately led to close dependency of Nazi Germany, German troops on Finnish soil, revanchism and to co-belligerence in the Continuation War.ĭuring the Continuation War, controversies on 68,000 refugees' internment in labour camps in the vicinity of German troops, particularly on the Anthonio scandal in which eight Jewish refugees were deported to the Gestapo on 6 November 1942, prompted Fagerholm to raise the question of his resignation. As the Winter War ended with the loss of Finnish Karelia, that was generally seen as the failure of the neutralist Scandinavia-orientation. When the Winter War broke out, suspicions against Finland's "hazardous foreign politics" remained strong, most importantly among leading Social Democrats in Sweden. As a native Swedish speaker, Social Democrat, former Union leader, and head of the Ministry for Social Affairs, he was just cut out for that task, but the time that he had was too short. That danger seemed to have increased with fierce Soviet anticapitalist sentiments being met with equally fierce anticommunist sentiments in Finland. In government, Fagerholm was one of the chief executors of the neutralist Scandinavia-orientation, which had increasingly been seen by Conservatives and Socialists in the 1930s to be Finland's deliverance from the danger of Soviet expansionism.
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Principles of parliamentarism again were finally heeded in 1937, when Fagerholm became Minister for Social Affairs in a series of Cabinets from 1937 to 1943. One consequence was that socialists were barred from the Cabinet 1929 to 1937.
A revival of anti-socialist opinion had in Finland like in many countries in Continental Europe led to a right-wing shift in public opinion and the emerge of the semi- fascist Lapua Movement. In the 1920s and the 1930s, the main challenge for the Social Democrats was the rehabilitation after the Finnish Civil War, in which the Social Democrats had belonged to the defeated side. In 1930, he was elected member of Finland's Parliament. He narrowly lost the presidential election to Urho Kekkonen in 1956.įagerholm had in his youth briefly been chairman (1920-1923) of the Barbers' Union. Fagerholm's postwar career was, however, marked by fierce opposition from both the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Finland. As a Scandinavia-oriented Swedish-speaking Finn, he was believed to be more to the taste of the Soviet Union's leadership than his predecessor, Väinö Tanner. Fagerholm became one of the leading politicians of the Social Democrats after the armistice in the Continuation War. Karl-August Fagerholm (31 December 1901, in Siuntio –, in Helsinki) was Speaker of Parliament and three times Prime Minister of Finland (1948–50, 1956–57, and 1958–59).
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