Memoirs of a Finnish War Analyst

Summary of Stefan Forss's article in RSAWSPJ no 2 2001.

Memoirs or reviews of Finnish intelligence operations during the Second World War are not abundant. Former Finnish intelligence officers were obliged to remain silent for 25 years, but this obligation was repeatedly extended and it expired only in 1988 by decision of the President of Finland, Mauno Koivisto. The memoirs of Nils-Erik Stenbäck, now 88, are therefore most welcome.

Stenbäck prefers to call himself a war analyst, and that is a very good description of what he actually worked with during most of the war. For two years, Engineer Lieutenant Stenbäck was stationed in Washington and worked there in the capacity of Assistant Defence Attaché. From 1942 on, to his departure from the USA in autumn 1943, he was the only Finnish defence official in the USA. He was no doubt the right man in the right place. Stenbäck succeeded in gathering - from solely open sources - an amazingly good picture of the American war effort, and his contribution was going to prove decisive for the military outcome, not only on the Eastern front but in the Pacific as well.

The massive US help to the Soviet Union, deliberately downplayed by the authorities in the former Soviet Union and also all too often in the West, clearly paved the way for a final Soviet victory. As far as the war between the US and Japan was concerned, Stenbäck never hesitated to report to Helsinki his firm conviction that it was inevitable that the US would win in the end. He wasn’t always believed by the Finnish Armed Forces Headquarters, but when events proved him right he was suitably decorated by Marshal Mannerheim himself.

Perhaps the most dramatic episode during Stenbäck’s military career was a telephone call to him on 7th June, 1944 from his Swedish colleague, Captain Curt Wennberg. They had met in Washington and were good friends. Wennberg phoned to warn Stenbäck of the imminent massive Soviet attack on the Karelian Isthmus that took most key figures of the Finnish Armed Forces Command by surprise.

Finnish intelligence were well aware of the impending Soviet assault that began on 9th June, just three days after D-Day. The Finnish intelligence officers were, however, extremely frustrated that their analyses and predictions were largely ignored by the Operational Command led by Lieutenant-General Aksel Airo.

This "intelligence failure" is still being debated in Finland, and clearly this issue needs to be thoroughly looked into. Stenbäck drives home his argument quite convincingly that the planning skills of the Finnish Military High Command were less than adequate but that, on the other hand, it excelled in dynamic operational warfare.