Allied Commission - Finland

Finland

The Allied Control Commission (ACC) arrived in Finland on September 22, 1944 to observe Finnish compliance with the Moscow armistice. It consisted of 200 Soviet and 15 British members and was led by Col. Gen. Andrei Zhdanov. Immediately after its inception, the commission required Finland to take more vigorous action to intern the German forces in Northern Finland. Finland's compliance with the commission resulted in the Lapland War. Simultaneously, Finland was required to demobilize, which was also required by the commission.

The ACC provided Finland with a list of war criminals against whom Finland had to start judicial proceedings. Although this required Finnish post-facto legislation, Finland was the only country on the losing side of the war that was allowed to try its own war criminals. The ACC interfered with the war-responsibility trials by requiring longer prison sentences than the preliminary verdict would have contained. The ACC also strove to change the Finnish political life by requiring a number of allegedly fascist (in practice anti-Soviet) organizations to be banned, among them the Civil Guard. Furthermore the ACC required the forced return of all Soviet citizens, including Ingrian Finns and Estonians, to the Soviet Union.

After the war, the Finnish military placed part of the weapons of the demobilized troops into several hundred caches distributed around the country. The caches would have been used to arm guerillas in case of a Soviet occupation. When the matter was leaked to the public, the commission required Finnish authorities to investigate and prosecute the officers and men responsible for the caching. The Weapons Cache Case was followed closely until the ACC determined that the case was purely a military operation. The Allied Control Commission left Finland September 26, 1947, when the Soviet Union finally ratified the Paris Peace Treaty.