Trial For War Crimes
After the Continuation War Oesch’s career took a turn for worse. After serving again as the Chief of the General Staff for almost a year, Oesch retired on his own will in September 1945. He was aware that the Soviets demanded his arrest as a war criminal. For a moment Oesch thought of escaping to Sweden, but in the end decided to stay and face the charges. He was arrested in the same month and later tried. Four years earlier, in September 1941, Oesch had given an order that permitted the guards to use their arms if POWs refused to follow orders. The details of the affair are not clear, but apparently some trigger-happy men took liberties with the orders, and a number of Soviet POWs were killed. Oesch stood accused for ordering the execution of 17 POWs.
According to Finnish sources, proof for Oesch’s personal responsibility for these deaths was rather dubious. But in the postwar political climate it was imperative to fulfill the Soviet demands in order not to give them any excuses to intervene even more in Finnish affairs. Oesch was condemned to 12 years of penal servitude by a Finnish military court on 19 July 1946, although the sentence was commuted to three years by the Highest Court on 2 February 1948. Nevertheless, Oesch’s military career was finished. Oesch was the only senior Finn to be condemned of war crimes.
Read more about this topic: Karl Lennart Oesch
Famous quotes containing the words trial, war and/or crimes:
“Looks like we got a trial ahead of us. But it’s not the first time. We’ve had to go it alone before, and we’ll have to go it alone again. We’re tough. We’ve had to be tough ever since Brother Brigham led our people across the plain. Well, they survived and I dang it, we’ll, well, we’ll survive too. Now put out your fires and get to your wagons.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
to escape writing of the worst thing of all—
not the crimes of other, not even our own death,
but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)