Evacuation and naval operations in September The announcement on 2 September 1944 of the ceasefire and the
Moscow Armistice between Finland and the USSR triggered frantic efforts by the 20th Mountain Army, which immediately started Operation Birke. Large amounts of
materiel were evacuated from southern Finland and harsh punishments were set for any hindering of the withdrawal. The Germans began to seize Finnish shipping. Finland responded by preventing ships sailing from Finland to Germany and nearly doomed the materiel evacuations of Operation Birke. So the order was rescinded and then the Finns, in turn, allowed Finnish tonnage to be used to hasten the German evacuations. The first German naval mines were laid in Finnish seaways on 14 September 1944, allegedly for use against Soviet shipping, though since Finland and Germany were not yet in open conflict, the Germans warned the Finns of their intent. As the Finns wanted to avoid devastation of their country, and the Germans wished to avoid hostilities, both sides strove for the evacuation to be performed as smoothly as possible. By 15 September, a secret agreement had been reached by which the Germans would inform the Finns of their withdrawal timetable, who would then allow the Germans to use Finnish transport for evacuation as well as to destroy roads, railroads and bridges behind their withdrawal. In practice, friction soon arose both from the destruction caused by the Germans and from the pressure exerted on the Finns by the Soviets. On 15 September 1944, the
Kriegsmarine tried to land and seize the island of
Suursaari in
Operation Tanne Ost to secure shipping routes in the
Gulf of Finland. The USSR sent aircraft to support the Finnish defenders and the failed to capture Suursaari. After the landing attempt, a Finnish coastal artillery fort at
Utö island prevented German
net-laying ships from passing into the Baltic Sea on 15 September, as they had been ordered to intern the German forces. On 16 September, a German naval detachment consisting of the escorted by five destroyers arrived at Utö. The German cruiser stayed out of range of the Finnish guns and threatened to open fire with its artillery. In order to avoid bloodshed, the Finns allowed the net-layers to pass. In response to the German operations, Finland immediately removed its shipping from the joint evacuation operation, but the evacuation from Lapland to Norway progressed according to the secret agreement. The last German convoy departed from
Kemi in northern Finland on 21 September 1944 and was escorted by submarines and, starting from south of
Åland, by German cruisers.
Initial land battles in September and October The lack of Finnish aggression did not go unnoticed by the
Allied Control Commission monitoring adherence to the Moscow Armistice and the USSR threatened to occupy Finland if the terms of expelling or disarming the Germans were not met. Thus, Lieutenant General Siilasvuo ordered the III Corps to engage. The first hostilities between the Finnish Army and the 20th Mountain Army in Lapland took place southwest of
Pudasjärvi, at around 08:00 on 28 September 1944, when Finnish advance units first issued a surrender demand and then opened fire on a small German rearguard contingent. This took the Germans by surprise as the Finns had previously agreed to warn them should they be forced to take hostile action against them. After the incident, partial contact was re-established. The Germans told the Finns they had no interest in fighting them, but would not surrender. The next incident took place on 29 September at a bridge crossing the Olhava river between Kemi and Oulu. Finnish troops, who had been ordered to take the bridge intact, were attempting to disarm explosives rigged to the bridge when the Germans detonated them, demolishing the bridge and killing, among others, the Finnish company commander. On 30 September, the Finns attempted to encircle the Germans at Pudasjärvi into a
pocket (called a
motti in Finnish, originally meaning of firewood) with flanking movements through the forests and managed to cut the road leading north. By then, the bulk of the German force at Pudasjärvi had already left, leaving behind only a small detachment which, after warning the Finns, blew up a munitions dump. The risky landings for the
Battle of Tornio, on the border with Sweden next to the
Gulf of Bothnia, began on 30 September 1944 when three Finnish transport ships (SS
Norma, SS
Fritz S and SS
Hesperus) departed from Oulu towards
Tornio without any air or naval escorts. They arrived on 1 October and disembarked their troops without any interference. The landing had originally been planned as a diversionary raid, with the main assault to take place at Kemi, where the Finnish battalion-sized Detachment Pennanen () was already in control of important industrial facilities on the island of Ajos. Various factors—including a stronger than expected German garrison at Kemi already alerted by local attacks—made the Finns switch the target to Röyttä, Tornio's outer port. The Finns initially landed the Infantry Regiment 11 () of the 3rd Division, which, together with a
Civil Guard-led uprising at Tornio, managed to secure both the port and most of the town as well as the bridges over the
Tornio River. The Finnish attack soon bogged down due to disorganisation caused in part by alcohol looted from German supply depots as well as stiffening German resistance. During the ensuing battle, the German , a reinforced regiment, conducted several counterattacks to retake the town as it formed an important transportation link between the two roads running parallel to the
Kemi and Tornio Rivers. As ordered by Rendulic, the Germans took 262 Finnish civilian hostages in an attempt to trade them for captured soldiers. The Finns refused and the civilians were later released on 12 October. '' of the XVIII Mountain Corps attacking behind cover in 1942 when Finland and Germany were still at war with the USSR together A second wave of four Finnish ships arrived on 2 October and a third wave—three ships strong and with
Brewster F2A fighter escorts—landed its troops with only a single ship being lightly damaged by German
Stuka dive bombers. On 4 October, bad weather prevented Finnish air cover from reaching Tornio, leaving the fourth landing wave vulnerable. bombers scored several hits and sank the SS
Bore IX and the SS
Maininki alongside the pier. The fifth wave on 5 October suffered only light shrapnel damage despite being both shelled from shore and bombed from the sky. The
Finnish Navy's gunboats ,
and VMV-class patrol boats 15 and 16 arrived with the sixth wave just in time to witness German
Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor bombers attacking the shipping at Tornio with
Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs without results. Arrival of naval assets allowed the Finns to safely disembark heavy equipment to support the battle and around 12,500 soldiers in total arrived during the landings. The German forces were reinforced by the 2nd Company of
Panzer Abteilung 211, two infantry battalions and the . The Finnish Infantry Regiment 11 was reinforced with Infantry Regiments 50 and 53. The Finns beat back German counterattacks for a week until 8 October, when the Germans withdrew from Tornio. Meanwhile, Finnish troops were advancing overland from Oulu towards Kemi, with the 15th Brigade making only slow progress against meager German resistance. Their advance was hampered by the destruction of roads and bridges by withdrawing Germans as well as a lack of spirit in both the Finnish troops and their leaders. The Finns attacked Kemi on 7 October, attempting to encircle the Germans into a with a frontal attack by the 15th Brigade and an attack from the rear by Detachment Pennanen. Strong German resistance, civilians in the area, and looted alcohol prevented the Finns from fully trapping all the Germans. Though Finnish forces took several hundred prisoners, they failed to prevent the Germans from demolishing the bridges over the Kemi River once they began to withdraw on 8 October. From the start of the war, the Germans had systematically destroyed and mined the roads and bridges as they withdrew in a delaying strategy. After the first hostilities took place, Rendulic issued several orders on destroying Finnish property in Lapland. On 6 October, a strict order was issued which classified only military sites or military necessities as targets. On 8 October, the Germans bombed and heavily damaged factory areas of Kemi. On 9 October, the demolition order was extended to include all governmental buildings with the exception of hospitals. On 13 October, "all covers, installations and objects that can be used by an enemy" were ordered to be destroyed in northern Finland in a
scorched-earth strategy. Though it was logical for the Germans to deny pursuing forces any shelter, it had a very limited effect on the Finns, who always carried tents for shelter.
German withdrawal effective by November When
Allied advances continued, German high command and 20th Mountain Army leadership asserted that it would be perilous to maintain positions in Lapland and east of
Lyngen Municipality in northern Norway. Likewise, Minister of Armaments and War Production
Albert Speer had determined that German nickel stores were sufficient and holding Petsamo was unnecessary. Preparations for further withdrawal began. Hitler accepted the proposal on 4 October 1944, and the plan was codenamed Operation Nordlicht on 6 October. Instead of a gradual withdrawal from southern Lapland into fortified positions further to the north while evacuating materiel, as in Operation Birke, Operation Nordlicht called for a rapid and strictly organised withdrawal directly behind
Lyngen Fjord in Norway, while under pressure from harassing enemy forces. As the Germans withdrew towards the town of
Rovaniemi, a road junction point in Lapland, and Norway, movement was mostly limited to the immediate vicinity of Lapland's three main roads, which constricted military activities considerably. In general, the withdrawal followed a pattern in which advancing Finnish units would encounter German rear guards and attempt to flank them on foot, but the destroyed road network prevented them from bringing up artillery and other heavy weapons. As Finnish infantry slowly picked their way through the dense woods and marshland, the motorised German units would simply drive away and take up positions further down the road. , Finland, 10 October 1944 pictured on 16 October 1944 after the German withdrawal On 7 October, the Finnish Jaeger Brigade forced the German Mountain Regiment 218 to fight a delaying action off of their pre-set timetable at Ylimaa, some south of Rovaniemi. The opposing forces were roughly even numerically and the lack of heavy weapons and exhaustion from long marches prevented the Finnish brigade from trapping the defending Germans before it received permission to withdraw on 9 October after causing substantial losses to the Finns. On 13 October, the tables were turned at Kivitaipale, some south of Rovaniemi, and only a fortuitous withdrawal by the Mountain Regiment 218 saved the Finnish Infantry Regiment 33 from being severely mauled. The German withdrawal allowed the Finns to surround one of the delaying battalions, but Mountain Regiment 218 returned and managed to rescue the stranded battalion. The Germans initially concentrated on destroying governmental buildings in Rovaniemi, but the fire spread and destroyed housing beyond that. German attempts to fight the fire failed and a train loaded with ammunition caught fire at the railroad station on 14 October, resulting in an explosion which spread the fire throughout the primarily wooden buildings of the town. The first Finnish units to reach the vicinity of Rovaniemi on 14 October were components of the Jaeger Brigade advancing from
Ranua. The Germans repelled Finnish attempts to capture the last intact bridge over the Kemi river and then left the mostly scorched town to the Finns on 16 October 1944. Finnish demobilisation and difficult supply routes took their toll. At
Tankavaara, south of Ivalo, barely four battalions of the Finnish Jaeger Brigade attempted, unsuccessfully, on 26 October to dislodge the twelve-battalion-strong German
169th Infantry Division, entrenched in prepared fortifications. Finnish forces gained ground only on 1 November, when the Germans withdrew northward. Likewise, on 26 October at
Muonio, south-east of defensive positions in Norway, the German
6th SS Mountain Division Nord reinforced by again had numerical and material superiority with artillery and armoured support. This prevented the Finnish 11th Division from gaining the upper hand despite initially fairly successful flanking operations by Infantry Regiments 8 and 50. The Finns planned to isolate 6th SS Mountain, marching from the direction of
Kittilä in the south-east, before Muonio and thereby entrap it within a . The delaying action by and the destroyed road network thwarted the Finnish strategy. between Norway, Sweden and Finland on 27 April 1945 after the end of the Lapland War and thus, the end of World War II in Finland The Soviet Karelian Front, led by General
Kirill Meretskov, initiated its Petsamo–Kirkenes Offensive and started to push the XIX Mountain Corps towards Norway from Soviet territory along the Arctic coast on 7 October. By 25 October, the front captured the Norwegian port of
Kirkenes. The
14th Army pursued German troops withdrawing southwest from Petsamo and Kirkenes approximately into Finnish territory along
Lake Inari. By 5 November, Soviet reconnaissance troops met with the Finnish Army at
Ivalo. Likewise, the
26th Army had followed the withdrawing XVIII Mountain Corps around over the Finnish border in southern Lapland to
Kuusamo and
Suomussalmi, but left the area in November. The Soviet troops in Ivalo did not leave until September 1945. For most practical purposes, the war in Lapland concluded in early November 1944. After holding Tankavaara, the Germans swiftly withdrew from north-eastern Lapland at
Karigasniemi on 25 November 1944. The Finnish Jaeger Brigade pursuing them had by then been mostly demobilised. In north-western Lapland, only four battalions of Finnish troops were left on 4 November and by February 1945, a mere 600 men. The Germans continued their withdrawal but remained in positions first at
Palojoensuu village, from Norway, in early November 1944. From there, they moved to the fortified position along the
Lätäseno River, from Norway, on 26 November. The German
7th Mountain Division held these positions until 10 January 1945 when northern Norway had been cleared and positions at Lyngen Fjord were manned. On 12 January, the was sunk with the loss of its ten sailors in the Gulf of Bothnia by the using an acoustic
G7es torpedo. Some German positions defending Lyngen extended over to
Kilpisjärvi on the Finnish side of the border, but no major activity occurred. The completely withdrew from Finland by 27 April 1945 and a Finnish battle patrol
raised the flag on the three-country cairn between Norway, Sweden and Finland to celebrate the end of the wars. There was never an official peace agreement signed between Finland and Germany. It was not until 1954 that the government of Finland officially noted that "the hostilities have ceased and interaction between Finland and Germany since then developed peacefully" and thus "the war has ended". File:FinnishTroops Rovaniemi1944 LaplandWar 004.jpg|Finnish Troops in
Rovaniemi (1944) File:Valtakatu Kemi 19441008.jpg|The Valtakatu street in
Kemi (1944) File:Panssareita Oulun Tuirassa 19441112 sa-kuva-154127.jpg|Armored vehicles on the march in
Oulu (1944) File:FinnishTroops Tornio1944 005.jpg|Finnish infantry in
Tornio (1944) ==Aftermath==