Environments of Defence: Finland and the Winter War

ABSTRACT In January 1940, the British writer John Langdon-Davies travelled to Finland to report on the Winter War with the Soviet Union (November 1939–March 1940). On his return he wrote a book entitled Finland: the First Total War in which he proposed that it was the ability of the Finnish people to adapt to their environment that enabled the determined defence of their country from forces far greater in number and with superior armaments. His theme originated with the “military science,” as he put it, of collective defensive action that embraced the topography of Finland, its climate, and the skills evolved by life within it. He proposed that since its independence in 1917 and the subsequent civil war, Finland had been designed as a social democracy fit for purpose in its resilience to both political and military threat. Langdon-Davies considered Finnish modern architecture of the 1930s as part of a national strategy that embraced place, cooperation, and social wellbeing. He positioned architecture and design within interconnected military, social and economic contexts, as a kind of expanded functionalism both technical and poetic. This paper argues that Finland: the First Total War contributes to understandings of architecture as a protagonist in national defence.