Lapland War

The Lapland War was fought between Finland and Germany in northern Finland from the autumn of 1944 to the spring of 1945. Germany had been Finland's partner against the Soviet Union, but when Finland signed an armistice with the Soviets in September 1944, it agreed to expel the German troops from its territory, and the Germans began to withdraw to northern Norway. Fighting broke out as Finnish forces followed them, and the retreating Germans devastated Lapland by a scorched-earth policy, burning buildings and destroying roads and bridges, and the provincial capital, Rovaniemi, was largely burned. The last German troops left Finland in the spring of 1945. The war was fought under heavy pressure from the Soviet side.

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