On rapprochement - Martin Pfaffenzeller in Der Spiegel:

‘Tauno Aarni had only been in Sweden for a couple of weeks before he started talking. From Finland, Aarni had found shelter in a refugee camp in the Swedish port city of Gävle because he, as an anti-communist, allegedly faced persecution back home.
In late November 1944, Aarni spoke with a police officer who he thought shared his views on Judaism. Jews, he told the police officer, cannot be seen as humans. He continued with a sentence that would prove problematic for him: "If you only knew how many Jews I have shot.”’

(…)

‘According to the commonly accepted narrative, the Finnish SS members had nothing to do with war crimes and the Holocaust – or, if they did, they were forced to participate against their will.’

(…)

‘Helsinki, however, didn’t believe that the harmony between Hitler and Stalin would last very long. The government believed it would have to choose one side or the other so as not to be trapped between the two great powers. The country chose Nazi Germany.
Finland began negotiating with Germany in August 1940 over arms deliveries. In return, the Germans would receive permission to attack the Soviet Union from Finnish territory. Soon, Finnish units also began cropping up in German war plans. The volunteer SS battalion was to be a symbol of rapprochement.’

(…)
‘On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the non-aggression pact with Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union. Alongside the Germans, troops from Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway also fought in the SS Wiking Division. All of them had sworn an oath to the "Führer.” The division, 19,000-strong initially, moved through Ukraine to the southeast. The motto, as the troops well knew, was: "The SS takes no prisoners.” Red Army soldiers who surrendered were frequently shot on the spot. The division was similarly merciless with the Jewish population. In the town of Zboriv, they are thought to have participated in the slaughter of 600 Jews that July. They also provided occasional support to the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that systematically murdered Jews, Roma and communists.’

(…)

‘Finland also soon lost interest in the former SS members. The country had defended its independence, though it aligned its foreign policy with that of the Soviet Union, and it was eager to avoid angering Moscow by admitting to having participated in the German war of extermination, which is thought to have cost the lives of 25 million Soviet citizens.’

(…)

‘The historian expects that he will again be vilified for his paper once it is published in the spring. He says that the societal climate in Finland had deteriorated. The Finns Party, which has been back in government since 2023 and is strictly anti-Russian due to the country’s history, is trying to assert its revisionist view of history, Swanström claims. Recently, three government ministers from the party supported a motion to provide the SS veterans association with funding to conduct a counter-study.
On top of that, Swanström believes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has reinforced conservative views of history. "Currently, old narratives of heroes and enemies are coming to the fore. The Russians are evil and their opponents are automatically good.” Swanström, though, also sees his work as a contribution to the defense of freedom. "We should not become a mirror image of the Russians, who reject any critical examination of their history.”’

Read the article here.

The urge to reject any critical examination of the history is just the flipside of the coin: the urge to see the own history as nothing but one big crime.
Which doesn’t imply that both sides are equally wrong.

The need to whitewash is always more dangerous.

Most people are good at adapting (mental health). They will do what they need to do to survive. Sometimes to do a bit more than sheer surviving, and they become willing executioners.