Some old photos from the photo archive of the Finnish Defense Forces resurface on social media from time to time because they are so remarkable.
Photo taken by Finnish photographer Osvald Hedenström, Finland’s World War II. It shows a type of camouflage he used to hide a road from Soviet forces during World War II. As Atlas Obscura explains, while the trees in the photos cannot hide the path from airplanes, someone looking at the area from a watchtower will see an unbroken row of trees. Seen from ground level, it’s probably a much more suspicious sight, as a multitude of flying trees hanging in the air are visible.
The reason for this is simple: Finland, occupying an odd place in the conflict between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, used countless tricks during the conflict to frustrate a much more powerful enemy. It was common for the military to camouflage literally everything with trees and leaves to deceive Russian planes and watchtowers. According to the caption Hedenström attached to the photo, “The Finns camouflaged the Raate road, about 10 km from Russia, with suspended pines, because there was a watchtower erected by the Russians right on the border.”
The Finns were very effective at using the natural resources available in their country, 75 percent of which was covered with trees.
“The Finns didn’t have the money to buy large quantities of artificial camouflage like netting, so they used trees, leaves and greenery to confuse the enemy,” Colonel Petteri Jouko, a military historian at the Finnish National Defense University, told Atlas Obscura. They were accustomed to the wilderness and took advantage of the forest, unlike the German soldiers operating in the region.”
Trees were used to hide everything from tanks to heavy artillery, while white sheets were used to hide vehicles in the snow.
Finland first allied itself with Nazi Germany while fighting the Soviets in the Winter War, when the Soviets launched an invasion in 1939, and then during the Continuation War, an offensive against the Soviets by Finland and Nazi Germany in 1941-44. During the first few weeks of the Continuation War, Hedenström photographed the surreal image of trees flying over the road.
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