During World War II some 70,000 war children were evacuated from Finland to Scandinavia, chiefly to Sweden. Most were evacuated during the Continuation War to ease the situation for their parents who set out to rebuild their homes in the re-conquered Karelia. The first surge of evacuees arrived, however, during the Winter War when the Finns had reasons to fear a humanitarian catastrophe following the expected Soviet occupation. World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the globe... Scandinavia, Fennoscandia, and the Kola Peninsula. ... The Continuation War was fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II; from the Soviet bombing attacks on June 25, 1941, to cease-fire September 4, 1944 (on the Finnish side) and September 5 (on the Soviet side). ... Finnish Karelia, historically also Swedish Karelia or Carelia, is a historical province in eastern Finland. ... The Winter War (also known as the Soviet-Finnish War or the Russo-Finnish War) broke out when the Soviet Union attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, three months after the start of World War II. As a consequence, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations on... State motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (transliteration: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!) (Russian: Workers of the world, unite!) Official language None; Russian (de facto) Capital Moscow Area  - Total  - % water 1st before collapse 22,402,200 km²  ?% Population  - Total  - Density 3rd before collapse 293,047,571 (July 1991) 13. ...

In retrospect, the evacuation has been considered psychologically flawed, as the separations turned out to inflict a far greater damage on the evacuees than the damage suffered by those children who had remained by their parents in Finland. In comparison to Finland's approximately 23,000 military casualties in the Winter War, the 66,000 in the Continuation war, and the total of 2,000 civilian casualties – and the roughly equally many seriously wounded – the war children were, of course, not physically injured, let alone killed. However, their number is of about the same size as that of the war invalids, and many of them feel their sufferings to be ignored.

After the war Finland experienced times of economic hardship, and also substantial insecurity with regard to the Soviet Union's plans for Finland, which resulted in the delay of the return of the children for several years. Ultimately about 20% of the war children stayed with their foster families after the war, who often adopted them, which spared them another traumatic separation. Many more returned to Sweden as adults, when the prolonged post-war hardship in Finland pushed large contingents of unemployed Finns to Sweden's booming economy in the 1950s–60s.

The exact figures remain unknown.

This European history-related article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. World map showing location of Europe When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... ...