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Lenny Kravitz’s Hero Uncle and Other Lesser Known American Heroes

Khalid Elhassan August 18, 2020 35 min

American Revolutionary War - United States — The British surrender at Yorktown. Library of Congress

5. Fighting in the Ruins of the Third Reich

Red banner waving over a wrecked Berlin in 1945. Radio Free Europe

While Torni and his men excelled, the wider war went against his country, and in September, 1944, Finland sued for peace. The Finnish army was largely disbanded and Torni was discharged. However, he still wanted to fight the Soviets. So in early 1945, he joined a pro-Nazi Finnish resistance movement, and hitched a ride on a U-boat to Germany for clandestine guerrilla and sabotage training. By then, however, the Nazi regime was on its last legs.

Torni’s training ended prematurely in March, 1945, and he found himself stuck in a collapsing Third Reich, unable to get back to Finland. So he joined a German unit to fight the advancing Red Army. In the war’s final days, he made it to the Western Allies’ lines, where he surrendered to British troops. He was sent to a POW camp, but escaped and made it back to Finland in June, 1945.

Read too: 8 Incredible WWII POW Stories of Survival and Escape.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.