ABSTRACT
This case study follows the path of a Finnish military interpreter from Ssummer 1941 to Aautumn 1944, when several divisions of the German armed forces involved in the German invasion of the Soviet Union were stationed on and operating from Finnish territory. The Finnish–-German military collaboration created an intercultural framework of social encounters both embodied and shaped by mediators such as Lance sergeant Jyrki Kolkkala. Assigned to the German Army by the Finnish High Command, he was one mediating node in a network of Finnish liaison officers and military interpreters, whose task was, on the one hand, to maintain communication between representatives of the two armies and to assist German troops in a variety of everyday matters, and, on the other, to observe the German ally. By triangulating Kolkkala’s personal papers with archival sources and military historiography, the chapter not only reconstructs the agency of military interpreters and liaison officers in the alliance but also discusses the insight of this agency into the specific historical setting with its ideological, cultural, and social constraints.
