“The Winter Warriors”, a memoir between snow and blood by Olivier Norek – rts.ch

By plunging into the heart of the winter of 1939-1940 in a war between the Soviet giant and Lilliputian Finland, Olivier Norek recounts a forgotten conflict. With “The Winter Warriors”, the former captain of the judicial police abandons the thriller and offers a dazzling historical choral fresco.

At the dawn of the Second World War, Stalin, seeking to secure his borders and protect Leningrad, set out to conquer Finland. For the dictator, it is the story of a few days, a few weeks at most. What will this young nation of three million inhabitants be able to do against the heavily armed Soviet army?

But what he thought would be a simple formality, almost a walk in the park, will become a military nightmare. Because the Finnish army fought with fierce determination, using its knowledge of the terrain, the winter, the forests, to undermine Stalin’s expansionist wishes.

Simo Häyhä, la Mort Blanche

The Finnish army, under-equipped, has a major asset – small in size but great in courage – in the person of Simo Häyhä, nicknamed the White Death. This 31-year-old man, 1.52m tall (the size of his rifle) is a sniper of legendary precision. Single-handedly, he defeats the enemy, sows death and trouble, he, the simple farmer who defended his livestock against bears and wolves and who finds himself defending his country.

I think I’m a very bad inventor and that if I don’t touch, I don’t see, I don’t taste, I would have difficulty finding the right words, the right images. I need to get out into the field.

Olivier Norek, author of “Winter Warriors”

Olivier Norek, before experiencing the story, confesses to not knowing how to write it. Taking up his investigator’s and policeman’s hat again, he leaves for Finland on the trail of these soldiers, these peasants, of Simo Häyhä, exactly the same number of days as the period that this war lasted, that is to say -say 105 days. When he explains what he wants to do, doors open, attics, trunks, libraries, archives. He talks with professors, snipers, weapons experts, enthusiasts who all tell him about their winter war and this conflict which has become, in Finland, a national story.

A pacifist story

Lying in the snow, his head held in a vice by -40 degrees, Olivier Norek thinks of his characters, all real. He met their gazes in photographs, he experienced through them the cold, the hunger, the fear. It narrates the daily life of the Finns in this winter of 1939-1940 when temperatures dropped to -51 degrees. But he also evokes the young Soviet soldiers, poor kids who came from Crimea, Ukraine or another of the twenty-seven ethnic minorities, to die frozen in the ice. This war is not theirs, they who obey imbecile orders from a hierarchy which is more afraid of Stalin than of the enemy.

It is important for me to emphasize that this is not a war book but a pacifist book. He is not pro-Finnish or anti-Russian

Olivier Norek, author of “Winter Warriors”

When reading “The Winter Warriors”, we cannot help but think of current wars, of the fights of small people against great powers. The parallels are never far away, and reading becomes an even more disturbing experience.

A deeply human novel, both epic and intimate, “The Winter Warriors” shows that tenacity and courage can sometimes triumph in the face of much superior forces. All this calls for modesty and celebrates the memory of the 70,000 Finns and 400,000 Soviets who fell in combat in a conflict that would change the course of the Second World War.

Catherine Fattebert/sc

Olivier Norek, “The Winter Warriors”, Michel Lafon, August 2024.

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