A physicist criticising and developing Finnish tanks:

Erkki Laurila in the civil guard and the Winter War



This article examines the training one future scientist and inventor, Erkki Laurila, received first in the civil guard in Finland and then in the Finnish defence forces during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Together with his education in physics from the University of Helsinki, these (military) experiences empowered him to criticise the Renault tanks from the World War I that the Finnish army first planned to use in battle in late 1939 if the Soviet army attacked. His and his comrade-in-arms’ test proved the opposite and saved their lives. In the Winter War (1939–1940), Laurila mostly focused on evacuating Soviet tanks that the Finns had stopped to no-man’s-land. After the war, he went back to finish his doctoral dissertation in applied physics and planned for a career in science.