The Winter War 1939

 

Eric Calcraft Planet News, Arthur Menken Paramount . Winter War 1939

The Winter War 1939, unseen pictures now revealed.

The Swedish photographer Kristoffersson was only 21 years old when becoming one of the first war correspondents in Finland just after the Soviet Finnish conflict breakout in December 1939. An abrupt growing up as a press photographer of course. He went to the Mannerheim line on the easter border of Finland on the Karelia, the bombed Helsingfors and Viborg and in north Finland where he experienced the some of the coldest weather ever and where Russian troops fell in thousands, mostly due to the extreme cold temperature that could be as cold as minus 40 degrees.     

Kristofferssons archive from the Winter War 1939 is now being made public. 

The glass plates and negative originals are of course a treasure for publishers of war history. Editors are now going through Kristofferssons archive to choose the best photographs from his time in Finland 1939. The pictures are of high editorial value and the collection of photographs are historical important and most of them have never been published.

About the picture. The freezing winter cold in Finland adds to the other hazards of being a war correspondent. Kristoffersson has pictured many of the war correspondents who worked during the Winter War 1939.  On the photograph above are war correspondents Eric Calcraft of Planet News and Arthur Menken of Paramount pictured in Finland. They both became famous for their imagery from war zones around the world. Kristoffersson also photographed war correspondents in Finland 1939 from Paris Match, NBC,National Zeitung, Associated Press, Daily Mail, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily Express to mention a few. This part of Kristofferssons collection is worth a section of it's own and makes a very interesting historical feature both from a media history point of view, and as part of telling the story about the Winter War 1939.

American journalist Edmund Stevens. 1910-1992. Already from the 1930s living in Russia. Began writing for the Manchester Guardian and The Daily Herald of London 1938. At this time he worked for NBC Radio, and made interviews behind enemy lines with Russian prisoners of war. He was a A Pulitzer prize winner 1950.

War correspondent journalist Geoffrey Cox of British newspaper Daily Express reports the ongoing events to the world press. He witnessed the early Finnish victories at Kemijärvi and Suomussalmi and wrote in his report: Men lay with hand grenades in their hands, poised to throw, one man leant against a wagon wheel with a length of wire still in his hands, until you got right up to him you could not tell that he was not still living. It was this incredible effect of the cold and the battle near Kemi halting the scene for all time. He had already covered the Spanish civil war.

War correspondent and journalist Leland Stowe, 1899-1994. Pulitzer Price winning American reporting from Finland for the American newspaper Chicago Daily News. January 1940.

Why the interest in The Winter War 1939?

It will in December 2019 be 80 years since the start of the conflict between the Soviet union and Finland. Photographer Kristofferssons archive and pictures from his time in Finland during the conflict is a collection of hundreds of unpublished and unique photographs. An unparallelled solid collection from one photographer that would fit in any book or publication about the Winter War of 1939.

Read more about photographer Kristoffersson.

Are you a publisher looking to publish this unique collection exclusively?

Contact me and let me show you more from the Kristoffersson collection.


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