Does Finland Have Any Martial Arts of Their Own?
Käsikähmätaistelu (KKT) – Finnish Army Manus to Paw Combat Grooming
Straying away from logistics, economics and infrastructure briefly, there were other reasons why the Finnish Army emerged triumphant from the 1939-1940 Winter War. 1 of these was the emergence of a new doctrine placing an increased emphasis on hand-to-paw gainsay (Käsikähmätaistelu, or KKT) and on training soldiers in effective shoot-to-kill techniques.
The Army and the Suojeluskunta in particular encouraged its men (and women) to maximize their physical capabilities – Finland was likewise 1 of the very few countries in the earth in the 1930'due south whose Regular army encouraged and promulgated the learning of formal unarmed and armed martial arts combat techniques. From the early 1930's on, a synthesis of techniques from the Japanese and Korean martial arts, primarily Judo, Ju-Jitsu and Karate only as well from Tae Kwan Do and Aikido, together with knife and bayonet fighting techniques were taught within the Finnish Armed services. Conscripts got this in full measure from the mid-1930's on. Combined with a backwoods penchant for savage brawling and knife-fighting, the Finnish soldier was not somebody you wanted to meet on a night night in the woods. Or on any night for that thing.
Hand to Manus Combat and the Pyschology of Killing
The introduction of formal Hand to Hand Combat Training into the Finnish Armed Forces beginning occurred in the early on 1930'due south cheers to Gustaf Johannes Lindbergh (1888 – 1970), a Finn of Swedish origin from Turku. The scion of a Turku family heavily involved in shipping, Lindbergh had spent near all of the 1920's living in Nippon where he worked for the family unit Aircraft Company, learnt Japanese and became a student of the Japanese Martial Arts.
Gustaf Johannes Lindbergh – founder of KKT
A successful student of wrestling and boxing in Finland in his schoolhouse days, where he had often represented his School and local City Teams in competitions, in Japan he primarily studied Karate, Judo and Ju-Jitsu, but too studied Aikido in it's early from, Aiki-Jujutsu, nether Morihei Ueshiba. An eclectic student and a quick learner, he seems also to have studied Tae-Kwan-Exercise under a Korean Sifu living in Japan, likewise equally various Japanese Sword and Weapon Fighting Techniques.
Lindberg returned to Finland in tardily 1929 and, having plant work in Tampere, established his ain Gym. A conservative, he plant himself involved in manufacturing plant politics in a city where many of the Workers belonged to the militant left-wing. Very apace, he began to teach paw-to-mitt gainsay techniques to fellow Conservatives and members of the Tampere Civil Guard who were frequently involved, despite the political rapprochement betwixt the SDP and the Civil Baby-sit, in street brawls and bar-fights with left-wingers.
No teetotaler himself, Lindbergh very chop-chop realized that the formalized wrestling, boxing and Japanese/Korean martial arts techniques he had studied had very lilliputian in mutual with existent combat. Equally a result, working with some of his Gym members, he began developing a system of gainsay techniques for practical self-defense and crime in life threatening situations. His approach was to pare combat techniques down to the essentials, creating a reality based fighting system. On the streets, he continued to acquire hard won experience in a brutal schoolhouse where losing meant a severe beating. This rapidly led him to a crucial understanding of the differences between sports fighting and street fighting.
Lindbergh training Suojeluskuntas men in street fighting techniques
Over the next couple of years, he adult his fundamental hand-to-hand gainsay principles: 'use natural movements and reactions' for defense, combined with an immediate and decisive counterattack. From this evolved the more refined theory of 'simultaneous defense and attack' while 'never occupying two easily in the same defensive move.' The fighting technique he developed was certainly eclectic, incorporating techniques of wrestling, grappling, striking and kicking, with many elements borrowed from the Japanese and Korean Martial Arts he had studied. He quickly became known for his schools extremely efficient and brutal counter-attacks.
Due to his Gym having a large number of Civil Guards equally members, in particular many Officers (who could afford the membership fees), Lindbergh was invited in 1931 to get the Hand-to-Hand Combat Teacher and Primary Instructor of Physical Fitness for the Tampere Civil Guard units. In this capacity, between 1931 and 1933, he connected to develop and refine his hand-to-hand combat methods, and also began including concrete endurance training, psychological techniques, the practical usage of common cold steel weapons (fighting knives, hukari's – the lethal ii pes long Finnish Army machetes, entrenching tools, bayonets and rifles), knife and stick fighting techniques and aspects of shut quarter combat such as sentry removal. By 1933 this had evolved into a system for military shut-quarters gainsay, which he named, with a certain lack of originality, Käsikähmätaistelu, or KKT for short.
Following a demonstration for Align Mannerheim and Senior Officers of the Army in late 1933, organised by the Senior Officers of the Tampere Ceremonious Guard, Mannerheim worked to ensure the promotion of Lindbergh to Chief Instructor of Physical Preparation and Unarmed Gainsay for the Finnish Ground forces. Lindbergh moved into this position in mid-1934 and drove the rapid expansion of KKT training throughout the Finnish Army and into High Schools through the War machine Buck organisation. At the same time, he continued to work on the evolution of fighting techniques as well equally the psychological aspects of hand-to-hand combat training, emphasizing physical endurance and the ability to have physical punishment in combat without being unduly perturbed, elevating and strengthening the spirit, emphasizing threat neutralization, simultaneous defensive and offensive maneuvers and developing an always aggressive mindset.
Lindbergh demonstrating KKT techniques
Under his leadership, KKT became an essential part of training for all members of the Armed Forces, women included. KKT fostered an ambitious mindset and the preparation, especially in the Regular army during the Basic and Advanced Preparation periods, was intense (and intensely concrete). Many recruits later spoke of it every bit one of the highlights of their training and the occasional strange observer plant the displays they were given by skilled practitioners during the Winter War itself verging on the terrifying, especially those involving fighting with the Finnish Army's hukari's, the Combat Issue Machetes and also with Entrenching Tools, each of which were more capable of taking off a man'southward head or a limb.
From 1934 to 1936, Lindbergh had also devoted considerable time, in conjunction with two psychologists who he had met through his gym, to the psychological aspects of gainsay. In his hand-to-hand combat training, Lindbergh had placed a great deal of emphasis on overcoming what he had seen initially as a reluctance to fight finer. He had later come to see this equally a generic phobic-level aversion to violence which he then trained his students to overcome. He theorized that this might also utilize to soldiers and their willingness to kill and began, in conjunction with the two psychologists, a systematic study into the improvement of the effectiveness of soldiers in gainsay.
The involvement of Finnish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War gave Lindbergh a applied theater for his studies and for two years, he and the psychologists were attached for long periods to the Finnish Volunteer unit of measurement fighting with the Nationalists. During these studies, they adamant that for many soldiers, despite having volunteered for combat, there was a deep seated disfavor to actually killing the enemy, with only xx-25% of individual riflemen actually deliberately aiming at the enemy before firing (with not-Finns, it was generally around 15-20% – Lindbergh theorized that possibly the deviation was that many Finns were outdoors-men who hunted recreationally). While they were willing to die, they were not willing to impale. They also identified that there was no such problem with long altitude weapons, where the enemy was out of sight and therefore de-personalized. Specialized weapons, such every bit a flame-thrower, were unremarkably fired. Coiffure-served weapons, such equally a car gun, were most e'er fired. And firing would increase profoundly if a nearby leader demanded that the soldier fire. But when left to their own devices, the keen bulk of individual combatants appeared unable or unwilling to deliberately impale.
KKT came to include weapons training, including pocketknife fighting
In addition, they identified a number of physiological responses to combat involving vaso-constriction, tunnel vision and hyperventilating besides as "fight or flight" stress responses to the stimulus of gainsay. Studies Lindbergh carried out identified that this process was so intense that soldiers ofttimes suffered stress diarrhea with loss of control of urination and defecation beingness common. Lindbergh's surveys identified a quarter of combat veterans admitting that they urinated in their pants in combat, and a quarter admitting that they defecated in their pants in gainsay. He also identified that there was a parasympathetic backlash that occurred as shortly as the danger and the excitement of combat was over, taking the class of an incredibly powerful weariness and sleepiness on the part of the soldier. This seemed to occur every bit soon as the momentum of the assail was halted and the soldier briefly believed himself to be safety. During this period of vulnerability a counterattack by fresh troops could have an upshot completely out of proportion to the number of troops attacking.
These were revolutionary insights into human being nature and into a military problem – a xv-twenty% aiming and firing charge per unit amidst riflemen is similar a xv-20% literacy rate amidst librarians. Step by step through this period, Lindbergh worked from a armed services perspective to correct these bug every bit they were identified. And right them he did. In the Winter War, the "deliberate aiming and firing" charge per unit among riflemen in the Finnish Army was over 90 percent and in that location was no appreciable reluctance to kill enemy soldiers. Measures taken included replacing the old "bulls-center" targets with man-shaped pop upward targets that fell when striking and repetitious "snap-shooting" range training against the same man-shaped pop-upwards targets, creating a reflexive response pattern that became ingrained subsequently constant repetition (abiding repetition was heavily stressed as the central to success). Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, repeated hundreds of times proved to be a successful conditioner. Afterwards this training, when soldiers and so-trained were in combat and somebody popped upwardly with a gun, reflexively they shot and shot to kill without witting volition ("..they shoot like automatons…" a foreign journalist wrote at the time, "…with unbelievable accuracy, aiming and shooting in an instant, killing with no visible emotion…..").
Range targets
He also worked to sympathise the physiological responses to close-range interpersonal aggression. Tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, the loss of fine and circuitous motor command, irrational behavior, and the inability to think conspicuously were all observed as byproducts of combat stress. A cardinal determination was that in many means soldiers in combat were really less capable than normal and conditioning was needed to overcome these physiological responses. Again, Lindbergh adult techniques to exercise just this, training soldiers to consciously arrange their physiological responses, largely through a combination of breathing exercises and "battle-workout" training under conditions of extreme stress and exertion simulating real combat as closely equally possible.
By early 1938, he had proved his training and conditioning techniques to his and the Army's satisfaction and these were rolled out in general and refresher training through 1938. With actual war looming in 1939, virtually soldiers received at least an abbreviated form of this training every bit function of mobilization refresher training in the Autumn of 1939. It was grooming that served the Regular army well in the Winter War, with the Finns achieving unprecedented effectiveness in the willingness of Finnish soldiers to aim to kill, shooting with an accuracy and effectiveness that was non reached in other Military until decades later. In this of course they were also aided by the outstanding individual firearms brought into service through the tardily 1930'south by the Finnish Armed Forces.
Suojeluskuntas range blueprint resulted in increasingly skilled shooters
Those very very few foreign military observers who were permitted access to the front during the Winter War were in awe of the Finnish soldier's military prowess. As one such observer was quoted every bit saying past a strange (american) journalist "I don't know if they terrify the Russians, but they certain practise terrify me." This particular observer had merely witnessed an meet date where an advancing Finnish Infantry Company of less than 100 men had wiped out a counter-attacking Russian Infantry unit of somewhere between 1,000 and one,500 men in an engagement that lasted less than 5 minutes. ("In improver to the constructive employ of accompanying support weapons, the individual Finnish Soldiers immediately went to ground, making effective utilise of available cover and fired aimed shots at approximately ten second intervals with outstanding accurateness," he wrote in his report, "almost every shot seemed to find a target, the attacking Russian unit was wiped out to the terminal man. The Finns suffered 1 casualty, a low-cal wound. They and so resumed their advance.")
A groovy deal of the credit for this must go to Lindbergh, the revolutionary insights into man nature that he came up with and the training techniques he devised to overcome these. Lindbergh continued as the Army's Main Teacher of Physical Preparation and Unarmed Combat until 1948, when he retired from the military, though he connected to supervise the instruction of KKT in both Finnish war machine and constabulary-enforcement contexts, and in addition, worked indefatigably to refine, improve and arrange KKT to meet civilian needs.
Render to Table of Contents for "Punainen myrsky – valkoinen kuolema" (Red Storm, White Death)
Source: http://www.alternativefinland.com/kasikahmataistelu-kkt-and-the-armeijan/
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