Ensio Uoti

Ensio Ilmari Uoti (5 September 1897 Pori – 1966 Aachen) was a Finnish politician and Nazi who in the 1930s was the leader of the Finnish-Socialist Workers' Party (SSTP). Ensio Uoti's parents were pastor Juho Henrik Uoti, a known anarchist, and Augusta Matilda Laurila (1863–1936), a primary school teacher. In 1919, he moved to Germany to study engineering, after which Uoti visited Finland only occasionally. Uoti graduated as Master of Science in 1924 from Aachen University of Technology metallurgy department and subsequently worked in the Finnish Army as an engineer officer. Uoti had met Gottfried Feder, a Nazi economic theorist in Germany who greatly influenced his thinking. According to Uoti, the role of the state in economic life should be strengthened to eliminate the influence of “foreigner groups” associated with capitalism, especially Jews. In the 1930s, Uoti was active in multiple Finnish Nazi parties, the National Socialist Union of Finland, the Patriotic People's Movement and the Finnish People's Organisation. After this, Uoti co-founded the Finnish-Socialist Workers' Party in November 1934. The SSTP participated in the 1936 parliamentary elections in the Uusimaa constituency with the slogan "better pay for work". Cars equipped with party election advertisements toured Helsinki, attracting attention thanks to the large swastika banners. The SSTP was abolished after the Continuation War under Article 21 of the Ceasefire Agreement (which entered into force on 23 September 1944) on 12 October 1944. In the autumn of 1939, Uoti was sent to Berlin on a diplomatic mission. According to his own account, Uoti got to meet Heinrich Himmler, who would have said that Germany would not allow the occupation of Finland and that in two years' time Germany and the Soviet Union would be at war. According to Uoti, Germany would have offered to send a relief mission of 100,000 men to Finland as early as January 1940 via Åland if the Finnish government were to become "German-friendly".