Historian Mauno Jokipii, in his 1968 study of the Finnish volunteers Panttipataljoona: Suomalaisen SS-pataljoonan historia, claimed to apply scholarly methods to their history, but a veterans' organization of former Waffen-SS volunteers commissioned the work. Panttipataljoona is, according to scholar Antero Holmila, "an embodiment of the positivist historical tradition". In his work, Jokipii uses a narrative order to provide a sense of coherence and totality. Holmila Antero criticizes Jokipii, saying his work has a problem in "its distance from the experiences of those who lived through the chaos". Holmila uses the example when Jokipii, describes the aftermath of the death of Westland regiment commander Hilmar Wäckerle and the atrocities committed (burning of a nearby village, Russians and Jews executed without trial for being accused of collaborating with the sniper who killed Weckerle), said that no Finns "were there", which goes against the narrative of Lappi-Seppälä. In its totalizing telling of the story "as it was", Holmila criticizes it as it "assumed its own innocence where the Holocaust was concerned." Holmila says that in doing so, Jokipii "shelters" the audience from the Holocaust.
