Almost everything I've heard says that Finland's participation and cooperation with Germany in WW2 was simply to retake territory lost to the Soviets as a result of the Winter War.
Almost. I recently heard a theory that Finland did want to take as much Russian Territory for themselves as they could, but were defeated badly enough at the old border that they were forced to give up on that idea (for example, they didn't help Germany encircle Leningrad not because they didn't want to advance that far, but that they couldn't advance that far), and that the idea that the Finns only aligned with Germany for self defense, and was never that aggressive towards the Soviet Union once they recaptured their territory, was promoted on both sides after the fact to ease post-war relations.
Almost everything I've heard says that Finland's participation and cooperation with Germany in WW2 was simply to retake territory lost to the Soviets as a result of the Winter War.
Yes and no. There wouldn't have been any need for Continuation War if there wouldn't have been Winter War. Anyway, old border was crossed and Soviet territory was occupied, reasons for that are in the 19th century/early 20th century mentality of Finnish nationalism and unification of Finnic tribes under "Greater Finland". The oppression of the brother kins fueled the mentality (such as the genocide of Estonians in recently occupied Estonia in 1940).
Almost. I recently heard a theory that Finland did want to take as much Russian Territory for themselves as they could, but were defeated badly enough at the old border that they were forced to give up on that idea (for example, they didn't help Germany encircle Leningrad not because they didn't want to advance that far, but that they couldn't advance that far), and that the idea that the Finns only aligned with Germany for self defense, and was never that aggressive towards the Soviet Union once they recaptured their territory, was promoted on both sides after the fact to ease post-war relations.
Well, no. There never was such a heavy battles in 1941 which would have forced the assault to a halt, mind you that USSR was lacking pretty much everything in 1941 after onslaught of Wehrmacht. Active part to Siege of Leningrad wasn't taken due to Mannerheim personally denying it, meaning Finnish held airports/gun enplacements weren't used to bombard the city. Reasons for the call are in Mannerheim's past. If you can name the individual battles where the assault would have been put to a halt due to Soviet resistance which couldn't have been overcome, please share the information, keen to know more.
What comes to the "self-defense", well... Can one call an offensive war a "self-defense" is one thing. But there was problems by Finnish high command to get the troops to cross the old border, multiple sections refused to cross it, so for a Finnish farmer-soldier the main purpose was to regain the lost homes. But then again, Finns did have their camps for non-Finnic Russian civilians in the occupied areas, so for Finnish high command the Greater Finland certainly was part of the motivation.