The Winter War

A Captivating Guide to the Russo-Finnish War

between Finland and the Soviet Union
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
Chapter 1 – The Grand Duchy of Finland
Chapter 2 – The Finnish Civil War
Chapter 3 – Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Chapter 4 – The Red Menace
Chapter 5 – Negotiations, “Refresher Training,” and the Balance of Forces
Chapter 6 – The Greatest Finn of All Time
Chapter 7 – Hell in the Snow
Conclusion: Defeat but Not defeated
Bibliography
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Introduction
In December 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a
speech about a conflict that had some leading figures in Britain and France,
including Churchill himself, briefly discussing the idea of going to war with
the Soviet Union, even though they were already fighting Adolf Hitler.
While that notion was quickly dismissed, Churchill’s summation of the
fighting between Finland and the USSR was scathing in its criticism of
Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union and fulsome in its praise of the Finns.
All Scandinavia dwells brooding under Nazi and Bolshevik threats.
Only Finland-superb, nay, sublime-in the jaws of peril-Finland shows
what free men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is
magnificent. They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military
 incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions
about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of
fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots
the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and
proves it base and abominable in war.
Of course, war makes strange bedfellows, and one year later, Churchill
would find himself allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and
Finland. It’s an interesting saga, one with roots in imperial Russian history
and the desire of the Finns to be free in their northern forests.
Chapter 1 – The Grand Duchy of Finland
In the 1500s, the territory we now call the nation of Finland came under
Swedish control. Prior to that, the Finns existed in a series of small and
larger kingdoms, earldoms, tribal areas, and clan territories. Over time,
these came and went, and they were subjected, in large part, to control or
influence by its larger and more powerful neighbors, namely Sweden and
Russia.
From the 16 th century until 1809, Finland was a grand duchy of Sweden.
The titular head of state was the grand duke, which was another title for the
Swedish kings. In 1807, Russian Tsar Alexander I and French Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte signed the Treaties of Tilsit, which arrayed Russia and
France against Napoleon’s enemies, Britain and Sweden (then a force to be
reckoned with in northern Europe). Of course, this was before Napoleon’s
invasion of Russia in 1812. In 1807, however, the young Russian tsar was
in awe of Bonaparte, as were many others in Europe.
As part of their arrangement, Napoleon agreed that Russia should control
Finland, and in 1808, Russia invaded the Swedish Grand Duchy of Finland.
The Russians found the fighting in Finland difficult, something they would
discover again 120 years later, but within a year, the territory had been
absorbed into the Russian Empire.
This happened for two reasons. First, the Finns, though they fought a brave
and tenacious guerrilla war against the Russians, could not hope to hold out
against the Russian numbers. This, too, would be the same story over a
century later.
Second, as Alexander I had promised Napoleon and his satellite state of
Denmark, the Russians warred with Sweden in the west, forcing the Swedes
to decide what was more important to them, the wilds of Finland or access
to the Atlantic through the Baltic and North Seas. So, the Swedes chose to
give up Finland to the Russians, which many Finns saw as a betrayal.
Though Sweden had ruled Finland for centuries, the Finns enjoyed a high
level of autonomy, and though there were occasional problems, the Finns
and Swedes, who were a large minority, managed to coexist in relative
peace. Even today, there are parts of Sweden where Finnish is spoken and
vice versa. Additionally, the Finns and Swedes shared a common religious
outlook in Lutheranism, whereas the Russians practiced another form of
Christianity known as Eastern Orthodoxy. Many Finns feared that they
would be forced to convert and that the Russian numbers would overwhelm
them in their own country.
Though it was Napoleon’s agreement with Tsar Alexander that caused
Finland to be absorbed by Russia, in a way, the Finns could be “thankful”
for Napoleon, as he soon began eyeing Russia as his next target for an
invasion. The Finnish resistance to the Russian invasion was enough to
convince the Russians that they would need to keep a substantial force in
Finland in order to control it—a force that they were quickly coming to
believe they would need against the French.
In 1809, an agreement was reached between the tsar and the Finnish
parliament. Finland would be a part of Russia and pay taxes to the Russian
Crown, but it would enjoy a high level of autonomy. Tsar Alexander also
returned some territories to Finland that had been taken by Russia in other
conflicts. Besides making the Finns pay taxes, they would have to fight in
Russia’s wars, but, at least under Alexander I (who reigned from 1801 to
1825), the Finns had a relatively free hand in their own affairs, though a
Russian governor-general would oversee the duchy in the name of the tsar.
Toward the end of Alexander’s reign, however, things began to change.
Two years before his death, a new Russian governor-general named Arseny
Zakrevsky was appointed, and he was much more heavy-handed than the
Finns (and the Finnish Swedes) were used to. He was also deeply involved
in Russian palace intrigue and attempted to bring Finland under the direct
control of who he believed would be the next tsar after Alexander. In the
meantime, he angered many Finns with edicts and interference in their
affairs.
Zakrevsky bet on the wrong horse in the race for the Russian throne, and
Alexander’s successor, Nicholas I, pledged to maintain Finland’s autonomy,
but over the course of the next decades, an ever-increasing Russification
took place in Finland. Conservatives in the Russian government pressed for
the people in Finland to use the Russian language in its school, courts, and
press. The Finnish upper-classes were divided: some of them willingly
became more “Russian” when it came to politics and culture, and they
adopted Russian habits, diets, and dress as a way of moving up the social
ladder or into more powerful positions. Others resisted Russification, but
this did not mean they took to the streets or fought some kind of guerrilla
war. It was more of a quiet resistance performed with thoughts, deeds, and
speeches.
During the 1830s and the 1840s, waves of nationalism swept Europe,
powered by the Romantic movement in the arts. Finns were caught up in
this as well, and they pressed for more and more autonomy. This movement
also pressed for more democracy, and Russia experienced some turmoil in
their capital of Petrograd (now known as Saint Petersburg), which was
located just over the Finnish border, in 1830/31. This, in true Russian
fashion, was put down with some harshness, but the unrest did not spill into
Finland itself. Nicholas I essentially left Finland alone until about 1850.
By 1850, the waves of nationalism had begun to come ashore in Finland as
well, in the form of the Fennoman movement, which essentially promoted
the Finnish language and culture. More extreme elements within this
movement called for the rejection of Russian Orthodoxy in the country and
the unification of all Finns into one country, as there were sizable Finnish
populations in Sweden, Russia, and Estonia (which speaks a language
closely related to Finnish).
This movement and the spirit of Finnish nationalism were bound together in
the publication of the Finnish national epic known as the Kalevala , which
spoke of ancient Finnish mythology and ancient heroes, such as the warrior
Vänämöinen. (Just to be clear, Finnish mythology is not Norse mythology,
though there are some similarities.)
The nationwide publishing of the Kalevala and the movement to teach and
publish in Finnish led to a backlash in the Russian government, the Swedish
elite (which dominated academia), and, most importantly, Tsar Nicholas I,
who, like so many other people before him, became more conservative with
age.
During the Crimean War, which took place between 1853 and 1856, the
Russians fought against the English, French, and Turks. During the war, the
Allied fleets bombarded Finnish coastal forts and islands, causing great
resentment among the Finns, most of whom felt they had nothing to do with
Russia’s fight in far-off Crimea. Moreover, the attacks came as a shock, for
at this time, all newspapers were in Russian, and most Finns did not read
that language. In response, there were demands for the people to use the
Finnish language more, as well as more autonomy for the Finnish
parliament.
When Nicholas I died in 1855, his successor, Alexander II, took a more
liberal line with Finland. This happened for a number of reasons. Firstly,
Alexander was generally a more liberal leader. Secondly, the progressive
spirit that had animated western Europe in the 1830s and 1840s was now
finding a home in Russia, and Alexander personified it. Though some Finns
thought that Alexander would not allow them greater freedoms, as what
they wanted for their parliament and press was not even allowed in Russia
itself, Alexander knew that opposing their wishes at this point would only
lead to more problems, which he could not afford, considering it would be
coming on the heels of the Crimean War defeat.
Alexander was a reformer at home, too, but to many, the tsar was a symbol
of oppression, and so, Alexander II was assassinated by radical
revolutionaries in 1881. In response, his son, Alexander III, imposed a
reactionary and harsh rule as Alexander II’s predecessors had done, and it
affected not only Russia but Finland as well. From the time of Alexander III
(r. 1881–1894) to the rule of Nicholas II (r.1894–1917), Finland’s autonomy
was gradually reduced, and most of Alexander II’s reforms were reversed,
causing greater resentment among the Finns.
Among the many things caused by this new program of Russification in
Finland was a reconciliation between the Finns and the sizable (and
relatively wealthy) Swedish minority in Finland. In part, this was brought
on by a nascent movement in Russia and eastern Europe known as Pan-
Slavism, which was the idea that all Slavs should be under one roof and that
conquered nations such as Finland should gradually be assimilated, both
culturally and demographically. Obviously, this didn’t play well with the
Finns, and it drove the Swedes in Finland closer to their Scandinavian
cousins as well.
Another bone of contention was the economic success of Finland. Finland
had a more advanced economy that was less feudal and more industrial in
nature than Russia, and this bred resentment in the Russian capital. Russian
nationalists in and outside the government called on the tsar for greater
taxation on Finland, which in turn sparked more and more resentment
among the Finns and helped to create socialist and communist movements
in Finland, something that would have consequences until the outbreak of
the Winter War in 1939.
Additionally, Nicholas II appointed a general, Nikolay Bobrikov, to be the
governor-general of Finland, and he soon became the most hated man in the
country. Bobrikov treated Finland as his own fiefdom, instituting laws and
taxes without consulting the Finns at all. The once semi-independent
Finnish Army was dissolved in 1901, and a military draft was instituted
instead, which called for Finns to serve five years in the Imperial Russian
Army. This could mean stationing in Ukraine, which was seven hundred
miles from Helsinki, or even farther away: for instance, Vladivostok, on the
Pacific coast of Russia, was 6,125 miles from the Finnish capital. Before air
travel became more commonplace, soldiers hardly ever came home at those
distances.
In 1905, when Russia was defeated in the Russo-Japanese War, and
revolution briefly appeared in Russia, many leading Finns saw an
opportunity to regain some of their lost freedoms. They remade their
parliament, declared universal suffrage (including women—something no
other European nation had done up to that point), and drew up a new
constitution. However, it was all for naught, as Bobrikov’s successor, Pyotr
Stolypin, was even harsher toward Russia’s minorities. This continued until
the outbreak of World War I.
World War I was not unexpected. In the years before the outbreak of the
war in 1914, many people in Europe and around the world knew that it was
just a matter of time before the major countries of Europe fought each other.
In Finland, the nationalists secretly prepared for an uprising against the tsar,
and about two hundred Finns (it grew to over 1,500 by war’s end) traveled
to Germany to form the 27 th Jäger (“hunter”) Battalion, which fought
against the Russians on the Eastern Front.
Most of the men that survived the war and returned to Finland later fought
in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, which broke out after the abdication of
Tsar Nicholas II and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Tsar Nicholas II
of Russia abdicated his throne in 1917, and the Provisional Government of
Alexander Kerensky took power until they were deposed by Vladimir
Lenin’s communist faction, known as the Bolsheviks. What followed in
Russia had great implications for Finland.
Lenin immediately withdrew Russian (now known as the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union, or simply the USSR for short) forces
from the battlefields of World War I. Germany imposed a draconian peace
treaty on Russia and took all of Ukraine and a large chunk of western
Russia for itself. Lenin, with his hands full in forming a new state and
fighting a civil war against supporters of the old tsarist regime, had no
choice but to agree to these terms.
For some time, before the fall of the tsar in Russia, there had been a low-
level guerrilla war for independence going on in Finland. This movement
was a reaction to the harsh measures and attempts to Russify the nation. By
the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, many people in Finland were pushing
for independence from Russia, either actively or privately.
On December 6 th , 1917, Finland declared independence from Russia,
which is celebrated today as Finland’s Independence Day. As Lenin had his
hands full, he signed off on Finland’s independence with virtually no
conditions.

Illustration 1: Letter to Finland’s parliament from Lenin with

his signature, agreeing to Finland’s independence.
Chapter 2 – The Finnish Civil War
Finland was a territory of Russia for over one hundred years. For much of
that time, the Finns enjoyed a level of autonomy that no other people in the
Russian Empire had enjoyed, but as we saw in the prior chapter, Russian
governors, at the end of the 19 th and the start of the 20 th century, began to
try to impose more and more of Russia’s culture on Finland and frequently
negated the actions of the Finnish parliament.
With the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia, who called for greater autonomy
for the peoples of the Russian Empire, Finland demanded independence,
and to the surprise of many around the world, it got it.
However, just what type of government Finland was to have was still a big
question. Lenin did not grant independence for Finland without a plan in the
back of his mind. He knew there was a sizable Finnish Communist Party
and that they were very strong in the cities of the nation, where the majority
of the population lived.
In the Russian Civil War, which took place between 1917 and 1921, the
communists were known as the Reds, as red stood for the “blood of the
workers.” Opposing them were the Whites, as white had been the color of
many of the royal families of Europe. In
Finland, it was the same: red for the communists, whites for the
conservatives (it should be mentioned there was no Finnish royal family,
though there were aristocrats that had held titles from the time of Russian
imperial rule). While the Reds were strong in the cities, the Whites were
strong in the countryside and among the elite, which included the
aristocracy, businesses, and large landowners. In 1917, Finland’s population
was only 3.1 million, but unlike today, most of them lived in the
countryside, small towns, and villages. Most of these people tended to be
conservative in outlook.
Supporting the Finnish Reds, the Bolsheviks in Russia sent what weapons
they could along with a small number of Russian troops. The Whites were
supported by troops, weapons, and money from Germany, which hoped to
keep the Russians as weak as possible and who had received Finnish
volunteers in their own war effort.
Illustration 2: Communist POWs massacred by White forces during the civil
war.
The war was not only fought on battlefields but also in the press and in the
streets. There were violent attacks and a number of politically motivated
killings. Large numbers of White prisoners lost their lives or were sent to
camps in Russia, never to return. Conversely, an estimated twelve thousand
Red prisoners died of exposure, malnutrition, and disease. In total, almost
forty thousand people lost their lives during the war, the vast majority of
which were Finns (Russians, Swedes, and Germans made up the rest).
Over the course of the short civil war, which lasted from the end of January
to mid-May 1918, there were four major battles: the Battle of Tampere,
which was a costly urban battle for the city of the same name, the Battle of
Helsinki (Finland’s capital), the Battle of Lahti, and the Battle of Vyborg.
Though the Reds did win a number of smaller skirmishes in the war, these
major battles were White/German victories, and they were decisive. Many
of the surviving Red forces and politicians fled to the Soviet Union. Some
of them would make an appearance in the run-up to and during the Winter
War.
In the aftermath of the civil war, a portion of the Whites wanted to form a
constitutional monarchy with a German prince as the Finnish king. The
reasons behind this run deep in history, but after much debate and
sometimes vitriolic arguments, it was decided that Finland would be a
parliamentary democracy.
This was helped by the fact that Germany had been defeated in World War
I, and the “Big Three,” which consisted of Great Britain, France, and the
United States, pushed for the establishment of republics in Europe. Hoping
to garner international support for their new nation and for some of their
territorial claims in the USSR (there were sizable Finnish populations on
the Soviet side of the border), the Finns formed a new democratic
government in 1918. One of the greatest achievements of the new nation
was universal suffrage—women voted in the formation of the new
government and were a part of it.
There were a number of heroes of the Finnish Civil War, but the man who
emerged from the conflict with the most fame and notoriety was Carl
Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who would play a central role in the Winter War
and whom we will devote a chapter to in the pages to come.
Chapter 3 – Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Finland’s new government was a unicameral parliament with a prime
minister as the head of government and a president as the head of state,
much like many other modern European nations. In the years between the
Finnish Civil War and the Winter War, the Finnish government leaned more
toward the conservative side, with many of its leading figures being men
from larger businesses or old established families.
Still, despite its conservative leanings, Finland managed to steer a relatively
moderate course in the 1930s, avoiding extremes on both the left and right.
As 1939 approached, the most left-leaning party was the Social Democratic
Party of Finland, which was lightyears more moderate than the
Communists, most of whom had been driven far underground or had fled to
the Soviet Union. On the right, there were a smattering of parties, from the
Lapua Movement to the Patriotic People’s Movement, which had links to
Mussolini and Hitler, but these parties, like the Communists, were on the
margins of Finnish society, especially after the Lapua Movement attempted
a coup d’état in 1932.
In its foreign relations, Finland was between a rock and a hard place. Its
geography made dealing with the Soviet Union unavoidable, and though
many Finns inside and outside of the government hated the USSR and the
Russians in general, there was no choice except to get along with Stalin as
well as possible.
On the other hand, the growing power of Nazi Germany also demanded the
Finns’ attention. Though many Finns viewed Hitler with alarm and caution,
they also had been aided by Germany in the Finnish Civil War. Germany
under Kaiser Wilhelm II had sent arms and men to Finland before the end
of World War I, aiding the Finns in their struggle against the Communists,
who received money, arms, and men from the USSR. But, like others in
Europe, Finland watched Hitler’s rise to world power with alarm.
One choice left to Finland was some sort of alliance system or closer
relationship with its smaller neighbors. Aligning itself with France and
Britain was an option that was explored, but any move to establish a
military alliance was fraught with danger, not only for the Finns but also for
the Western Allies. Britain and France were concerned that any alliance
with Finland might drag them into a war with the Soviet Union, and
Germany would not look kindly on such an alliance either. Remember,
Finland’s population was just over three million people in 1939, while the
populations of the USSR and Germany were around 150 to 170 million and
70 million, respectively.
Of those smaller neighbors, the richest and most “powerful” was Sweden.
Finland’s ties with Sweden were ancient, and many people of Swedish
descent (one of them being Mannerheim) lived in Finland, and vice versa.
Though Finland had been a part of the Kingdom of Sweden before 1809,
relations between the two countries were good, and much business was
done with each other.
However, Sweden was in a similar position as Finland. Though it did not
share a border with the Soviet Union, the giant nation still cast a large
shadow. In many nations of the world at that time, Soviet agents and native
communists worked to undermine the capitalist social order and forge a
path to power for communism. If that was not enough to give Sweden
pause, the military might of the Soviet Union, at least on paper, would have
been.
And although most Swedes did not like Hitler and his regime, Sweden did
increasing business with Nazi Germany as the 1930s wore on. In fact,
Sweden was a significant source of Germany’s iron and much of its nickel,
as well as other resources. Although an alliance with Finland would not
have necessarily been frowned upon by Hitler, anything that made Sweden
stronger and more likely to refuse Hitler’s “requests” would not be a good
thing.
Lastly, Sweden had made it a policy for some time that it would, like
Switzerland, remain neutral in any conflicts that did not threaten the
country itself. A formal alliance with Finland would violate that policy.
But though it remained officially neutral, Sweden did sell a limited number
of arms to the Finns, and its intelligence services shared much information.
On occasion, the militaries of both countries, especially their small navies,
conducted exercises together. Still, this was a far cry from any kind of
mutual defense pact.
The only sort of mutual aid pact that the Finns were able to put together in
the years before the war was with the small and newly independent nation
of Estonia. Estonia, like Finland, had been a part of the Russian Empire, but
it had gotten its independence after the Bolshevik Revolution. The other
two Baltic nations, Latvia and Lithuania, entertained the idea of entering
into this agreement, but as they were even closer to Germany than Finland
and still near the Soviet Union, they decided it was best to try to walk a fine
line between the two great powers.
Finland and Estonia shared more than just an antipathy toward the USSR.
Along with Hungary, Finland and Estonia share a language root. The Finno-
Ugric branch of European languages are only spoken by these three nations,
and Hungarian is so far distant from the other two as to be unintelligible.
The Finns and Estonians, however, can understand each other well enough.
They also share a linked history, as they are right across the Baltic Sea from
each other.
There was one big problem with the Finnish-Estonian agreement. While the
two nations did exchange helpful intelligence at times, neither one posed
much of a threat to the Soviets. Estonia is much smaller than Finland
geographically, and its population was even smaller than that of the Finns:
just over one million people, where it still stands today. In the end, the
agreement did not amount to much, and along with the Finns, the Estonians
found themselves the target of Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Chapter 4 – The Red Menace
The Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War, which took place
between 1917 and 1922, gave Finland some time to establish its
government and society on its own terms. By defeating the Reds in their
own civil war, the Finns clearly thumbed their noses at Lenin and the ruling
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
During the time of Lenin, some of the nations that had not been in the
Russian Empire for very long or had been in its orbit intermittently were
able to achieve their independence. Finland was one; the Baltic States were
three others. The other European state that became a nation in the time after
the Bolshevik Revolution and World War I was Poland, which had at
various times been divided among the USSR, Germany, and Austria-
Hungary.
For the other peoples of the Russian Empire, such as the Ukrainians,
Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis, the Bolshevik Revolution and the
rise of the Communists changed nothing, and the man that held the title of
People’s Commissar of Nationalities of the Russian Federative Socialist
Republic, which was the name of Russia within the Soviet Union, was none
other than one Iosif (Josef) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a Georgian who
became the embodiment of Russia and who was known to the entire world
simply as Stalin—his alias, meaning “Man of Steel.”
Vladimir Lenin suffered his first stroke in May 1922. In December of that
year, he suffered a second stroke. Though he was diminished by his strokes,
Lenin remained atop the power pyramid in the USSR, but behind the
scenes, Josef Stalin and his archenemy, Leon Trotsky, vied for power.
Between his first and third stroke, which hit him in March 1923, Lenin put
together what became his political will and testament. In it, he clearly
favored Trotsky as the future leader of the USSR, though he believed him to
be egotistical, high-handed, and aloof. Trotsky was also a very able
administrator and had led the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.
Of Stalin, who had slowly grown in power within the Communist Party,
Lenin said:
Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our
milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes
unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. I therefore propose
to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from
 this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is
distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the
single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite
and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious.
After a long struggle with many ups and downs, Lenin died on January 21 st
, 1924. Almost immediately, Stalin pounced. Trotsky, who had been by
Lenin’s side for the Bolsheviks’ rise to power, was in the Caucasus region
resting, and he was not notified of Lenin’s death and was conspicuously not
at the funeral to give a eulogy, as Stalin and other party leaders did.
Stalin then moved to place himself as Lenin’s chosen heir, even though the
contents of Lenin’s letter were read to the Communist leadership. Stalin, in
a rare show of humility, offered to give up his newly acquired position of
general secretary of the Communist Party, but his offer was refused because
it showed penance. Stalin next made a series of lectures on Lenin and
Leninism, which turned him, in the eyes of the public and many in the
party, into the heir to Lenin’s place in the country.
All the while, as Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin had been putting his
own men in positions of power in the various republics of the USSR. As
general secretary, he was also able to place his men in top positions in the
national party. At the same time, Stalin established relationships with the
heads of the secret police.
Trotsky’s sole office was as People’s Commissar of Military and Naval
Affairs of the Soviet Union, which was a position of power. However, this
power was squandered by the arrogant way he treated his underlings and his
underestimation of Stalin as a crude and not too bright Georgian peasant.
In 1924, matters came to a head. Within the Communist Party, Trotsky led a
formidable group of people known as the Left Opposition, which took a
more radical stance on many issues. They also asserted that toward the end
of his life, Lenin had committed errors in judgment—allowing limited
capitalist enterprise in his New Economic Policy was his chief mistake.
By late 1924, Stalin had enough of his supporters in places of power that he
felt strong enough to make his move. He acted against former allies, the
powerful, well-known revolutionaries Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev,
and replaced them with his own men. Over the course of the next year,
these men joined with Trotsky against Stalin, but it was too late. With his
control of the secret police and many of the key positions of the Communist
Party, not only in the capital but also around the country, Stalin had become
the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. In 1927, Trotsky was put into
internal exile, and two years later, he was deported. At the time, Stalin did
not feel strong enough to have Trotsky killed since he had been a hero of
the revolution and was still revered by many ordinary Soviets. By 1940,
though, that had changed, and Stalin sent an assassin to kill Trotsky, who
did so by driving an ice ax into Trotsky’s head (not an ice pick as legend
has it). The blow did not kill Trotsky immediately, but although he put up a
tremendous fight, he eventually succumbed to his wound.
By the time of the late 1920s, Stalin’s position was unassailable. He had
control of all the levers of power and had also released a much-edited
version of Lenin’s last testament. In Stalin’s version, Lenin had chosen him
above all others to lead the USSR. From the late 1920s on, no one dared
question this version of history.
In the late 1930s, Stalin, who became increasingly paranoid as his power
grew, began what is known to history as the Great Terror. In July 1937
alone, Stalin ordered the arrest of over 250,000 people. Over 75,000 were
executed on orders personally signed by Stalin and his chief of the secret
police (who was later executed himself).
This was just the beginning. Stalin ordered the arrest of many thousands of
people, from the most obscure to the most powerful and/or influential. In
1937, he ordered two things that have cemented his place as one of the most
ruthless and totalitarian dictators in history. These were the show trials in
which leaders of the Communist Party, including Zinoviev and Kamenev, as
well as a former ally named Nikolai Bukharin, were put on public display in
court. They were berated, tortured both physically and psychologically, and
forced to admit “the error of their ways” before they were executed.
Stalin also carried out a purge of the military, which was included as a part
of these show trials but was also done in secret. This had a direct effect on
the Winter War and the beginning of World War II. During the military
purge, experienced officers were removed by the thousands and replaced
with “yes-men” with no military skill and Stalin loyalists. Those skilled
men who survived either suffered exile or removal, and many of them came
back during World War II, but thousands of others were not exiled—they
were killed. The only people left were people too terrified to gainsay
anything Stalin ordered, which was a major problem for the Soviets as
Stalin was not a military genius.
This was the situation within the Soviet Union in the years before the Soviet
invasion of Finland. Of course, factors outside of Stalin’s control informed
his decision to attack Finland in the winter of 1939.
One of the things that Stalin criticized Trotsky for was the latter’s desire to
actively and openly foment a worldwide communist revolution, an ideology
that had not become properly established in the USSR yet. Stalin publicly
promoted what he called “Socialism in one country,” but that did not mean
he wasn’t working for gradual world revolution behind the scenes, and it
also did not mean that he was going to pass up any opportunities to
strengthen the Soviet Union if they came his way. And despite all of his
communist rhetoric, Stalin and many others in the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union wished to reestablish the boundaries of the Russian Empire.
And that is where they ran into trouble, especially as the 1930s wore on. In
1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. By the end of the decade, the Nazi
dictator had established Germany as the power in central Europe and had
already been in a proxy conflict with the USSR in Spain, where Francisco
Franco’s fascist “Falange” party had finally defeated the Soviet-supported
communists in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). By the end of the
1930s, Hitler had also annexed Austria to Germany, taken over
Czechoslovakia, and had helped establish right-wing governments in
Hungary and Romania, which bordered the USSR.
By the spring of 1939, only one major and truly independent nation in
central Europe remained: Poland. The Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia remained independent nations, but Stalin knew they posed no
threat to him—that was unless Hitler got there first. Poland, however, was
another story.
During World War II, the Poles lost more people than any other nation in
the world—about 20 percent of the population of Poland perished. As it had
so many times throughout its history, Poland suffered from its geographic
location between Germany and Russia. Once it became a nation again in
1918 after World War I, the Poles were determined to remain free no matter
the cost, and that put it directly in the crosshairs of Hitler and Stalin,
perhaps two of the most ruthless men in the history of the world.
Fortunately for the Poles, their military was strong, at least when compared
to those of the other nations around it, and it was run by able men. Hitler
and Stalin were both like wolves who were about to corner a badger. They
knew they could defeat it, but they also knew they were going to get hurt in
the process.

Illustration 3: Despite the pact, no one really believed

that Hitler and Stalin would remain at peace.
So, to mitigate that injury, Stalin and Hitler, previously the archest of
archenemies, agreed in late August of 1939 to divide Poland between them.
Hitler would get more of the “living-space” he wanted for the German
people and retrieve lands that had been taken from Germany and given to
Poland after World War I. For his part, Stalin would be retrieving much of
pre-Bolshevik-Revolution Russian territory, and most importantly, he would
add hundreds of miles of “buffer zone” between his country and Hitler’s.
Other parts of the Nazi-Soviet Pact (or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
named after the foreign ministers of the two nations) were beneficial for the
Soviet Union. It would be “given” the Baltic States (meaning Germany
would not interfere when Stalin took them), as well as a slice of Romania,
which Hitler had pressured to cede to Stalin. There was also a secret
protocol within the pact that gave Stalin assurances that Germany would not
interfere if Stalin expanded his territory into Finland. This last declaration
would have shocked the Finns, who, while keeping aloof from Hitler, had
come to believe that he would aid them significantly should the Soviet
Union attack their country.
Within days of signing the pact, Hitler and Stalin attacked Poland, which
put up a brave fight but was inevitably defeated. The Baltic States
essentially “ran up the white flag,” and the Soviets marched in, annexing
those three small nations to the USSR as “autonomous” republics in 1940.
After settling the Polish “problem,” Stalin turned his eyes again to Finland,
which he had approached in the winter of 1939 with offers that he thought
would strengthen the Soviet position in the north in case Hitler decided to
invade from that direction and/or use Finland as a proxy.
Chapter 5 – Negotiations, “Refresher Training,”
and the Balance of Forces
It may come as some surprise to many that Stalin’s demands of Finland
were not that excessive—if requiring a nation to give up parts of its territory
can be described in that way. Moreover, Stalin offered the Finns a trade; he
would give them Soviet land that the Finns had tried to annex during the
Finnish Civil War known as Eastern Karelia, where many people of ethnic
Finnish background lived.
In return for this ancestral Finnish homeland, Stalin wanted a number of
things. First, he demanded that Finnish territory near the USSR’s “second
city” and “Home of the Revolution,” Leningrad (formerly Petrograd and
today’s Saint Petersburg), be pushed backward. Stalin’s representative in
the talks, who was actually a member of the secret police and not a
diplomat, stated that the USSR did not trust Germany and believed it was
possible that Hitler would try to use Finland to attack the Soviet Union from
the north. Despite Finnish protests that they would maintain neutrality in
any conflict between the two great powers, the Soviets saw that Finnish
volunteers had fought for Germany in World War I (and a number of these
men were now officers in the Finnish Army) and that Germany had sent
both arms and troops to Finland in its civil war against the Soviet-supported
Finnish Reds. Stalin’s demands also meant that Finland would be required
to give up its second-largest city, Viipuri (today’s Vyborg), something it did
not want to do.
Stalin also wanted Finland to cede or lease a number of islands in the Gulf
of Finland to the Soviet Union. This would guard the approaches to
Leningrad and northern Russia by sea. These the Soviets would arm with
cannons and fortifications. In one case, the Soviets asked that the Finns
fortify one of the larger islands with the Soviets themselves arming and
manning it. Additionally, the Soviets agreed that the Finns could fortify the
Åland Islands, which lay in between Sweden and Finland and guarded the
Gulf of Bothnia, the northern branch of the Baltic Sea. These islands, which
were an autonomous part of Finland (the people there were mostly
Swedish-speaking), could not be armed in agreement with Sweden, and so,
Finland refused.
In return for these concessions, Stalin offered a piece of land to the Finns
that was larger than what he had asked them to give up. Even though
Eastern Karelia was important to the Finns from an emotional point of view,
the land there was not strategic in any way, and the Finns refused this offer.
So, in the late summer, Stalin and Hitler signed their pact in 1939.
It was clear to everyone that despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, war was
coming between Hitler and Stalin, as the cartoon in the prior chapter
illustrates. And Finland was determined to remain neutral. If it granted
Stalin’s wishes, not only would it bring their country closer to the Soviet
Union, whose system most Finns hated, but it would also anger Hitler, and
Finland did much trade with Germany. It was also not completely out of the
question that Hitler would invade southern Finland, a contingency that was
planned for in the Finnish Army.
The Finns did not trust Stalin at all. They had seen his rise to power, the
show trials, the Great Terror, and more. Allowing him to arm island
fortresses just off the coast of Finland and to give up the strong
fortifications they had built on the Karelian Peninsula opposite Leningrad
would put Finland in a weaker position for when Stalin decided to move
against Finland. Most Finns supported the government’s stance, but there
were many that believed Finland was incredibly outmatched by the Red
Army and that they had to accept Stalin’s offer. Among them was General
Mannerheim, the hero of the civil war and now the head of the Finnish
Defense Council. Mannerheim’s opinion carried some weight, but despite
his qualms, the Finns rejected Stalin’s demands.
 Illustration 4: Situation in fall 1939. Map courtesy genekeyes.com
With the Finnish rejection of his demands and Hitler sidelined for the
moment, Stalin ordered his generals to move forward with the invasion of
Finland in late November 1939. They, for their part, put together a plan that
called for Soviet troops to be marching through Helsinki on December 21 st
, Stalin’s sixtieth birthday.
Balance of Forces
On paper, the Red Army was the largest in the world at that time. Of course,
most of it was deployed in eastern Poland and western Russia to defend
against Hitler in case he broke the pact. Other massive concentrations were
in Ukraine and in the Far East, as Stalin feared that Japan would attempt an
invasion of the Soviet Union there.
There was an approximate total of two million men in the Red Army when
the Winter War began. During the course of the short war, the Soviets
utilized just under half of these men, as the Finnish defenses were much
stouter than predicted. Unfortunately for the Soviets, many of their men had
only the most basic of training, though some elite, well-trained, and
disciplined troops did take part, especially in the war’s second phase.
In addition to their superiority in manpower, the Soviets employed
anywhere between 300 to 500 planes in the Finnish war zone through the
course of the war. They also deployed some 1,500 to 3,000 tanks of various
kinds (light, medium, and heavy) and massive numbers of artillery. The
approximate totals are not known due to a lack of transparency from Soviet
sources (which, after the war, wished to downplay the numbers of troops
used against Finland, for reasons that will become obvious) and the inflated
numbers from Finnish sources, which enlarged the numbers of Soviets
against them.
To counter those forces, the Finns deployed between 300,000 and 350,000
men, just under 40 tanks, and about 120 aircraft. If you know nothing about
the Winter War, you might think you already know the outcome based on
these totals alone, but there’s more.
The Finns had two advantages that should not be underestimated. Firstly,
they were fighting for their country and were up against former colonial
oppressors and a system they hated. Secondly, they knew the ground the
war would be fought on like the back of their hand.
The Soviets had to deal with a number of other disadvantages as well. One
has already been mentioned above—their troops, for the most part, were
barely trained recruits. Second, as the Finns were fighting in familiar
territory, the Red Army men were not. Third, and this may come as a
surprise to many who are familiar with the story of the Red Army in World
War II, most Soviet troops were not equipped to fight in the cold winter of
Finland. Over a quarter of their estimated over 200,000 casualties came in
the form of frostbite.
And lastly, the Red Army was led by men who had very little experience in
leading men, and those that did were not willing to gainsay any orders
coming from above that they disagreed with. As was mentioned in an
earlier chapter, Stalin’s purges affected not only his political enemies and
much of Soviet society but the Red Army as well. The officer corps was
decimated. Many of those that had been removed from their positions were
removed from their lives as well, though some were “rehabilitated” when
Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941.
Three of the five marshals of the Soviet Union were removed, as well as 13
of 15 army commanders, 8 of 9 fleet admirals, 50 of 57 corps commanders,
and 154 of 186 division commanders. Additionally, the Red Army had a
system in which Communist Party officials shadowed higher commanding
offices to make sure they were not only following orders and preserving
discipline but also acting in the spirit of “Marxism-Leninism,” as the
system was then called. These men were not immune either: all 16 army
commissars were removed, and 25 of 28 corps commissars were as well. As
the purge went on, lower-ranked officers were purged, though the ratios
were not as great as those at the top. The Red Army was not what it
appeared to be on paper, but it was still a powerful force and equipped with
some of the leading technology of the time.
“Refresher Training”
After the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the division of Poland between Hitler and
Stalin, the Finns were sure that war would come to them, especially since
they were so determined to refuse any further Soviet demands, which came
at the end of October/beginning of November 1939. In this late round of
talks, the Finns offered to cede the area of Terijoki, a small port area
opposite Leningrad, but this was far less than what the Soviets were
demanding.
Though the Finns expected the talks to resume, they also did not dismiss the
idea that Stalin would attack and try to take what they would not give him,
so they began to mobilize their armed forces. However, they did not call it a
“mobilization” and did not issue nationwide calls for their troops (many of
whom were national guard type cadres who had to leave their “day jobs”
and join up with their units) to avoid alarming the Soviets. Instead, the
Finns issued local orders to their troops for “refresher training” on the area
near the Soviet border. Most of the men knew that this “refresher training”
was a call to arms, so it was carried out with the utmost discipline.
At the same time, Finnish troops began to reinforce an already strong line
of fortifications near the Soviet border on the Karelian Isthmus near
Leningrad. This was to be called the Mannerheim Line, named after the
general and head of the Finnish Defense Council. This defensive belt had
been started after the Finnish Civil War in anticipation of the Soviet Union
trying to regain territory belonging to the old Russian Empire. Over the
years, the line had grown from a series of unreinforced log bunkers to a
modern defensive belt with interlocking fields of machine gun positions,
reinforced concrete bunkers, an elaborate trench system, miles of barbed
wire, and mines. Much of Finland’s limited supply of artillery was located
on the Mannerheim Line. Unfortunately for the Finns, they suffered from a
severe shortage of anti-tank guns, but over the course of the next three
months, they would improvise and give the world a new weapon and a new
word, more of which we will talk about shortly.
Supplementing the Finnish forces were the Lotta Svärd, a woman’s
auxiliary group brought into existence during the Finnish Civil War as a
part of the White forces. Its name comes from a fictional widow of a
Finnish soldier who goes to the front in place of her husband. The Lotta
Svärd of the Winter War era did not actually fight on the front lines, though
some of the nurses and other female auxiliaries (cooks, mail persons, etc.)
did carry sidearms. The “Lottas” also took over the jobs of many of the men
who went into the army, much like women did in the US. The symbol of the
Lotta Svärd is below and brings up an interesting bit of trivia. It is side by
side with the symbol of the Finnish Air Force, as seen on a plane from the
time.

As you can see, the Nazis were not the only ones to use the swastika
symbol. In fact, the Finns had used it long before Hitler came to power. In
Finland, as in many other nations (Japan, for instance), it is a symbol not
only of good luck but also of ancient pagan religions. Today, planes of the
Finnish Air Force do not use the swastika, but it is used on military insignia
and unit flags. Finnish Nazis, on the other hand, do not use the symbol but
have appropriated an old Norse rune, which the Finns did not use. The
debate over the usage of swastikas is still ongoing in Finland today.
The Mainila Incident
In their wars in Manchuria and China in the 1930s, the Japanese used two
“false flag” operations, which had been carried out by their operatives with
the aim of making it appear that the Chinese had actually attacked them.
However, the world didn’t believe the Japanese.
In 1939, Nazi Germany orchestrated a similar operation on a radio station
on the German-Polish border with the aim of making it appear that the
Poles had attacked a German radio station in Germany. No one believed the
Nazis.
The Soviet Union undertook its own false flag operation to make it appear
that the Finns had attacked them . On November 26 th , 1939, Soviet guns
opened up on their own positions in Mainila, a Russian village located just
a few miles north of Leningrad. The Soviets claimed that the artillery fire
came from the Finnish side of the border and that between 20 and 25 Soviet
soldiers were killed.
Over the next three days, the Finns and the Soviets waged a war of words in
the press about the incident, and the Finns proposed a commission from
neutral countries to investigate the matter. Of course, the Soviets rejected
this; they had already decided on war, and on November 29 th , they
formally broke off diplomatic relations with Finland.
Examination of Finnish documents from the time indicate that no Finnish
guns were in range of the village; in fact, they had been moved from the
border to prevent just such an incident. After the fall of the Soviet Union,
files were found that showed without doubt that the incident was developed
and carried out by the Soviet Union.
On November 30 th , the day after breaking off relations with Finland, the
Soviet Union renounced their non-aggression pact with Finland and began
their invasion.
The Soviets also had a cadre of Finnish Communists living in their country,
refugees from the Finnish Civil War. Led by Otto Kuusinen, they rushed in
behind the Soviets and established the Finnish People’s Republic in a small
Finnish city just across the border. They issued calls for Finnish workers
and peasants to rise up against their “capitalist and aristocratic oppressors,”
but the call went unheeded. Even the leftist Finns hated the Russians and
joined the Finnish Army in droves.
Chapter 6 – The Greatest Finn of All Time

In 2004, the Finnish government issued a survey: “Who were the greatest
Finns in history?” The winner, by far, was Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim,
the man who led Finland through the Winter War and the Continuation War.
By the time of the Winter War, Mannerheim was already an admired figure
for most Finns; those on the left did not care for him. He had witnessed and
been a part of some of the greatest events of Finnish history before and
since its independence from Russia.
Mannerheim was born in Askainen, Finland, in June 1867 to an aristocratic
family of Swedish-German background. Askainen is on the west coast of
Finland, where many ethnic Swedes still live. Like many of his social class,
Mannerheim joined the military—in this case, it was the Russian military.
He entered the cavalry and served in the elite Chevalier Guard and was part
of the honor guard at Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896. He served at
Nicholas’s court for some time and became well known to the tsar and his
family.
From 1904 to 1905, Mannerheim distinguished himself in the Russo-
Japanese War, and he was one of the few Russian officers to come out of
that defeat with a better reputation. Between 1906 and 1909, he undertook
an arduous journey across Asia to reach China to investigate the Chinese
government’s plans for the western part of their nation, near the Russian
border. This was in the days before the Trans-Siberian Railway, and
Mannerheim did much of his traveling on horseback, foot, and wagon. He
met with the Dalai Lama and many other leading figures in the area, and he
gained a reputation of being not only a military man but also an adventurer
and a diplomat.
When World War I erupted, Mannerheim was made commander of the elite
Guards Cavalry Brigade and fought against Austria-Hungary and Romania,
where he was cited for bravery. He was then made a division commander in
1915. In the winter of 1917, Mannerheim was on his way back to Finland
on leave and found himself in Petrograd (today’s Saint Petersburg) when
the February Revolution broke out, which ultimately put the Provisional
Government of Alexander Kerensky in power and deposed the tsar. When
Mannerheim returned to duty, he was promoted to lieutenant general.
When the Bolshevik Revolution broke out that fall, Mannerheim fell under
suspicion, as he was a part of the aristocracy. He then chose to retire, and he
returned to Finland, but his retirement didn’t last long as the Finnish Civil
War soon began. As an aristocrat who was in the tsar’s bodyguard and his
confidante, Mannerheim, of course, joined the White forces and was soon
named their commander. During the conflict, White terror squads
assassinated Red and leftist agitators and were responsible for the killing of
Red prisoners of war. Much of this was laid at Mannerheim’s door, as he
was, after all, the commander of the White forces, and this dogged him to a
degree within Finland until the Winter War. After the civil war ended, some
aristocratic Finns wanted to set up a Finnish monarchy with a German
prince as king (Germany had an excess of princes, and many Germans had
taken the thrones of various European countries throughout the 19 th and 20
th
centuries). These aristocrats, seeing the initial successes of the German
Spring Offensive of 1918, believed the Germans would win the war and
that a German on the throne of Finland could only strengthen their new
country.
Mannerheim, with much more military experience than these men, believed
that the Allies would defeat Germany and that the idea, while it appealed to
his aristocratic beliefs, was born to fail, which it did with the defeat of
Kaiser Wilhelm II. Toward the end of the civil war, Mannerheim
approached Great Britain and the United States for recognition of an
independent Finland. When Germany was defeated, Prince Friedrich Karl
renounced the Finnish throne, and Mannerheim was made regent until a
permanent government could be established. The Western Powers also
recognized an independent Finland due to Mannerheim’s efforts.
Despite Mannerheim’s seemingly inborn belief in the superiority of the
aristocracy, he did not push for a Finnish king but rather for a strong
executive. He believed that party politics often put the country second and
politicians first. The Finns rejected this kind of policy and set up the
unicameral parliament that exists today, though it does have a prime
minister and presidency, much like France.
In between the civil war and the Winter War, Mannerheim went into
retirement, forming and working for a number of charities. He also worked
on the board of a large Finnish bank and the now world-famous company
Nokia, which then focused largely on lumber and paper.
During the time between the wars, Mannerheim was often approached by
rightist parties (some more extreme than others) to help them seize power,
where he would be put in charge as a military dictator. Though Mannerheim
did support some of the ideas of the rightists (with the exception of the
more extreme racial views), he rejected this offer. As Hungary, Romania,
and Spain became fascist countries in the 1930s, the Finns rejected extreme
right-wing views and made a number of such parties illegal. Any Finnish
Communists remaining either lived in hiding or on the other side of the
border in the USSR.
In the early 1930s, two of Finland’s presidents made promises to
Mannerheim that if Finland should go to war, he would be made field
marshal and put in charge of the armed forces. Even though Finland was at
peace in 1933, Mannerheim was still made field marshal. To this end, he
worked toward equipping the Finnish Army and establishing mutual
defense pacts or associations, as was mentioned in an earlier chapter.
The pace of Finnish rearmament in the 1930s dismayed Mannerheim, who
came to believe more and more that Finland would be at war sometime in
the near future. The various Finnish governments in power in the 1930s
either had other priorities or believed that rearming would anger the Soviet
Union and possibly Germany. At times during the late 1930s, Mannerheim
wrote and signed many letters of resignation over the rearmament issue and
was about to sign and deliver another when the Winter War broke out.
Personally, Mannerheim was a taciturn man with a regal bearing. He was
tall, thin, and powerfully built. He was calm under pressure but had a
temper, which he kept under tight control. Though many Finns with leftist
beliefs distrusted him, during the run-up to the Winter War when many
Finnish politicians were in favor of leaving left-leaning Finns out of the
army or put in jail for being “untrustworthy,” Mannerheim was famously
quoted as saying, “We need not ask where a man stood fifteen years ago.”
He included left-leaning officers on his staff and supported the left’s
inclusion in the struggle to come.
Many outside of Finland might be surprised that the man voted “The
Greatest Finn of All Time” could not really speak Finnish. This was not
uncommon, especially among those of Swedish heritage from the west of
the country. Besides that, Finnish is a notoriously difficult language to
learn. Mannerheim had to rely on a translator to get by until he was in his
fifties. He spoke Swedish at home, German and Russian fluently, English
well enough, and some French. Some Finns distrusted Mannerheim because
of this and because he was in the Imperial Russian Army before Finnish
independence. Sometimes, Mannerheim would sign official documents
“Kustaa,” the Finnish form of Karl, to overcome this prejudice. More often,
though, he signed “C. G. Mannerheim,” as he hated the name “Emil,” or
just “Mannerheim.” By the end of the Winter War, no one questioned his
loyalty to Finland.
In the negotiations with the Soviet Union before the war, Mannerheim
supported the idea of leasing those islands the Soviets requested and giving
up some territory on the Karelian Isthmus in return for territory farther
north. The field marshal believed that in the face of the overwhelming
numbers of the Red Army and the lack of preparedness of the Finnish
armed forces, it was only a matter of time before Stalin got what he wanted
anyway. However, Mannerheim, while his opinion was important, was not
the government, and the Finns, as we have seen, rejected all Soviet “offers.”
Despite his doubts, when war came, Mannerheim dedicated himself to the
cause, and he came to epitomize the Finnish spirit of sisu , which Finlandia
University aptly defines as “ strength of will, determination, perseverance,
and acting rationally in the face of adversity.”
Chapter 7 – Hell in the Snow

When people think of the Winter War, the image above is likely what they
picture in their minds. Finns, perfectly at home in the forests and cold,
dressed in white, silently skiing around, through, between, and among
terrified Russians, who died by the hundreds. This is absolutely true, but
while that did happen, most of the heaviest fighting took place along the
static Mannerheim Line that had been set up by the Finns on the Karelian
Isthmus northeast of Leningrad in the years before the war. The isthmus
was a natural bridge between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga,
meaning there was very little room to maneuver. This allowed the Finns to
concentrate their fewer numbers in one specific spot, where the Russians
battered themselves to pieces for months on the Finns’ unyielding defenses.
North of the Karelian Isthmus, Finland is a land of seemingly endless
forests and lakes, even to this day. In the 1930s, very few roads existed in
these forests, and those that did were mostly dirt tracks, mostly unknown to
the Russians but well known to the Finns. It was there that the Finns set
loose the majority of their ski-troops against the Red Army.
Like the Spanish Civil War that had begun in 1936, the Winter War was a
foreshadowing of the worldwide conflict that was to come, and it began
with what became a common occurrence in 1939 through 1945: the
bombing of civilian targets. On the morning of November 30 th , 1939, the
Red Air Force bombed Finland’s capital, Helsinki. The bombing did
significant damage, killed 97 people, and wounded almost 300.
When this happened, the world was a different place than what it would be
just a few months later, and the Soviets came under widespread criticism for
bombing civilians. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked the
Soviets to refrain from bombing civilians and was told by Soviet Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that the USSR was only bombing airfields.
Others also criticized the bombing, to which Molotov replied that the
Soviets were only dropping food to “starving Finns.” The incendiary bombs
that the Soviets dropped did have a basketlike look to them, and the Finns,
who are famous for their sardonic humor, dubbed the bombs as “Molotov
bread baskets.”
Of course, we all recognize the name “Molotov.” Vyacheslav Molotov was
the Soviet foreign minister from 1939 to 1949 . Winston Churchill, famous
for his colorful descriptions of people, later described him thus: “I have
never known a human being who more perfectly represented the modern
conception of a robot.” This is likely how Molotov survived being Stalin’s
right-hand man for decades.
To the Finns, Molotov and Stalin were the personifications of evil, and they
decided to have a little fun at Molotov’s expense. The Finns did not have
nearly enough anti-tank weapons when the Soviets attacked, and so, they
improvised. They developed what they said was “a drink to go with his
food parcels.” You guessed it: the famous “Molotov cocktail.” It didn’t get
that name by accident.
The Molotov cocktail is a nasty piece of business, and it can be quite
effective against vehicles and concrete fortifications—if you can get close
enough. This type of homemade bomb was used in the Spanish Civil War
and other smaller conflicts before the Winter War, but it was the Finns, with
their jab at the Soviet foreign minister, that made them famous.
The Finns began by using gasoline or kerosene in a large milk or vodka
bottle with a rag soaked in kerosene (gasoline burns too fast). Very shortly,
the use of these bombs became widespread, and their effectiveness was
noticed. The Finnish alcohol monopoly Alko began using vodka bottles to
produce ready-made bombs, and a variety of mixtures were used, such as
kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate, or other flammable and sticky
materials. Alko supplied long storm proof fuses and matches along with
their “cocktails.” Individual soldiers experimented with creating these
cocktails themselves as well.
To use the cocktail, you have to be within throwing distance. That takes a
lot of courage when faced with waves of Soviet tanks, and for sure, many
Finns died trying to use their bombs. Many sources and interviews from
both sides testify to the bravery of the Finns, but they did not simply stand
up and run at the Soviet machines. They made use of other tools and tactics
too.
As you can imagine, Finland is usually covered in snow in the winter. The
Finnish people donated white linens, sheets, and blankets to the army,
which made white coveralls for its infantry, and soon, the Finnish soldiers
blended into the background, making it a bit easier to get closer to the
Soviet tanks and guns. Of course, the ski troops used the cocktails too, but
using them on skis didn’t take place all that often as it took a lot of skill. As
a side note, one would think that the Red Army would have used snowsuits
too, but it seems that this did not occur to them at first, probably because
they expected a swift victory. However, after a few weeks and the
reorganization of their forces, more Soviets began to clothe themselves in
white.
The cocktails could be used on troops as well, but troops could more easily
get out of the way and roll in the snow to put the fire out. Men in tanks,
especially tanks that were bogged down in snow and mud from the forest,
had nowhere to go. The Finns were taught to aim for the ventilation and
observation slits of the tank, which would allow them to cook the men
inside, a horrifying death that terrified the Soviet men and sapped morale.
The main focus of the Soviet attack came on the Karelian Isthmus, which
was the focus of Soviet demands, as they sought a buffer zone for
Leningrad. It was there that the Finns had established the Mannerheim Line,
which, in the 1930s, had been strengthened in most places by reinforced
concrete bunkers.
On the Mannerheim Line, the Finns enjoyed a number of advantages for a
time. Firstly, the Soviets had limited space to maneuver. They essentially
tried to overwhelm the Finns with their numbers, but this did not work since
the limited space concentrated the strength of the Finnish units there.
Additionally, the Finns had to make the best use of their limited artillery.
They had approximately only 36 guns per division, and most of these were
from pre-1918, but the Finns had ample time before the war started to “zero
in” each gun on the line to pre-set target areas. By using an advance force
ahead of the line, the Finns learned where the Soviets had concentrated
most of their troops and launched effective artillery barrages.
The other advantages the Finns had were the snow, the lack of roads, and
the short hours of the northern winter, which allowed the Finns to get closer
to the tanks than they might have in full sunlight.
The Mannerheim Line itself was placed anywhere between twenty and
thirty miles from the border. The Soviets reached the line about a week after
the war began and concentrated their first attacks on the eastern part of the
isthmus, along the coast of Lake Ladoga and the city of Taipale.
Over the next week, the Soviets began to realize that their idea of marching
into Helsinki within days was not going to happen. At the Battle of Taipale,
which lasted from December 6 th to December 27 th , the Soviets used two
tactics they expected to work, as they had previously worked during the
Russian Civil War and their brief conflict with the Japanese in Mongolia in
1938. The first was simply to use wave after wave of men. At Taipale, the
Finns had the advantage of higher ground and an unobstructed view of the
waves of Soviet troops.
Additionally, for much of the war, the Soviets tried to spread their tanks far
apart, which had proved useful in their fight in Mongolia against the
Japanese. In Finland, though, that didn’t work so well. Isolated in the snow,
and with many of them bogged down (the Soviets had not yet completely
developed the idea of wider tanks and tracks that allow weight to be more
equitably dispersed), the Finns with their white suits and Molotov cocktails
descended on them.
 Illustration 5: The Soviet attacks along the Karelian
Isthmus/Mannerheim Line, December 1939

The Soviets attempted attack after attack at Taipale, and none of them
succeeded in moving the Finns at all. Thousands of Soviets died, and
dozens of Red Army tanks were destroyed.
That winter was one of the coldest on record, hitting a low of -45ºF on
January 16 th , 1940. The Finns were made of flesh and blood just like the
Soviets, but they were better prepared for the winter conditions than their
enemies. All of Finland is in the north, and while many Soviet soldiers were
intimately familiar with the cold, many of them were from southern areas in
the USSR. On top of that, Soviet officers were loath to request additional
gear: to do so might indicate that one did not believe that Stalin had
adequately prepared his men. In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, any
criticism, implied or otherwise, was taken as a criticism of the system and
its head. To complain was to risk your life.
North of the Mannerheim Line
Over 200 miles to the north, a Soviet division numbering about 20,000 men
launched an attack near the town of Tolvajärvi. Here, the Finns had one
regiment and a number of smaller independent battalions numbering
approximately 4,000 men. It was at Tolvajärvi that the legends of Finland’s
resistance and of the ski-troops were born.

Commanding the Finns at Tolvajärvi was Colonel Paavo Talvela (pictured

below), a veteran of the Finnish Jäger battalion that had fought in World
War I and the Finnish Civil War.
At Tolvajärvi and elsewhere in the north, the Finns developed a tactic that
can be likened to what some predators do to larger schools of fish or herds
of antelope or zebra on the African plains. Using their mobility, the Finns
would concentrate their forces to achieve local superiority and cut off
Soviet units from their comrades. During the night and in the forests and
hills of Finland, this was easy to do (relatively speaking). The Soviets
would gather themselves much like the US pioneers circled their wagons on
the Great Plains when under attack by Native American warriors. The Finns
called these formations mottis , or “pockets.” They would destroy these
mottis and move on in concert with other units as they moved in the
darkness. Many of the men in the mottis were not only fighting the Finns
but the cold weather as well. Despite orders, fires were lit, making the
Soviets easier to spot and harder for the men inside the encampment to see
out.
At Tolvajärvi, the Finns killed an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Soviets,
wounded another 5,000, destroyed and disabled almost 60 Soviet tanks and
armored vehicles, and destroyed or captured at least 30 Soviet cannons. The
original Soviet division and a reinforcement division were mauled, all at a
loss of just over 100 Finns killed in action, 250 wounded, and 150 captured.
The victory resulted in Colonel Talvela’s promotion to major general and
buoyed the spirits of other Finnish soldiers. The civilians at home, many of
whom had family on the front lines, also had their spirits lifted by the
victory at Tolvajärvi, which they needed. As if the war was not bad enough,
the government had announced a ban on dancing and similar gatherings for
the duration of the war—and this stayed in effect throughout World War II.
The Finns were successful in blunting the Soviet offensive in the north and
inflicting massive casualties on the Red Army, but Stalin knew he could
sustain greater losses before it made a dent in his army. Eventually, the
Finns would wear down, but before they did, they were going to make the
Soviets pay for every inch of ground they took.
All throughout Eastern Karelia, Finnish families packed up what they could
on horse-drawn sleighs, carts, and wagons. Sometimes they had to flee at a
moment’s notice, seeing the fires of burning villages on the horizon and the
refugees pouring into their town with word that the “Ivans” were coming.
As the refugees moved westward toward bigger towns or other villages for
safety, Finnish border guards and militiamen attempted to hold the Soviets
back until proper reinforcements arrived.
In the far north of Finland, the Arctic Ocean port of Petsamo, which was the
nation’s only port on that ocean, fell to the Soviets after a brief fight, but
though they attempted to push farther south, the Soviets at Petsamo could
make no further progress, and the front lines in that area remained static to
the end of the war.
Elsewhere, the Finns fell back, luring the Soviets deeper and deeper into the
dark, cold forests. In the region of Suomussalmi, the Finns fought the battle
that has, since the time of the war, been held up by generations of Finns as
the greatest victory of the Winter War.
The Soviet goal in the area was to reach the city of Oulu and control the
roads around it. Doing so would cut Finland in half and deal a severe blow
to the Finns, who might be forced to concede defeat if their country was
divided. The Soviet 163 rd Rifle Division moved into the area on the first
day of the war, November 30 th .
On that first day and for about a week thereafter, the Finns only had one
battalion of men in the area, in the village of Raate located along the main
east-west road (really a wide dirt track, like many of the roads in the area),
which wended its way through heavy forests with lakes on either side. As
you will see in the following maps, and if you look at a map of Finland in
general, lakes lay all over the country, making travel of the countryside very
difficult. This also allowed the Finns to bottle up the Soviets in small
contained areas.
The Reds advanced on Suomussalmi on December 7 th , 1939, and took the
town, which was nothing but a pile of smoldering ruins as the Finns had set
it on fire to deny the Soviets shelter from the cold. Suomussalmi lies on the
banks of Kiantijärvi (Lake Kianti), a large body of water. The Finns
retreated to the other side of the lake to watch what the Soviets would do
next and to plan their tactics accordingly.

In the left-hand corner of the map above, you can see that the Soviets’ next
move was an attempt to flank the Finnish positions across from
Suomussalmi. Though faced with only part of a battalion, this attempt
failed.
Another veteran of Finland’s World War I volunteers, Colonel Hjalmar
Siilasvuo, arrived on December 9 th and took command of the Finnish forces
in the area. The first thing he did was order an attack on Suomussalmi,
which was repulsed with heavy losses. In assaulting prepared positions,
which the Soviets had been working on since they first arrived, the Finns
were at a disadvantage. The Soviets had more heavy, medium, and light
machine guns, cannons, and armored vehicles.
Though the Finns could not take back the town, they did surround it and
kept the Soviets bottled up within. The Soviets tried to break the
encirclement a number of times, especially on Christmas Eve, but were
unsuccessful. By the 27 th , however, the Finns had received reinforcements,
two highly trained Jäger regiments, and retook Suomussalmi.
Not all of the Soviets within the town were killed or captured, and the ones
that managed to flee escaped in panic down the Raate Road toward the
Soviet border. Along the road, the panicking Red forces were met by Soviet
reinforcements from the 44 th Rifle Division moving into the area. The
result was a huge traffic jam. Units became entangled, discipline fell apart
and was put back together using harsh methods, and many Soviets simply
fled into the forests, where most of them froze to death or were hunted
down by the Finns, who began to move into the forests on both sides of the
road like wolves just outside the warmth of a fire.
Over the course of the next four days, the Finns moved and skied circles
around the “Ivans,” cutting off units from one another and wiping them out
one by one. Many of these attacks came at night, making them even more
terrifying for the men of the Red Army. Oftentimes, they would hear a
battle begin just down the line from them in the darkness. The forests
muffled or exaggerated sound depending on the area’s topography.
Sometimes, the battle sounded far away, and the next thing they knew, the
Soviets had units of Finns ripping right through them. Sometimes, the
battles took place quite a ways off but sounded as if it was next door, and
the panicked screams of their comrades set the rest of the Soviets in the area
on edge.
By January 8 th , 1940, the Finns had destroyed or captured all of the Soviets
in the area, along with much materiel, which was badly needed: 43 tanks,
over 70 field guns, and 29 of the ever-important anti-tank guns, along with
trucks, horses, rifles, machine guns, and ammunition.
All along the central and northern fronts of the war, the Finns inflicted
heavy losses on the Russians using guerrilla tactics. In hundreds of
skirmishes, large and small, the Finns showed what a determined and
skilled army could do when fighting for their homeland.
As you read at the start of this book, Winston Churchill was in awe of the
Finns, as were many others around the world. Nations, especially France
and Britain, had talked about aiding the Finns against the Soviets. In the
end, this amounted to naught, but just the idea of France and Britain getting
involved was enough to give Stalin pause when the Finns sent a message
that they were willing to negotiate.
 Illustration 6: In this US cartoon, Uncle Sam and the other great
“neutral” powers discuss sending weapons to the Finns.
Though the Finns were admired for their stand against the Russians, in the
end, they did not receive the aid they needed to continue the war
successfully. Time, distance, international relations, and indecision all got in
the way. Some 8,000 Swedes did volunteer and fight in Finland, as did
several hundred Norwegians, and the Swedes did manage to secretly send
some heavy weapons, but significant aid was lacking for the Finns.
The Soviets ended their push against the Mannerheim Line in late
December. Here, the Finns had managed to hold back the main Soviet
advance and had even attempted to recapture Viipuri, an attack that failed at
high costs to both sides. However, as the fighting along the Mannerheim
Line went into a sort of semi-lull, to the north, on the northern side of Lake
Ladoga, the Soviets continued to push.
The initial Soviet attacks in the area had caught Mannerheim by surprise.
He expected the bulk of the Soviet forces to move within the isthmus, but
the Soviets were attempting a flanking maneuver to the north in the hopes
of breaking through the Finnish lines and approaching the Mannerheim
Line from the rear, capturing the Finns there in a vice and thus ending the
war.
After the initial Soviet advance into Finnish territory, Mannerheim was
forced to take reserves from the Mannerheim Line and move them
northward to the area of the Kollaa River. Here, as on the isthmus, the Finns
and Soviets engaged in a war of attrition. In fact, the Battle of Kollaa lasted
from the beginning of the war in December until its end in the middle of
March.
Like the Battle of Suomussalmi, the Battle of Kollaa became a rallying
point for the Finns. When Mannerheim radioed the local commander, a
legendary figure among the Finns named Aarne Juutilainen, asking him,
“Can Kollaa hold?” Juutilainen signaled back, “Kollaa will hold—unless
we’re ordered to run.” That phrase, “Kollaa will hold,” became a
catchphrase in WWII-Finland, and one can still hear it occasionally when a
person is faced with a difficult situation. Juutilainen was one of the great
figures of the war and was nicknamed “The Terror of Morocco,” for he had
served there in the French Foreign Legion. He was also known for his wild
hard-drinking parties, as well as his leadership.
One of the men who attended Juutilainen’s parties at least once is probably
the most well-known Finn of the Winter War outside of Finland. That man
is Simo Häyhä, dubbed “The White Death.” Häyhä once took a captured
Soviet soldier to one of Juutilainen’s parties and then turned him loose to
return to Soviet lines—the man cried and literally begged to stay with the
Finns.
Häyhä’s kill count, estimated at over 500, is disputed by some. His wartime
diary, which was not released until after his death in 2002, notches over
500, and his chaplain, who made notes during the war, claimed Häyhä shot
536 Red Army soldiers. What is known as an absolute certainty is that
Häyhä became a celebrity during the war in Finland and that the Soviets put
a bounty on his head.
Even more amazing than Häyhä’s kill count is how he did it without a
scope. He believed that a scope forced a sniper to rise up to see the enemy,
potentially giving his position away. The glint off a scope could do the
same. Häyhä used a Russian-designed Finnish-made variant of the Mosin-
Nagant rifle and the outstanding Finnish submachine gun, the Suomi
KP/-31. He is alleged to have killed an equal number of Reds with the
machine gun as with the sniper rifle.
 Illustration 7: Häyhä during the war
It was also to Häyhä’s advantage that he was small. He stood at barely five
feet tall. To further reduce his chances of being seen, Häyhä is said to have
put snow in his mouth to cool his breath and reduce the mist it made when
he exhaled, and, of course, he wore the famous white camouflage.
Unfortunately for Häyhä, he was hit on the left side of his face by an
explosive bullet toward the end of the war, permanently disfiguring him. It
was an incident that took him years to recover from. For most of his life, he
kept his war experience quiet, a quality appreciated by the Finns, who are
known for being rather taciturn. Häyhä spent the rest of his life as a
professional hunter and dog breeder, sometimes even leading hunts for
Finland’s elite.
However, despite the heroics of men like Häyhä, Juutilainen, Talvela,
Siilasvuo, and countless others, as well as the adroit leadership of
Mannerheim, in the end, many, if not most, Finns knew the end was
inevitable. The Soviet numbers were just too great. The question was, could
the Finns inflict enough damage on the Reds to make them think twice
about pushing on to take the rest of the country? And would the
international situation lend itself to the Finnish cause?
These questions became ever more urgent in February on the Karelian
Isthmus. During the latter part of January and the beginning of February,
the Soviets paused and regrouped. Not only did they reorganize and
reinforce their units, but they also resupplied them with better gear. First
and foremost, they gave their front-line troops snowsuits so they wouldn’t
stand out as such easy targets for the Finns. They also supplied great
quantities of cold-weather gear. Much as the Germans would in 1941, the
Soviets had originally sent their men into battle with the wrong clothing
while expecting a rapid victory. That had now changed.
Additionally, troops were taken out of the line and retrained. Some of them
became ski-troops, and more elite and practiced units of all types were
brought in from around the USSR. Most important of all, the Soviets
changed commanders on the Karelian Isthmus. The original commander,
Kirill Meretskov, was removed from command. At the start of World War
II, he was arrested and held by the secret police for two months but
“redeemed” himself during the war and ended it as a marshal of the Soviet
Union.
Replacing Meretskov was Semyon Timoshenko, who had fought in World
War I and the Russian Civil War and was a personal friend of Stalin’s,
which helped him survive the Great Purge and placed him among the
highest-ranking Soviet commanders. Under Timoshenko, the Soviets on the
Karelian Isthmus would push forward, exhausting the Finns and causing the
Mannerheim Line to crack in the latter part of February 1939.

Conclusion: Defeat but Not defeated

In late January, the Soviets actually signaled a willingness to negotiate with
the Finns. The war was not going well, and Stalin was beginning to become
more and more concerned about Hitler. Stalin would need the nearly three-
quarters of a million men involved in Finland if Hitler decided to invade the
USSR. They also returned the Finnish Communists to the Soviet Union,
where, miraculously, Otto Kuusinen survived into old age.
Though the Finns were holding their own by this point, Mannerheim and
others realized that without massive international intervention, which
seemed less likely every day, their cause would eventually be lost. Why not
negotiate with the Soviets before the good weather and long days made
Soviet airpower more effective? Aside from that, though the Finns in the
north were enjoying successes, many Soviet mottis (the Finnish word for
the encircled strongholds they had penned the Russians into) were still
standing firm. However, they were unable to break out and advance—or
retreat. Instead, they kept the Finns busy, which took a toll on Finland’s
limited manpower.
Throughout late January, the Finnish leadership debated on if, how, and
when to approach the Soviets. At the time, the Finnish Army was holding
the Soviets back, but on February 1 st , the Soviets launched a massive
assault on the Mannerheim Line. Timoshenko and the new cadre of officers
that had been brought in showed an ability that their predecessors did not,
as they were able to launch the blitzkrieg tactics that the Germans had used
in Poland in 1939.
Over the course of the next ten days, the Red Army launched coordinated
assaults on the Mannerheim Line, and on February 11 th , they broke
through at the town of Summa. The break in the line at Summa caused the
Finns all along the line to retreat to another less formidable line of defense
that had been prepared at the start of the war.
Exhaustion, dwindling supplies, lack of anti-tank guns on a meaningful
scale, and reduced manpower began to take a toll on the Finns, despite their
continued dogged resistance. Over the course of the next two weeks, the
Soviets launched attack after attack, forcing the Finns back on ever-
weakening lines of defense.
While this assault went on, the Finns responded to Stalin’s call to negotiate.
In the end, though, it wasn’t really a negotiation, rather the Finns receiving
a set of demands from the Russians, which happened on February 23 rd .
The Soviets demanded what they had originally demanded plus some
additional requests: more islands in the Gulf of Bothnia, the entire Karelian
Isthmus, and the north shore of Lake Ladoga. In return, Stalin would return
Petsamo, Finland’s only ice-free port on the Arctic Ocean, although they
were not allowed to station naval vessels there.
In actuality, given Stalin’s personality and the power of the Soviet forces,
the terms were rather generous, relatively speaking. In all likelihood, he
was nervous about what the British and French might do, and he wanted the
Winter War to end quickly because of his fears of Hitler invading.
On March 12 th , the Finns sent a delegation to Moscow and signed the
terms of the cease-fire as laid out by Stalin and Molotov. The Winter War,
called Talvisota in Finnish, ended on March 13 th , 1940.
The Finns had suffered almost 26,000 casualties. They lost about 10 percent
of their territory and had to absorb 400,000 refugees from the areas now in
the Soviet Union (and still part of Russia today). But it could have been
much, much worse, and most Finns knew it. The bravery and skill of the
Finnish troops, the spirit of sisu shown by the Lotta Svärd and every Finn,
and the leadership of Marshal Mannerheim had saved Finland from
complete disaster.
On the world stage, the Soviets were greatly embarrassed by their
performance in the Winter War. Most historians believe that Hitler, who was
already leaning toward an invasion of the USSR, was encouraged by what
he saw in Finland. However, Hitler and others should have looked a bit
deeper, because, at the end of the war, the Soviets had shown themselves
able to conduct a modern offensive after learning and regrouping. Though
the Germans would punish the Soviets in their invasion of the USSR in
1941, this was due to the time it took for the Soviets to recover from the
purges of the 1930s and to absorb the lessons of Finland and the early part
of World War II. Once they regrouped, doing so on a large-scale, they
became even better at the blitzkrieg than the Germans had been.
For Finland, Hitler’s invasion of the USSR presented them with an
opportunity to regain lost land. So, in 1941, they joined up with Hitler. They
did not form an anti-Semitic fascist government, and though Hitler and his
SS chief Henrich Himmler put pressure on Finland to turn over their Jews
to Germany, aside from one embarrassing and tragic incident, the Jewish
community in Finland remained safe and even served in the Finnish Army.
The Finns joined with Hitler, and Mannerheim made it clear that his forces
would not advance farther than the original lines of Finland’s pre-Winter
War borders. Though Hitler tried in almost every way to get the Finns to aid
Germany’s siege of Leningrad, they would not. The Continuation War,
known as Jaktosota in Finnish, would remain a largely static war. The Finns
regained what had been lost in the Winter War plus some small parts of
Soviet Karelia, in which many ethnic Finns lived.
However, as the tides turned against Hitler, it turned against Finland too.
Stalin gave Finland an ultimatum that they were to either throw out or
disarm the Germans and give up what they had gained from 1941 to 1944
or face complete invasion. Wisely, the Finns followed the Soviet’s demands,
and the Germans surprisingly left without much of an argument. This likely
saved Finland from the fate of Germany’s eastern European allies of
Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, all of which the Soviet Union took over
and made puppet states.
For his part, Marshal Mannerheim was credited with a victory of sorts in
the Winter War, as he kept Finland safe from the USSR and Germany (a
rock and a hard place if there ever was one), and the war ended with him
being regarded as a greater hero than he had been before. He died in 1951
of an ulcer. Interestingly enough, the only recording of Hitler in a
conversation is a secret recording a Finnish sound engineer made during his
meeting with Mannerheim in 1942, in which Hitler admits attacking the
USSR was likely a mistake. This is perhaps the biggest understatement of
all time.

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Bibliography
Clements, J. Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy . Haus Publishing, 2012.
Dear, I., and M. R. Foot. The Oxford companion to World War II . Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Edwards, Robert. The Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939-
1940 . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
“HyperWar: The Soviet-Finnish War, 1939-1940 (USMA).” Accessed
April 27, 2020. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Winter/USMA-
Finnish/index.html.

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