FREE ARTICLE: The Winter War, 1939-1940

Big Russia, little opponent, doesn't pan out how they'd hoped...

At the end of last year I got to go to Finland and play with war stuff. Can’t say anymore, but the results will be on National Geographic later this year. Doing the research on something that I had previously known absolutely nothing about was fun. I’d never even set foot in Finland before, let alone paid attention to the Winter War. If you like the idea of Stalin looking foolish for a bit, read on…

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To War

In the early nineteenth century, Finland was annexed by Russia. The obsession with it was the location of St. Petersburg, which was only about a century old when all this happened. Peter the Great had chosen a swamp on which to build his new capital and forcibly dragged his court there from stuffy Moscow. To be fair to him, he’d witnessed some pretty hideous stuff there, but that’s a story for a different day. The point is, St. Petersburg was precariously located right in the corner of his empire. Technically, actually, it was in Sweden when he claimed it I think. In the 100 years before the First World War, the whole of annexed Finland was effectively looked at as a convenient buffer to keep people away from the Tsar’s capital.

After the November Revolution of 1917, the new regime let it go, and Finland declared independence on 6th December, then fought for the right to obtain it. In 1932, the Finns and the Soviets signed a non-aggression pact, but the two nations were never on friendly terms. Stalin was still sore that Finland had become independent, still sore that the Finns had sided with Britain and the Russian Whites against the Bolsheviks. He believed that Finland represented a threat on the doorstep of the renamed city of Leningrad.

Soviet propaganda told the world that the Finnish leadership was fascist (yes, I know, I know, wait till you see how the parallels increase) and when Stalin affirmed his power in 1938, Soviet history was rewritten. Leningrad was a mere 20 miles from the Finnish border. This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. Stalin wanted his buffer back.

The Soviets began by blaming the Nazis, postulating to the Finns that that they needed to lease some of their territory to the Soviet Union so that it might defend itself from Germany. Actually, it doesn’t look like Hitler cared about touching Finland. As long as he kept getting iron ore from Sweden and German ships had access to the Baltic, he was happy. Well, whatever resembled happy for Hitler. When the Soviets officially signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, surely that was that, then? No chance of a Soviet war with Germany, no need to claim bits of Finland.

Nope.

Stalin had actually had heavy duty mobilisation taking place along the Finnish border since 1938, but in October, despite the justification having vanished, things began to escalate. There were negotiations. Apparently Stalin was delightful throughout, which obviously surprised the Finnish delegation. The smaller nation did not dismiss the Soviets out of hand, but the sticking point was the Soviet Union using Finnish territory for military purposes. The Finns refused to agree.

I get the principle, because why would the Soviets stop once they had grabbed a toehold? But Finland owned a mere dozen modern aircraft and not a single viable anti-tank gun. They lacked shells, machine-guns and ammunition. Artillery dated back to the Russian-Japanese war in some cases, and men drilled with rifles dating back to the days of Nicholas II. This prompted Finns like Gustav Mannerheim (he’s important, hold tight) to suggest pragmatism. The territory the Soviets wanted was unimportant. Let them have it.

He lost that argument. Finland held firm. All this did was convince Stalin that his paranoia was justified. Surely there’s no way Finland would act this way unless Hitler was backing them?

You will not be surprised to learn that there then occurred a dubious “incident” on the border for which the Finns were blamed. On 26th November, in a small village on the Soviet side of the border name Mainila, a shell hit a guard post. Mannerheim had already had all the Finnish artillery leave this area for precisely this reason, so it was not the Finns. There’s a chance this was news to Stalin too, and that this was the dirty work of the NKVD. It was not subtle. The Soviets had even held war games in the recent past based on the same premise, in the same village. Nonetheless, apparently four guards were dead, nine more were injured and they demanded an apology. Finland told them to shove it and suggested a mutual investigation. By 28th November, the Soviet Union had severed diplomatic relations, accusing the Finns of being hostile.

Was there any other intention aside from a conquest of all Finland? Russian historians still can’t agree, but in 2013, Putin said that the Winter War was launched to “correct mistakes” made in 1917. Does it even matter why?

On 30th November 1939, Soviet forces invaded Finland without declaring war, which would help get them booted out of the impotent League of Nations. In Helsinki, almost immediately, propaganda was dumped on the city. ‘Finnish Comrades!” The leaflets stated. ‘We come to you not as conquerors, but as liberators of the Finnish people from the oppression of the capitalists and the landlords.’

Bombs were also immediately forthcoming. It wasn’t the kind of wholesale levelling that would emerge later in the war, but this image shows a block of flats caught by an incendiary shell. Molotov told the international community they were dropping food baskets. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the bombs Molotov Bread Baskets and when they started flinging homemade explosives at Soviet forces, they even more sarcastically named Molotov cocktails.

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Following up the air strike on Helsinki were nearly half a million men. Stalin wanted the job done and Finland claimed in time for his 60th Birthday on 21st December. The Soviet hierarchy, whatever their end game, expected subjugation to be easy. In yet more parallels with what is happening in Ukraine today, the overwhelming might of the Soviet Army did not simply flatten their opponents as they might have expected. Finns united to oppose the invasion and refused to be squashed. Also, Joe, when you’ve purged your army of nearly half its officers, including most of those in senior positions, and the force that is left is divided among competing factions, it buggers up your potential efficiency.

Having counselled against poking the Russian bear, General Gustav Mannerheim now had to do his best to defend his country. He’s regarded as perhaps the greatest Finn in history. The armed forces still party on his birthday. Born in Finland during the annexation, he had served in the Imperial Russian Army, in the Russo-Japanese War and with distinction as a divisional commander during the First World War. One of his proudest moments was participating in the coronation of Nicholas II. Until he died, his home in Helsinki would house portraits of the man he called 'my Emperor.’  My favourite anecdote is him lighting up a cigar in Hitler’s face in 1942. The whole room gasped, because Adolf hated smoking, but when he said nothing Mannerheim judged that Hitler considered his position weak and so he refused to give him what he was there to ask for.

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Back in 1939, about 20 miles past the border, the Soviets started coming into contact with Finnish defences that would become known as the Mannerheim line. The Finns fought a delaying action out in front, and they had to quickly learn how to disable Soviet tanks using imaginative (cheap) methods like the Molotov cocktails because they lacked anti-tank equipment and training.

When it came to fully fledged battle, too, the Finns dished out several sucker punches against the odds. They were well prepared for the Battle of Taipale, the first significant Soviet attack, and Stalin’s forces suffered repeated heavy casualties. They threw more men at it, and still failed. Successive attempts to break the Finnish defences went awry at a cost of thousands of men. Elsewhere, more checks were delivered.

War on Santa’s Doorstep

Just to add to everyone’s misery, that winter was unseasonably cold. Temperatures got down to nearly -45C. Soviet troops wouldn’t have snow camouflage until the end of January, but the Finns were ahead of the game. In this picture you can see some of their expert ski troops, (which the Soviets didn’t have) who all had a white snow cape and were basically invisible to the enemy. They were adept at getting behind Soviet lines and at messing with their communication lines. The cold has killed the Soviet troops in the foreground of the photo. In some units, it is estimated that 10% of some units had become casualties before they had even crossed the border.  The only up side for the Soviet forces was that frozen ground was better for their tanks.

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Stuck at the Mannerheim line, Soviet morale got so low that troops refused to carry out further costly, frontal attacks. Elsewhere, they were still plugging away the length and breadth of the country. Nobody expected more than the odd raid in Lapland, in winter, when there was hardly any daylight. The Red Army, however, sent entire divisions here.

A Finnish soldier near Kemijärvi in February 1940. The Finns managed to race lots of men up to hold the line here, and once again the Soviets ran up against determined defenders, but what they did manage to do was capture Petsamo, which was Finland’s only ice-free port in the Arctic. (Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive)

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Suomussalmi and the Raate Road

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The famous clash in this conflict has been used as a benchmark of how to batter your enemy when you’re attacked by a much larger force. Suomussalmi is in the middle of Finland, on the border, and remote. It’s surrounded by lakes and forest, and infrastructure like roads was limited. Because of this, once again, the Finns were not expecting much to happen here, but the Soviets decided to try and smash through and effectively sever Finland in two. Fighting went on for a month, and at the Battle of Raate Road, the Soviets incurred one of their worst losses of the Winter War.

In December 1939, the Finns had managed to all but encircle the Soviet forces in the town of Suomussalmi, which was home to about 4,000 people. The General inside had asked for permission to retreat, and in response, thousands more men were sent up. Specifically, sent to march along the Raate Road. At the beginning of January, chaos ensued as Soviet troops were ambushed in the forest. Blocking off potential retreat routes, including with mines, the Finns broke them down into smaller groups and bit by bit, picked them off. Soviet troops fled, and ill-equipped with winter clothing, thousands froze to death. More were rounded up cold and starving by the Finnish forces.

As the Soviets fled for the border, the Finns began claiming their stuff. They banked thousands of rifles, valuable machines guns and artillery pieces and nearly 50 tanks. There were hundreds more trucks, well over a thousand horses and all important anti-tank weapons. Christmas had come a week or so late.

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Stalin is not amused

To put it mildly. The Soviet losses are estimated at 7,000-9,000. Finland suffered 400. For decades, Soviet sources would not even mention the annihilation of 44th Division on the Raate Road. Commanders were executed, and one former soldier even claimed that the men who survived the battle and recrossed the border were picked off by the NKVD.

Various nonsense propaganda included claiming that the Mannerheim Line was stronger than the Maginot Line and that America had sent 1,000 crack pilots to fight with the Finns. At this point Finland had about 100 serviceable (not shiny) aircraft and were outnumbered by as many as 20-1. Clearly, the Soviets needed to have a rethink about what they’d bitten off here. Reorganisation would come, and then they would go again, but I’m going to save that for when the NatGeo thing comes out…

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If you have to know more, now, the absolute best source on this is where I got most of my stuff from. The Winter War, by William Trotter is brilliant.