The Winter War 9/8/21
Between the Gulf of
Finland and Lake Ladogo lies the Karelian Isthmus.
1703 May Peter the Great
selected the swampy, bug infested Delta to build a new Capital St. Petersburg.
More than 100,000 died
during the 10 years to build this city and now a quarter million Russians and
25,000 Fins died because Leningrad was so close to the Finish border.
1809 Finland was under
Swedish suzerainty till then. Military
service was a favorite rout of young Finns in the Tsarist army. Finland
as a part of the Russian Empire 1809–1917. Nicholas II in 1894 appointed Bobikov as Governor of
Finland and after that Finns could be conscripted unwillingly.
Sibelius’s Finlandia
roused nationalist fever and in 1904 Bobikov was assassinated on the steps of
the Senate in Helsinki.
1915-1916 Finns got
professional military training in Germany.
1917 Finish parliament
assumed responsibility for their affairs and Lenin who lacked troops recognized
Finnish neutrality. With German help the Reds in Finland surrendered and
the 1920 treaty of Tartu a state of peace was formally recognized between the
USSR and Finland.
The White Finnish Government
had allowed both Russian Whites and the British Navy to attack Bolshevik on the
Finnish coast. In the Petsamo region the Finns gave the British Empire
consortium a nickel mining concession. Both the Soviets and Germany
supported Scandinavian neutrality
1931 Finland’s various
Communist parties were outlawed, and by 1932 Finland’s flirtation with fascism
was over.
The Finns felt Stalin's
demands were a start for further appeasement. General Mannenheim tried to
make the politician see the truth. Stalin wanted land as a buffer zone. Such a
concession would surrender the Mannerheim line making Finland more vulnerable
to attack. Leningrad was the cultural heart of the communist state and
revolution as well as a major industrial center.
1939 Nov 26 First shots
fired.
Gustav Mannenheim was a
Swedish aristocrat in Finland and went to the Finnish corp of Cadets, but was
expelled from the corps for AWOL so he crossed the border to the Tsars Cavalry
School and became a lieutenant in 1989. He fought in the Russo- Japanese war.
Later was sent on a 9000 expedition to collect information on the topography of
the southern border and in that time he went to Lhasa and met the Dalia Lama.
He fought in WW1 and
hurt his leg and was in Odessa to recovery while the unit he was in was wiped
out.
He returned to Finland
when the Bolsheviks took over in Russia. He was “The Bloody Baron" against
Red supporters in Finland 80,thousand were rounded up and put
in a concentration camp. 10 thousand died in 6 months and 8 thousand were
executed by firing squad as part of the White Terror. His defeat of the Bolsheviks
got him an Iron Cross from Kaiser Wilhelm II.
1920 he set up the
Mannenheim Child Welfare and became chairman of Finnish Red Cross.
1931 became chairman of
the Finnish Defense council and in 1939 when he said they should give in
to Stalin’s demands was asked to retire but the war started before he stepped
down and appointed commander in chief.
He was born Swedish
speaking was fluent in Russian and French, could converse in English , Polish,
German but only started learning Finnish at the age of 50.
The Finnish campaign was
an embarrassment to the Russian officer class and 50 years later there is very
little of it written in Russian print. Russia planned to solve the war in 12 days;
she had the equipment to have her own version of a blitzkrieg. In the Red army
using individual unitive could lead to going to a gulag, and fighting was
overseen by inexperienced party ideologues. Into some of the densest forest
without accurate maps with heavy useless amour and their tanks were not painted
to suit the environment. Merekovs troops had to clear out the Finns in 2 weeks before
the subarctic winter could ruin the timetable
The Finns were made up
of troops from local areas similar to what they knew from childhood.
Mannenheim set ups his
headquarters in Mikkeli (St.Michael) from where he had run the war against the
Reds.
The Finns had a defense
Navy of 13 thousand men but Turku harbor was icebound at this time.
O W Kuusman was to be
Stalin puppet government to be head of Finland and he signed a treaty giving
Stalin every concession he asked for.
Tanks attacked without
infantry and got stuck on the defense rocks, and brave Finns could attack bombs
to the soft underbellies or attack them with. The Finns supply of guns and
weapons were limited and they had to use all sparingly. Thousands of civilians
of the Karelian isthmus had to be evacuated and their homes destroyed so as not
to provide the enemy with shelters. Buoyance charges were set to blow up the
ice below the tanks, which began to avoid the lakes which is what the Finns
wanted. The Finns laid large stretches of cellophane on the lakes so they
looked unfrozen. From the border to the Mannenheim line was 12 to 30 km
with troops and obstacles set up.
4 days before Christmas
was Stalin birthday he was not happy. Long slow trains, windows covered were
arriving in Leningrad full of maimed, starving, frostbitten Red Army troops.
They swamped the hospitals and the schools were used for the overflow. Voroshilov
said "you are the one to blame you killed the best Generals. 3 quarters of
the experienced professional leadership had been purged.
Samyon Timoshenko with
Georgi Zhukov his chief of staff were appointed to take over. 2,600
medals were awarded to the earlier troops. New tanks were brought in including
43 tons tanks with 76mm guns. Tanks were no allowed to outrun the infantry and
massing artillery to fire on concrete blockhouses. Russian forces could
be rotated when fatigued the Finns could not. The Russians broke through
with heavy fighting on 16 Feb 1940
The Finns were hoping to
hold out till the spring thaw turning the advance area into quagmire giving
them a greater negating position.
There were 8 thousand
Swedish volunteers and 800 Norwegians and Danes. From fascist Hungary a battalion
came. 350 Finnish Americans arrived via a Norwegian port. Sweden wanted to help
but her neutrality was very precarious. Fascist Italy gave a lot of moral
support
In NY Mayor le Guardia
held a "Help Finland" rally. Both Stokowski and Toscanini conducted benefit
concerts all of Sibelius music.
From refusing to meet Stalin’s
demands Finland paid a high price, they lost the Karelian Isthmus and the Rybachi
peninsula. The 105 day war, 24,923 Finns killed and 43557 wounded.
420,000 Finns lost their homes. The entire population at this time was under 4
million.
5000 Russain POW were
repatriated and sent to a Gulag by the White Sea, many interrogated and
then shot. Russia lost perhaps 270 thousand men and 300 thousand were wounded.
The Soviets reviewed the role of political commissars and reduced their
authority in battle.
In the Continuation War
Finland fought on the side of the Nazis. Thinking that Germany would be the
winner and they could regain their lost land. Mannenheim only allowed them to
advance to the old border. Both the Germans and the American believed that
Russia would collapse under the Germans in about 90 days, having seen the
example of the Red Army ciaos.
1944 Mannenheim
Became President of Finland. He died in 1951
Marshal Timoshenko later
showed Khrushchev they had detailed maps of the Mannenheim line made
before the war by the intelligence dept. but nobody bothered to ask for
them.
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