14 Apr 01

"The Winter War" The Russian invasion of Finland, 1939-1940

Typical of Russia's sad history, its 1917 revolution was violent and bloody. Not surprisingly, Russia's subsequent flirtation with democracy had a short life. No sooner had the new democratic Russian administration been created, when Vladimir Ulyanov seized power, sweeping aside all vestiges of representative government. He was careful not to call himself "Czar," but that is what he was, and everyone knew it. They had simply traded one czar for another.

Russians were traditionally fearful of Germans and their "Iron Chancellor." So, in order to instill fear in his colleagues and the general population alike, Ulyanov started to call himself "Man of Iron." In Russian, it translates to "Lenin."

The revolution in Russia sent shock waves through the all aristocratic families of Europe. Visions of throngs of pitchfork-armed peasants storming castles scared kings and barons alike, as they had not been scared in a long time. "Gun control" was one of their knee-jerk reactions, and we've lived with it to this very day. Pitchforks were okay, but guns in the hands of "peasants" suddenly made aristocrats nervous.

Civil war erupted immediately with Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin and his Bolsheviks (Communists) subsequently showed their countrymen and the entire world just how brutal and barbarous an army could be. Starting with the sadistic murder of Czar Nicholas, his wife, and all five of their children (assuring no Nicholas successor would ever claim title), he was successful in consolidating power, despite spirited opposition from the "White Russian" Army and its covert support from Britain and America. Lenin's forces swarmed over a hundred ethnic lands, casually slaughtering all opposition. Lenin laughingly called his new empire, "A Prison of Nations," but only in private. Its official title was "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." In Russian, "soviet" translates to "council."

By 1921, the fighting was over, and Lenin was firmly in command. However, he died mysteriously in 1924 at the age of fifty-four. He was immediately succeeded by a close supporter, forty-three-year-old Iosef Djugashvili. Djugashvili, seeking to consolidate his shaky position, started calling himself, "Man of Steel," upstaging Lenin's nickname. The Russian translation is "Stalin." Succeeding decades would reveal Joe Stalin to be the literal personification of evil, making other, better known, aggressive and brutal dictators, like Hitler, look positively enlightened by comparison.

Under Stalin, all private property was immediately confiscated by the state. Since that included privately owned farms, mass impoverishment followed. Millions starved to death. The Czars had flaunted their wealth. Hypocritical Communist leaders hid theirs, and a swift arrest by the dreaded NKVD (precursor of the KGB) and indefinite internment in a "reeducation" camp awaited all who dared suggest that the new USSR was not paradise on Earth.

Communism, of course, didn't work then any more than it worked at any other time, and it soon became obvious to Communist leaders that an "amebic" foreign policy, where neighboring nations were successively invaded, stripped of valuables, and casually discarded was the only way to keep the empire going. As a result, numerous ethnic revolts between 1928 and 1935 had to be successively put down by Stalin. He and his regime survived, but Stalin's rabid paranoia lead to the murder of tens of thousands of colleagues, friends, religious leaders, civil servants, industrial and military leaders, and their entire families, extending to cousins, nieces and nephews! Most were shot to death on the spot. Dreadful purges continued throughout the 1930s.

As the 1930s came to a close, it became obvious to world watchers that Hitler and Stalin were in a desperate race for control of Europe. Hitler and Stalin had signed a convenient but uneasy alliance in 1939, just in time to secure the conquest of Poland, but Stalin's and Hitler's hatred for each other would make any such agreement short lived. The NKVD followed Russian troops into Poland, and, as they had in Russia itself, promptly slaughtered and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent (and conveniently disarmed) noncombatants. The Communist "style" was thus becoming well established, and it was feared by all, even more than that of the Nazis.

With Hitler firmly in control of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and most of Poland, Stalin frantically looked for matching conquests. He turned his attention west to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Finland was the most sophisticated nation of the four and was the main objective of Stalin's attention. Finland was one of the few neighboring nations that had not yet been absorbed by the amebic USSR. Stalin now demanded that the Finns allow him to put air and navel bases on Finnish soil. Characteristically duplicitous Stalin was, of course, planning an invasion whether they yielded to his demands or not.

By November of 1939, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had all readily yielded to every demand of Stalin. They offered no resistance. The Finns, on the other hand, not only refused to allow Russians on their soil, but had mobilized on a national scale. Stalin was furious, but, like all bullies who face the prospect of a real fight, he was startled and a little frightened! Massacring rear-echelon and reserve troops and innocent civilians is one thing. Facing a well-armed, well organized, and determined army, even a small one, was something else. Stalin was concerned, but he had no choice. He could not afford to look "weak" on the world stage. Germans, British, and Americans were all watching. Tolerating an insolent snub from tiny Finland was out of the question, even with winter coming on.

The Finnish/Russian border was an immense, rugged forest with only a few roads and logging trails. It was November. The soil was slush. The full blast of winter would come in December, freezing everything solid and reducing daylight to only a few hours each day. Relentless darkness broken only by brief, timid, and cloudy twilight would go on until spring. Faced with this predicament, Meretsklov, the Russian general in charge, suggested to Stalin that the invasion of Finland be postponed until spring or at least until midwinter when frozen ground would support his tanks. He was contemptuously rebuffed and ordered to proceed without delay. It was a fatal mistake!

When the Finns decided to resist, they endowed the "Grand Old Man" of the Finnish Army, Marshal Baron Carl Gustav Mannerheim, with complete control of Finnish military resistance. At the age of seventy-two, Mannerheim was an experienced and crusty soldier and aristocrat with a seething contempt for Stalin and his Communists. He had fought to free his country from Russians once before, and he was ready to fight them again. Mannerheim literally mobilized his entire nation! Women, old men, and teenage boys were inducted into and integrated with existing military units. Like the Israelis a generation later, he told his nation that they were in a fight for their very lives and the life of their country, and they would hold nothing back.

With negotiations broken off, the Russian invasion began on 30 Nov 39, with Soviet bombers striking Finnish cities, and Soviet warships shelling coastal towns. The tiny Finnish Navy and Air Force could do little to interfere. By the time the ground invasion stated later the same day, Russian troops were advancing in total darkness.

The Soviet advance bogged down almost immediately. Supply lines broke down in the darkness and cold, and tanks and motorized vehicles, slogging through the slush and mud, started running out of gas. White uniformed Finnish ski troops lilted effortlessly in and out of Russian columns. Like silent ghosts, they appeared out of nowhere. The Finns then sprayed rows of stacked up Russian troops with their domestically made Soumi submachine guns, inflicting multiple casualties. As abruptly as they had materialized, they vanished into the forested darkness. Russians, not equipped with skies, could not pursue them, nor could they respond in any effective way. Finnish ski troops disappeared before the Russians could bring their machine guns into play or even unsling their rifles.

The forest was so thick, navigation by the stars was all but impossible, and tanks could not maneuver except on roads, and there were precious few of those. In the dark, tanks were useless anyway. Russian units that left roads and trails became separated and eventually lost. Most became disoriented and eventually froze to death. Most main trails and roads had been blocked with felled trees. Clearing them often took days. But, the few open trails were invariably narrow and repeatedly led the Russians into well camouflaged, Finnish ambushes. Finnish machine guns then raked drawn-out Russian infantry columns. Nearly all fighting took place in total darkness. Large Finnish units kept appearing where they were not supposed to be! Russian casualties rapidly mounted. Most could not be evacuated and quickly froze to death. Horses, used to draw wagons, were killed and eaten by cold and starving Russian troops, effectively immobilizing most Russian artillery.

By 25 Dec 39, the entire Russian offensive ground to a halt. Most units were out of fuel, out of food, and out of ammunition. Stalin's methods were coming back to haunt him! Every one of his officers who had displayed any initiative in the past ten years had been either imprisoned or shot. The ones who were left wouldn't make any decision without the concurrence of the ever-present political commissars, but it was the political commissars who always broke and ran first! Stalin's army was paralyzed.

Stalin angrily fired Meretsklov and replaced him with Timoshenko. Timoshenko, with no less than twenty-four fresh divisions, renewed the offensive, but fared no better than Meretsklov. The new forces instantly became bogged down. The war was an effective stalemate. The Finns were not strong enough to eject the Russians outright, and the Russians were losing people so fast that they had to do something.

A truce was negotiated. While soldiers froze and starved, the two sides bargained. Stalin knew he was not in a position of strength, but the Finns knew the Russian assault would begin anew in the spring, and British and American help was unlikely. In the end, Finland ceded several bases, but was not, as a whole, annexed into the Soviet Union. It's citizens were spared the horrors that would have been inflicted by the NKVD. Finland retained its independence.

The cost of the Finland Campaign in terms of lives was staggering. The Finns sustained losses to be sure, but the Russians lost close to a half million men, not to mentioned uncounted tons of captured and abandoned equipment.

However, the lessons learned in Finland were not lost on the Russians and were put to good use against the Germans at Stalingrad:

For one thing, Stalin stopped shooting every general who lost a battle! Meretsklov was not only spared, but he was retained in the army. Other officers saw this as a sign that they could, once again, show some initiative without fear of facing a firing squad.

The Red Army instituted cold-weather training and started equipping its troops with adequate equipment and clothing for low temperatures. The timing of this move couldn't have been better, as the Russians would be facing German troops in cold weather in just three years, at Stalingrad.

Heavy, ponderous tanks were scrapped in favor of the light and nimble T-34, which could maneuver in terrain inaccessible to heaver tanks.

Russian infantry units turned in their Moisin-Nagant, bolt-action rifles and were reissued submachine guns. Easy to manufacture and maintain, submachine guns could be produced in great numbers quickly. The pistol ammunition they used was also easy to make in vast quantities. For fighting in urban areas, like Stalingrad, submachine gun equipped Russian infantry was extremely effective against bolt-action rifle equipped German infantry.

Had the Russians not fought the Finns in 1939-40 and learned the important lessons they did, they would probably not have been able to stop the Germans during the Eastern Campaign. Had the Germans been successful on the Eastern Front, the Normandy Invasion would probably never have taken place, and World history would have been considerably different!

Lessons:

>World leaders who are more worried about their own "image" and "place in history" than they are about the day-to-day welfare of their nation invariably make calamitous errors, leading to untold misery and suffering.

>Standing up to a bully, even when the odds are greatly in his favor, will invariable unnerve him and cause him to become confused. Never underestimate your enemy, but never overestimate him either.

>A nation where everyone, soldier and citizen alike, is armed is nearly impossible for anyone to conquer.

/John