On the eve of the World War, both Europe and Asia were already in flames with many local conflicts. International tension was due to the high probability of a new big war, and all the most powerful political players on the world map before it began tried to secure favorable starting positions for themselves, without neglecting any means. The USSR was no exception. In 1939-1940 The Soviet-Finnish war began. The reasons for the inevitable military conflict lay in the same looming threat of a major European war. The USSR, increasingly aware of its inevitability, was forced to look for an opportunity to move the state border as far as possible from one of the most strategically important cities - Leningrad. Taking this into account, the Soviet leadership entered into negotiations with the Finns, offering their neighbors an exchange of territories. At the same time, the Finns were offered a territory almost twice as large as what the USSR planned to receive in return. One of the demands that the Finns did not want to accept under any circumstances was the USSR’s request to locate military bases on Finnish territory. Even the admonitions of Germany (an ally of Helsinki), including Hermann Goering, who hinted to the Finns that they could not count on Berlin’s help, did not force Finland to move away from its positions. Thus, the parties who did not come to a compromise came to the beginning of the conflict.
Progress of hostilities
The Soviet-Finnish war began on November 30, 1939. Obviously, the Soviet command was counting on a quick and victorious war with minimal losses. However, the Finns themselves were also not going to surrender to the mercy of their big neighbor. The president of the country, the military Mannerheim, who, by the way, received his education in the Russian Empire, planned to delay the Soviet troops with a massive defense for as long as possible, until the start of assistance from Europe. The complete quantitative advantage of the Soviet country in both human resources and equipment was obvious. The war for the USSR began with heavy fighting. Its first stage in historiography is usually dated from November 30, 1939 to February 10, 1940 - the time that became the bloodiest for the advancing Soviet troops. The line of defense, called the Mannerheim Line, became an insurmountable obstacle for the Red Army soldiers. Fortified pillboxes and bunkers, Molotov cocktails, which later became known as Molotov cocktails, severe frosts that reached 40 degrees - all this is considered to be the main reasons for the failures of the USSR in the Finnish campaign.
The turning point in the war and its end
The second stage of the war begins on February 11, the moment of the general offensive of the Red Army. At this time, a significant amount of manpower and equipment was concentrated on the Karelian Isthmus. For several days before the attack, the Soviet army carried out artillery preparations, subjecting the entire surrounding area to heavy bombardment.
As a result of the successful preparation of the operation and the further assault, the first line of defense was broken within three days, and by February 17 the Finns had completely switched to the second line. During February 21-28, the second line was also broken. On March 13, the Soviet-Finnish war ended. On this day, the USSR stormed Vyborg. The leaders of Suomi realized that there was no longer a chance to defend themselves after a breakthrough in the defense, and the Soviet-Finnish war itself was doomed to remain a local conflict, without outside support, which is what Mannerheim was counting on. Given this, a request for negotiations was a logical conclusion.
Results of the war
As a result of protracted bloody battles, the USSR achieved satisfaction of all its claims. In particular, the country became the sole owner of the waters of Lake Ladoga. In total, the Soviet-Finnish war guaranteed the USSR an increase in territory by 40 thousand square meters. km. As for losses, this war cost the Soviet country dearly. According to some estimates, about 150 thousand people left their lives in the snows of Finland. Was this company necessary? Considering the fact that Leningrad was the target of German troops almost from the very beginning of the attack, it is worth admitting that yes. However, heavy losses seriously cast doubt on the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army. By the way, the end of hostilities did not mark the end of the conflict. Soviet-Finnish War 1941-1944 became a continuation of the epic, during which the Finns, trying to regain what they had lost, failed again.
Little-known details of the military campaign that was eclipsed by the Great Patriotic War
This year, November 30, will mark 76 years since the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–1940, which in our country and beyond its borders is often called the Winter War. Unleashed right on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the Winter War remained in its shadow for a very long time. And not only because memories of it were quickly eclipsed by the tragedies of the Great Patriotic War, but also because of all the wars in which the Soviet Union participated in one way or another, this was the only war started on Moscow’s initiative.
Move the border west
The Winter War became in the literal sense of the word “a continuation of politics by other means.” After all, it began immediately after several rounds of peace negotiations stalled, during which the USSR tried to move the northern border as far as possible from Leningrad and Murmansk, in return offering Finland land in Karelia. The immediate reason for the outbreak of hostilities was the Maynila Incident: an artillery shelling of Soviet troops on the border with Finland on November 26, 1939, which killed four servicemen. Moscow placed responsibility for the incident on Helsinki, although later the guilt of the Finnish side was subject to reasonable doubt.
Four days later, the Red Army crossed the border into Finland, thus beginning the Winter War. Its first stage - from November 30, 1939 to February 10, 1940 - was extremely unsuccessful for the Soviet Union. Despite all efforts, Soviet troops failed to break through the Finnish defense line, which by that time was already being called the Mannerheim Line. In addition, during this period, the shortcomings of the existing system of organization of the Red Army most clearly manifested themselves: poor controllability at the level of middle and junior echelons and lack of initiative among commanders at this level, poor communication between units, types and branches of the military.
The second stage of the war, which began on February 11, 1940 after a massive ten-day preparation, ended in victory. By the end of February, the Red Army managed to reach all those lines that it had planned to reach before the new year, and push the Finns back to the second line of defense, constantly creating the threat of encirclement of their troops. On March 7, 1940, the Finnish government sent a delegation to Moscow to participate in peace negotiations, which ended with the conclusion of a peace treaty on March 12. It stipulated that all territorial claims of the USSR (the same ones that were discussed during the negotiations on the eve of the war) would be satisfied. As a result, the border on the Karelian Isthmus moved away from Leningrad by 120–130 kilometers, the Soviet Union received the entire Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg, the Vyborg Bay with islands, the western and northern coasts of Lake Ladoga, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, part of the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas, and the peninsula Hanko and the maritime area around it were leased to the USSR for 30 years.
For the Red Army, victory in the Winter War came at a high price: irrevocable losses, according to various sources, ranged from 95 to 167 thousand people, and another 200–300 thousand people were wounded and frostbitten. In addition, Soviet troops suffered heavy losses in equipment, primarily in tanks: of the almost 2,300 tanks that went into battle at the beginning of the war, about 650 were completely destroyed and 1,500 were knocked out. In addition, the moral losses were also heavy: both the army command and the entire country, despite massive propaganda, understood that the military power of the USSR was in urgent need of modernization. It began during the Winter War, but, alas, was never completed until June 22, 1941.
Between truth and fiction
The history and details of the Winter War, which quickly faded in the light of the events of the Great Patriotic War, have since been revised and rewritten, clarified and double-checked more than once. As happens with any major historical events, the Russian-Finnish war of 1939–1940 also became the object of political speculation both in the Soviet Union and beyond its borders - and remains so to this day. After the collapse of the USSR, it became fashionable to review the results of all key events in the history of the Soviet Union, and the Winter War was no exception. In post-Soviet historiography, the figures for the losses of the Red Army and the number of destroyed tanks and aircraft increased significantly, while the Finnish losses, on the contrary, were significantly downplayed (contrary to even the official data of the Finnish side, which against this background remained practically unchanged).
Unfortunately, the further the Winter War moves away from us in time, the less likely it is that we will ever know the whole truth about it. The last direct participants and eyewitnesses pass away, to please the political winds, documents and material evidence are shuffled and disappeared, or even new ones, often false, appear. But some facts about the Winter War are already so firmly fixed in world history that they cannot be changed for any reason. We will discuss the ten most notable of them below.
Mannerheim Line
Under this name, a strip of fortifications erected by Finland along a 135-kilometer stretch along the border with the USSR went down in history. The flanks of this line abutted the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. At the same time, the Mannerheim line had a depth of 95 kilometers and consisted of three consecutive defense lines. Since the line, despite its name, began to be built long before Baron Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim became commander-in-chief of the Finnish army, its main components were old single-aspect long-term firing points (pillboxes), capable of conducting only frontal fire. There were about seven dozen of these in the line. Another fifty bunkers were more modern and could fire on the flanks of the attacking troops. In addition, obstacle lines and anti-tank structures were actively used. In particular, in the support zone there were 220 km of wire barriers in several dozen rows, 80 km of anti-tank granite obstacles, as well as anti-tank ditches, walls and minefields. Official historiography on both sides of the conflict emphasized that Mannerheim's line was practically irresistible. However, after the command system of the Red Army was rebuilt, and the tactics of storming the fortifications were revised and linked to preliminary artillery preparation and tank support, it took only three days to break through.
The day after the start of the Winter War, Moscow radio announced the creation of the Finnish Democratic Republic in the city of Terijoki on the Karelian Isthmus. It lasted as long as the war itself: until March 12, 1940. During this time, only three countries in the world agreed to recognize the newly formed state: Mongolia, Tuva (at that time not yet part of the Soviet Union) and the USSR itself. Actually, the government of the new state was formed from its citizens and Finnish emigrants living on Soviet territory. It was headed, and at the same time became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by one of the leaders of the Third Communist International, a member of the Communist Party of Finland, Otto Kuusinen. On the second day of its existence, the Finnish Democratic Republic concluded a treaty of mutual assistance and friendship with the USSR. Among its main points, all the territorial demands of the Soviet Union, which became the cause of the war with Finland, were taken into account.
Sabotage war
Since the Finnish army entered the war, although mobilized, but clearly losing to the Red Army both in numbers and technical equipment, the Finns relied on defense. And its essential element was the so-called mine warfare - more precisely, the technology of continuous mining. As Soviet soldiers and officers who participated in the Winter War recalled, they could not even imagine that almost everything that the human eye could see could be mined. “Stairs and thresholds of houses, wells, forest clearings and edges, roadsides were literally strewn with mines. Here and there, abandoned as if in a hurry, bicycles, suitcases, gramophones, watches, wallets, and cigarette cases were lying around. As soon as they were moved, there was an explosion,” this is how they describe their impressions. The actions of the Finnish saboteurs were so successful and demonstrative that many of their techniques were promptly adopted by the Soviet military and intelligence services. It can be said that the partisan and sabotage war that unfolded a year and a half later in the occupied territory of the USSR was, to a large extent, conducted according to the Finnish model.
Baptism of fire for heavy KV tanks
Single-turret heavy tanks of a new generation appeared shortly before the start of the Winter War. The first copy, which was actually a smaller version of the SMK heavy tank - "Sergei Mironovich Kirov" - and differed from it by the presence of only one turret, was manufactured in August 1939. It was this tank that ended up in the Winter War in order to be tested in a real battle, which it entered on December 17 during the breakthrough of the Khottinensky fortified area of the Mannerheim Line. It is noteworthy that of the six crew members of the first KV, three were testers at the Kirov Plant, which was producing new tanks. The tests were considered successful, the tank showed its best performance, but the 76-mm cannon with which it was armed was not enough to combat pillboxes. As a result, the KV-2 tank was hastily developed, armed with a 152-mm howitzer, which no longer managed to take part in the Winter War, but forever entered the history of world tank building.
How England and France prepared to fight the USSR
London and Paris supported Helsinki from the very beginning, although they did not go beyond military-technical assistance. In total, England and France, together with other countries, transferred 350 combat aircraft, approximately 500 field guns, over 150 thousand firearms, ammunition and other ammunition to Finland. In addition, volunteers from Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, France and Sweden fought on the Finnish side. When, at the end of February, the Red Army finally broke the resistance of the Finnish army and began to develop an offensive deep into the country, Paris began to openly prepare for direct participation in the war. On March 2, France announced its readiness to send an expeditionary force of 50 thousand soldiers and 100 bombers to Finland. After this, Britain also announced its readiness to send its expeditionary force of 50 bombers to the Finns. A meeting on this issue was scheduled for March 12 - but did not take place, since on the same day Moscow and Helsinki signed a peace treaty.
There is no escape from the “cuckoos”?
The Winter War was the first campaign in which snipers participated en masse. Moreover, one might say, only on one side - the Finnish one. It was the Finns in the winter of 1939–1940 who demonstrated how effective snipers could be in modern warfare. The exact number of snipers remains unknown to this day: they will begin to be identified as a separate military specialty only after the start of the Great Patriotic War, and even then not in all armies. However, we can say with confidence that the number of sharp shooters on the Finnish side was in the hundreds. True, not all of them used special rifles with a sniper scope. Thus, the most successful sniper of the Finnish army, Corporal Simo Häyhä, who in just three months of hostilities brought the number of his victims to five hundred, used an ordinary rifle with open sights. As for the “cuckoos” - snipers shooting from the crowns of trees, about which there are an incredible number of myths, their existence is not confirmed by documents from either the Finnish or Soviet side. Although there were many stories in the Red Army about “cuckoos” tied or chained to trees and freezing there with rifles in their hands.
The first Soviet submachine guns of the Degtyarev system - PPD - were put into service in 1934. However, they did not have time to seriously develop their production. On the one hand, for a long time the command of the Red Army seriously considered this type of firearm to be useful only in police operations or as an auxiliary weapon, and on the other hand, the first Soviet submachine gun was distinguished by its complexity of design and difficulty in manufacturing. As a result, the plan to produce PPD for 1939 was withdrawn, and all already produced copies were transferred to warehouses. And only after, during the Winter War, the Red Army encountered Finnish Suomi submachine guns, of which there were almost three hundred in each Finnish division, did the Soviet military quickly begin to return weapons so useful in close combat.
Marshal Mannerheim: who served Russia and fought with it
The successful opposition to the Soviet Union in the Winter War in Finland was and is considered primarily the merit of the commander-in-chief of the Finnish army, Field Marshal Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim. Meanwhile, until October 1917, this outstanding military leader held the rank of lieutenant general of the Russian Imperial Army and was one of the most prominent division commanders of the Russian army during the First World War. By this time, Baron Mannerheim, a graduate of the Nicholas Cavalry School and the Officer Cavalry School, had participated in the Russo-Japanese War and organized a unique expedition to Asia in 1906–1908, which made him a member of the Russian Geographical Society - and one of the most prominent Russians intelligence officers of the early twentieth century. After the October Revolution, Baron Mannerheim, maintaining his oath to Emperor Nicholas II, whose portrait, by the way, hung on the wall of his office all his life, resigned and moved to Finland, in whose history he played such an outstanding role. It is noteworthy that Mannerheim retained his political influence both after the Winter War and after Finland's exit from World War II, becoming the country's first president from 1944 to 1946.
Where was the Molotov cocktail invented?
The Molotov cocktail became one of the symbols of the heroic resistance of the Soviet people to the fascist armies at the first stage of the Great Patriotic War. But we must admit that such a simple and effective anti-tank weapon was not invented in Russia. Alas, the Soviet soldiers, who so successfully used this remedy in 1941–1942, had the opportunity to first test it on themselves. The Finnish army, which did not have a sufficient supply of anti-tank grenades, when faced with tank companies and battalions of the Red Army, was simply forced to resort to Molotov cocktails. During the Winter War, the Finnish army received more than 500 thousand bottles of the mixture, which the Finns themselves called the “Molotov cocktail,” hinting that it was this dish they prepared for one of the leaders of the USSR, who, in a polemical frenzy, promised that the very next day after the start of the war he would dine in Helsinki.
Who fought against their own
During the Russian-Finnish War of 1939–1940, both sides - the Soviet Union and Finland - used units in which collaborators served as part of their troops. On the Soviet side, the Finnish People's Army took part in the battles - the armed force of the Finnish Democratic Republic, recruited from Finns and Karelians living on the territory of the USSR and serving in the troops of the Leningrad Military District. By February 1940, its number reached 25 thousand people, who, according to the plan of the USSR leadership, were supposed to replace the occupation forces on Finnish territory. And on the side of Finland, Russian volunteers fought, the selection and training of whom was carried out by the white émigré organization “Russian All-Military Union” (EMRO), created by Baron Peter Wrangel. In total, six detachments with a total number of about 200 people were formed from Russian emigrants and some of the captured Red Army soldiers who expressed a desire to fight against their former comrades, but only one of them, in which 30 people served, for several days at the very end of the Winter war participated in hostilities.
1939-1940 (Soviet-Finnish War, in Finland known as the Winter War) - an armed conflict between the USSR and Finland from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940.
Its reason was the desire of the Soviet leadership to move the Finnish border away from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in order to strengthen the security of the northwestern borders of the USSR, and the refusal of the Finnish side to do this. The Soviet government asked to lease parts of the Hanko Peninsula and some islands in the Gulf of Finland in exchange for a larger area of Soviet territory in Karelia, with the subsequent conclusion of a mutual assistance agreement.
The Finnish government believed that accepting Soviet demands would weaken the strategic position of the state and lead to Finland losing its neutrality and its subordination to the USSR. The Soviet leadership, in turn, did not want to give up its demands, which, in its opinion, were necessary to ensure the security of Leningrad.
The Soviet-Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus (Western Karelia) ran just 32 kilometers from Leningrad, the largest center of Soviet industry and the second largest city in the country.
The reason for the start of the Soviet-Finnish war was the so-called Maynila incident. According to the Soviet version, on November 26, 1939, at 15.45, Finnish artillery in the Mainila area fired seven shells at the positions of the 68th Infantry Regiment on Soviet territory. Three Red Army soldiers and one junior commander were allegedly killed. On the same day, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR addressed a note of protest to the Finnish government and demanded the withdrawal of Finnish troops from the border by 20-25 kilometers.
The Finnish government denied the shelling of Soviet territory and proposed that not only Finnish, but also Soviet troops be withdrawn 25 kilometers from the border. This formally equal demand was impossible to fulfill, because then Soviet troops would have to be withdrawn from Leningrad.
On November 29, 1939, the Finnish envoy in Moscow was handed a note about the severance of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Finland. On November 30 at 8 a.m., troops of the Leningrad Front received orders to cross the border with Finland. On the same day, Finnish President Kyusti Kallio declared war on the USSR.
During "perestroika" several versions of the Maynila incident became known. According to one of them, the shelling of the positions of the 68th regiment was carried out by a secret unit of the NKVD. According to another, there was no shooting at all, and in the 68th regiment on November 26 there were neither killed nor wounded. There were other versions that did not receive documentary confirmation.
From the very beginning of the war, the superiority of forces was on the side of the USSR. The Soviet command concentrated 21 rifle divisions, one tank corps, three separate tank brigades (a total of 425 thousand people, about 1.6 thousand guns, 1,476 tanks and about 1,200 aircraft) near the border with Finland. To support the ground forces, it was planned to attract about 500 aircraft and more than 200 ships of the Northern and Baltic fleets. 40% of Soviet forces were deployed on the Karelian Isthmus.
The group of Finnish troops had about 300 thousand people, 768 guns, 26 tanks, 114 aircraft and 14 warships. The Finnish command concentrated 42% of its forces on the Karelian Isthmus, deploying the Isthmus Army there. The remaining troops covered separate directions from the Barents Sea to Lake Ladoga.
The main line of defense of Finland was the “Mannerheim Line” - unique, impregnable fortifications. The main architect of Mannerheim's line was nature itself. Its flanks rested on the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. The shore of the Gulf of Finland was covered by large-caliber coastal batteries, and in the Taipale area on the shore of Lake Ladoga, reinforced concrete forts with eight 120- and 152-mm coastal guns were created.
The "Mannerheim Line" had a front width of 135 kilometers, a depth of up to 95 kilometers and consisted of a support strip (depth 15-60 kilometers), a main strip (depth 7-10 kilometers), a second strip 2-15 kilometers from the main one, and rear (Vyborg) defense line. Over two thousand long-term fire structures (DOS) and wood-earth fire structures (DZOS) were erected, which were united into strong points of 2-3 DOS and 3-5 DZOS in each, and the latter - into resistance nodes (3-4 strong points point). The main line of defense consisted of 25 resistance units, numbering 280 DOS and 800 DZOS. Strong points were defended by permanent garrisons (from a company to a battalion in each). In the gaps between the strong points and the nodes of resistance there were positions for field troops. Strongholds and positions of field troops were covered by anti-tank and anti-personnel barriers. In the support zone alone, 220 kilometers of wire barriers in 15-45 rows, 200 kilometers of forest debris, 80 kilometers of granite obstacles up to 12 rows, anti-tank ditches, scarps (anti-tank walls) and numerous minefields were created.
All fortifications were connected by a system of trenches and underground passages and were supplied with food and ammunition necessary for long-term independent combat.
On November 30, 1939, after a lengthy artillery preparation, Soviet troops crossed the border with Finland and began an offensive on the front from the Barents Sea to the Gulf of Finland. In 10-13 days, in separate directions they overcame the zone of operational obstacles and reached the main strip of the “Mannerheim Line”. Unsuccessful attempts to break through it continued for more than two weeks.
At the end of December, the Soviet command decided to stop further offensive on the Karelian Isthmus and begin systematic preparations for breaking through the Mannerheim Line.
The front went on the defensive. The troops were regrouped. The North-Western Front was created on the Karelian Isthmus. The troops received reinforcements. As a result, Soviet troops deployed against Finland numbered more than 1.3 million people, 1.5 thousand tanks, 3.5 thousand guns, and three thousand aircraft. By the beginning of February 1940, the Finnish side had 600 thousand people, 600 guns and 350 aircraft.
On February 11, 1940, the assault on the fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus resumed - the troops of the North-Western Front, after 2-3 hours of artillery preparation, went on the offensive.
Having broken through two lines of defense, Soviet troops reached the third on February 28. They broke the enemy's resistance, forced him to begin a retreat along the entire front and, developing an offensive, enveloped the Vyborg group of Finnish troops from the northeast, captured most of Vyborg, crossed the Vyborg Bay, bypassed the Vyborg fortified area from the northwest, and cut the highway to Helsinki.
The fall of the Mannerheim Line and the defeat of the main group of Finnish troops put the enemy in a difficult situation. Under these conditions, Finland turned to the Soviet government asking for peace.
On the night of March 13, 1940, a peace treaty was signed in Moscow, according to which Finland ceded about a tenth of its territory to the USSR and pledged not to participate in coalitions hostile to the USSR. On March 13, hostilities ceased.
In accordance with the agreement, the border on the Karelian Isthmus was moved away from Leningrad by 120-130 kilometers. The entire Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg, the Vyborg Bay with islands, the western and northern coasts of Lake Ladoga, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, and part of the Rybachy and Sredniy peninsulas went to the Soviet Union. The Hanko Peninsula and the maritime territory around it were leased to the USSR for 30 years. This improved the position of the Baltic Fleet.
As a result of the Soviet-Finnish war, the main strategic goal pursued by the Soviet leadership was achieved - to secure the northwestern border. However, the international position of the Soviet Union worsened: it was expelled from the League of Nations, relations with England and France worsened, and an anti-Soviet campaign unfolded in the West.
The losses of Soviet troops in the war were: irrevocable - about 130 thousand people, sanitary - about 265 thousand people. Irreversible losses of Finnish troops are about 23 thousand people, sanitary losses are over 43 thousand people.
(Additional
Soviet-Finnish War 1939-1940 |
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Eastern Finland, Karelia, Murmansk region |
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Victory of the USSR, Moscow Peace Treaty (1940) |
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Opponents |
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Finland |
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Swedish Volunteer Corps |
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Volunteers from Denmark, Norway, Hungary, etc. |
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Estonia (Intelligence transfer) |
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Commanders |
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K. G. E. Mannerheim |
K. E. Voroshilov |
Hjalmar Siilasvuo |
S. K. Timoshenko |
Strengths of the parties |
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According to Finnish data as of November 30, 1939: |
On November 30, 1939: 425,640 soldiers, 2,876 guns and mortars, 2,289 tanks, 2,446 aircraft. |
According to Finnish data as of November 30, 1939: 250 thousand soldiers, 30 tanks, 130 aircraft. |
According to Finnish data: 25,904 killed, 43,557 wounded, 1,000 prisoners. |
Soviet-Finnish war 1939-1940 (Finnish campaign, Finnish Talvisota - Winter War) - an armed conflict between the USSR and Finland in the period from November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940. The war ended with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. The USSR included 11% of the territory of Finland with the second largest city of Vyborg. 430 thousand Finnish residents lost their homes and moved deeper into Finland, which led to a number of social problems.
According to a number of historians, this offensive operation of the USSR against Finland dates back to the Second World War. In Soviet and Russian historiography, this war is viewed as a separate bilateral local conflict, not part of the Second World War, just like the undeclared war on Khalkhin Gol. The declaration of war led to the fact that in December 1939 the USSR, as a military aggressor, was expelled from the League of Nations. The immediate reason for the expulsion was the mass protests of the international community over the systematic bombing of civilian targets by Soviet aircraft, including the use of incendiary bombs. US President Roosevelt also joined the protests.
Background
Events of 1917-1937
On December 6, 1917, the Finnish Senate declared Finland an independent state. On December 18 (31), 1917, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR addressed the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) with a proposal to recognize the independence of the Republic of Finland. On December 22, 1917 (January 4, 1918), the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to recognize the independence of Finland. In January 1918, a civil war began in Finland, in which the “reds” (Finnish socialists), with the support of the RSFSR, were opposed by the “whites”, supported by Germany and Sweden. The war ended with the victory of the “whites”. After the victory in Finland, the Finnish “White” troops provided support to the separatist movement in Eastern Karelia. The first Soviet-Finnish war that began during the already civil war in Russia lasted until 1920, when the Tartu (Yuryev) Peace Treaty was concluded. Some Finnish politicians, such as Juho Paasikivi, regarded the treaty as "too good a peace", believing that great powers would only compromise when absolutely necessary. K. Mannerheim, former activists and leaders of separatists in Karelia, on the contrary, considered this world a disgrace and a betrayal of compatriots, and the representative of Rebol Hans Haakon (Bobi) Sieven (Fin. H.H.(Bobi) Siven) shot himself in protest. Mannerheim, in his “oath of the sword,” publicly spoke out for the conquest of Eastern Karelia, which was not previously part of the Principality of Finland.
Nevertheless, relations between Finland and the USSR after the Soviet-Finnish wars of 1918-1922, as a result of which the Pechenga region (Petsamo), as well as the western part of the Rybachy Peninsula and most of the Sredny Peninsula, were transferred to Finland in the Arctic, were not friendly, however openly hostile too.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the idea of general disarmament and security, embodied in the creation of the League of Nations, dominated government circles in Western Europe, especially in Scandinavia. Denmark disarmed completely, and Sweden and Norway significantly reduced their weapons. In Finland, the government and the majority of parliament members have consistently cut spending on defense and weapons. Since 1927, to save money, no military exercises have been held at all. The allocated money was barely enough to maintain the army. The parliament did not consider the cost of providing weapons. There were no tanks or military aircraft.
Nevertheless, the Defense Council was created, which on July 10, 1931 was headed by Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim. He was firmly convinced that as long as the Bolshevik government was in power in the USSR, the situation there was fraught with the most serious consequences for the whole world, primarily for Finland: “The plague coming from the east could be contagious.” In a conversation that same year with Risto Ryti, then the governor of the Bank of Finland and a well-known figure in the Progressive Party of Finland, Mannerheim outlined his thoughts on the need to quickly create a military program and finance it. However, Ryti, after listening to the argument, asked the question: “But what is the benefit of providing the military department with such large sums if no war is expected?”
In August 1931, after inspecting the defensive structures of the Enckel Line, created in the 1920s, Mannerheim became convinced of its unsuitability for modern warfare, both due to its unfortunate location and destruction by time.
In 1932, the Tartu Peace Treaty was supplemented by a non-aggression pact and extended until 1945.
In the Finnish budget of 1934, adopted after the signing of a non-aggression pact with the USSR in August 1932, the article on the construction of defensive structures on the Karelian Isthmus was crossed out.
V. Tanner noted that the Social Democratic faction of the parliament “...still believes that a prerequisite for maintaining the country’s independence is such progress in the well-being of the people and the general conditions of their life, in which every citizen understands that this is worth all the costs of defense.”
Mannerheim described his efforts as “a futile attempt to pull a rope through a narrow pipe filled with resin.” It seemed to him that all his initiatives to unite the Finnish people in order to take care of their home and ensure their future were met with a blank wall of misunderstanding and indifference. And he filed a petition for removal from his position.
Negotiations 1938-1939
Yartsev's negotiations in 1938-1939.
The negotiations were started at the initiative of the USSR, initially they were conducted in secret, which suited both sides: the Soviet Union preferred to officially maintain “free hands” in the face of an unclear prospect in relations with Western countries, and for Finnish officials the announcement of the fact of negotiations was inconvenient from the point of view from the point of view of domestic politics, since the population of Finland had a generally negative attitude towards the USSR.
On April 14, 1938, Second Secretary Boris Yartsev arrived in Helsinki, at the USSR Embassy in Finland. He immediately met with Foreign Minister Rudolf Holsti and outlined the position of the USSR: the USSR government is confident that Germany is planning an attack on the USSR and these plans include a side attack through Finland. That is why Finland’s attitude towards the landing of German troops is so important for the USSR. The Red Army will not wait on the border if Finland allows the landing. On the other hand, if Finland resists the Germans, the USSR will provide it with military and economic assistance, since Finland itself is not able to repel the German landing. Over the next five months, he held numerous conversations, including with Prime Minister Kajander and Minister of Finance Väinö Tanner. The Finnish side's guarantees that Finland would not allow its territorial integrity to be violated and Soviet Russia to be invaded through its territory were not enough for the USSR. The USSR demanded a secret agreement, obligatory in the event of a German attack, its participation in the defense of the Finnish coast, the construction of fortifications on the Åland Islands and the placement of Soviet military bases for the fleet and aviation on the island of Gogland (Finnish. Suursaari). No territorial demands were made. Finland rejected Yartsev's proposals at the end of August 1938.
In March 1939, the USSR officially announced that it wanted to lease the islands of Gogland, Laavansaari (now Moshchny), Tyutyarsaari and Seskar for 30 years. Later, as compensation, they offered Finland territories in Eastern Karelia. Mannerheim was ready to give up the islands, since they were still practically impossible to defend or use to protect the Karelian Isthmus. Negotiations ended without result on April 6, 1939.
On August 23, 1939, the USSR and Germany entered into a Non-Aggression Treaty. According to the secret additional protocol to the Treaty, Finland was included in the sphere of interests of the USSR. Thus, the contracting parties - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - provided each other with guarantees of non-interference in the event of war. Germany began World War II by attacking Poland a week later, on September 1, 1939. USSR troops entered Polish territory on September 17.
From September 28 to October 10, the USSR concluded mutual assistance agreements with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, according to which these countries provided the USSR with their territory for the deployment of Soviet military bases.
On October 5, the USSR invited Finland to consider the possibility of concluding a similar mutual assistance pact with the USSR. The Finnish government stated that the conclusion of such a pact would be contrary to its position of absolute neutrality. In addition, the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany had already eliminated the main reason for the Soviet Union's demands on Finland - the danger of a German attack through Finnish territory.
Moscow negotiations on the territory of Finland
On October 5, 1939, Finnish representatives were invited to Moscow for negotiations “on specific political issues.” The negotiations took place in three stages: October 12-14, November 3-4 and November 9.
For the first time, Finland was represented by the envoy, State Councilor J. K. Paasikivi, the Finnish Ambassador to Moscow Aarno Koskinen, Foreign Ministry official Johan Nykopp and Colonel Aladar Paasonen. On the second and third trips, Finance Minister Tanner was authorized to negotiate along with Paasikivi. On the third trip, State Councilor R. Hakkarainen was added.
At these negotiations, the proximity of the border to Leningrad was discussed for the first time. Joseph Stalin remarked: " We can’t do anything about geography, just like you... Since Leningrad cannot be moved, we will have to move the border further away from it».
The version of the agreement presented by the Soviet side looked like this:
- Finland transfers part of the Karelian Isthmus to the USSR.
- Finland agrees to lease the Hanko Peninsula to the USSR for a period of 30 years for the construction of a naval base and the deployment of a four-thousand-strong military contingent there for its defense.
- The Soviet navy is provided with ports on the Hanko Peninsula in Hanko itself and in Lappohja
- Finland transfers the islands of Gogland, Laavansaari (now Moshchny), Tytjarsaari and Seiskari to the USSR.
- The existing Soviet-Finnish non-aggression pact is supplemented by an article on mutual obligations not to join groups and coalitions of states hostile to one side or the other.
- Both states disarm their fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus.
- The USSR transfers to Finland territory in Karelia with a total area twice as large as the Finnish one received (5,529 km²).
- The USSR undertakes not to object to the armament of the Åland Islands by Finland's own forces.
The USSR proposed a territorial exchange in which Finland would receive larger territories in Eastern Karelia in Reboli and Porajärvi. These were territories that declared independence and tried to join Finland in 1918-1920, but according to the Tartu Peace Treaty they remained with Soviet Russia.
The USSR made its demands public before the third meeting in Moscow. Germany, which had concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR, advised the Finns to agree to them. Hermann Goering made it clear to Finnish Foreign Minister Erkko that the demands for military bases should be accepted and that Germany should not hope for help.
The State Council did not comply with all the demands of the USSR, since public opinion and parliament were against it. The Soviet Union was offered the cession of the islands of Suursaari (Gogland), Lavensari (Moshchny), Bolshoy Tyuters and Maly Tyuters, Penisaari (Small), Seskar and Koivisto (Berezovy) - a chain of islands that stretches along the main shipping fairway in the Gulf of Finland, and those closest to Leningrad territories in Terijoki and Kuokkala (now Zelenogorsk and Repino), deep into Soviet territory. The Moscow negotiations ended on November 9, 1939.
Previously, a similar proposal was made to the Baltic countries, and they agreed to provide the USSR with military bases on their territory. Finland chose something else: to defend the inviolability of its territory. On October 10, soldiers from the reserve were called up for unscheduled exercises, which meant full mobilization.
Sweden has made its position of neutrality clear, and there have been no serious assurances of assistance from other states.
Since mid-1939, military preparations began in the USSR. In June-July, the Main Military Council of the USSR discussed the operational plan for the attack on Finland, and from mid-September the concentration of units of the Leningrad Military District along the border began.
In Finland, the Mannerheim Line was being completed. On August 7-12, major military exercises were held on the Karelian Isthmus, where they practiced repelling aggression from the USSR. All military attaches were invited, except the Soviet one.
Declaring the principles of neutrality, the Finnish government refused to accept Soviet conditions - since, in their opinion, these conditions went far beyond the issue of ensuring the security of Leningrad - while at the same time trying to achieve the conclusion of a Soviet-Finnish trade agreement and Soviet consent to armament of the Åland Islands, whose demilitarized status was regulated by the Åland Convention of 1921. In addition, the Finns did not want to give the USSR their only defense against possible Soviet aggression - a strip of fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus, known as the “Mannerheim Line”.
The Finns insisted on their position, although on October 23-24, Stalin somewhat softened his position regarding the territory of the Karelian Isthmus and the size of the proposed garrison of the Hanko Peninsula. But these proposals were also rejected. “Do you want to provoke a conflict?” /IN. Molotov/. Mannerheim, with the support of Paasikivi, continued to insist to his parliament on the need to find a compromise, declaring that the army would hold out on the defensive for no more than two weeks, but to no avail.
On October 31, speaking at a session of the Supreme Council, Molotov outlined the essence of the Soviet proposals, while hinting that the hard line taken by the Finnish side was allegedly caused by the intervention of third-party states. The Finnish public, having first learned about the demands of the Soviet side, categorically opposed any concessions.
Negotiations resumed in Moscow on November 3 immediately reached a dead end. The Soviet side followed with a statement: “ We civilians have made no progress. Now the floor will be given to the soldiers».
However, Stalin made concessions the next day, offering to buy it instead of renting the Hanko Peninsula or even rent some coastal islands from Finland instead. Tanner, then Minister of Finance and part of the Finnish delegation, also believed that these proposals opened the way to reaching an agreement. But the Finnish government stood its ground.
On November 3, 1939, the Soviet newspaper Pravda wrote: “ We will throw to hell all the games of political gamblers and go our own way, no matter what, we will ensure the security of the USSR, no matter what, breaking down any and all obstacles on the way to the goal" On the same day, the troops of the Leningrad Military District and the Baltic Fleet received directives to prepare for military operations against Finland. At the last meeting, Stalin, at least outwardly, showed a sincere desire to achieve a compromise on the issue of military bases. But the Finns refused to discuss it, and on November 13 they left for Helsinki.
There was a temporary lull, which the Finnish government considered to confirm the correctness of its position.
On November 26, Pravda published an article “A buffoon at the post of Prime Minister,” which became the signal for the start of an anti-Finnish propaganda campaign. On the same day, there was an artillery shelling of the territory of the USSR near the settlement of Maynila, staged by the Soviet side - which is also confirmed by the relevant orders of Mannerheim, who was confident in the inevitability of a Soviet provocation and therefore had previously withdrawn troops from the border to a distance that would exclude the occurrence of misunderstandings. The USSR leadership blamed Finland for this incident. In Soviet information agencies, a new one was added to the terms “White Guard”, “White Pole”, “White emigrant” widely used to name hostile elements - “White Finn”.
On November 28, the denunciation of the Non-Aggression Treaty with Finland was announced, and on November 30, Soviet troops were given the order to go on the offensive.
Causes of the war
According to statements from the Soviet side, the USSR's goal was to achieve by military means what could not be done peacefully: to ensure the security of Leningrad, which was dangerously close to the border even in the event of war breaking out (in which Finland was ready to provide its territory to the enemies of the USSR as a springboard) would inevitably be captured in the first days (or even hours). In 1931, Leningrad was separated from the region and became a city of republican subordination. Part of the borders of some territories subordinate to the Leningrad City Council was also the border between the USSR and Finland.
Did the Government and Party do the right thing by declaring war on Finland? This question specifically concerns the Red Army. Could it be possible to do without war? It seems to me that it was impossible. It was impossible to do without war. The war was necessary, since peace negotiations with Finland did not produce results, and the security of Leningrad had to be ensured unconditionally, because its security is the security of our Fatherland. Not only because Leningrad represents 30-35 percent of the defense industry of our country and, therefore, the fate of our country depends on the integrity and safety of Leningrad, but also because Leningrad is the second capital of our country. Speech by I.V. Stalin at a meeting of commanding staff 04/17/1940 |
True, the very first demands of the USSR in 1938 did not mention Leningrad and did not require moving the border. Demands for the lease of Hanko, located hundreds of kilometers to the west, increased the security of Leningrad. The only constant in the demands was the following: to obtain military bases on the territory of Finland and near its coast and to oblige it not to ask for help from third countries.
Already during the war, two concepts emerged that are still being debated: one, that the USSR pursued its stated goals (ensuring the security of Leningrad), the second, that the true goal of the USSR was the Sovietization of Finland.
However, today there is a different division of concepts, namely on the principle of classifying a military conflict as a separate war or part of the Second World War. Which in turn present the USSR as a peace-loving country or as an aggressor and ally of Germany. At the same time, the Sovietization of Finland was only a cover for the USSR’s preparation for a lightning invasion and the liberation of Europe from German occupation with the subsequent Sovietization of all of Europe and the part of African countries occupied by Germany.
M.I. Semiryaga notes that on the eve of the war both countries had claims against each other. The Finns were afraid of the Stalinist regime and were well aware of the repressions against Soviet Finns and Karelians in the late 30s, the closure of Finnish schools, etc. The USSR, in turn, knew about the activities of ultranationalist Finnish organizations that aimed to “return” the Soviet Karelia. Moscow was also worried about Finland’s unilateral rapprochement with Western countries and, above all, with Germany, which Finland agreed to, in turn, because it saw the USSR as the main threat to itself. Finnish President P. E. Svinhuvud said in Berlin in 1937 that “Russia’s enemy must always be Finland’s friend.” In a conversation with the German envoy, he said: “The Russian threat to us will always exist. Therefore, it is good for Finland that Germany will be strong.” In the USSR, preparations for a military conflict with Finland began in 1936. On September 17, 1939, the USSR expressed support for Finnish neutrality, but literally on the same days (September 11-14) it began partial mobilization in the Leningrad Military District, which clearly indicated the preparation of a military solutions.
According to A. Shubin, before the signing of the Soviet-German Pact, the USSR undoubtedly sought only to ensure the security of Leningrad. Helsinki’s assurances of its neutrality did not satisfy Stalin, since, firstly, he considered the Finnish government to be hostile and ready to join any external aggression against the USSR, and secondly (and this was confirmed by subsequent events), the neutrality of small countries itself did not guarantee that they could not be used as a springboard for attack (as a result of occupation). After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the demands of the USSR became stricter, and here the question arises of what Stalin was really striving for at this stage. Theoretically, presenting his demands in the fall of 1939, Stalin could plan to carry out in the coming year in Finland: a) Sovietization and inclusion in the USSR (as happened with other Baltic countries in 1940), or b) a radical social reorganization with the preservation of formal signs of independence and political pluralism (as was done after the war in the Eastern European so-called “people's democracies”, or in) Stalin could only plan for now to strengthen his positions on the northern flank of a potential theater of military operations, without risking interfering in internal affairs for now Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. M. Semiryaga believes that in order to determine the nature of the war against Finland, “it is not necessary to analyze the negotiations of the autumn of 1939. To do this, you just need to know the general concept of the world communist movement of the Comintern and the Stalinist concept - great power claims to those regions that were previously part of the Russian Empire... And the goals were to annex the whole of Finland. And there is no point in talking about 35 kilometers to Leningrad, 25 kilometers to Leningrad...” Finnish historian O. Manninen believes that Stalin sought to deal with Finland according to the same scenario, which was ultimately implemented with the Baltic countries. “Stalin’s desire to “resolve issues peacefully” was the desire to peacefully create a socialist regime in Finland. And at the end of November, starting the war, he wanted to achieve the same thing through occupation. “The workers themselves had to decide whether to join the USSR or found their own socialist state.” However, O. Manninen notes, since these plans of Stalin were not formally recorded, this view will always remain in the status of an assumption and not a provable fact. There is also a version that, putting forward claims to border lands and a military base, Stalin, like Hitler in Czechoslovakia, sought to first disarm his neighbor, taking away his fortified territory, and then capture him.
An important argument in favor of the theory of Sovietization of Finland as the goal of the war is the fact that on the second day of the war, a puppet Terijoki government was created on the territory of the USSR, headed by the Finnish communist Otto Kuusinen. On December 2, the Soviet government signed a mutual assistance agreement with the Kuusinen government and, according to Ryti, refused any contact with the legitimate government of Finland led by Risto Ryti.
We can assume with a great deal of confidence: if things at the front had gone according to the operational plan, then this “government” would have arrived in Helsinki with a specific political goal - to unleash a civil war in the country. After all, the appeal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Finland directly called […] to overthrow the “government of executioners.” Kuusinen’s address to the soldiers of the Finnish People’s Army directly stated that they were entrusted with the honor of hoisting the banner of the Democratic Republic of Finland on the building of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. However, in reality, this “government” was used only as a means, although not very effective, for political pressure on the legitimate government of Finland. It fulfilled this modest role, which, in particular, is confirmed by Molotov’s statement to the Swedish envoy in Moscow, Assarsson, on March 4, 1940, that if the Finnish government continues to object to the transfer of Vyborg and Sortavala to the Soviet Union, then the subsequent Soviet peace terms will be even tougher and the USSR will then agree to a final agreement with the “government” of Kuusinen M. I. Semiryaga. "Secrets of Stalin's diplomacy. 1941-1945" |
A number of other measures were also taken, in particular, among the Soviet documents on the eve of the war there are detailed instructions on the organization of the “Popular Front” in the occupied territories. M. Meltyukhov, on this basis, sees in Soviet actions a desire to Sovietize Finland through an intermediate stage of a left-wing “people's government”. S. Belyaev believes that the decision to Sovietize Finland is not evidence of the original plan to seize Finland, but was made only on the eve of the war due to the failure of attempts to agree on changing the border.
According to A. Shubin, Stalin’s position in the fall of 1939 was situational, and he maneuvered between the minimum program - ensuring the security of Leningrad, and the maximum program - establishing control over Finland. Stalin did not strive directly for the Sovietization of Finland, as well as the Baltic countries, at that moment, since he did not know how the war in the West would end (indeed, in the Baltics, decisive steps towards Sovietization were taken only in June 1940, that is, immediately after the defeat of France took place). Finland's resistance to Soviet demands forced him to adopt a tough military option at an unfavorable moment for him (in winter). Ultimately, he ensured that he at least completed the minimum program.
Strategic plans of the parties
USSR plan
The plan for the war with Finland provided for the deployment of military operations in three directions. The first of them was on the Karelian Isthmus, where it was planned to conduct a direct breakthrough of the Finnish defense line (which during the war was called the “Mannerheim Line”) in the direction of Vyborg, and north of Lake Ladoga.
The second direction was central Karelia, adjacent to that part of Finland where its latitudinal extent was the smallest. It was planned here, in the Suomussalmi-Raate region, to cut the country's territory in two and enter the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia into the city of Oulu. The selected and well-equipped 44th Division was intended for the parade in the city.
Finally, in order to prevent counterattacks and possible landings of Finland's Western allies from the Barents Sea, it was planned to conduct military operations in Lapland.
The main direction was considered to be the direction to Vyborg - between Vuoksa and the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Here, after successfully breaking through the defense line (or bypassing the line from the north), the Red Army received the opportunity to wage war on a territory convenient for tanks to operate, which did not have serious long-term fortifications. In such conditions, a significant advantage in manpower and an overwhelming advantage in technology could manifest itself in the most complete way. After breaking through the fortifications, it was planned to launch an attack on Helsinki and achieve a complete cessation of resistance. At the same time, the actions of the Baltic Fleet and access to the Norwegian border in the Arctic were planned. This would make it possible to ensure a quick capture of Norway in the future and stop the supply of iron ore to Germany.
The plan was based on a misconception about the weakness of the Finnish army and its inability to resist for a long time. The estimate of the number of Finnish troops also turned out to be incorrect: “ it was believed that the Finnish army in wartime would have up to 10 infantry divisions and a dozen and a half separate battalions" In addition, the Soviet command did not have information about the line of fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus, and by the beginning of the war they had only “sketchy intelligence information” about them. Thus, even at the height of the fighting on the Karelian Isthmus, Meretskov doubted that the Finns had long-term structures, although he was reported about the existence of the Poppius (Sj4) and Millionaire (Sj5) pillboxes.
Finland plan
In the direction of the main attack correctly determined by Mannerheim, it was supposed to detain the enemy for as long as possible.
The Finnish defense plan north of Lake Ladoga was to stop the enemy on the line Kitelya (Pitkäranta area) - Lemetti (near Lake Siskijärvi). If necessary, the Russians were to be stopped further north at Lake Suoyarvi in echelon positions. Before the war, a railway line from the Leningrad-Murmansk railway was built here and large reserves of ammunition and fuel were created. Therefore, the Finns were surprised when seven divisions were brought into battle on the northern shore of Ladoga, the number of which was increased to 10.
The Finnish command hoped that all the measures taken would guarantee rapid stabilization of the front on the Karelian Isthmus and active containment on the northern section of the border. It was believed that the Finnish army would be able to independently restrain the enemy for up to six months. According to the strategic plan, it was supposed to wait for help from the West, and then carry out a counter-offensive in Karelia.
Armed forces of opponents
The Finnish army entered the war poorly armed - the list below indicates how many days of the war the supplies available in warehouses lasted:
- cartridges for rifles, machine guns and machine guns - for 2.5 months;
- shells for mortars, field guns and howitzers - for 1 month;
- fuels and lubricants - for 2 months;
- aviation gasoline - for 1 month.
The Finnish military industry was represented by one state-owned cartridge factory, one gunpowder factory and one artillery factory. The overwhelming superiority of the USSR in aviation made it possible to quickly disable or significantly complicate the work of all three.
The Finnish division included: headquarters, three infantry regiments, one light brigade, one field artillery regiment, two engineering companies, one communications company, one engineer company, one quartermaster company.
The Soviet division included: three infantry regiments, one field artillery regiment, one howitzer artillery regiment, one battery of anti-tank guns, one reconnaissance battalion, one communications battalion, one engineering battalion.
The Finnish division was inferior to the Soviet one both in numbers (14,200 versus 17,500) and in firepower, as can be seen from the following comparative table:
Statistics |
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Finnish division |
Soviet division |
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Rifles |
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Submachine guns |
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Automatic and semi-automatic rifles |
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7.62 mm machine guns |
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12.7 mm machine guns |
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Anti-aircraft machine guns (four-barreled) |
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Dyakonov rifle grenade launchers |
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Mortars 81−82 mm |
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Mortars 120 mm |
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Field artillery (37-45 mm caliber guns) |
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Field artillery (75-90 mm caliber guns) |
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Field artillery (105-152 mm caliber guns) |
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Armored vehicles |
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The Soviet division was twice as powerful as the Finnish division in terms of the total firepower of machine guns and mortars, and three times as powerful in artillery firepower. The Red Army did not have machine guns in service, but this was partially compensated by the presence of automatic and semi-automatic rifles. Artillery support for Soviet divisions was carried out at the request of the high command; They had at their disposal numerous tank brigades, as well as an unlimited amount of ammunition.
On the Karelian Isthmus, Finland’s line of defense was the “Mannerheim Line,” consisting of several fortified defensive lines with concrete and wood-earth firing points, communication trenches, and anti-tank barriers. In a state of combat readiness there were 74 old (since 1924) single-embrasure machine-gun bunkers for frontal fire, 48 new and modernized bunkers that had from one to four machine-gun embrasures for flanking fire, 7 artillery bunkers and one machine-gun-artillery caponier. In total, 130 long-term fire structures were located along a line about 140 km long from the shore of the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga. In 1939, the most modern fortifications were created. However, their number did not exceed 10, since their construction was at the limit of the state’s financial capabilities, and the people called them “millionaires” due to their high cost.
The northern coast of the Gulf of Finland was fortified with numerous artillery batteries on the shore and on the coastal islands. A secret agreement was concluded between Finland and Estonia on military cooperation. One of the elements was to coordinate the fire of Finnish and Estonian batteries with the aim of completely blocking the Soviet fleet. This plan did not work: by the beginning of the war, Estonia had provided its territories for military bases of the USSR, which were used by Soviet aviation for air strikes on Finland.
On Lake Ladoga, the Finns also had coastal artillery and warships. The section of the border north of Lake Ladoga was not fortified. Here, preparations were made in advance for partisan actions, for which there were all the conditions: wooded and swampy terrain, where the normal use of military equipment is impossible, narrow dirt roads and ice-covered lakes, where enemy troops are very vulnerable. At the end of the 30s, many airfields were built in Finland to accommodate aircraft from the Western Allies.
Finland began building its navy with coastal defense ironclads (sometimes incorrectly called "battleships"), adapted for maneuvering and fighting in skerries. Their main dimensions: displacement - 4000 tons, speed - 15.5 knots, armament - 4x254 mm, 8x105 mm. The battleships Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen were laid down in August 1929 and accepted into the Finnish Navy in December 1932.
Cause of war and breakdown of relations
The official reason for the war was the Maynila Incident: on November 26, 1939, the Soviet government addressed the Finnish government with an official note stating that “On November 26, at 15:45, our troops located on the Karelian Isthmus near the border of Finland, near the village of Mainila, were unexpectedly fired upon from Finnish territory by artillery fire. A total of seven gun shots were fired, as a result of which three privates and one junior commander were killed, seven privates and two command personnel were wounded. Soviet troops, having strict orders not to succumb to provocation, refrained from returning fire.". The note was drawn up in moderate terms and demanded the withdrawal of Finnish troops 20-25 km from the border in order to avoid a repetition of incidents. Meanwhile, Finnish border guards hastily conducted an investigation into the incident, especially since border posts witnessed the shelling. In a response note, the Finns stated that the shelling was recorded by Finnish posts, the shots were fired from the Soviet side, according to the observations and estimates of the Finns, from a distance of about 1.5-2 km to the southeast of the place where the shells fell, that on the border the Finns only have border guards troops and no guns, especially long-range ones, but that Helsinki is ready to begin negotiations on the mutual withdrawal of troops and begin a joint investigation of the incident. The USSR's response note read: “The denial on the part of the Finnish government of the fact of the outrageous artillery shelling of Soviet troops by Finnish troops, which resulted in casualties, cannot be explained otherwise than by a desire to mislead public opinion and mock the victims of the shelling.<…>The refusal of the Finnish government to withdraw troops who carried out a villainous attack on Soviet troops, and the demand for the simultaneous withdrawal of Finnish and Soviet troops, formally based on the principle of equality of arms, exposes the hostile desire of the Finnish government to keep Leningrad under threat.”. The USSR announced its withdrawal from the Non-Aggression Pact with Finland, citing the fact that the concentration of Finnish troops near Leningrad created a threat to the city and was a violation of the pact.
On the evening of November 29, the Finnish envoy in Moscow Aarno Yrjö-Koskinen (Finnish) Aarno Yrjo-Koskinen) was summoned to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where Deputy People's Commissar V.P. Potemkin handed him a new note. It stated that, in view of the current situation, the responsibility for which rests with the Finnish government, the USSR government recognized the need to immediately recall its political and economic representatives from Finland. This meant a break in diplomatic relations. On the same day, the Finns noted an attack on their border guards at Petsamo.
On the morning of November 30, the last step was taken. As stated in the official statement, “by order of the High Command of the Red Army, in view of new armed provocations on the part of the Finnish military, troops of the Leningrad Military District at 8 o’clock in the morning on November 30 crossed the border of Finland on the Karelian Isthmus and in a number of other areas”. That same day, Soviet aircraft bombed and machine-gunned Helsinki; At the same time, as a result of the pilots' error, mainly residential working areas were damaged. In response to protests from European diplomats, Molotov stated that Soviet planes were dropping bread on Helsinki for the starving population (after which Soviet bombs began to be called “Molotov bread baskets” in Finland). However, there was no official declaration of war.
In Soviet propaganda and then historiography, responsibility for the outbreak of the war was placed on Finland and Western countries: “ The imperialists were able to achieve some temporary success in Finland. At the end of 1939 they managed to provoke Finnish reactionaries to war against the USSR».
Mannerheim, who as commander-in-chief had the most reliable information about the incident near Maynila, reports:
Nikita Khrushchev says that in late autumn (meaning November 26) he dined at Stalin’s apartment with Molotov and Kuusinen. There was a conversation between the latter about the implementation of the decision that had already been made - presenting Finland with an ultimatum; At the same time, Stalin announced that Kuusinen would lead the new Karelo-Finnish SSR with the annexation of the “liberated” Finnish regions. Stalin believed “that after Finland is presented with ultimatum demands of a territorial nature and if it rejects them, military action will have to begin”, noting: “this thing starts today”. Khrushchev himself believed (in agreement with Stalin's sentiments, as he claims) that "It's enough to tell them loudly<финнам>, if they don’t hear, then fire the cannon once, and the Finns will raise their hands up and agree with the demands.”. Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Marshal G.I. Kulik (artilleryman) was sent to Leningrad in advance to organize a provocation. Khrushchev, Molotov and Kuusinen sat with Stalin for a long time, waiting for the Finns to answer; everyone was sure that Finland would be scared and agree to Soviet conditions.
It should be noted that internal Soviet propaganda did not advertise the Maynila incident, which served as a frankly formal reason: it emphasized that the Soviet Union was making a liberation campaign in Finland to help Finnish workers and peasants overthrow the oppression of the capitalists. A striking example is the song “Accept us, Suomi-beauty”:
We come to help you deal with it,
Pay with interest for the shame.
Welcome us, Suomi - beauty,
In a necklace of clear lakes!
At the same time, the mention in the text of “a low sun autumn"gives rise to the assumption that the text was written ahead of time in anticipation of an earlier start of the war.
War
After the severance of diplomatic relations, the Finnish government began evacuating the population from the border areas, mainly from the Karelian Isthmus and Northern Ladoga region. The bulk of the population gathered between November 29 and December 4.
The beginning of the battles
The first stage of the war is usually considered to be the period from November 30, 1939 to February 10, 1940. At this stage, the Red Army units were advancing in the territory from the Gulf of Finland to the shores of the Barents Sea.
The group of Soviet troops consisted of the 7th, 8th, 9th and 14th armies. The 7th Army advanced on the Karelian Isthmus, the 8th Army north of Lake Ladoga, the 9th Army in northern and central Karelia, and the 14th Army in Petsamo.
The advance of the 7th Army on the Karelian Isthmus was opposed by the Isthmus Army (Kannaksen armeija) under the command of Hugo Esterman. For the Soviet troops, these battles became the most difficult and bloody. The Soviet command had only “sketchy intelligence information about the concrete strips of fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus.” As a result, the allocated forces to break through the “Mannerheim Line” turned out to be completely insufficient. The troops turned out to be completely unprepared to overcome the line of bunkers and bunkers. In particular, there was little large-caliber artillery needed to destroy pillboxes. By December 12, units of the 7th Army were able to overcome only the line support zone and reach the front edge of the main defense line, but the planned breakthrough of the line on the move failed due to clearly insufficient forces and poor organization of the offensive. On December 12, the Finnish army carried out one of its most successful operations at Lake Tolvajärvi. Until the end of December, attempts at a breakthrough continued, but were unsuccessful.
The 8th Army advanced 80 km. It was opposed by the IV Army Corps (IV armeijakunta), commanded by Juho Heiskanen. Some of the Soviet troops were surrounded. After heavy fighting they had to retreat.
The advance of the 9th and 14th Armies was opposed by the Northern Finland Task Force (Pohjois-Suomen Ryhmä) under the command of Major General Viljo Einar Tuompo. Its area of responsibility was a 400-mile stretch of territory from Petsamo to Kuhmo. The 9th Army launched an offensive from White Sea Karelia. It penetrated the enemy’s defenses at 35-45 km, but was stopped. The forces of the 14th Army, advancing on the Petsamo area, achieved the greatest success. Interacting with the Northern Fleet, the troops of the 14th Army were able to capture the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas and the city of Petsamo (now Pechenga). Thus, they closed Finland's access to the Barents Sea.
Some researchers and memoirists try to explain the Soviet failures also by the weather: severe frosts (up to −40 °C) and deep snow - up to 2 m. However, both meteorological observation data and other documents refute this: until December 20, 1939, On the Karelian Isthmus, temperatures ranged from +1 to −23.4 °C. Then, until the New Year, the temperature did not drop below −23 °C. Frosts down to −40 °C began in the second half of January, when there was a lull at the front. Moreover, these frosts hindered not only the attackers, but also the defenders, as Mannerheim also wrote about. There was also no deep snow before January 1940. Thus, operational reports of Soviet divisions dated December 15, 1939 indicate a depth of snow cover of 10-15 cm. Moreover, successful offensive operations in February took place in more severe weather conditions.
Significant problems for the Soviet troops were caused by Finland's use of mine-explosive devices, including homemade ones, which were installed not only on the front line, but also in the rear of the Red Army, along troop routes. On January 10, 1940, in the report of the authorized People's Commissariat of Defense, Army Commander II Rank Kovalev, to the People's Commissariat of Defense, it was noted that, along with enemy snipers, the main losses to the infantry were caused by mines. Later, at a meeting of the commanding staff of the Red Army to collect experience in combat operations against Finland on April 14, 1940, the chief of engineers of the North-Western Front, brigade commander A.F. Khrenov, noted that in the front action zone (130 km) the total length of the minefields was 386 km, with In this case, mines were used in combination with non-explosive engineering obstacles.
An unpleasant surprise was also the massive use of Molotov cocktails by the Finns against Soviet tanks, later nicknamed the “Molotov cocktail.” During the 3 months of the war, the Finnish industry produced over half a million bottles.
During the war, Soviet troops were the first to use radar stations (RUS-1) in combat conditions to detect enemy aircraft.
Terijoki government
On December 1, 1939, a message was published in the Pravda newspaper stating that the so-called “People's Government” had been formed in Finland, headed by Otto Kuusinen. In historical literature, Kuusinen’s government is usually called “Terijoki”, since after the outbreak of the war it was located in the village of Terijoki (now the city of Zelenogorsk). This government was officially recognized by the USSR.
On December 2, negotiations took place in Moscow between the government of the Finnish Democratic Republic, headed by Otto Kuusinen, and the Soviet government, headed by V. M. Molotov, at which a Treaty of Mutual Assistance and Friendship was signed. Stalin, Voroshilov and Zhdanov also took part in the negotiations.
The main provisions of this agreement corresponded to the requirements that the USSR had previously presented to Finnish representatives (transfer of territories on the Karelian Isthmus, sale of a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, lease of Hanko). In exchange, the transfer of significant territories in Soviet Karelia and monetary compensation to Finland was provided. The USSR also pledged to support the Finnish People's Army with weapons, assistance in training specialists, etc. The agreement was concluded for a period of 25 years, and if one year before the expiration of the agreement, neither party declared its termination, it was automatically extended for another 25 years. The agreement came into force from the moment it was signed by the parties, and ratification was planned “as soon as possible in the capital of Finland - the city of Helsinki.”
In the following days, Molotov met with official representatives of Sweden and the United States, at which recognition of the People's Government of Finland was announced.
It was announced that the previous government of Finland had fled and, therefore, was no longer governing the country. The USSR declared at the League of Nations that from now on it would negotiate only with the new government.
RECEPTION Comrade MOLOTOV OF THE SWEDISH ENVIRONMENT OF VINTER Accepted Comrade Molotov on December 4, the Swedish envoy Mr. Winter announced the desire of the so-called “Finnish government” to begin new negotiations on an agreement with the Soviet Union. Comrade Molotov explained to Mr. Winter that the Soviet government did not recognize the so-called “Finnish government”, which had already left Helsinki and headed in an unknown direction, and therefore there could now be no question of any negotiations with this “government”. The Soviet government recognizes only the people's government of the Finnish Democratic Republic, has concluded an agreement of mutual assistance and friendship with it, and this is a reliable basis for the development of peaceful and favorable relations between the USSR and Finland. |
The “People's Government” was formed in the USSR from Finnish communists. The leadership of the Soviet Union believed that using in propaganda the fact of the creation of a “people's government” and the conclusion of a mutual assistance agreement with it, indicating friendship and alliance with the USSR while maintaining the independence of Finland, would influence the Finnish population, increasing the disintegration in the army and in the rear.
Finnish People's Army
On November 11, 1939, the formation of the first corps of the “Finnish People's Army” (originally the 106th Mountain Rifle Division), called “Ingria”, began, which was staffed by Finns and Karelians who served in the troops of the Leningrad Military District.
By November 26, there were 13,405 people in the corps, and in February 1940 - 25 thousand military personnel who wore their national uniform (made of khaki cloth and was similar to the Finnish uniform of the 1927 model; claims that it was a captured uniform of the Polish army , are erroneous - only part of the overcoats were used from it).
This “people’s” army was supposed to replace the occupation units of the Red Army in Finland and become the military support of the “people’s” government. “Finns” in confederate uniforms held a parade in Leningrad. Kuusinen announced that they would be given the honor of hoisting the red flag over the presidential palace in Helsinki. The Directorate of Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks prepared a draft instruction “Where to begin the political and organizational work of communists (note: the word “ communists“crossed out by Zhdanov) in areas liberated from white power,” which indicated practical measures to create a popular front in occupied Finnish territory. In December 1939, this instruction was used in work with the population of Finnish Karelia, but the withdrawal of Soviet troops led to the curtailment of these activities.
Despite the fact that the Finnish People's Army was not supposed to participate in hostilities, from the end of December 1939, FNA units began to be widely used to carry out combat missions. Throughout January 1940, scouts from the 5th and 6th regiments of the 3rd SD FNA carried out special sabotage missions in the 8th Army sector: they destroyed ammunition depots in the rear of Finnish troops, blew up railway bridges, and mined roads. FNA units took part in the battles for Lunkulansaari and the capture of Vyborg.
When it became clear that the war was dragging on and the Finnish people did not support the new government, Kuusinen's government faded into the shadows and was no longer mentioned in the official press. When Soviet-Finnish consultations on concluding peace began in January, it was no longer mentioned. Since January 25, the government of the USSR recognizes the government in Helsinki as the legitimate government of Finland.
Foreign military assistance to Finland
Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, detachments and groups of volunteers from around the world began to arrive in Finland. In total, over 11 thousand volunteers arrived in Finland, including 8 thousand from Sweden (Swedish Volunteer Corps), 1 thousand from Norway, 600 from Denmark, 400 from Hungary, 300 from the USA, as well as British citizens , Estonia and a number of other countries. A Finnish source puts the figure at 12 thousand foreigners who arrived in Finland to take part in the war.
Also among them were a small number of White Russian emigrants from the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), who were used as officers of the “Russian People's Detachments”, formed by the Finns from among the captured Red Army soldiers. Since the work on the formation of such detachments was started late, already at the end of the war, before the end of hostilities only one of them (35-40 people in number) managed to take part in the hostilities.
Great Britain supplied Finland with 75 aircraft (24 Blenheim bombers, 30 Gladiator fighters, 11 Hurricane fighters and 11 Lysander reconnaissance aircraft), 114 field guns, 200 anti-tank guns, 124 automatic small arms, 185 thousand artillery pieces shells, 17,700 air bombs, 10 thousand anti-tank mines.
France decided to supply Finland with 179 aircraft (transfer 49 fighters free of charge and sell another 130 aircraft of various types), but in fact during the war 30 Moran fighters were transferred free of charge and six more Caudron C.714 arrived after the end of hostilities and did not last in the war. participated; Finland also received 160 field guns, 500 machine guns, 795 thousand artillery shells, 200 thousand hand grenades and several thousand sets of ammunition. Also, France became the first country to officially allow the registration of volunteers to participate in the Finnish war.
Sweden supplied Finland with 29 aircraft, 112 field guns, 85 anti-tank guns, 104 anti-aircraft guns, 500 automatic small arms, 80 thousand rifles, as well as other military equipment and raw materials.
The Danish government sent a medical convoy and skilled workers to Finland, and also authorized a fundraising campaign for Finland.
Italy sent 35 Fiat G.50 fighters to Finland, but five aircraft were destroyed during their transportation and development by personnel.
The Union of South Africa donated 22 Gloster Gauntlet II fighters to Finland.
A representative of the US government made a statement that the entry of American citizens into the Finnish army does not contradict the US neutrality law, a group of American pilots was sent to Helsinki, and in January 1940 the US Congress approved the sale of 10 thousand rifles to Finland. Also, the United States sold Finland 44 Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters, but they arrived too late and did not have time to take part in hostilities.
Italian Foreign Minister G. Ciano in his diary mentions assistance to Finland from the Third Reich: in December 1939, the Finnish envoy to Italy reported that Germany had “unofficially” sent to Finland a batch of captured weapons captured during the Polish campaign.
In total, during the war, 350 aircraft, 500 guns, more than 6 thousand machine guns, about 100 thousand rifles and other weapons, as well as 650 thousand hand grenades, 2.5 million shells and 160 million cartridges were delivered to Finland.
Fighting in December - January
The course of hostilities revealed serious gaps in the organization of command and supply of the Red Army troops, poor preparedness of the command staff, and the lack of specific skills among the troops necessary to wage war in winter in Finland. By the end of December it became clear that fruitless attempts to continue the offensive would lead nowhere. There was relative calm at the front. Throughout January and early February, troops were strengthened, material supplies were replenished, and units and formations were reorganized. Units of skiers were created, methods of overcoming mined areas and obstacles, methods of combating defensive structures were developed, and personnel were trained. To storm the “Mannerheim Line”, the North-Western Front was created under the command of Army Commander 1st Rank Timoshenko and member of the Leningrad Military Council Zhdanov. The front included the 7th and 13th armies. In the border areas, a huge amount of work was carried out on the hasty construction and re-equipment of communication routes for uninterrupted supply of the active army. The total number of personnel was increased to 760.5 thousand people.
To destroy the fortifications on the Mannerheim Line, the first echelon divisions were assigned destruction artillery groups (AD) consisting of from one to six divisions in the main directions. In total, these groups had 14 divisions, which had 81 guns with calibers of 203, 234, 280 mm.
During this period, the Finnish side also continued to replenish troops and supply them with weapons coming from the allies. At the same time, fighting continued in Karelia. The formations of the 8th and 9th armies, operating along roads in continuous forests, suffered heavy losses. If in some places the achieved lines were held, in others the troops retreated, in some places even to the border line. The Finns widely used guerrilla warfare tactics: small autonomous detachments of skiers armed with machine guns attacked troops moving along the roads, mainly in the dark, and after the attacks they went into the forest where bases were established. Snipers caused heavy losses. According to the strong opinion of the Red Army soldiers (however, refuted by many sources, including Finnish ones), the greatest danger was posed by “cuckoo” snipers, who allegedly fired from the trees. The Red Army formations that broke through were constantly surrounded and forced their way back, often abandoning their equipment and weapons.
The Battle of Suomussalmi became widely known in Finland and abroad. The village of Suomussalmi was occupied on December 7 by the forces of the Soviet 163rd Infantry Division of the 9th Army, which was given the responsible task of striking Oulu, reaching the Gulf of Bothnia and, as a result, cutting Finland in half. However, the division was subsequently surrounded by (smaller) Finnish forces and cut off from supplies. The 44th Infantry Division was sent to help her, which, however, was blocked on the road to Suomussalmi, in a defile between two lakes near the village of Raate by the forces of two companies of the 27th Finnish regiment (350 people).
Without waiting for its approach, the 163rd Division at the end of December, under constant attacks from the Finns, was forced to break out of the encirclement, losing 30% of its personnel and most of its equipment and heavy weapons. After which the Finns transferred the released forces to encircle and liquidate the 44th Division, which by January 8 was completely destroyed in the battle on the Raat Road. Almost the entire division was killed or captured, and only a small part of the military personnel managed to escape from the encirclement, abandoning all equipment and convoys (the Finns received 37 tanks, 20 armored vehicles, 350 machine guns, 97 guns (including 17 howitzers), several thousand rifles, 160 vehicles , all radio stations). The Finns won this double victory with forces several times smaller than those of the enemy (11 thousand (according to other sources - 17 thousand) people with 11 guns versus 45-55 thousand with 335 guns, more than 100 tanks and 50 armored vehicles. The command of both divisions The commander and commissar of the 163rd division were removed from command, one regimental commander was shot; before the formation of their division, the command of the 44th division (brigade commander A.I. Vinogradov, regimental commissar Pakhomenko and chief of staff Volkov) was shot.
The victory at Suomussalmi had enormous moral significance for the Finns; Strategically, it buried plans for a breakthrough to the Gulf of Bothnia, which were extremely dangerous for the Finns, and so paralyzed Soviet troops in this area that they did not take active action until the very end of the war.
At the same time, south of Soumusalmi, in the Kuhmo area, the Soviet 54th Infantry Division was surrounded. The winner of Suomsalmi, Colonel Hjalmar Siilsavuo, was promoted to major general, but he was never able to liquidate the division, which remained surrounded until the end of the war. The 168th Rifle Division, which was advancing on Sortavala, was surrounded at Lake Ladoga and was also surrounded until the end of the war. There, in South Lemetti, at the end of December and beginning of January, the 18th Infantry Division of General Kondrashov, along with the 34th Tank Brigade of Brigade Commander Kondratyev, was surrounded. Already at the end of the war, on February 28, they tried to break out of the encirclement, but upon exiting they were defeated in the so-called “valley of death” near the city of Pitkäranta, where one of the two exiting columns was completely destroyed. As a result, out of 15,000 people, 1,237 people left the encirclement, half of them wounded and frostbitten. Brigade commander Kondratyev shot himself, Kondrashov managed to get out, but was soon shot, and the division was disbanded due to the loss of the banner. The number of deaths in the “valley of death” amounted to 10 percent of the total number of deaths in the entire Soviet-Finnish war. These episodes were vivid manifestations of the Finnish tactics, called mottitaktiikka, the tactics of motti - “pincers” (literally motti - a pile of firewood that is placed in the forest in groups, but at a certain distance from each other). Taking advantage of their advantage in mobility, detachments of Finnish skiers blocked roads clogged with sprawling Soviet columns, cut off the advancing groups and then wore them down with unexpected attacks from all sides, trying to destroy them. At the same time, the surrounded groups, unable, unlike the Finns, to fight off roads, usually huddled together and occupied a passive all-round defense, making no attempt to actively resist the attacks of Finnish partisan detachments. Their complete destruction was made difficult for the Finns only by the lack of mortars and heavy weapons in general.
On the Karelian Isthmus the front stabilized by December 26. Soviet troops began careful preparations for breaking through the main fortifications of the Mannerheim Line and conducted reconnaissance of the defense line. At this time, the Finns unsuccessfully tried to disrupt the preparations for a new offensive with counterattacks. So, on December 28, the Finns attacked the central units of the 7th Army, but were repulsed with heavy losses.
On January 3, 1940, off the northern tip of the island of Gotland (Sweden), with 50 crew members, the Soviet submarine S-2 sank (probably hit a mine) under the command of Lieutenant Commander I. A. Sokolov. S-2 was the only RKKF ship lost by the USSR.
Based on the Directive of the Headquarters of the Main Military Council of the Red Army No. 01447 of January 30, 1940, the entire remaining Finnish population was subject to eviction from the territory occupied by Soviet troops. By the end of February, 2080 people were evicted from the areas of Finland occupied by the Red Army in the combat zone of the 8th, 9th, 15th armies, of which: men - 402, women - 583, children under 16 years old - 1095. All resettled Finnish citizens were placed in three villages of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic: in Interposelok, Pryazhinsky district, in the village of Kovgora-Goimae, Kondopozhsky district, in the village of Kintezma, Kalevalsky district. They lived in barracks and were required to work in the forest at logging sites. They were allowed to return to Finland only in June 1940, after the end of the war.
February offensive of the Red Army
On February 1, 1940, the Red Army, having brought up reinforcements, resumed its offensive on the Karelian Isthmus across the entire width of the front of the 2nd Army Corps. The main blow was delivered in the direction of Summa. Artillery preparation also began. From that day on, every day for several days the troops of the North-Western Front under the command of S. Timoshenko rained down 12 thousand shells on the fortifications of the Mannerheim Line. Five divisions of the 7th and 13th armies carried out a private offensive, but were unable to achieve success.
On February 6, the attack on the Summa strip began. In the following days, the offensive front expanded both to the west and to the east.
On February 9, the commander of the troops of the North-Western Front, Army Commander of the first rank S. Timoshenko, sent directive No. 04606 to the troops, according to which, on February 11, after powerful artillery preparation, the troops of the North-Western Front were to go on the offensive.
On February 11, after ten days of artillery preparation, the general offensive of the Red Army began. The main forces were concentrated on the Karelian Isthmus. In this offensive, ships of the Baltic Fleet and the Ladoga Military Flotilla, created in October 1939, acted together with the ground units of the North-Western Front.
Since the attacks of Soviet troops on the Summa region were not successful, the main attack was moved east, to the direction of Lyakhde. At this point, the defending side suffered huge losses from artillery bombardment and the Soviet troops managed to break through the defense.
During three days of intense battles, the troops of the 7th Army broke through the first line of defense of the “Mannerheim Line”, introduced tank formations into the breakthrough, which began to develop their success. By February 17, units of the Finnish army were withdrawn to the second line of defense, as there was a threat of encirclement.
On February 18, the Finns closed the Saimaa Canal with the Kivikoski dam, and the next day the water began to rise in Kärstilänjärvi.
By February 21, the 7th Army reached the second defense line, and the 13th Army reached the main defense line north of Muolaa. By February 24, units of the 7th Army, interacting with coastal detachments of sailors of the Baltic Fleet, captured several coastal islands. On February 28, both armies of the Northwestern Front began an offensive in the zone from Lake Vuoksa to the Vyborg Bay. Seeing the impossibility of stopping the offensive, the Finnish troops retreated.
At the final stage of the operation, the 13th Army advanced in the direction of Antrea (modern Kamennogorsk), the 7th Army - towards Vyborg. The Finns put up fierce resistance, but were forced to retreat.
England and France: plans for military operations against the USSR
Great Britain provided assistance to Finland from the very beginning. On the one hand, the British government tried to avoid turning the USSR into an enemy, on the other hand, it was widely believed that because of the conflict in the Balkans with the USSR, “we would have to fight one way or another.” The Finnish representative in London, Georg Achates Gripenberg, approached Halifax on December 1, 1939, asking for permission to ship war materials to Finland, provided they were not re-exported to Nazi Germany (with which Britain was at war). The head of the Northern Department, Laurence Collier, believed that British and German goals in Finland could be compatible and wanted to involve Germany and Italy in the war against the USSR, while opposing, however, the proposed Finland used the Polish fleet (then under British control) to destroy Soviet ships. Thomas Snow (English) ThomasSnow), the British representative in Helsinki, continued to support the idea of an anti-Soviet alliance (with Italy and Japan), which he had expressed before the war.
Amid government disagreements, the British Army began supplying weapons, including artillery and tanks, in December 1939 (while Germany refrained from supplying heavy weapons to Finland).
When Finland requested bombers to attack Moscow and Leningrad and to destroy the railway to Murmansk, the latter idea received support from Fitzroy MacLean in the Northern Department: helping the Finns destroy the road would allow Britain to "avoid the same operation" later, independently and in less favorable conditions.” Maclean's superiors, Collier and Cadogan, agreed with Maclean's reasoning and requested an additional supply of Blenheim aircraft to Finland.
According to Craig Gerrard, plans for intervention in the war against the USSR, then emerging in Great Britain, illustrated the ease with which British politicians forgot about the war they were currently waging with Germany. By the beginning of 1940, the prevailing view in the Department of the North was that the use of force against the USSR was inevitable. Collier, as before, continued to insist that appeasement of the aggressors was wrong; Now the enemy, unlike his previous position, was not Germany, but the USSR. Gerrard explains the position of MacLean and Collier not on ideological, but on humanitarian grounds.
Soviet ambassadors in London and Paris reported that in “circles close to the government” there was a desire to support Finland in order to reconcile with Germany and send Hitler to the East. Nick Smart believes, however, that at a conscious level the arguments for intervention did not come from an attempt to exchange one war for another, but from the assumption that the plans of Germany and the USSR were closely linked.
From the French point of view, the anti-Soviet orientation also made sense due to the collapse of plans to prevent the strengthening of Germany through a blockade. Soviet supplies of raw materials meant that the German economy continued to grow, and the French began to realize that after some time, as a result of this growth, winning the war against Germany would become impossible. In such a situation, although moving the war to Scandinavia posed a certain risk, inaction was an even worse alternative. The Chief of the French General Staff, Gamelin, ordered the planning of an operation against the USSR with the aim of waging war outside French territory; plans were soon prepared.
Great Britain did not support some French plans: for example, an attack on oil fields in Baku, an attack on Petsamo using Polish troops (the Polish government in exile in London was formally at war with the USSR). However, Britain was also moving closer to opening a second front against the USSR. On 5 February 1940, at a joint war council (at which Churchill was unusually present but not speaking), it was decided to seek Norwegian and Swedish consent to a British-led operation in which an expeditionary force would land in Norway and move east .
French plans, as Finland's situation worsened, became more and more one-sided. So, in early March, Daladier, to the surprise of Great Britain, announced his readiness to send 50,000 soldiers and 100 bombers against the USSR if the Finns asked for it. The plans were canceled following the end of the war, to the relief of many involved in the planning.
The end of the war and the conclusion of peace
By March 1940, the Finnish government realized that, despite demands for continued resistance, Finland would not receive any military assistance other than volunteers and weapons from the allies. After breaking through the Mannerheim Line, Finland was obviously unable to hold back the advance of the Red Army. There was a real threat of a complete takeover of the country, which would be followed by either joining the USSR or a change of government to a pro-Soviet one.
Therefore, the Finnish government turned to the USSR with a proposal to begin peace negotiations. On March 7, a Finnish delegation arrived in Moscow, and already on March 12, a peace treaty was concluded, according to which hostilities ceased at 12 o'clock on March 13, 1940. Despite the fact that Vyborg, according to the agreement, was transferred to the USSR, Soviet troops launched an assault on the city on the morning of March 13.
According to J. Roberts, Stalin's conclusion of peace on relatively moderate terms could have been caused by the awareness of the fact that an attempt to forcefully Sovietize Finland would have encountered massive resistance from the Finnish population and the danger of Anglo-French intervention to help the Finns. As a result, the Soviet Union risked being drawn into a war against the Western powers on the German side.
For participation in the Finnish war, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to 412 military personnel, over 50 thousand were awarded orders and medals.
Results of the war
All officially declared territorial claims of the USSR were satisfied. According to Stalin, " the war ended in
3 months and 12 days, only because our army did a good job, because our political boom set for Finland turned out to be correct.”
The USSR gained full control over the waters of Lake Ladoga and secured Murmansk, which was located near Finnish territory (Rybachy Peninsula).
In addition, according to the peace treaty, Finland assumed the obligation to build a railway on its territory connecting the Kola Peninsula through Alakurtti with the Gulf of Bothnia (Tornio). But this road was never built.
On October 11, 1940, the Agreement between the USSR and Finland on the Åland Islands was signed in Moscow, according to which the USSR had the right to place its consulate on the islands, and the archipelago was declared a demilitarized zone.
US President Roosevelt declared a “moral embargo” on the Soviet Union, which had virtually no effect on the supply of technology from the United States. On March 29, 1940, Molotov stated in the Supreme Council that Soviet imports from the United States had even increased compared to the previous year, despite the obstacles put in place by the American authorities. In particular, the Soviet side complained about obstacles to Soviet engineers gaining access to aircraft factories. In addition, under various trade agreements in the period 1939-1941. The Soviet Union received 6,430 machine tools from Germany worth 85.4 million marks, which compensated for the decrease in equipment supplies from the United States.
Another negative result for the USSR was the formation among the leadership of a number of countries of the idea of the weakness of the Red Army. Information about the course, circumstances and results (a significant excess of Soviet losses over Finnish ones) of the Winter War strengthened the position of supporters of the war against the USSR in Germany. At the beginning of January 1940, the German envoy in Helsinki Blucher presented a memorandum to the Foreign Ministry with the following assessments: despite superiority in manpower and equipment, the Red Army suffered one defeat after another, left thousands of people in captivity, lost hundreds of guns, tanks, aircraft and decisively failed to conquer the territory. In this regard, German ideas about Bolshevik Russia should be reconsidered. The Germans proceeded from false premises when they believed that Russia was a first-class military factor. But in reality, the Red Army has so many shortcomings that it cannot cope even with a small country. Russia in reality does not pose a threat to such a great power as Germany, the rear in the East is safe, and therefore it will be possible to speak with the gentlemen in the Kremlin in a completely different language than it was in August - September 1939. For his part, Hitler, based on the results Winter War, called the USSR a colossus with feet of clay. Disdain for the fighting power of the Red Army became widespread. W. Churchill testifies that "failure of Soviet troops" caused in public opinion in England "contempt"; “In British circles many congratulated themselves on the fact that we were not very zealous in trying to win the Soviets to our side<во время переговоров лета 1939 г.>, and were proud of their foresight. People too hastily concluded that the purge destroyed the Russian army and that all this confirmed the organic rottenness and decline of the Russian state and social system.”.
On the other hand, the Soviet Union gained experience in waging war in winter, in wooded and swampy areas, experience in breaking through long-term fortifications and fighting an enemy using guerrilla warfare tactics. In clashes with Finnish troops equipped with the Suomi submachine gun, the importance of submachine guns, previously removed from service, was clarified: the production of PPD was hastily restored and technical specifications were given for the creation of a new submachine gun system, which resulted in the appearance of the PPSh.
Germany was bound by a treaty with the USSR and could not publicly support Finland, which it made clear even before the outbreak of hostilities. The situation changed after major defeats of the Red Army. In February 1940, Toivo Kivimäki (later ambassador) was sent to Berlin to test out possible changes. Relations were initially cool, but changed dramatically when Kivimäki announced Finland's intention to accept help from the Western Allies. On February 22, the Finnish envoy was urgently arranged for a meeting with Hermann Goering, the number two in the Reich. According to the memoirs of R. Nordström in the late 1940s, Goering unofficially promised Kivimäki that Germany would attack the USSR in the future: “ Remember that you should make peace on any terms. I guarantee that when in a short time we go to war against Russia, you will get everything back with interest" Kivimäki immediately reported this to Helsinki.
The results of the Soviet-Finnish war became one of the factors that determined the rapprochement between Finland and Germany; in addition, they could in a certain way influence the leadership of the Reich regarding plans for an attack on the USSR. For Finland, rapprochement with Germany became a means of containing the growing political pressure from the USSR. Finland's participation in World War II on the side of the Axis powers was called the "Continuation War" in Finnish historiography, in order to show the relationship with the Winter War.
Territorial changes
- Karelian Isthmus and Western Karelia. As a result of the loss of the Karelian Isthmus, Finland lost its existing defense system and began to rapidly build fortifications along the new border (Salpa Line), thereby moving the border from Leningrad from 18 to 150 km.
- Part of Lapland (Old Salla).
- The Petsamo (Pechenga) region, occupied by the Red Army during the war, was returned to Finland.
- Islands in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland (Gogland Island).
- Rent of the Hanko (Gangut) peninsula for 30 years.
In total, as a result of the Soviet-Finnish War, the Soviet Union acquired about 40 thousand square meters. km of Finnish territories. Finland reoccupied these territories in 1941, in the early stages of the Great Patriotic War, and in 1944 they again ceded to the USSR.
Finnish losses
Military
According to modern calculations:
- killed - ok. 26 thousand people (according to Soviet data in 1940 - 85 thousand people);
- wounded - 40 thousand people. (according to Soviet data in 1940 - 250 thousand people);
- prisoners - 1000 people.
Thus, the total losses in the Finnish troops during the war amounted to 67 thousand people. Brief information about each of the victims on the Finnish side was published in a number of Finnish publications.
Modern information about the circumstances of the death of Finnish military personnel:
- 16,725 killed in action, remains evacuated;
- 3,433 killed in action, remains not evacuated;
- 3671 died in hospitals from wounds;
- 715 died from non-combat causes (including disease);
- 28 died in captivity;
- 1,727 missing and declared dead;
- The cause of death for 363 military personnel is unknown.
In total, 26,662 Finnish military personnel were killed.
Civil
According to official Finnish data, during air raids and bombings of Finnish cities (including Helsinki), 956 people were killed, 540 were seriously and 1,300 slightly injured, 256 stone and about 1,800 wooden buildings were destroyed.
Losses of foreign volunteers
During the war, the Swedish Volunteer Corps lost 33 people killed and 185 wounded and frostbite (with frostbite making up the vast majority - about 140 people).
In addition, 1 Italian was killed - Sergeant Manzocchi
USSR losses
The first official figures for Soviet casualties in the war were published at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 26, 1940: 48,475 dead and 158,863 wounded, sick and frostbitten.
According to reports from the troops on March 15, 1940:
- wounded, sick, frostbitten - 248,090;
- killed and died during the sanitary evacuation stages - 65,384;
- died in hospitals - 15,921;
- missing - 14,043;
- total irrecoverable losses - 95,348.
Name lists
According to the lists of names compiled in 1949-1951 by the Main Personnel Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Ground Forces, the losses of the Red Army in the war were as follows:
- died and died from wounds during the sanitary evacuation stages - 71,214;
- died in hospitals from wounds and illnesses - 16,292;
- missing - 39,369.
In total, according to these lists, irretrievable losses amounted to 126,875 military personnel.
Other loss estimates
In the period from 1990 to 1995, new, often contradictory data about the losses of both the Soviet and Finnish armies appeared in Russian historical literature and in journal publications, and the general trend of these publications was the increasing number of Soviet losses from 1990 to 1995 and a decrease in Finnish. So, for example, in the articles of M. I. Semiryagi (1989) the number of killed Soviet soldiers was indicated at 53.5 thousand, in the articles of A. M. Noskov, a year later - 72.5 thousand, and in the articles of P. A Aptekar in 1995 - 131.5 thousand. As for the Soviet wounded, then, according to P. A. Aptekar, their number is more than double the results of the study by Semiryagi and Noskov - up to 400 thousand people. According to data from Soviet military archives and hospitals, sanitary losses amounted to (by name) 264,908 people. It is estimated that about 22 percent of the losses were due to frostbite.
Losses in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. based on the two-volume “History of Russia. XX century" |
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Finland |
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1. Killed, died from wounds |
about 150,000 |
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2. Missing people |
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3. Prisoners of war |
about 6000 (5465 returned) |
From 825 to 1000 (about 600 returned) |
4. Wounded, shell-shocked, frostbitten, burned |
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5. Airplanes (in pieces) |
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6. Tanks (in pieces) |
650 destroyed, about 1800 knocked out, about 1500 out of action due to technical reasons |
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7. Losses at sea |
submarine "S-2" |
auxiliary patrol ship, tugboat on Ladoga |
"Karelian Question"
After the war, local Finnish authorities and provincial organizations of the Karelian Union, created to protect the rights and interests of the evacuated residents of Karelia, tried to find a solution to the issue of returning lost territories. During the Cold War, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen repeatedly negotiated with the Soviet leadership, but these negotiations were unsuccessful. The Finnish side did not openly demand the return of these territories. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the issue of transferring territories to Finland was raised again.
In matters relating to the return of ceded territories, the Karelian Union acts together with and through the foreign policy leadership of Finland. In accordance with the “Karelia” program adopted in 2005 at the congress of the Karelian Union, the Karelian Union seeks to ensure that the political leadership of Finland actively monitors the situation in Russia and begins negotiations with Russia on the issue of the return of the ceded territories of Karelia as soon as a real basis arises and both sides will be ready for this.
Propaganda during the war
At the beginning of the war, the tone of the Soviet press was bravura - the Red Army looked ideal and victorious, while the Finns were portrayed as a frivolous enemy. On December 2 (2 days after the start of the war), Leningradskaya Pravda will write:
However, within a month the tone of the Soviet press changed. They began to talk about the power of the “Mannerheim Line”, difficult terrain and frost - the Red Army, losing tens of thousands killed and frostbitten, was stuck in the Finnish forests. Starting with Molotov’s report on March 29, 1940, the myth of the impregnable “Mannerheim Line”, similar to the “Maginot Line” and the “Siegfried Line”, began to live. which have not yet been crushed by any army. Later Anastas Mikoyan wrote: “ Stalin, an intelligent, capable man, in order to justify the failures during the war with Finland, invented the reason that we “suddenly” discovered a well-equipped Mannerheim line. A special film was released showing these structures to justify that it was difficult to fight against such a line and quickly win a victory.».
If Finnish propaganda portrayed the war as the defense of the homeland from cruel and merciless invaders, combining communist terrorism with traditional Russian great power (for example, in the song “No, Molotov!” the head of the Soviet government is compared with the tsarist governor-general of Finland Nikolai Bobrikov, known for his Russification policy and fight against autonomy), then Soviet Agitprop presented the war as a struggle against the oppressors of the Finnish people for the sake of the latter’s freedom. The term White Finns, used to designate the enemy, was intended to emphasize not the interstate or interethnic, but the class nature of the confrontation. “Your homeland has been taken away more than once - we have come to return it to you”, says the song "Receive us, Suomi beauty", in an attempt to fend off accusations of taking over Finland. The order for LenVO troops dated November 29, signed by Meretskov and Zhdanov, states:
- Cartoon in the Chicago Daily Tribune. January 1940
- Cartoon in the Chicago Daily Tribune. February 1940
- "Receive us, Suomi beauty"
- "Njet, Molotoff"
Mannerheim Line - an alternative point of view
Throughout the war, both Soviet and Finnish propaganda significantly exaggerated the significance of the Mannerheim Line. The first is to justify the long delay in the offensive, and the second is to strengthen the morale of the army and the population. Accordingly, the myth about “ incredibly strongly fortified“The “Mannerheim Line” is firmly entrenched in Soviet history and has penetrated into some Western sources of information, which is not surprising, given the Finnish side’s glorification of the line literally - in song Mannerheimin linjalla(“On the Mannerheim Line”). The Belgian General Badu, a technical adviser on the construction of fortifications, a participant in the construction of the Maginot Line, stated:
Russian historian A. Isaev is ironic about this passage by Badu. According to him, “In reality, the Mannerheim Line was far from the best examples of European fortification. The vast majority of long-term Finnish structures were one-story, partially buried reinforced concrete structures in the form of a bunker, divided into several rooms by internal partitions with armored doors.
Three bunkers of the “million-dollar” type had two levels, another three bunkers had three levels. Let me emphasize, precisely the level. That is, their combat casemates and shelters were located at different levels relative to the surface, slightly buried casemates with embrasures in the ground and completely buried galleries connecting them with the barracks. There were negligibly few buildings with what could be called floors.” It was much weaker than the fortifications of the Molotov Line, not to mention the Maginot Line, with multi-story caponiers equipped with their own power plants, kitchens, rest rooms and all amenities, with underground galleries connecting bunkers, and even underground narrow-gauge railways. Along with the famous gouges made of granite boulders, the Finns used gouges made of low-quality concrete, designed for outdated Renault tanks and which turned out to be weak against the guns of new Soviet technology. In fact, the Mannerheim Line consisted mainly of field fortifications. The bunkers located along the line were small, located at a considerable distance from each other, and rarely had cannon armament.
As O. Mannien notes, the Finns had enough resources to build only 101 concrete bunkers (from low-quality concrete), and they used less concrete than the building of the Helsinki Opera House; the rest of the fortifications of the Mannerheim line were wood and earthen (for comparison: the Maginot line had 5,800 concrete fortifications, including multi-story bunkers).
Mannerheim himself wrote:
...the Russians even during the war floated the myth of the “Mannerheim Line.” It was argued that our defense on the Karelian Isthmus relied on an unusually strong defensive rampart built with the latest technology, which can be compared with the Maginot and Siegfried lines and which no army has ever broken through. The Russian breakthrough was “a feat unparalleled in the history of all wars”... All this is nonsense; in reality, the state of things looks completely different... There was a defensive line, of course, but it was formed only by rare long-term machine-gun nests and two dozen new pillboxes built at my suggestion, between which trenches were laid. Yes, the defensive line existed, but it lacked depth. The people called this position the “Mannerheim Line”. Its strength was the result of the stamina and courage of our soldiers, and not the result of the strength of the structures. - Carl Gustav Mannerheim. Memoirs. - M.: VAGRIUS, 1999. - P. 319-320. - ISBN 5-264-00049-2 |
Fiction about war
Documentaries
- "The Living and the Dead." Documentary film about the “Winter War” directed by V. A. Fonarev
- “Mannerheim Line” (USSR, 1940)
The Finnish War lasted 105 days. During this time, over one hundred thousand Red Army soldiers died, about a quarter of a million were wounded or dangerously frostbitten. Historians are still arguing whether the USSR was an aggressor and whether the losses were unjustified.
A look back
It is impossible to understand the reasons for that war without an excursion into the history of Russian-Finnish relations. Before gaining independence, the “Land of a Thousand Lakes” never had statehood. In 1808 - an insignificant episode of the twentieth anniversary of the Napoleonic Wars - the land of Suomi was conquered by Russia from Sweden.
The new territorial acquisition enjoys unprecedented autonomy within the Empire: the Grand Duchy of Finland has its own parliament, legislation, and since 1860 - its own monetary unit. For a century, this blessed corner of Europe has not known war - until 1901, Finns were not drafted into the Russian army. The population of the principality increases from 860 thousand inhabitants in 1810 to almost three million in 1910.
After the October Revolution, Suomi gained independence. During the local civil war, the local version of the “whites” won; chasing the “reds”, the hot guys crossed the old border, and the First Soviet-Finnish War began (1918-1920). Bleeded Russia, having still formidable white armies in the South and Siberia, chose to make territorial concessions to its northern neighbor: as a result of the Tartu Peace Treaty, Helsinki received Western Karelia, and the state border passed forty kilometers northwest of Petrograd.
It is difficult to say how historically fair this verdict turned out to be; The Vyborg province inherited by Finland belonged to Russia for more than a hundred years, from the time of Peter the Great until 1811, when it was included in the Grand Duchy of Finland, perhaps also as a sign of gratitude for the voluntary consent of the Finnish Seimas to pass under the hand of the Russian Tsar.
The knots that later led to new bloody clashes were successfully tied.
Geography is a sentence
Look at the map. It's 1939, and Europe smells of a new war. At the same time, your imports and exports mainly go through seaports. But the Baltic and the Black Sea are two big puddles, all the exits from which Germany and its satellites can clog in no time. The Pacific sea routes will be blocked by another Axis member, Japan.
Thus, the only potentially protected channel for export, for which the Soviet Union receives the gold it desperately needs to complete industrialization, and the import of strategic military materials, remains only the port on the Arctic Ocean, Murmansk, one of the few year-round ice-free harbors in the USSR. The only railway to which, suddenly, in some places passes through rugged deserted terrain just a few tens of kilometers from the border (when this railway was laid, back under the Tsar, no one could have imagined that the Finns and Russians would fight on opposite sides barricades). Moreover, at a distance of a three-day journey from this border there is another strategic transport artery, the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
But that’s another half of the geographic troubles. Leningrad, the cradle of the revolution, which concentrated a third of the country's military-industrial potential, is within the radius of one forced march of a potential enemy. A metropolis, whose streets have never been hit by an enemy shell before, can be shelled from heavy guns from the very first day of a possible war. Baltic Fleet ships are losing their only base. And there are no natural defensive lines, right up to the Neva.
friend of your enemy
Today, wise and calm Finns can only attack someone in an anecdote. But three quarters of a century ago, when, on the wings of independence gained much later than other European nations, accelerated national building continued in Suomi, you would have had no time for jokes.
In 1918, Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim uttered the well-known “oath of the sword,” publicly promising to annex Eastern (Russian) Karelia. At the end of the thirties, Gustav Karlovich (as he was called during his service in the Russian Imperial Army, where the path of the future field marshal began) is the most influential person in the country.
Of course, Finland did not intend to attack the USSR. I mean, she wasn't going to do this alone. The young state's ties with Germany were, perhaps, even stronger than with the countries of its native Scandinavia. In 1918, when the newly independent country was undergoing intense discussions about the form of government, by decision of the Finnish Senate, Emperor Wilhelm's brother-in-law, Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, was declared King of Finland; For various reasons, nothing came of the Suoma monarchist project, but the choice of personnel is very indicative. Further, the very victory of the “Finnish White Guard” (as the northern neighbors were called in Soviet newspapers) in the internal civil war of 1918 was also largely, if not completely, due to the participation of the expeditionary force sent by the Kaiser (numbering up to 15 thousand people, despite the fact that the total number of local “reds” and “whites”, who were significantly inferior to the Germans in terms of fighting qualities, did not exceed 100 thousand people).
Cooperation with the Third Reich developed no less successfully than with the Second. Kriegsmarine ships freely entered Finnish skerries; German stations in the area of Turku, Helsinki and Rovaniemi were engaged in radio reconnaissance; from the second half of the thirties, the airfields of the “Land of a Thousand Lakes” were modernized to accept heavy bombers, which Mannerheim did not even have in the project... It should be said that subsequently Germany, already in the first hours of the war with the USSR (which Finland officially joined only on June 25, 1941 ) actually used the territory and waters of Suomi to lay mines in the Gulf of Finland and bombard Leningrad.
Yes, at that time the idea of attacking the Russians did not seem so crazy. The Soviet Union of 1939 did not look like a formidable adversary at all. The asset includes the successful (for Helsinki) First Soviet-Finnish War. The brutal defeat of the Red Army soldiers from Poland during the Western Campaign in 1920. Of course, one can recall the successful repulsion of Japanese aggression on Khasan and Khalkhin Gol, but, firstly, these were local clashes far from the European theater, and, secondly, the qualities of the Japanese infantry were assessed very low. And thirdly, the Red Army, as Western analysts believed, was weakened by the repressions of 1937. Of course, the human and economic resources of the empire and its former province are incomparable. But Mannerheim, unlike Hitler, did not intend to go to the Volga to bomb the Urals. Karelia alone was enough for the field marshal.
Negotiation
Stalin was anything but a fool. If to improve the strategic situation it is necessary to move the border away from Leningrad, so it should be. Another question is that the goal cannot necessarily be achieved only by military means. Although, honestly, right now, in the fall of ’39, when the Germans are ready to grapple with the hated Gauls and Anglo-Saxons, I want to quietly solve my little problem with the “Finnish White Guard” - not out of revenge for an old defeat, no, in politics following emotions leads to imminent death - and to test what the Red Army is capable of in a battle with a real enemy, small in number, but trained by the European military school; in the end, if the Laplanders can be defeated, as our General Staff plans, in two weeks, Hitler will think a hundred times before attacking us...
But Stalin would not have been Stalin if he had not tried to settle the issue amicably, if such a word is appropriate for a person of his character. Since 1938, the negotiations in Helsinki had been neither shaky nor slow; in the fall of 1939 they were moved to Moscow. In exchange for the Leningrad underbelly, the Soviets offered twice the area north of Ladoga. Germany, through diplomatic channels, recommended that the Finnish delegation agree. But they did not make any concessions (perhaps, as the Soviet press transparently hinted, at the suggestion of “Western partners”) and on November 13 they left for home. There are two weeks left until the Winter War.
On November 26, 1939, near the village of Mainila on the Soviet-Finnish border, the positions of the Red Army came under artillery fire. The diplomats exchanged notes of protest; According to the Soviet side, about a dozen soldiers and commanders were killed and wounded. Whether the Maynila incident was a deliberate provocation (as evidenced, for example, by the absence of a named list of victims), or whether one of the thousands of armed men, tensely standing for long days opposite the same armed enemy, finally lost their nerve - in any case , this incident was the reason for the outbreak of hostilities.
The Winter Campaign began, where there was a heroic breakthrough of the seemingly indestructible “Mannerheim Line”, and a belated understanding of the role of snipers in modern warfare, and the first use of the KV-1 tank - but for a long time they did not like to remember all this. The losses turned out to be too disproportionate, and the damage to the international reputation of the USSR was severe.