The Winter War

The war is over but the ramifications are only just beginning. With the peace signing of March 13 1940, the Finns had ceded much of their territory including the entire Karelian Isthmus to the Russians, along with chunks of their Arctic land and eastern border. They were also supposed to build a railway line linking Murmansk and Leningrad to the Finnish western port town of Tornio on the Swedish B...

This is episode 13 and it’s an unlucky number for the Finns. Wednesday the 13th March 1940 to be specific. The had held off the might of the Soviet army for more than three months, but on that day, they signed the Cease Fire Treaty, and were forced to surrender a swathe of their territory. So before we get there, let’s wrap up the Winter War. Red Army commander Timoshenko had decided to deploy 40%...

This is episode 12 - it’s the third week of February 1940 and the Russians have eventually succeeded in punching a hole through the Mannerheim Line. As you heard last episode, the second major offensive began on the 11th February when Russian commander Timoshenko ordered a massive bombardment followed by focused thrusts at Poppius and Million Dollar bunkers. That section of the line was pierced bu...

This is episode 11 and it’s February 1940. The Russians are having another go at invading Finland, and now they’ve learned a few lessons. As you heard last episode, there had been a build up through late January. While Finland’s political leaders had been desperately trying to start up peace talks with the Soviet Union, Stalin had been fretting about reports that Britain and France were planning t...

This is episode 10 and the Russians are about to launch their second attempt at invading Finland and this time, they’re going to significantly alter their strategy and their tactics. The Stavka back in Moscow had inserted new commanders, demoted failures, and were now determined to recover lost initiative — the Red Army had lost numerous battles and lost face in the full view of the Germans. This...

This is episode 9 and we’re swinging back to the Karelian Isthmus to focus on what was going on through the third week of January 1940. Earlier in the month the disgraced Soviet Leningrad Military district was reformed and renamed the Northwestern Front and Stalin installed Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko as the commander. He was a hard man, flinty eyes, shaven head, powerful voice — a tough man...

This is episode 8 and we’re into the second week of January 1940. The Russian invasion of Finland has hit a roadblock. It is a corner of Europe insulated through much of the year by ice. Historically, as Eric Dancy noted in a fantastic analysis published in 1946, she was a great prize and a battlefield initially for Sweden and Russia — until the Germans replaced the Swedes as the principal enemies...

This is episode 7 and I’m covering the first week of January 1940. The Russian invasion of Finland has stalled as their mechanised units find the defenders extremely motivated, and the use of various innovations such as the Molotov cocktail and the Motti attack system have stymied Moscow’s grand Red Army. Instead of flooding over the border and seizing Finland, the Russians have already lost thous...

This is episode six and we’re covering events at the end of December and into the first week of January. First a quick situation report. The Finns were fighting to maintain control over parts of the road to Raate from Suomussalmi, with the Russians having now decided to send an entire new Division to support the Ninth Army which had experienced some difficulty in the drive to cut Finland in half t...

Last we heard how the Russian Stavka had taken control of the war directly after a number of mishaps, the Finns had managed to stymie the mighty Red Army which launched its invasion without warning on November 30th. 120 000 Russian soldiers backed up by 1500 artillery pieces, 1400 tanks and about 1000 planes had initially launched part of the invasion along the Karelian Isthmus - this was the Sovi...

The Russians have invaded on a broad front, stretching from the Karelia Isthmus all the war to the Arctic Sea, ten major incursions in all. When the Soviets attacked on November 30th, they did so without declaring war — they just rolled in. As you heard last episode, by day two of the Soviet invasion, December 2nd 1939 the Finns were facing the might of the Red Army and the prognosis was not good....

This is episode 3 and the Russians have just bombed Helsinki on the morning of 30th November 1939 — missing most of the vital infrastructure but hitting the residential area and a square in front of the main railway station, as well as a hangar at Malmi Airfield. Two hundred people died in the first few hours of the invasion, most were civilians. The Finns were caught totally off guard - their ant...

In the early winter of 1939 the Red Army was an unknown quantity to just about everyone, particularly the Germans who were going to miscalculate and invade the USSR within two years. The Red Army was an untried theoretical instrument in 1939, after Stalin’s purges of their commanding officers. There had been that stunning one-sided victory when Marshal Zhukov defeated the Japanese at Khalkin Gol i...

The Russian invasion of Finland in November 1939 came as a bloody shock to the people of the small Baltic state, not least the government which appeared to have misread Joseph Stalin’s intentions. The location for this terrible saga lies at the easternmost end of the Baltic Sea, between the Gulf of Finland and the huge Lake Ladoga, this is the rugged and very narrow Karelian Isthmus. Flying over t...