Ed Strosser - Stupid Wars - A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

Finland has a complicated history. It was part of the pow­erful Swedish Kingdom from the end of the fourteenth cen­tury until 1809 when it was traded to the Russian Empire. By the late nineteenth century, the tsars treated the Finns harshly and dominated all Finnish institutions. But the Finns waited and when the tsar fell in 1917, the Finns declared their independence. On December 31, 1917, Lenin formally recognized the newly independent state of Finland.

But the wave of Communist agitation that erupted throughout Europe had also infiltrated Finland. A civil war erupted between the pro-Soviet Reds and the Finnish bour­geoisie led by Mannerheim. To defeat the pro-Soviet Com­munist forces, the Finns called in help from Germany. With their assistance and troops, the Finns defeated the Reds. But the country now had a decidedly pro-Germany tinge, and the Soviets gazed at their lost Finnish territory with longing and a bit of murderous revenge.

In the 1920s Josef Stalin inherited the not-yet-totally-fail­ing Soviet state following Lenin’s demise. He vowed to retake Finland. Perhaps most important, the vital Russian city of Leningrad stood a mere twenty miles from the Finnish border. Leningrad sits on the Karelian Isthmus, a chunk of land only about forty miles wide situated between the Gulf of Finland on the west and Lake Ladoga in the east. It was not paranoia to assume that a Soviet enemy might launch an attack from Finland down the Isthmus, and quickly over­whelm the city and its important military bases. To prevent such an attack, Stalin prudently wanted to grab a chunk of the Finnish border as a buffer zone.

Along with the other Scandinavian countries, Finland had a white-knuckle grasp on a tenuous neutrality among the flying bar stools of Europe. In 1938 Stalin asked the Finns to promise they would not ally with Germany and to kindly attach some of their territory to Russia. At least he asked. The Finns declined. Stalin, unable to believe any country could actually resist attacking and conquering their neigh­bors, and not willing to contemplate someone might tell the truth during negotiations, immediately distrusted the Finns and assumed they were up to something. For their part, the indeed-trusty Finns could not see how their answer did not sit well with the Russian Rex. Despite warnings by Mannerheim that little Finland would get quickly overrun, its leaders refused to bow to logic and stoop to Russian servitude.

The negotiations stalled and Stalin turned the screws, de­manding more territory and bases. The Finns turned him down every time. At the end of a meeting on November 3, 1939, Soviet foreign minister Molotov told the Finns that it was now time for the military to speak. Loudly. This is Stalinist diplomatic code for “You are about to get crushed.” When the Finns still refused, they shook hands all around, and Stalin bade his Finnish counterparts best wishes, more code for “I’m digging your graves, fellas.” He then left to twirl his mustache and plan the destruction of their country.

To the Finns it seems natural. Ski through the woods, rifle slung over a shoulder. Slip off the skis, lie on the ground, and pop off a few quick, accurate rounds. Then ski away. A sport was even created around it — the biathlon — the combination of skiing and shooting that goes together like pickles and herring. In competitions, the biathletes fire at stationary tar­gets. For a few months during the winter of 1939/40, the Finnish competitors fired at live targets, even though some­times they were even more stationary than the Olympic kind. The snowy woods of Finland were suddenly filled with the easiest targets a soldier often dreams of: Russian soldiers.

As with most of Stalin’s plans, this one was brutally simple: line up as many soldiers and tanks he could muster on the border, pour into Finland, and overwhelm the Finns. If that wasn’t enough, they had thousands of planes to bomb the Finns back to the Ice Age. The whole romp would take no longer than two weeks, the generals assured Stalin. In fact, Stalin was more concerned that his army would roll through Finland so fast they would stumble into Sweden on the other side, angering a country that Stalin did not yet want to conquer.

The attack concentrated on three main areas. First, the Soviets would pound the narrow Karelian Isthmus with divi­sion after division, long columns of modern tanks along with hundreds of fighters and bombers. Then five divisions would sweep north of Lake Ladoga to outflank the Finns pinned down on the Mannerheim Line, which was the Finns’ stout defensive line across the Isthmus. And much farther north, into the thinly populated Arctic regions, the Soviets would launch numerous divisions in a pointless attempt to cut the country in half.

Stalin modeled his attack on the German blitz of Poland. His plan was brilliant except for two significant flaws: (1) he didn’t have the German army, and (2) Finland is not Poland. Hitler’s blitzkrieg was designed for fighting on the broad, flat plains of Europe. The invasion of Poland went so well in part because the Nazis had plenty of room to maneuver their huge tank columns, and the weather was warm and dry. Under those conditions, the immobile Poles were easily out­flanked, cut off, and decimated.

But Finland is forbidding to invaders even in the summer. Winter invasion is an act of insanity. One third of the country is above the Arctic Circle, and all of it is virtually ice­bound during the winter when darkness lasts twenty-three hours a day and temperatures regularly drop to 20–30 de­grees below zero. Roads are few and narrow, incapable of handling a tank convoy. Between the roads stand deep, dark forests with snowbanks large enough to swallow a man.

The Soviets soon found out that the toughest part of Fin­land was the Finns. The country had about 4.5 million people, hardy souls all, since that was the only way to survive in the harsh environment. Finns possess exceptional know-how of surviving outdoors in the winter. This tenacity, which the Finns called sisu , would prove their strongest weapon in their struggle with the vastly superior Soviet forces.

Finland’s army, capable of fielding at most 150,000 sol­diers, was terribly overmatched. They had no tanks, few an­titank guns, artillery dating back forty years, and only a skeleton air force. Mannerheim knew his troops would be armed with sisu and little else. The army would fight to simply survive in the hopes that some foreign power — Britain or France — would rescue them. If not, Mannerheim said, his army would endure an “honorable annihilation.”

On the other side, the Red Army looked pretty good on paper, like a team loaded with high-priced free agents. During 1939 they prepared for the invasion by building rail­roads close to the Finnish border, allowing them to not only put more troops in the field than Mannerheim expected but also to keep the supplies flowing. The Reds now possessed lots of everything. That was perhaps the last smart move they made. In the field, however, the Soviet army stank. It had never fought against a real army, so it was not battle tested. Stalin had purged the officer corps during the 1930s and replaced most of them with drones who lacked any ini­tiative and simply followed orders. Any risk taking was re­warded by a firing squad. Another minor problem was that the plan did not take into account the weather or terrain. Only in the Isthmus could large numbers of troops operate; the rest of the country was too heavily forested to move by truck. And although on the Soviet maps the forests didn’t look like a barrier, in reality skiing was the only feasible way to get around. No Russian troops, however, received training in ski-fighting tactics. Some were supplied with skis but not instructions on how to use them. Others just got the instruction manual without any skis. Perhaps the plan was to strap the manuals to the sol­diers’ feet and turn them loose. But since the attack was only expected to last two weeks, they didn’t bother schlepping along all that heavy winter clothing. Many of the troops simply marched along in cotton jackets with felt shoes.