A Brief History
On March 12, 1940, an epic battle of a David against a Goliath ended in a draw! Or did it? Read on for the our exciting sequel to “The Start of the Winter War: Finland Humbles the Russian Bear“!
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper, we find the “Winter War” between the gigantic Soviet Union (one of the largest countries the world has ever known) and Finland, much smaller and with far fewer people.
The Soviets had taken advantage of their “non-aggression” pact with Hitler’s Germany to make land grabs of their own in Poland, the Baltics, and in Finland. The heroic Finns had initially held off the Red Army with stunning feats of heroism and maneuver, but had finally succumbed to the overwhelming mass of the Soviets.
The so called Moscow Peace Treaty that ended the Winter War preserved Finnish independence, but forced Finland to cede valuable territory to the Soviets, territory that was of vital strategic value for transportation and defense as well as containing the heart of Finland’s industry. Unable to get any help from the UK, France, or Sweden, Finland had no choice for the immediate present but accept the harsh terms.
Not forgotten, just put on hold for a short time, Finnish patriots rose up as soon as the situation presented itself, which was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union a year later. The Finns went back to war with the Soviets, this time with at least some help from the Germans. Unfortunately for Finland, the Soviets saw what was called “The Continuation War” as a major threat and accordingly allotted enormous resources to the battle.
As with the Winter War, the Continuation War ended in another draw, with Finland retaining independence but having to make small territorial concessions and paying reparations. The Moscow Armistice of September 1944 was formalized as the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947.
The Finns and their allies had suffered about 275,000 casualties, but had inflicted 835,000 casualties on the Soviets. Not only had the Finns fought both wars with fewer forces, but also with far fewer tanks and heavy weapons. Both sides, however, had used the Mosin-Nagant 1891 rifle (7.62 mm X 54 mm), an incredibly rugged and reliable bolt action rifle well suited for the harsh conditions found in Finland.
Like many countries fighting against larger and more heavily armed opponents, the Finns had employed guerrilla tactics to great effect, using their skill on skis and mountain climbing in the rugged terrain.
The Soviet campaigns against Finland were just part of the continuing pattern of rotten behavior by the Soviet Union, and had its seeds in the 1939 secret agreement with Nazi Germany to split up the Baltic States and Finland. Truly, the price of freedom is vigilance!
Question for students (and subscribers): What is your favorite David versus Goliath story in military history? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please read…
Engle, Eloise and Lauri Paananen. Winter War, The: The Soviet Attack on Finland, 1939-1940 (Stackpole Military History Series). Stackpole Books, 2014.
Irincheev, Bair. War of the White Death: Finland against the Soviet Union, 1939-40 (Stackpole Military History Series). Stackpole Books, 2012.
Sander, Gordon F. The Hundred Day Winter War: Finland’s Gallant Stand against the Soviet Army (Modern War Studies). University Press of Kansas, 2013.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Finnish soldiers, some in snow camouflage, inspecting an abondoned Soviet T-26 tank after the Battle of Raate road during the Winter War, is in the public domain in Finland, because either a period of 50 years has elapsed from the year of creation or the photograph was first published before 1966. The section 49a of the Finnish Copyright Act (404/1961, amended 607/2015) specifies that photographs not considered to be “works of art” become public domain 50 years after they were created. The 50 years from creation protection period came into force in 1991. Before that the protection period was 25 years from the year of first publication according to the §16 of the law of protection of photographs of 1961. Material already released to public domain according to the 1961 law remains in public domain, and therefore all photographs (but not photographic works of art) released before 1966 are in the public domain. See Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Finland for details.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube:
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="1351 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=1351">14 Comments
I think it is interesting how the Soviets were attacking other areas to increase their amount of land, especially after they wanted the Germans to not do the same thing. Just goes to show how people will do anything in a war!
The last sentence is really powerful when you say “Truly, the price of freedom is vigilance!”
The Soviets going to battle to destroy other lands to gain more land for themselves was very interesting to me. Gaining land was very important back then so, it resulted in battles.
It would seem that every battle fought in the past would be about getting land. The fact that the Soviets would do all this just to gain land was very interesting to me. So many battles could have been avoided if countries did not want to gain so much land for their own needs.
This article was really interesting because I have never heard of this battle. But its crazy to see how the Finns were able to fight off such a great army. To see the Finns and their allies kill about 4 times more Soviets is wild.
What allies? There were none.
I found this article to be very interesting due to the large amount of castes that happened, but that is expected with any war. I have also never heard of this war before.
What an interesting article and great victory by the Fins!!! Beat the Soviets up!!!
Everyone wanted land during this time as we can see but it just led to wars. This situation could of been handled in many other ways besides war.
Yeah, Stalin could have stopped being a dictator. Not very likely, though. Or Finland could have surrendered like the Baltic countries and become annexed to the Soviet Union. Then there wouldn’t have been a war but probably more Finns would have died. I’d choose war.
Go Finland fight the opposition.
Thank you for the nice article. In a critical part, however, the text is misleading:
Just like it had launched the Winter War (1939–1940), the Soviet Union clearly launched also the Continuation War (1941–1944), with a massive invasion of Finland over land, air and sea.
In its launching of the Continuation War, the Red Army crossed the Finnish land border into Finland for instance in Parikkala.
The first Soviet attacks against Finnish targets, which led to the full-scale Continuation-War-initiating Soviet offensive on June 25, 1941, started on June 22, 1941, at 06:05, at sea.
Until the morning of June 22, 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union were “allies” of sorts, as the two countries had agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, 1939.
Prior to the start of the Continuation War, the Swedes and the Finns had granted a passage right for German forces through their territories; northbound through Sweden, and from there across the border to the Finnish Lapland and onward to Northern Norway.
During the Finnish-Soviet Interim Peace period – in between the two Finnish-Soviet wars – the Soviet Union too had demanded similar passage rights for their forces through Southern Finnish territory to the Finnish town of Hanko. The Finns considered this too dangerous, however, as Helsinki was on the planned commute route to Hanko.
When the Continuation War started, no German targets in Finland were attacked. Accordingly, Molotov told Mannerheim that Gemans being in Finland was not the reason why Finland was attacked.
Instead, Molotov accused the Finns of having fired against the Soviets first and – in this way – of having started the war (“Memoirs”, Mannerheim, 1952). This matched the way the Soviets had – falsely – accused the Finns of having started the Winter War.
Nevertheless, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union officially admitted that it had launched the Continuation War against Finland:
In his book, ‘Jatkosodan synty’ (“The Launching of the Continuation War”), p. 606–607, Professor Mauno Jokipii explains how the Soviet Union officially emphasized that it had launched the Continuation War:
• “The Soviet Union does not even try to deny its own initiative in the launching of the massive offensive. In contrary, this is being emphasized. The question who started has been solved: The Soviet Union admits in an official publication that it started the air raid in Finland and in the Nordic area.”
Learn more: http://continuationwar.com
I find it very interesting that the Finns turned to Guerilla warfare, skis an mountain climbing. I would be interested to learn more about how this was done.
This article instantly reminded me of the Greco Persian wars we’ve been learning about. Small amount of warriors defeats large amount. Sounds familiar.