For its unwillingness to meet Stalin’s demands, Finland paid a high price. In addition to all of the islands mentioned in the prewar negotiations, Finland lost the entire Karelian Isthmus, Hanko and some adjacent coastline, the entire Rybachi Peninsula, and a great slice of Karelia north of Lake Ladoga: roughly 25,000 square miles of land, including every strong natural defense line Finland possessed. In human terms, the war cost 24,923 killed and 43,557 wounded; approximately 420,000 Finns lost their homes. If those casualty figures seem disproportionately low, the reader should put them into perspective. The entire population of Finland at that time was less than 4 million; if the same percentage of losses had been inflicted on the United States in 1940, it would have been the equivalent of 2.6 million casualties in 105 days of war.
One Soviet general, looking at a map of the territory Russia had acquired on the Karelian Isthmus, is said to have remarked: “We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead.”
How many Russians died in those violent weeks? Molotov’s “official” figures, issued just after the war, listed 48,745 dead and 159,000 wounded. No one seriously believed them at the time, and even the Soviets acknowledge much more serious losses in their post-Stalinist accounts of the Winter War. The actual figures will probably never be known with any certainty. Khrushchev, in his memoirs, stated flatly that “we lost a million men,” but that is hyperbole. Modern Finnish historians, who keep close tabs on anything about the war that appears in the Russian language, now estimate Soviet dead at 230,000 to 270,000 and another 200,000 to 300,000 wounded.
To those figures must be added the 5,000 Russian POWs who were repatriated from Finland. No “smoking gun” evidence has ever seen print, of course, but several defectors who were in a position to have access to such information have sworn that every single prisoner was packed off to secret NKVD camps in the wilderness near the White Sea, interrogated, then shot.
The immediate military consequences of the war were played out fifteen months later, when the Germans opened Operation Barbarossa—their all-out offensive against the Soviet Union. Before then, the Supreme Military Soviet had met in urgent conclave in April 1940 to sift through the lessons of the Finnish campaign and recommend reforms. The role of frontline political commissars was considerably reduced, and old-fashioned ranks and forms of discipline were reintroduced. Clothing, equipment, and tactics for winter operations were thoroughly revamped; so were tank and aerial tactics. Professionalism, in short, was put back in its proper place. Not all of the reforms had been completed by the time the Germans struck, but enough changes had been wrought so that the Red Army was a far tougher and better equipped opponent than it would have been had the Winter War never happened; there was at least a thin margin of improvement that enabled Russia to survive, just barely, the stupendous onslaught of the world’s finest professional army.
As a result of its victory over Finland, Moscow did acquire some depth to its Leningrad defenses, although the mortal danger to the city, ironically, came from the other direction. During the period of cobelligerency with Germany, Finland’s army was under strict orders from Mannerheim not to advance beyond the old border, and not to shell Leningrad from its Isthmus lines. In the first, worst winter of the Siege of Leningrad, when the city’s defenses were stretched to the breaking point, a determined Finnish assault from the west would probably have caused it to fall.
Once the Baltic Republics succumbed to the Germans, the coast artillery and air facilities at Hanko were not only rendered useless but proved impossible to defend; Stalin was forced to evacuate the garrison for use nearer the city. Only in the far north, where the dismal headlands of the Rybachi Peninsula and the high ridges north of Salla gave the Russians good positions from which to repulse the German drive on Murmansk, did the Finnish concessions materially strengthen the USSR’s defenses. The Soviet-built railroad to Tornio was seldom used, and its true purpose remains mysterious to this day.
The so-called Continuation War with Russia saw Finland go to war with a completely revamped army of sixteen divisions, decently if not spectacularly equipped with artillery and armor (a lot of it converted Soviet weaponry taken during the Winter War), and a polyglot air force quite unlike any other in the world. So many nations had aircraft “in the pipeline” to Finland at the Winter War’s end that its airmen flew the machines of every belligerent in World War II with the exception of the Japanese.
That Finland should fight the Soviet Union again, only fifteen months after the end of the Winter War—and that in so doing it should compromise its national image if not its honor—seems a cruel twist of history. That Finland fought at the side of Nazi Germany, officially as a “cobelligerent” but in every practical aspect as a close ally, seems tragic. There was a disturbing aspect to the Continuation War in that a nation that only fifteen months before had been held up as a shining example of freedom and democracy should now make aggressive war at the side of one of history’s most ruthless totalitarian regimes.
No subject in Finnish history remains more clouded than the Continuation War. Finnish writers have spilled rivers of ink debating the complex chain of events and machinations that brought Finland into the conflict on Germany’s side. But even today there remain many unanswered questions, gaps of knowledge, and ambiguities. Was there a concerted plot on the part of certain Finnish generals and politicians to plunge the nation into war? Was the primary motive of these men—if indeed there was such a cabal—simply to regain the lands that Russia had seized in March 1940, or did vaster and more sinister schemes of aggrandizement fuel their machinations? Or was the nation simply a helpless victim of the inexorable pressures of circumstance and geography? No consensus on these matters exists in Finland itself, so it would be folly to presume one in these pages. The merest outline of events will suggest their complexity as well as their ambiguity:
Finland’s worst mistake, clearly, was in choosing the losing side. But at the time that choice was made, it seemed quite reasonable. So poorly had the Red Army performed in the early stages of the Winter War, so crude had been the steamroller tactics that finally gave Stalin his victory, and so stunning were the early conquests of the Nazis, that military experts the world over gave the Russians no chance at all of surviving a German onslaught. General Marshall advised Franklin Roosevelt, a few days after the German attack in June 1941, that the Red Army would be utterly defeated in no more than ninety days. British analysts gave the Russians about sixty days, and some predicted that Hitler would be in Moscow by September 1.
Who can blame the Finns for seeing in this situation a perfect chance to regain the land that had been wrested from them? After Norway and Denmark fell to the Germans, Finland was geographically isolated. No military aid could reach it from the Allies except through Petsamo, which could easily be sealed off by the Germans in Norway or the Soviets in Murmansk.
Stalin, moreover, pursued a heavy-handed and antagonistic policy toward Finland, undercutting the political impact of the many sensible Finns who wanted only to mend fences with their eastern neighbor. When Finland sought a rather innocuous defense pact with Sweden, under the by-then somewhat tattered umbrella of Scandinavian neutrality, Soviet pressure, some of it crude in the extreme, ruined the scheme. When Russia annexed the Baltic Republics in August 1940, a shudder of fear went through Finland.
It was during that same month that Hitler, frustrated in his attempt to bring England to the peace table through aerial bombing, began seriously to plan Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of the Soviet Union. Informal talks between Finnish and German diplomats resulted in Finland granting the Germans right-of-passage through the arctic provinces—ostensibly just overflights to and from the remote German bastion at Kirkines, Norway, but once the agreement was in place, it could certainly be used to give legality to more substantial troop deployments, against Murmansk for example. The Finnish public, by this time, had become so uneasy about the nation’s isolation that it was ready to welcome all the German troops Hitler wanted to send.
Stalin could still have wooed the Finns back into a mode of neutrality, but he was preoccupied with larger concerns and continued to treat Finland in an offensive and threatening manner, permitting Kremlin agents to interfere in domestic Finnish politics and publicly threatening to retaliate against Finland if men such as Tanner or Mannerheim were elected to high office. When Stalin learned that there had been informal discussions between German and Finnish military teams, he responded by cutting off desperately needed food shipments (shipments supposedly guaranteed by treaty) and by violating Finnish air space. Every maneuver seemed almost designed to increase Finland’s sense of dependence on Germany.
Despite exhaustive efforts by Finnish historians, it has so far proven impossible to pinpoint the exact date on which Finland was taken into confidence about Operation Barbarossa. The “paper trail” is tantalizing but leads only to dead ends and side paths, not to any benchmark conference or dates. Probably no formal agreements were necessary. The Finnish generals who were privy to joint planning were mostly German trained and intimately familiar with the German way of waging war. There was also a certain amount of coyness on both sides. Joint operations were discussed, all during the spring of 1941, in purely hypothetical terms, and neither the Finns nor the Germans were ever entirely candid with one another as to their national aims and methods. In any case, the step from contingency planning to actual operations, when it came, was little more than a formality.
Three days after the start of Barbarossa, Stalin handed the Finns a perfect excuse by launching some air raids. War was declared on June 25, 1941. After weeks of intense Soviet pressure, Great Britain felt compelled, on the same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, to make a formal declaration of war against Finland. No British leader had the slightest intention of waging active war against Finland, however, and the only practical military result of this uncomfortable alignment was a single rather lethargic air raid on Turku, during which most of the Royal Air Force pilots intentionally dropped their bombs into the sea.
Finland strained every national fiber in this crusade of reclamation. Fully 16 percent of its population went to war, including 80,000 women auxiliaries and a field army of 475,000 men. Germany had augmented Mannerheim’s forces with heavy artillery, modern fighter aircraft, and 100 or so Czech tanks. An entire corps of German troops prepared to enter Finland from Norway for the purpose of launching a drive against Murmansk.
Even Germany’s enemies understood why Finland had gone to war again; they also understood the military necessity of its partnership with Hitler. When Mannerheim’s troops reached the old border, one of the first statesmen to offer congratulations to a Finnish minister was American secretary of state Cordell Hull.
In most sectors, Mannerheim permitted no advance beyond the old border, except minor operations for local tactical reasons. The one area where this policy did not prevail was East Karelia. Pressure from Finnish right-wing political groups and nationalist societies forced the government to annex a vast area of Karelia, as far east as the Svir River. To the Finns’ discomfiture, they were not everywhere welcomed as liberators. Massive resettlement programs carried out by Stalin in the 1930s had altered the demographic makeup of many Karelian districts to the extent that most of their inhabitants were indifferent if not actually hostile toward Finland.
Militarily, there were two distinct campaigns launched from Finnish soil. The German drive above the Arctic Circle against Murmansk was quite separate from Finnish efforts in Karelia. It was also a failure. Bitter Russian resistance, terrain difficulties, and the generally mediocre quality of the Wehrmacht troops committed in the far north all combined to halt the attack some distance from Murmansk.
By mid-February 1942, however, the Finns had reached all of their objectives. Static trench warfare set in all along the Karelian front, and some 180,000 Finnish troops were demobilized in order to ease the strain on the nation’s economy.
By the start of 1944 Finland realized that Germany was losing the war. Peace feelers were sent out, but when Hitler got wind of them, he interrupted shipments of food and weapons, just to remind the Finns of how dependent they were on his favor. Finland’s dilemma was agonizing. If it sought peace unilaterally, Hitler threatened military occupation (as he did in Hungary when that nation tried to leave the Axis). If it did not, sooner or later the Red Army would turn its attention to the north.
After two years of inactivity, the dreaded blow fell on June 1944. Against a demoralized Finnish Army of 268,000 men, the Russians unleashed a stupendous attack by 450,000 infantry, 800 tanks, 10,000 cannon, and 2,000 aircraft. The Finnish Army reeled back everywhere. Viipuri was lost (in one day, after desultory resistance) a mere ten days after the start of the Russian offensive.
Mannerheim had no choice but to beg Hitler for emergency aid. Stukas and assault guns were sent from the Baltic front, and a flotilla of PT boats delivered several thousand of the new “Panzerfaust” bazookas. As a condition for this aid, Finnish president Ryti had to pledge fealty to Hitler. He was cagey enough, however, to do this by means of a signed personal letter to Hitler—a document not legally binding to the rest of the Finnish government.
Miraculously, the Finnish Army rallied and did not break. Thanks to the Stukas and the Panzerfausts, the Finns blasted more than 200 Russian tanks in early July. Late in the month, up near Ilomantsi, they even showed some of their old Winter War spirit by routing two entire Soviet divisions.
The Russian offensive ran out of steam. The planes, tanks, and cannon were urgently needed on a more important front if Stalin were to realize his dream of getting to Berlin ahead of the Americans. Stalin was also deterred by the very practical question of what to do with Finland if he went ahead and conquered the whole nation. The prospect of a festering guerrilla war in the forests, a struggle for which the Finns had made contingency plans, could not have been pleasing. Having humbled Finland and reexerted Russian dominance over its political will, Stalin was content to let Finland become his commercial window to the west, a nation still formally independent but never likely to be a threat to its giant neighbor again.
An armistice was signed on September 19, 1944. As part of its obligations under that treaty, Finland was required to turn upon its former German allies and eject them from the northern quarter of the country. A sideshow war was then fought between an outnumbered portion of the Finnish Army and some 200,000 German troops. Personnel casualties were moderate, but damage was immense, for the retreating German units destroyed everything of value in their withdrawal to Norway. Even today, the hills of Lapland are dotted with the blackened chimneys of humble farms that were put to the torch during the “Lapland War.”
When this last and most distasteful conflict was over, Finland was again at peace. And it remained a free state. The finest achievement of Gustav Mannerheim and his soldiers is just that fact. Of all the Baltic nations that negotiated with Stalin in 1939, only Finland resisted aggression. Only Finland survived as a free nation.
The Winter War also had severe political repercussions beyond the Baltic region. Neither Daladier nor Chamberlain recovered from the failure of their Scandinavian designs; both men were out of power within weeks. The humiliating British defeat in Norway was the direct outgrowth of the “Save Finland” scheme and gives a bleak indication of what would have happened if the expedition actually had sailed in response to the Finns’ call for help. The strategic might-have-beens are quite formidable, starting with the disorienting scenario of Britain and France waging war against Germany and Russia simultaneously, and probably laying waste to most of Scandinavia in the process.
The mythology of the Winter War was powerful but short-lived. Too soon after the surrender of brave little Finland, it was the turn of numerous other brave little countries. But for a period the Finns’ gallant stand against their huge and bullying neighbor gave the democracies something to feel good about at a time when they needed it. Or, as historian Max Jakobsen put it, in his splendid book, The Diplomacy of the Winter War:
The Finns were defending democracy and freedom and justice, all the things the western democracies stood for, but had had, at the time, little actual chance to fight for. Many a modern Byron on skis volunteered to go to the scene of the action, and, though few got as far as the firing line, in most countries of the west, there are men who think of Finland, a little wistfully perhaps, as the country they almost died for.1
From the farewell order of Field Marshal Gustav Mannerheim to the soldiers of the Finnish Army:
Soldiers! I have fought on many battlefields, but never have I seen your like as warriors! … After sixteen weeks of bloody combat, with no rest by day or night, our army stands unconquered before an enemy whose strength has grown in spite of terrible losses.
… Our fate is hard, now that we are compelled to surrender to an alien race land which for centuries we have cultivated with our labor and sweat.… Yet we must put our shoulders to the wheel, in order that we may prepare, on the soil left to us, a home for those rendered homeless, and a better life for all; and, as before, we must be ready to defend our diminished homeland with the same resolution and with the same fire with which we defended our undivided homeland.
We are proudly conscious of our historic duty, which we shall continue to fulfill: the defense of western civilization which has been our heritage for centuries. But we also know that we have paid, to the last penny, any debt we may have owed the West.
… That an army so inferior in numbers and equipment, should have inflicted such serious defeats on an overwhelmingly powerful enemy, and, while retreating, have over and over again repelled his attacks, is a thing for which it is hard to find a parallel in the history of war. But it is equally admirable that the Finnish people, face to face with an apparently hopeless situation, were able to resist giving in to despair, and instead to grow in devotion and greatness.
Such a nation has earned the right to live.
1Jakobsen, 177.