There seems no point in listing, in a formal way, the Finnish-language sources consulted, as the titles are not available outside of Finland and would be unreadable if they were. Suffice it to say that I read everything I could during the year I lived there—very slowly at first, as I struggled with the demonic complexities of written Finnish—and was able to cover a fair-sized shelf of basic titles. Included were several one-volume histories, the memoirs of General Harold Öhquist, and the official history of the Finnish Coast Artillery, which contained far more detailed accounts of the Gulf of Viipuri fighting than could be included in this book. Tactical accounts and first-person combat narratives by the hundred were also available, thanks to the editor of Kansa Taisteli, Finland’s magazine of popular military history, who donated five years’ worth of back issues to the cause. To supplement my Finnish-language reading, I interviewed anyone who would sit still for it, including veterans of all ranks. The names of some of the most helpful interviewees appear in the acknowledgments at the start of this volume.
The best narrative of the war in English is Allen Chew’s The White Death (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971). Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen (an American/Finnish husband-and-wife team), in The Winter War (New York: Scribner’s, 1973), recount numerous fascinating anecdotes not found elsewhere and include some valuable appendixes—such as the most detailed breakdown of foreign aid I have seen in any book outside of Finland. But their book is too sketchy and lightweight to be of more than supplemental value.
Mannerheim’s autobiography The Memoirs of Marshal Mannerheim (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1954) is of course essential, because of who and what he was, but it is disappointingly flat and reticent; reading it is a duty, not a pleasure. The diplomatic and political dimensions of the Winter War have fared much better in English than its military aspects. The list of references is short, but every title is distinguished, starting with what is, all things considered, perhaps the best short history of the war ever written, Max Jakobsen’s The Diplomacy of the Winter War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), a lively, authoritative, and surprisingly witty account that also contains excellent brief summations of the military events. Finnish domestic politics—some comprehension of which is necessary for an understanding of the war’s origins—are clarified admirably in Marvin Rintala’s Four Finns—Political Profiles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). The historical background, back to the time of the Mongols, is colorfully treated in Oliver Warner’s history of the Baltic, The Sword and the Sea (New York: Morrow, 1965). Väinö Tanner’s The Winter War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957) is certainly illuminating, given Tanner’s vital role in the Finnish government, but it, too, is a chore to read and is recommended only to those with a special interest in the subject. The tangled but fascinating relations between Finland and the Great Powers are explicated with clarity and style in Anthony Upton’s Finland, 1939–1940 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1974).
Because of the war’s distance, short duration, and inaccessibility to correspondents, few accounts written during or immediately after the conflict retain much validity today. Exceptions are John Langdon-Davies, Invasion in the Snow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), which contains valuable data on weapons and tactics drawn from interviews with Finnish officers, and Sir Walter Citrine, My Finnish Diary (London: Penguin Books, 1940), which offers a rare first-person glimpse of Finnish society and domestic politics during the war, written by an experienced and eloquent visitor.
Churchill, in The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), provides a predictably vigorous but politically sanitized account of the Winter War’s impact on Allied foreign policy. General Edmund Ironside, by contrast, in The Ironside Diaries (London: McKay, 1963), gives an intimate and robustly cynical view of the actual behind-the-scenes machinations surrounding the abortive “relief expedition.” Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), contain only a few pages about the Russo-Finnish conflict, but each one is a gem—salty, irreverent vignettes of how things were done in the Kremlin in those days. (The tone of the memoirs has always seemed utterly authentic to me, although some still question their origin.)
Readers who wish to know more about Finland itself are directed to Eino Jutikkala’s A History of Finland (New York: Praeger, 1962), David G. Kirby’s Finland in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), or Wendy Hall’s The Finns and Their Country (New York: Paul Eriksson, 1968), a warm and affectionate valentine of a book that nonetheless conveys a great deal of solid information.