Winter War

Conflict	Winter War
Partof	World War II
Caption	A Finnish machine gun crew during the Winter War.
Date	30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940
Place	Eastern Finland
Result	Interim Peace
Territory	Moscow Peace Treaty
Combatant1
Combatant2
Commander1	C. G. E. Mannerheim
Commander2	Kirill Meretskov Kliment Voroshilov Semyon Timoshenko The command was passed on 9 December 1939 to the General Staff Supreme Command (later known as Stavka), directly under Kliment Voroshilov (chairman), Nikolai Kuznetsov, Joseph Stalin and Boris Shaposhnikov. In January 1940, the Leningrad Military District was reformed and renamed "North-Western Front." Semyon Timoshenko was chosen Army Commander to break the Mannerheim Line. 32 tanks998,100 men 20 divisions one month before the war and 58 divisions two weeks before its end in Leningrad Military District. |group="F"}}

998,100 men (overall) 2,514–6,541 tanks
1,000 captured
957 civilians in air raids The results of the Krivosheyev's research group has a "semi-official" status. |group="F"}}
188,671 wounded, injured or burned
3,543 tanks was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939—three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland—and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939.

The Soviet forces had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, 30 times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been crippled by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With more than 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, including most of those of the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. but did gain sufficient territory along Lake Ladoga to provide a buffer for Leningrad. The Finns, however, retained their sovereignty and enhanced their international reputation.

The peace treaty thwarted the Franco-British plan to send troops to Finland through northern Scandinavia. One of the Allied operation's major goals had been to take control of northern Sweden's iron ore and cut its deliveries to Germany.

Background

Politics of Finland

]] Finland constituted the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom for centuries before 1809. At this time, to protect its imperial capital, Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia conquered Finland and converted it into an autonomous buffer state within the Russian Empire. Finland enjoyed wide autonomy until the end of the 19th century, when Russia began attempts to assimilate Finland as part of a general policy to strengthen the central government and unify the Empire through Russification. While abortive because of Russia's internal strife, these attempts ruined Russia's relations with the Finns and increased support for Finnish self-determination movements.

Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920. Finland sought security guarantees from the League, but its primary goal was cooperation with the Scandinavian countries. The Finnish and Swedish militaries engaged in wide-ranging cooperation, but were more focused on the exchange of information and defence planning for the Åland islands than on military exercises, or the stockpiling and deployment of materiel. Nevertheless, the government of Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Another Finnish military policy was the top secret military cooperation between Finland and Estonia. The government of Estonia accepted the ultimatum, signing the corresponding agreement in September. Latvia and Lithuania followed in October. Unlike the Baltic states, Finland started a gradual mobilisation under the guise of "additional refresher training."

War preparations

and his team arriving from Moscow for the first round of negotiations on 16 October 1939. From left, minister Aarno Yrjö-Koskinen, J.K. Paasikivi, chief of staff Johan Nykopp and colonel Aladár Paasonen.]] On 5 October 1939, the Soviet Union invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow for negotiations. J.K. Paasikivi, the Finnish ambassador to Sweden, was sent to Moscow to represent the Finnish government. Finland denied responsibility for the attack, rejected the demands, and called for a joint Finnish–Soviet commission to examine the incident. The Soviet Union then claimed that the Finnish response was hostile and renounced the non-aggression pact on 28 November. In the following years, Soviet historiography described the incident as a Finnish provocation. Doubt on the official Soviet version was cast only in the late 1980s, in the times of glasnost. However, the issue continued to divide Russian historiography even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Soviet political and military offensive

On 30 November, Soviet forces invaded Finland with 21 divisions, totaling some 450,000 men, and bombed Helsinki.

At the start of the Winter War, Finland brought up the matter of the Soviet invasion before the League of Nations. The League expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939 and exhorted its members to aid Finland. They were commonly replaced by soldiers who were less competent but more loyal to their superiors. Furthermore, unit commanders were superseded by a political commissar, who ratified military decisions on their political merits, further complicating the Soviet chain of command. -XX- Finnish Divisional Boundary
-XXX- Finnish Corps Boundary]] The Finnish main defensive line, which became known as the Mannerheim Line, was located on the Karelian Isthmus about from the old Soviet/Finnish border. Red Army soldiers on the Isthmus numbered 250,000 facing 130,000 Finns. The Finnish command deployed a covering force of about 21,000 men in the area in front of the Mannerheim Line in order to delay and damage the Red Army before it reached the line. At the beginning of the war, only those Finnish soldiers who were in active service had uniforms and weapons. The rest had to make do with their own clothing, which for many soldiers was their normal winter clothing with semblance of an insignia added. Finnish soldiers were skilled in cross-country skiing. According to the Finns, the real strength of the line was "stubborn defenders with a lot of sisu" – a Finnish idiom roughly translated as "guts." During the first battle of Summa, a number of Soviet tanks broke through the thin line on 19 December, but the Soviets could not benefit from the situation because of insufficient cooperation between branches of service. The Finns remained in their trenches, allowing the Soviet tanks to move freely behind the Finnish line, as the Finns had no proper anti-tank weapons. However, the Finns succeeded in repelling the main Soviet assault. The tanks, stranded behind enemy lines, attacked the strongpoints at random until they were eventually destroyed, 20 in all. By 22 December, the battle ended in a Finnish victory.

Finnish forces panicked and retreated in front of the overwhelming Red Army. The commander of the Finnish IV Army Corps was replaced by Woldemar Hägglund on 4 December. were almost completely destroyed by a Finnish ambush as they marched along the forest road. A small unit blocked the Soviet advance while Finnish Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo and his 9th Division cut off the retreat route, split the enemy force into smaller fragments, and then proceeded to destroy the remnants as they retreated. The Soviets suffered 7,000–9,000 casualties, In addition, the Finnish troops captured dozens of tanks, artillery pieces, anti-tank guns, hundreds of trucks, almost 2,000 horses, thousands of rifles, and much-needed ammunition and medical supplies.

In southern Lapland, near the tiny rural village of Salla, the Soviet force advanced with two divisions, the 88th and 112th, totalling 35,000 men. In the battle of Salla the Soviets advanced easily to Salla, where the road forked. The northern branch moved toward Pelkosenniemi while the rest pushed on toward Kemijärvi. On 17 December, the Soviet northern group, comprising an infantry regiment, a battalion, and a company of tanks, was outflanked by a Finnish battalion. The 112th retreated, leaving much of its heavy equipment and vehicles behind. Following this success, the Finns shuttled reinforcements down to the defensive line in front of Kemijärvi. The Soviets hammered the defensive line without success. The Finns counterattacked, and the Soviets were pushed back to a new defensive line where they stayed for the rest of the war.

The main focus of the Soviet attack was switched to the Karelian Isthmus. Timoshenko and Zhdanov reorganised and tightened control between different branches of service in the Red Army. They also changed tactical doctrines to meet the realities of the situation. All Soviet forces on the Karelian Isthmus were divided into two armies: the 7th and the 13th Armies. The 7th Army, now under Kirill Meretskov, would concentrate three-fourths of its strength against the stretch of the Mannerheim Line between Taipale and the Munasuo swamp. Tactics would be basic: an armored wedge for the initial breakthrough, followed by the main infantry and vehicle assault force. The Red Army would prepare by pinpointing the Finnish frontline fortifications. The 123rd Assault Division then rehearsed the assault on life-size mockups. The Soviets shipped massive numbers of new tanks and artillery pieces to the theatre. Troops were increased from ten divisions to 25–26 divisions, 6–7 tank brigades and several independent tank platoons, totalling 600,000 men.

Although the Soviets refined their tactics and morale improved, the generals were still willing to accept massive losses in order to reach their objectives. Attacks were screened by smoke, heavy artillery and armor support, but the infantry charged in the open and in dense formations.

On 11 February, the Soviets had about 460,000 men, over 3,350 artillery pieces, about 3,000 tanks and about 1,300 aircraft deployed on the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was constantly receiving new recruits after the breakthrough. Opposing them the Finns had eight divisions, totalling about 150,000 men. One by one, the defenders' strongholds crumbled under the Soviet attacks and the Finns were forced to retreat. On 15 February, Mannerheim authorised a general retreat of the Second Corps to the Intermediate Line. On the eastern side of the isthmus, the Finns continued to resist Soviet assaults, repelling them in the battle of Taipale.

By mid-February, it became clear that the Finnish forces were rapidly approaching exhaustion. For the Soviets, casualties were high, the situation was a source of political embarrassment of the Soviet regime, and there was a risk of Franco-British intervention. Furthermore, with the spring thaw approaching, the Soviet forces risked becoming bogged down in the forests. The Finnish foreign minister Väinö Tanner arrived in Stockholm on 12 February and negotiated the peace terms with the Soviets through the Swedes. German representatives, not aware that the negotiations were underway, suggested on 17 February that Finland negotiate with the Soviet Union.

Both Germany and Sweden were keen to see an end to the Winter War. The Germans feared losing iron ore fields in northern Sweden and threatened to attack at once if the Swedes granted the Allied forces right of passage. The Germans even had a theoretical invasion plan called the Studie Nord against Scandinavian countries, which later became the full-blown Operation Weserübung.

Last days of war

On 5 March, the Red Army advanced past the Mannerheim Line and entered the suburbs of Viipuri. That same day, the Red Army established a beachhead on the western Gulf of Viipuri. The Finns proposed an armistice on that day, but the Soviets, wanting to keep the pressure on the Finnish government, declined the offer the next day. The Finnish peace delegation went to Moscow via Stockholm and arrived on 7 March. The Soviets made further demands as their military position was strong and improving. On 9 March, the Finnish military situation on the Karelian Isthmus was dire as troops were experiencing heavy casualties. In addition, artillery ammunition supplies were exhausted and weapons were wearing out. The Finnish government, noting that the hoped-for Franco-British military expedition would not arrive in time, as Norway and Sweden had not given the right of Allied passage, had little choice but to accept the Soviet terms. The formal peace treaty was signed in Moscow on 12 March. A cease-fire took effect the next day at noon Leningrad time, 11 a.m. Helsinki time.

Aerial warfare

bombers appear in the sky above Helsinki 30 November 1939.]]

Soviet bombings

The Soviet Union enjoyed air supremacy throughout the war. The Soviet Air Force, supporting the Red Army's invasion with about 2,500 aircraft (the most common of which was the Tupolev SB) was not as effective as the Soviets might have hoped. The material damage by the bomb raids was slight as Finland did not offer many valuable targets for strategic bombing. Very often, targets were small village depots with little value. The country had only a few modern highways in the interior, therefore making railway systems the main targets for bombers. The rail tracks were cut thousands of times, but they were easy to repair and Finns usually had trains running again in a matter of hours. The Soviet air force learned from its early mistakes, and by late February they instituted more effective tactics.

The largest bombing raid against the capital of Finland, Helsinki, occurred on the first day of the war. The capital was bombed only a few times thereafter. All in all, Finland lost only 5% of total man-hour production time because of Soviet bombings. Nevertheless, Soviet air attacks affected thousands of civilians, killing 957, as the Soviets recorded 2,075 bombing attacks in 516 localities. The city of Viipuri, a major Soviet objective close to the Karelian Isthmus front, was almost levelled by nearly 12,000 bombs. No attacks on civilian targets were mentioned in Soviet radio or newspaper reports. In January 1940 Pravda continued to stress that no civilian targets in Finland had been struck, even by accident.

Finnish Air Force

light bomber landed on the frozen lake of Jukajärvi near Juva village. Horses tow the plane to shore for cover.]] At the beginning of the war, Finland had a very small air force, with only 114 combat planes fit for duty. Missions were very limited, and fighter aircraft were mainly used to repel Soviet bombers. Strategic bombings could also double as opportunities for military reconnaissance. Old-fashioned and few in number, aircraft could not offer support for Finnish ground troops. In spite of losses, the number of planes in the Finnish Air Force had risen by over 50 percent by the end of the war. The Finns received shipments of British, French, Italian, Swedish and American aircraft.

Finnish fighter pilots would often fly their motley collection of planes into Soviet formations that outnumbered them 10 or even 20 times. Finnish fighters shot down a confirmed 200 Soviet aircraft, losing 62 of their own. In addition to combat, it is estimated that the Soviet air force lost about 400 aircraft because of inclement weather, lack of fuel and tools, and during transportation to the front. The Soviet Air Force flew approximately 44,000 sorties during the war.

The Finnish Navy was a coastal defence force with two coastal defence ships, five submarines, four gunboats, seven motor torpedo boats, one minelayer and six minesweepers. The two coastal defence ships, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, were moved to the harbour in Turku where they were used to bolster the air defences. Their anti-aircraft guns shot down one or two planes over the city, and the ships remained there for the rest of the war.

The first naval battle took place on 1 December, near the island of Russarö, south of Hanko. That day, the weather was fair and the visibility excellent. The Finns spotted the Soviet cruiser Kirov and two destroyers. After the ships were at a range of , the Finns opened fire with coastal guns. After five minutes of firing by four coastal guns, the cruiser had been damaged by near misses and retreated. The destroyers remained undamaged, but the Kirov suffered 17 dead and 30 wounded. The Soviets already knew the locations of the Finnish coastal batteries but were surprised by their firing range.

The coastal artillery had a greater effect upon the land war by helping to reinforce the defence in conjunction with army artillery. Two sets of fortress artillery made significant contributions to the early battles on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ladoga Karelia. These were located at Kaarnajoki on the eastern isthmus and at Mantsi on the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga. Furthermore, the fortress of Koivisto provided similar support from the southwestern coast of the isthmus. Coastal artilleries had the ability to fire high-explosive shells of calibre to a range of .

Volunteers arrived from various countries. By far the largest foreign contingent came from neighbouring Sweden, which provided nearly 8,760 volunteers during the war. The Swedish Volunteer Corps (Svenska Frivilligkåren), formed from the Swedes, the Norwegians (727 men) and the Danes (1,010 men), fought on the quiet northern front during the last weeks of the war. The Corps mainly took care of the air defence of northern Finland.

Franco-British intervention plans

had two roads to Finland; through Petsamo or through Narvik, Norway.|Franco-British support was offered on the condition their armed forces be given free passage through neutral Norway and Sweden instead of taking the difficult passage through Soviet-occupied Petsamo.]] France had been one of the earliest supporters of Finland during the Winter War. The French saw an opportunity to weaken Germany's major ally if the Finns were to attack the Soviet Union. France had other motives as well, because it preferred to have a major war in a remote part of Europe over one on French soil. France planned to re-arm the Polish exile units and transport them to the Finnish Arctic port of Petsamo. Another scheme was to execute a massive air strike with Turkish co-operation against the Caucasus oil fields. The matter was raised by the British Admiral Reginald Plunkett on 18 September 1939, and the next day Winston Churchill brought the subject in the Cabinet.

On 19 December French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier introduced his plan to the General Staff and the British War Cabinet. In his plan, Daladier created linkage between the war in Finland and the iron ore in Sweden.

Stymied but not yet dissuaded from the possibility of action, the Allies formulated a new plan on 29 January. First, the Finns would make a formal request for assistance. Then the Allies would ask Norway and Sweden for permission to move the "volunteers" across their territory. Finally, in order to protect the supply line from German actions, the Allies would send additional units ashore at Namsos, Bergen, and Trondheim. The operation would require 100,000 British and 35,000 French soldiers with naval and air support. The supply convoys would sail on 12 March and the landings would begin on 20 March.

Peace of Moscow

The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed on 12 March 1940 and went into effect the following day. Finland ceded a portion of Karelia – the entire Karelian Isthmus as well as a large swath of land north of Lake Ladoga. The area included Finland's second largest city of Viipuri, much of Finland's industrialised territory, and significant parts still held by Finland's army—all in all, 11 percent of the territory and 30 percent of the economic assets of pre-war Finland. to a few weeks or to a couple of months at most.

The Karelians evacuees established an interest group Karjalan Liitto. The group was to defend Karelian rights and interests and to find a way to return ceded regions of Karelia to Finland.

Soviet views

During the period between the war and the perestroika in the late 1980s, Soviet historiography leaned solely on Vyacheslav Molotov's speeches on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had tried to negotiate guarantees of security for Leningrad for two months. However, the Finns had taken a hostile stance to "please foreign imperialists". Finland had undertaken military provocation, and the Soviet Union could no longer hold to nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.

Another source later used widely in Soviet historiography was Molotov's speech in front of the Supreme Soviet on 29 March 1940, in which he blamed Western countries for starting the war and argued that they had used Finland as a proxy to fight the Soviet Union. The Western Allies had furthermore tried to take neutral Sweden and Norway along with them. Thus, the "masterminds" behind the war were the United Kingdom and France, but also Sweden, the United States, and Italy, who had issued massive amounts of materiel, money, and men to Finland. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union was merciful in peace terms, as the problem of Leningrad security had been solved.

That same year, Finland and Sweden negotiated a military alliance, but the negotiations ended once it became clear that both Germany and the Soviet Union opposed such an alliance.

Germany

The Winter War was a political success for the Germans. Both the Red Army and the League of Nations were humiliated, and the Allied Supreme War Council had been revealed to be chaotic and powerless. However, the German policy of neutrality was not popular in the homeland, and relations with Italy had suffered badly. After the Peace of Moscow, Germany did not hesitate to move to improve ties with Finland, and within two weeks Finno-German relations were at the top of the agenda.

During the Interim Peace, Finland established close ties with Germany in hopes of a chance to reclaim areas ceded to the Soviet Union. Three days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Continuation War began.

Western Allies

The Winter War put in question the organisation and effectiveness of the Red Army as well as the Western Allies. The Supreme War Council was unable to formulate a workable plan, revealing its total unsuitability to make effective war in either Britain or France. This failure led to the collapse of the Daladier government in France.

See also

Winter War in contemporary culture

Phoney War

Timeline of the Winter War

Military history of Finland during World War II

Military history of the Soviet Union

List of Finnish corps in the Winter War

List of Finnish divisions in the Winter War

List of wars involving Finland

Footnotes

Notes

Bibliography

Abbreviations:

Ts Pj = Leskinen and Juutilainen, eds (1999). Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (Winter War Guidebook). 1st ed.

Js Pj = Leskinen and Juutilainen, eds (2005). Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (Continuation War Guidebook). 1st ed.

(The Mannerheim Line : Legend of the Winter War) (The Winter War 1939-1940) (Red tanks : the Red Army tank forces, 1918–1945) (Truths about the war. One Finn is worth 5.7 Russians) Capsule review (in Finnish) (Battles of the Winter War) (The Raate Road: a tale of heroism in the north during the Winter War) (Reality and Illusions)

* Leskinen, Jari; Juutilainen, Antti, eds (1999). Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (Winter War Guidebook). 1st ed. Porvoo: WSOY. ISBN 951-0-23536-9.

(The Winter War at sea)

(Battles in Ladoga Karelia)

(Foreign volunteers in the Winter War)

(The Red Army's execution of Stalin's will)

(Battles in the Isthmus)

(Victims of the Winter War)

(The secret 1930s Finnish and Estonian military collaboration against Soviet invasion)

(Finland's glory days)

(Soviet objectives before and during the Winter War)

(Russian prisoners of war and casualties)

(Armament and equipment of the Finnish forces)

(The Winter War in the air)

(The Navy's first victory: Russarö)

(The spirit of the Winter War)

(Bitter peace and the postwar status of Finnish foreign policy)

(The Winter War in Soviet historiography)

(Myth of the Mannerheim line)

* Leskinen, Jari; Juutilainen, Antti, eds (2005). Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (Continuation War Guidebook). 1st ed. Porvoo: WSOY. ISBN 951-0-28690-7.

(Formation of the Ground Forces)

(Casualties of the War)

* ("Stalin's nuisance, Himmler's louse"—both remarks having been references to Finland) (How to conquer Finland : Operational plans of the Red Army 1939-1944) (Originally published in Finnish.)

External links

The Battles of the Winter War comprehensively covered by Sami H. E. Korhonen

Telegrams from each day of the Winter War

Report and resolution adopted by the assembly of the League of Nations, dated December 14. 1939.

The Front Museum on the Hanko Peninsula, documenting the lease of Hanko to the USSR

Finnish wartime photos and history website Stories by veterans, historians, and wartime pictures.

Those Burly Finns, History House magazine article

Category:Winter War Category:World War II Eastern European Theatre Category:Wars involving Finland Category:Wars involving the Soviet Union Category:League of Nations Category:Barents Sea Category:Karelian Isthmus Category:1939 in Finland Category:1940 in Finland Category:1939 in the Soviet Union Category:1940 in the Soviet Union Category:Sweden in World War II Category:Occupation of the Baltic states Category:Conflicts in 1939 Category:Conflicts in 1940