Finland held off Russian invasion in Winter War, won moral victory & More News Here

The 12 months was 1939. The reporter was Martha Gellhorn, a trailblazing feminine conflict correspondent. The pilot Gellhorn had interviewed, who had already shot down a number of Russian planes, was Finnish.

Every week earlier, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had invaded Finland with a large land, air and sea assault — very similar to the shock assault Russian President Vladimir Putin just lately launched in opposition to Ukraine, sans thermobaric cannons.

Assured by his overwhelming army energy, Stalin was assured that the “liberation operation” in opposition to the outnumbered, pesky Finns can be a walkover, very similar to Putin on the outset of his marketing campaign in opposition to the recalcitrant Ukrainians.

So had been most international observers. “The Finns are putting on a good show,” Harold Nicholson, a British diplomat and historian, wrote on Dec. 2, the third day of the Winter War, because the David-and-Goliath battle between the USSR and the previous Russian grand duchy got here to be known as.

“However,” he continued, “they will collapse in a day or two.”

Like at the moment, the Western world was outraged. “The Soviet Union has invaded Finland!” CBS Radio Berlin chief William Shirer confided to his journal after listening to the primary stories of the bombing of Helsinki by the Red Air Force. “The great champion of the working class, the mighty preacher against Fascist aggression, has fallen upon the most decent and workable little democracy in Europe.”

“I have raged for thirty hours,” scribbled the furious correspondent, finest often known as the creator of the “The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich,” however “could not sleep.”

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But what may very well be achieved? The Finns had been achieved for. Already on the second day of the invasion, the New York Times puzzled how rapidly the voracious Soviets dictator would reannex Finland.

However, as grew to become clear because the conflict continued into its second week and the Russian assault stalled — similar to the Russian assault in opposition to Ukraine — the Finns didn’t collapse.

“SOVIET FAILURE,” trumpeted a front-page headline in the Times on Dec. 7, the eighth day of the battle, because the newspaper admitted its mistake. “Soviet Russia’s plan for a lightning war with the obvious aim of causing a subsequent collapse of the Finnish government must be considered hopelessly stranded.”

Indeed, because the Soviets — and the world — had been about to find, the Finns had simply begun to combat. And they saved on giving the Russians nearly as good as they obtained for 100 days, infuriating Stalin.

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Ultimately, and maybe inevitably, the exhausted, outnumbered Finns needed to sue for peace, however not earlier than making a legend for the ages. By placing up a greater combat than anybody anticipated, they managed to retain their independence and democratic system — holding up an instance and a ray of hope for Ukraine, ought to it will definitely succumb to the Russian onslaught.

To be certain, the 2 conflicts aren’t precisely the identical. Putin will not be Stalin, and Russia will not be the USSR, though it appears he would very very similar to it to be.

And Ukraine will not be Finland. For one factor, at the moment’s Ukraine, with its 43 million folks, is significantly bigger and extra populous than Finland in 1939, with its 3 million. On the opposite hand, Finland had a a lot bigger military than Ukraine had when the Russians stormed throughout its borders.

Still, there are lots of vital similarities — significantly in the battle for international sympathy. After the primary week of combating, with the Russians stymied on nearly all fronts, the world knew, and Stalin knew, that in a sure sense, the Finns had won.

The first month of the 1939-40 Finnish-Soviet Winter War was such a catastrophe for the Soviets, because the Finnish Air Force blasted dozens of Russian planes from the skies whereas ghostlike Finnish ski troops wrought havoc among the many poorly educated Red Army troops, that some Americans thought the Finns had been successful.

One of them was Gellhorn. “I really think the Finns are going to win,” she wrote Ernest Hemingway, her romantic companion and future husband, in late December.

In the United States, Finland’s battle was the trigger celebre of the winter. Former president Herbert Hoover got here out of mothballs to go Finnish reduction. John F. Kennedy, then an undergraduate at Harvard, headed the Cambridge chapter.

“Finland is America’s sweetheart,” Christopher Isherwood, the British author then residing in Los Angeles, gushed in his diary.

The Finns thought they had been successful, too, particularly after their broadly publicized victory at Suomussalmi in central Finland, the place a Finnish drive of 6,000 ski troops annihilated a Soviet one 4 occasions as giant. One of the primary on the scene was Gellhorn’s finest pal and fellow correspondent, Virginia Cowles, who had taken her place as probably the most glamorous member of the massive international press corps masking the battle, in addition to its most shifting author.

“Perhaps it was the beauty of the morning that made the terrible Russian debacle all the more ghastly,” Cowles cabled. “The rising sun had drenched the snow-covered forest and the trees like lace Valentines. Then we turned a bend in the road and came upon the full horror of the scene. For four miles the roads and forests were strewn with the bodies of men and horses.” (The broadly circulated picture of a fallen Russian soldier mendacity in the snow in Ukraine is eerily harking back to the horrific ones that emerged from the 1939 bloodbath.)

Carl Gustav Mannerheim, the Finnish commander in chief, wasn’t fooled. Stalin could have underestimated him and his males. But he didn’t underestimate Stalin.

The Red Army’s preliminary offensive could have stumbled, however he knew that Stalin can be again. He appreciated America’s goodwill, in addition to its monetary assist. What he actually wished was American troops.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who occurred to be a passionate Fennophile, would have appreciated to ship them. “This dreadful rape of Finland,” he wrote to his pal Thomas McVeagh. “People are asking why anyone should have anything to do with the present Soviet leaders.”

FDR was in a position to ship the Finns a dozen outmoded Buffalo Brewster fighter plane, however America’s isolationist temper constrained him from doing extra.

Meanwhile, as Mannerheim anticipated, Stalin had gotten organized, bringing in a fiery new commander, Semyon Timoshenko, to guide a renewed Soviet assault and giving him much more troops — finally greater than half one million, plus 4,000 tanks and three,000 plane — to complete the job.

In mid-February, Timoshenko launched his “crescendo offensive” on the principle Finnish protection line, the Mannerheim Line, with a large artillery barrage, firing 300,000 shells in 24 hours.

Predictably, the offensive succeeded in breaching Finnish defenses and drove Mannerheim’s white-clad troops again alongside a broad entrance.

Remarkably, the exhausted Finns held out for one more month. In the meantime, unbeknown to the military or the Finnish folks, their authorities, recognizing the inevitable, had begun secret negotiations with Stalin and his international minister, Vyacheslav Molotov.

On March 13, 1940, 106 days after the Soviet invasion, Finnish Foreign Minister Vaino Tanner introduced the heartbreaking phrases the Russians had compelled on the Finns. Finland had to surrender 10 p.c of its territory, resulting in an inside evacuation of greater than 400,000 folks.

But the phrases might have been harsher. The bulk of Finland was not occupied, or “liberated,” because the Soviets initially described their “special operation” (simply as their latter-day Kremlin heirs have known as their Ukrainian “special operation”).

Stalin knew he would by no means have the ability to subjugate the Finns — 25,000 of whom had been killed in the conflict, in opposition to the Soviets’ estimated quarter-million — after the combat they’d put up.

In a real sense, the Finns had won. They had notched one of many nice defensive stands of army historical past, alongside Thermopylae, Masada and the Alamo. And the Finns had been allowed to maintain their military. They would dwell to combat one other day.

Unfortunately, in their need to avenge themselves in opposition to the Soviets and regain their misplaced territory, they wound up becoming a member of the Germans when Adolf Hitler invaded Russia the next 12 months, disappointing their associates and erasing the moral capital they’d won. The Finns misplaced their subsequent, for much longer conflict with Moscow, the 1941-1944 Continuation War, too.

The Winter War is comparatively forgotten in the United States, however definitely not in Finland. Eight many years later, it stays one in all Finland’s most interesting hours. Legenda elaa, Finns prefer to say of the Winter War: “The legend lives.”

How lengthy the Ukrainians maintain out in opposition to Russia stays to be seen. So do the phrases of an eventual armistice.

But the Ukrainians — and the world — know that they, too, have won their conflict in a way. Putin will not be getting Ukraine as a gift.

Hannes Tuovinen, 98, one of many few remaining veterans of the Winter War, posted this message for the defenders of Kyiv to the Facebook web page of his veterans’ group:

“Greetings to Ukraine. Once upon a time Finland too fought the Russian Army with everything we had and was able to hold on to our freedom and independence. That’s what we wish for you as well. The whole Europe stands with you.”

Gordon F. Sander is a journalist and historian based mostly in Riga, Latvia. He is the creator of a number of works of Nordic and army historical past, together with “The Hundred Day Winter War” and “The Finnish Factor: Kekkonen, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cold War.”