Quote (Ironfister @ 26 May 2023 14:42)
When the Russians attacked Finland, they lost 5 soldiers for every single finnish soldier. 350k soviets vs 70k finnish people. Despite Finland having little tanks, planes.
Fines did an excellent job defending. I'm in awe, for sure they did much better than French or Polish people during ww2.
Also there are 188000 lakes in Finland.
And its difficult to attack across water. We have seen it many times even in current war, with all the modern technologu, where both sides couldnt really advance across water and suffered heavy casualties when they tried.
No other country has that many lakes.
Finnish leader told the Soviet dictator: "I am old now, but you must remember that if you enter Finland, they will shoot at you from behind every bush and stone." And Stalin probably took this into account. Will you have such a level of citizenship self defense in another countries? I dont think so. French people gave up to Hitler in like 3 weeks, and then resistance was very little.
Yet if the Russian motivation were higher, they would attack Finland anyway.
That's the reason that Finnish people joined NATO recently, because they have seen Putin motivation to conquest higher than it was in the past, even during the cold war.
Are you talking about the first Finnish war? How’s that related to my comment about economic development of states that were formally controlled by Russian Empire / USSR?
Losses in first Finnish war were quite staggering for the Soviet Union indeed. Finnish put up a good fight as they knew their lands and how to fight during the winter and in the swamps. Soviets came badly prepared as they just rolled over Poland that didnt put up any resistance. They were worried (rightfully, in hindsight) that Finland would soon ally itself with Nazi Germany and this would enable Germany to attack USSR from the north, laying siege to eg Leningrad (ha!). They decided to invade preemptively under questionable
casus belli of a border incident which got USSR expelled from League of Nations (and served as a catalyst for eventual demise of League of Nations).
Soviets did manage to achieve a victory but it turned out Pyrrhic. in hindsight. Soviets took over big chunks of Lapland as well as pushing the border 50km away from Leningrad all the way to Vyborg. I’ve read accounts that this fumbled invasion emboldened and convinced Hitler to assume the rest of Soviet forces are as badly prepared and inept and USSR can be rolled over in a few months via a Blitzkrieg.
Finland did join Nazi Germany 15 months after in a second USSR-Finnish conflict laying siege to Leningrad which can be argued was one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the Second World War. Eventually USSR managed to turn the tide of the war and liberate Leningrad advancing fast on Helsinki. Finnish government sued for peace and left Second World War conflict.
Am I missing anything?
/edit: strongly reccomend two movies about the second Finnish conflict: (Cuckoo, 2002) a movie in three languages, Russia, Finnish and Saami. It’s quite heartwarming and shows tragedies of simple people who had to fight in this brutal war. (Sisu, 2023) is a recent one - John Wickesque action packed thriller with lots of explosions and badass scenes.
This post was edited by Malopox on May 26 2023 07:55am