A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940

by William R. Trotter

To a Soviet strategist sitting in a map room in the Kremlin in the spring of 1939, no direction on the compass looked reassuring. And nowhere was the potential danger quite as glaring as it was in the direction of Leningrad—and Finland. Not only was Leningrad a major industrial center, it was the spiritual and cultural heart of the Communist state, the cradle of the revolution. The city had become a powerful symbolic entity; its loss, in a war with Nazi Germany, would hurt Russia more than the loss of a million infantry.

Whether Stalin would truly have been satisfied with his initial “shopping list” is almost beside the point; ultimately, of course, these issues came back down to an irreducible case of right versus wrong. Finland was a sovereign nation, and it had every legal and moral right to refuse any Russian demands for territory. And the Soviet Union, for its part, had no legal or moral right to pursue its policies by means of armed aggression. Even Nikita Khrushchev admitted as much, decades later, although in the next breath he rationalized the invasion in the name of realpolitik: “There’s some question whether we had any legal or moral right for our actions against Finland. Of course we didn’t have any legal right. As far as morality is concerned, our desire to protect ourselves was ample justification in our own eyes.”

This faction based its hasty and slipshod operational planning on two misconceptions: one being the belief that Finland did not have the capacity to offer more than token, face-saving resistance, and the other being the hoary Politburo delusion that the Finnish working class would rise up and paralyze its existing government, if not actually turn its guns on them, just as soon as the Red Army came across the border.

“The terrain of coming operations is split by lakes, rivers, swamps, and is almost entirely covered by forests. … The proper use of our forces will be difficult. … It is criminal to believe that our task will be easy, or only like a march, as it has been told to me by officers in connection with my inspection.”

The blitzkrieg, in short, had been perfected for a sleek, hard-muscled, superbly trained, and passionately motivated army, such as the German General Staff had fashioned during the decades between the wars. It was quite unsuited for a ponderous, top-heavy army of ill-trained soldiers led by timid officers, overseen by inexperienced party ideologues, and sent forth to conquer a country whose terrain consists of practically nothing but natural obstacles to military operations.

There was no shelter except for a few scattered farms and logging towns, set in clearings hacked out of the trees. Lateral passage between the roads was possible only for trained men on skis; men on foot could scarcely make any progress at all in midwinter, for the snowdrifts that pile up between the trees are tall enough to bury a man in a standing position.

In the long run, Finland’s only real guarantee of continued existence was the conscience of Western civilization. Finland, it was hoped, would be regarded as a vital outpost of everything the Western powers stood for, and as such the country would not be allowed to vanish from the map. Thus was born a strategy designed to enable Finland to hang on long enough for outside aid to reach it. If that hope proved chimerical, the only thing left to do was to resist so fiercely that Stalin would opt for a negotiated settlement rather than total conquest. If Stalin did seek total subjugation, the Finns would fight to the last man and bullet.

Mannerheim’s plans, therefore, were not based on the absurd hope of outright victory, but on “the most honorable annihilation, with the faint hope that the conscience of mankind would find an alternative solution as a reward for bravery and singleness of purpose.”

Finland’s army would be fully extended almost from the start. Foreign military attachés in Helsinki believed that the Finns would fight stoutly, but in the face of the on-paper odds, most of them wrote off Finnish resistance as a heroic gesture that could not possibly stave off defeat for longer than a week or two.

The average Finnish soldier looked at matters much differently. He knew, in his bones, that on a man-to-man basis he was worth several of his opponents. His ancestors, as far back as recorded Finnish history existed, had fought Russians on this same soil and usually won. The Finn knew what he was fighting for and why.

“They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?”

Man for man, on its home ground, it was one of the toughest, best-led, most adaptable armies in the world. In spite of the scarcity of modern equipment, a spirit of calm confidence prevailed throughout the ranks. The men believed in themselves and their cause, and to an unusual degree they seem to have trusted their officers not to throw their lives away.

Before the border area could be turned into a combat zone, however, the Finns had to move the civilians out. During the interval between the collapse of the Moscow negotiations and the start of hostilities, thousands of Karelian families were evacuated. The Finnish border troops who organized this exodus were deeply moved by the toughness and patriotism of the farming families they dealt with. They were simple people, few of them educated, and they lived poor, marginal lives close to the earth. But they had sisu in abundance.

In one village, a detachment of border guards came up to the home of an aged peasant woman and sadly informed her that she must prepare to leave her home, possibly forever, with only the belongings she could carry on her back and in the horse-drawn sled tethered near her cabin. In the morning, they would return and burn her house to the ground, so that the Russians could not sleep there. When the soldiers returned the next morning, they found the sled parked by the old woman’s door, piled high with her possessions. When they entered the farmhouse, they were startled to see that the entire dwelling had been scrubbed and whitewashed until it sparkled. Stuck to the wall by the door, the woman had left a note saying that she had gone to fetch something at a neighbor’s house and would return in time to drive the sled away in the soldiers’ company. In the meantime, the note concluded, if the soldiers would look by the stove, they would find enough matches, kindling, and petrol to burn the house quickly and efficiently. When the old woman returned, the soldiers asked her why she had gone to so much trouble. Pulling herself upright with all the dignity she could summon, she looked them in the eye and replied: “When one gives a gift to Finland, one desires that it should be like new.”

“This farm was burned down twice before on account of the goddamned Russians—once by my grandfather, and once by my father. I don’t reckon it’ll kill me to do it either, but I’ll be damned if I could drive away without first making sure you’d done a proper job of it.”

Demolitions and booby traps—and the fear of booby traps, which was just as effective—were delaying the Reds’ advance. Token Finnish resistance, even a single sniper shot, had halted vast columns for hours.

By now, too, a cheap, effective, homemade weapon had appeared in great quantities. It was the “Molotov Cocktail.” The Finns did not invent these devices—that honor apparently goes to the Republicans in Spain—but they did christen them with the name that has stuck like glue ever since, and in the first week of the war the Finns manufactured vast quantities of them. When the supply of bottles ran short, the State Liquor Board in Helsinki rushed 40,000 empty fifth bottles to the front.

If the Tolvajärvi campaign proved anything, other than the toughness of the Finnish soldier, it reaffirmed the power of a commander of strong will and personality to materially change the course of battlefield events, even at the eleventh hour.

Finland alone, in danger of death—superb, sublime Finland—shows what free men can do. —Winston Churchill, January 1940

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.