Dimitri’s Reviews > Hitler's Nordic Ally?: Finland and the Total War 1939 - 1945 > Status Update

At the same meeting at OKW [Finnish] Lt.Gen. Heinrichs is supposed to have suggested.. that if the attack on the USSR went ahead, Germany should occupy the Åland Islands. This would provide Finland with a pretext to mobilise since it could be made to look as a precaution against a GERMAN attack. From Åland the Luftwaffe could later support the Finnish operations on Hanko.

These weren't just regrettable side-effects of an Anglo-French intervention but the real, hidden agenda behind the Allied offer of help, a fact that the Scandinavian leaders were fully aware of. The aim was to turn Scandinavia into a gigantic battleground, by which the British & particularly the French hoped to keep their expected future clash with Germany as far away from their own territory as possible.

After a January preparation lull, USSR achieved full deep penetration to 2nd line of Mannerheim defences & gave harsher renegotiation terms; Göring advised to accept them, but hinted at a "soon-to-come-rematch".( !) The human cost for Finland was 70.000 casualties & 400.000 border refugees. Plus child evacuation to Sweden.

Good use of multiple sources for same event ex. "White Finns" plus foreign correspondents.

the famous "motti" tactic of the Finns was born out of necessity: the war spread much further north than anticipated, into Lapland, where a convential army was totally road-bound. A motti seldom entailed physical destruction: an immobilised Soviet column quickly established a perimeter heavily defended with its tanks & guns, like pioneers in a wagon circle. A slow strangle by starvation & cold was the best answer.

The first Russian attacks were in 14-18 style, easy to kill infantry & tanks separately. Phase 2 saw massive artillery/armour attacks; the final barrage lasted until the very minute of the 11 a.m. peace. Unfortunately, Johansen gives no insight here how aspects of the Deep Penetration tactics have survived the purge among the Red Army's theorists.

Finnish Nationalism was strong in 1940. The Civil War had pitted Red Finns against White Finns, but the extreme right enjoyed [generally] a good consensus with the parties on the Left.
Neither could answer the nationalist question: are we Nordic, or Baltic? Baltic looked increasingly bad (see: Russian pressure) while a "Nordic NATO" could've kept the whole of Scandinavia out of WWII in retrospect.

Pre-war negociations were conducted correctly by the Finns, fearful of occupation as would happen to the Baltic (even if no historical proof for a plan for the 1940 occupation was ever unearthed). "Old Finn" negociators knew Russia must have its place. The personal participation of Molotov&Stalin shows the strategic importance of revised borders for Leningrad&Murmansk.