The Winter War Quotes

“For the moment we have not informed the Finnish people of them, as we have not wished to make the negotiations more difficult through public discussion.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“This process of mental contortion is to be seen at most conferences between Communist and non-Communist powers. Disarmament to one means one thing, to the other another thing; so also does peace. While to the non-Communist peace is a state of international harmony, to the Communist it is a state of international discord ... Communists hold that peace and war are reciprocal terms for a conflict which can only end when Marxian Beatitude is established; since their final aim is pacific, they are peace lovers.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“If the Germans come’, Marshal Smigly-Rydz9 had stated only a month before, in August 1939, ‘we lose our freedom. If the Russians come, we lose our souls.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“For it was axiomatic to a certain type of twentieth-century Social Democrat that a badly-equipped and therefore ineffective army was somehow less immoral than one that did its job well. It was further held that due to this deliberate oversight, an inevitably slavish dependence upon multilateral institutions would somehow take up the resultant political slack. The heavy cost of this point of view is seldom borne, either directly or immediately, by its proponents; one thinks like a sovereign nation-state, or one does not. When the wheels fall off the wagon of policy, the armed services often pay the price.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“we concentrate our army into an enormous fist. The very fact that such a fist exists will prevent the enemy from dispersing his forces in a war of manoeuvre, he will not be given any opportunity to loosen the close ‘interlinking’ of his army; on the contrary, he will be forced to concentrate, to go over to the defence on as restricted an area as possible. In other words, we get conditions of a frontal war, we force the enemy to accept our view of the character of the war.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40

“Since we cannot move Leningrad ... then we must move the border.”
― Robert Edwards, The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939–40