Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis Page 7

The result was a bitter Finnish Civil War, in which conservative Finns called Whites, consisting of Finnish troops trained in Germany and assisted by German troops who landed in Finland, fought against communist Finns called Reds, as well as against Russian troops still stationed in Finland. When the Whites consolidated their victory in May 1918, they shot about 8,000 Reds, and a further 20,000 Reds died of starvation and disease while rounded up in concentration camps. As measured by percentage of a national population killed per month, the Finnish Civil War remained the world’s most deadly civil conflict until the Rwandan genocide of 1994. That could have poisoned and divided the new country—except that there was quick reconciliation, the surviving leftists received back their full political rights, and by 1926 a leftist had become Finland’s prime minister. But the memories of the civil war did stoke Finland’s fear of Russia and of communism—with consequences for Finland’s subsequent attitude towards the Soviet Union.

  During the 1920’s and 1930’s Finland continued to be fearful of Russia, now reconstituted as the Soviet Union. Ideologically, the two countries were opposites: Finland a liberal capitalist democracy, the Soviet Union a repressive communist dictatorship. Finns remembered oppression by Russia under the last tsar. They were afraid that the Soviet Union would seek to re-acquire Finland, for example by supporting Finnish communists to subvert the Finnish government. They watched with concern Stalin’s reign of terror and paranoid purges of the 1930’s. Of most direct concern to Finland, the Soviets were constructing airfields and railroad lines in sparsely populated areas of the Soviet Union east of the Finnish border. Those railroad lines included ones running towards Finland, ending in the middle of forest short of the border, and serving no conceivable purpose except to facilitate an invasion of Finland.

  In the 1930’s Finland began to strengthen its army and its defenses under its General Mannerheim, who had led the victorious White troops during the civil war. Many Finns volunteered to spend the summer of 1939 at work strengthening Finland’s main defense line, called the Mannerheim Line, across the Karelian Isthmus, which separated southeastern Finland from Leningrad, the nearest and second-largest Soviet city. As Germany re-armed under Hitler and became increasingly antagonistic to the Soviet Union, Finland tried to maintain a foreign policy based on neutrality, to ignore the Soviet Union, and to hope that no threat would materialize from that direction. The Soviet Union in turn remained suspicious of its bourgeois neighbor that had defeated the communist side during the Finnish Civil War with the aid of German troops.

  Just as Finland had strong geographic and historical reasons for being concerned about the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union also had strong geographic and historical reasons for being concerned about Finland. The pre–World War Two border between Finland and the Soviet Union lay only 30 miles north of Leningrad (see map on p. 56). German troops had already fought in Finland against communists in 1918; British and French troops had already entered the Gulf of Finland to blockade or attack Leningrad (formerly and now again known as St. Petersburg) during the Crimean War of the 1850’s; and France had built a big fortress in Helsinki harbor in the 1700’s to prepare for an attack on St. Petersburg. In the late 1930’s Stalin’s fear of Germany under Hitler was growing, for good reason. Communists and Nazis exchanged virulent propaganda. Hitler had written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, of his vision of Germany expanding to the east, i.e. into the Soviet Union. Stalin had watched Hitler’s Germany absorb Austria in March 1938, take over Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and begin to threaten Poland. France, Britain, and Poland rejected Stalin’s proposals to cooperate in the defense of Poland against the growing German threat.

  In August 1939 Finland and the rest of the world were stunned to learn that Hitler and Stalin had abruptly called off their propaganda war and signed the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, also termed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Finns suspected, correctly, that the pact included secret agreements dividing up spheres of influence, with Germany acknowledging that Finland belonged to the Soviet sphere. The signing of the pact was quickly followed by Germany’s blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, followed within a few weeks by the Soviet Union’s invasion of eastern Poland. Stalin understandably wanted to push the Soviet Union’s border as far westwards as possible, in order to anticipate the growing German threat.

  In October 1939 the Soviet Union, still fearful of an eventual German attack, was eager to push even more of its western border back as far westwards as possible. With the temporary security offered by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union issued ultimata to its four Baltic neighbors: the so-called Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, plus Finland. From the Baltic Republics the Soviet Union demanded Soviet military bases on their soil, plus right of transit of Soviet troops to those bases. Although the stationing of Soviet troops obviously left the republics defenseless, the republics were so small that they saw resistance as hopeless, accepted the Soviet demands, and were unable to avoid annexation by the Soviet Union in June of 1940. Encouraged by that success, in early October 1939 the Soviet Union made two demands upon Finland. One demand was that the Soviet/Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus be moved back farther from Leningrad, so that Leningrad could not be bombarded or quickly captured (e.g., by German troops stationed again in Finland as they already had been in 1918). While there was no risk of Finland itself attacking the Soviet Union, it was realistic to fear some major European power attacking the Soviet Union through Finland. The second Soviet demand was that Finland let the Soviet Union establish a naval base on Finland’s south coast near the capital of Helsinki, and cede some small islands in the Gulf of Finland.

  Secret negotiations between Finland and the Soviet Union continued through the months of October and November of 1939. The Finns were willing to make some concessions, but not nearly as many as the Soviets wanted, even though Finland’s General Mannerheim urged the Finnish government to make more concessions because he knew the weakness of the Finnish army and (as a former lieutenant general in tsarist Russia’s army) understood the geographic reasons for the Soviet demands from the Soviet point of view. But Finns from all parts of the Finnish political spectrum—leftists and rightists, Reds and Whites in the civil war—were unanimous in refusing to compromise further. All Finnish political parties agreed with that refusal by their government, whereas in Britain in July 1940 there were leading British politicians in favor of compromising with Hitler in order to buy peace.

  One reason for Finns’ unanimity was their fear that Stalin’s real goal was to take over all of Finland. They were afraid that giving in to supposedly modest Soviet demands today would make it impossible for Finland to resist bigger Soviet demands in the future. Finland’s giving up its land defenses on the Karelian Isthmus would make it easy for the Soviet Union to invade Finland overland, while a Soviet naval base near Helsinki would allow the Soviet Union to bombard Finland’s capital by land and by sea. The Finns had drawn a lesson from the fate of Czechoslovakia, which had been pressured in 1938 into ceding to Germany its Sudeten borderland with its strongest defense line, leaving Czechoslovakia defenseless against total occupation by Germany in March 1939.

  Finns’ second reason for not compromising was their miscalculation that Stalin was only bluffing and would settle for less than what he was demanding. Correspondingly, Stalin also miscalculated and thought that the Finns, too, were only bluffing. Stalin could not imagine that a tiny country would be so crazy as to fight against a country with a population almost 50 times larger. Soviet war plans expected to capture Helsinki within less than two weeks. A third reason for Finns’ refusal to make further concessions was their miscalculation that countries traditionally friendly to Finland would help defend Finland. Finally, some Finnish political leaders calculated that Finland’s army could resist a Soviet invasion for at least six months, even though General Mannerheim warned them that that was impossible.

  On November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland, claiming that Finnish art
illery shells had landed in the Soviet Union and killed some Soviet soldiers. (Khrushchev later admitted that those shells had actually been fired by Soviet guns from inside the Soviet Union, under orders from a Soviet general who wanted to provoke war.) The war that followed is known as the Winter War. Soviet armies attacked along the whole length of the Finnish/Soviet border, and Soviet planes bombed Helsinki and other Finnish cities. The Finnish civilian casualties in that first night of bombing accounted for 10% of Finland’s total civilian war casualties during the entire five years of World War Two. When Soviet troops crossed the Finnish border and captured the nearest Finnish village, Stalin immediately recognized a Finnish communist leader named Kuusinen as head of a so-called “democratic” Finnish government, in order to give the Soviet Union the excuse that it was not invading Finland but just coming to the defense of “the” Finnish government. The establishment of that puppet government helped convince any still-doubting Finns that Stalin really did want to take over their country.

  At the time that war broke out on November 30, 1939, the details of this absurd military mismatch were as follows. The Soviet Union had a population of 170 million, compared to Finland’s population of 3,700,000. The Soviet Union attacked Finland with “only” four of its armies, totaling 500,000 men, and keeping many other armies in reserve or for other military purposes. Finland defended itself with its entire army, consisting of nine divisions totaling only 120,000 men. The Soviet Union supported its attacking infantry with thousands of tanks, modern war planes, and modern artillery; Finland was almost without tanks, modern war planes, modern artillery, anti-tank guns, and anti-aircraft defenses. Worst of all, though the Finnish army did have good rifles and machine guns, it had very limited stocks of ammunition; soldiers were told to save ammunition by holding fire until Soviet attackers were close.

  All of those disparities made Finland’s chances of defeating the Soviet Union zero, if Stalin were determined to win. The world had already seen how quickly Poland, with a population 10 times that of Finland and far more modern military equipment, had been defeated within a few weeks by German armies half the size of the Soviet Union’s armies. Hence Finns were not so insane as to imagine that they could achieve a military victory. Instead, as a Finnish friend expressed it to me, “Our aim was instead to make Russia’s victory as slow, as painful, and as costly for the Russians as possible.” Specifically, Finland’s goal was to resist for long enough that the Finnish government would have time to recruit military help from friendly countries, and that Stalin would tire of the military costs to the Soviet Union.

  To the great surprise of the Soviet Union and of the rest of the world, Finland’s defenses held. The Soviets’ military plan of attacking Finland along the entire length of their shared border included attacks on the Mannerheim Line across the Karelian Isthmus, plus attempts to “cut Finland at the waist” by driving all the way across the middle of Finland at the country’s narrowest point. Against Soviet tanks attacking the Mannerheim Line, the Finns compensated for their deficiencies in anti-tank guns by inventing so-called “Molotov cocktails,” which were bottles filled with an explosive mixture of gasoline and other chemicals, sufficient to cripple a Soviet tank. Other Finnish soldiers waited in a foxhole for a tank to come by, then jammed a log into the tank’s tracks to bring it to a stop. Daredevil individual Finnish soldiers then ran up to the crippled tanks, pointed their rifles into the cannon barrels and observation slits, and shot Soviet soldiers inside the tanks. Naturally, the casualty rate among Finland’s anti-tank crews was up to 70%.

  What most won the admiration of world observers for the Finnish defenders was their success in destroying the two Soviet divisions that attacked Finland at its waist. The Soviets advanced with motor vehicles and tanks along the few roads leading from the Soviet Union into Finland. Small groups of Finnish soldiers mounted on skis, wearing white uniforms for camouflage against the snow, moved through the roadless forest, cut the Soviet columns into segments, and then annihilated one segment after another (Plate 2.5). A Finnish veteran described to me in 1959 the tactics that he and his fellow soldiers had used in those winter battles. At night, Soviet soldiers who had parked their vehicles in a long column along a narrow one-lane forest road gathered around big bonfires to keep themselves warm. (Finnish soldiers instead stayed warm at night with small heaters inside their tents, invisible from the outside.) My friend and his platoon skied through the forest, invisible in their white camouflage uniforms, to within firing range of a Soviet column (Plate 2.6). They then climbed nearby trees while carrying their rifles, waited until they could identify the Soviet officers in the light of the bonfire, shot and killed the officers, and then skied off, leaving the Soviets frightened, demoralized, and leaderless.

  Why did the Finnish army prevail for so long in defending itself against the Soviet army’s overwhelming advantages of numbers and of equipment? One reason was motivation: Finnish soldiers understood that they were fighting for their families, their country, and their independence, and they were willing to die for those goals. For example, when Soviet forces were advancing across the frozen Gulf of Finland, which was defended only by small groups of Finnish soldiers on islands in the gulf, the Finnish defenders were told that there would be no means of rescuing them: they should stay on those islands and kill as many Soviets as possible before they themselves were killed; and they did. Second, Finnish soldiers were accustomed to living and skiing in Finnish forests in the winter, and they were familiar with the terrain on which they were fighting. Third, Finnish soldiers were equipped with clothing, boots, tents, and guns suitable for Finnish winters, but Soviet soldiers were not. Finally, the Finnish army, like the Israeli army today, was effective far out of proportion to its numbers, because of its informality that emphasized soldiers’ taking initiative and making their own decisions rather than blindly obeying orders.

  But the tenacity and temporary successes of the Finnish army were just buying time. With the expected melting of the winter ice and snow in the spring, the Soviet Union could finally put its numerical and equipment superiority to use in advancing across the Karelian Isthmus and across the Gulf of Finland. Finland’s hopes depended upon receiving assistance of volunteers, equipment, and army units from other countries. What was happening on that diplomatic front?

  Widespread sympathy for little Finland bravely fighting the big Soviet aggressor inspired 12,000 foreign volunteers, mostly from Sweden, to come to Finland to fight. But most of those volunteers had not yet completed their military training by the time that the war ended. Some countries sent military equipment, of varying degrees of usefulness. For example, one Finnish veteran told me of old artillery pieces, dating from World War One, that were sent from Italy. When one shoots a projectile from an artillery piece, the gun recoils backwards, so it must be secured on a strong mounting. Each artillery piece requires not only a gunner at the gun itself, but also someone called a spotter stationed some distance in front of the gun, in order to spot where the shell lands and thereby to correct the range setting for the next shot. But, according to my veteran friend, those old Italian artillery pieces were so poorly designed for absorbing recoil that each gun required two spotters: one, the usual spotter in front of the gun, to watch where the shell landed; plus another spotter behind the gun, to see where the gun landed!

  Realistically, the only countries from which Finland had any hopes of receiving many troops and/or supplies were Sweden, Germany, Britain, France, and the U.S. Neighboring Sweden, although closely connected to Finland through long shared history and shared culture, refused to send troops out of fear of becoming embroiled in war with the Soviet Union. While Germany had sent troops to support Finnish independence and had long-standing ties of culture and friendship with Finland, Hitler was unwilling to violate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by helping Finland. The U.S. was far away, and President Roosevelt’s hands were tied by U.S. neutrality rules resulting from decades of American isolationist policies.

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p; That left only Britain and France as realistic sources of help. Britain and France did eventually offer to send troops. But both were already at war with Germany, and that war was the overwhelming preoccupation of the British and French governments, which could not permit anything else to interfere with that goal. Germany was importing much of its iron ore from neutral Sweden. Much of that ore was being exported from Sweden across Norway by railroad to the ice-free Norwegian port of Narvik, and then by ship to Germany. What Britain and France really wanted was to gain control of the Swedish iron fields, and to interrupt the ship traffic from Narvik. Their offer to send troops across neutral Norway and Sweden to help Finland was just a pretext for achieving those true aims.

  Hence while the British and French governments offered help to Finland in the form of tens of thousands of troops, it turned out that most of those troops would be stationed at Narvik and along the Narvik railroad and in the Swedish iron fields. Only a tiny fraction of those troops would actually reach Finland. Even those stationings of troops would of course require the permission of the Norwegian and Swedish governments, which were remaining neutral and refused permission.

  In January 1940 the Soviet Union finally began to digest the lessons of its horrifying troop losses and military defeats in December. Stalin disowned the puppet Finnish government that he had set up under the Finnish communist leader Kuusinen. That meant that Stalin was no longer refusing to acknowledge the real Finnish government, which sent out peace feelers. The Soviets stopped wasting effort on their attempts to cut Finland at the waist, and instead assembled huge concentrations of troops and artillery and tanks on the Karelian Isthmus, where the open terrain favored the Soviets. Finnish soldiers had been fighting continually at the fronts for two months and were exhausted, while the Soviet Union could throw in unlimited fresh reserves. Early in February, Soviet attacks finally broke through the Mannerheim Line, forcing the Finns to retreat to their next and much weaker defense line. Although the other Finnish generals under Mannerheim begged him to retreat even further to a better defensive position, Mannerheim had iron nerves: despite the heavy casualties now being inflicted on the Finnish army, he refused to pull back further, because he knew that it was essential for Finland still to be occupying as much of its territory as possible at the time of the inevitable peace negotiations.