WW2 POSTERS

World War 2:
War in Finland

World War Two WW2 Finnish Military Propaganda Poster

Beginning in the last two weeks of September 1939, the Soviet Union forced the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to enter negotiations leading toward mutual assistance treaties granting rights to station Soviet troops and build Soviet bases on their territories. On October 5, the day Latvia signed its treaty, the Soviet government extended its diplomatic offensive to the north with a demand that Finland send plenipotentiaries to Moscow to negotiate political questions raised by the outbreak of the war. When the negotiations began on October 12, the Russians demanded a mutual assistance pact, a 30-year lease on a base at Hango (Hanko ), several islands in the Gulf of Finland, the western half of the Rybachi Peninsula, and a broad strip of Finnish territory on the Karelian Isthmus. The talks continued into November without producing agreement on the two main questions: Hango and the Karelian Isthmus.

On November 26, the Russians staged an "incident," an alleged Finnish artillery attack, at Mainila on the Karelian Isthmus. Two days later, they abrogated their nonaggression treaty with Finland, and on November 30 opened the war with heavy air raids on Helsinki and strong attacks by ground forces at several points from the border north of Leningrad to the Arctic Ocean. On December 1, in (as it developed) an extremely premature move, the Soviet government announced that it had created a People's Democratic Republic of Finland under an old-line Bolshevik, Otto W. Kuusinen.

The lengthy preliminaries had given the Finnish Army ample time to complete the mobilization that it had begun on October 14. During the summer volunteers had started building field fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus, but nothing resembling the mythical "Mannerheim Line," which the Russians later invented to excuse their reverses. Finland mobilized 9 divisions and some single companies and battalions, or a total of 175,000 men. Plans had called for 15 divisions, but lack of weapons and equipment made this goal unattainable. In the course of the war, Finnish strength rose to about 200,000 men, and foreign volunteers, including a 300-man FinnishAmerican Legion, added another 11,000. The Lotta Svard, an auxiliary force of 100,000 women, performed invaluable service in relieving men for frontline duty.

The Soviet High Command deployed four armies under the command of Gen. (later Marshal) Semyon K. Timoshenko on the Finnish frontier: the Seventh Army on the Karelian Isthmus, the Eighth Army north of Lake Ladoga, the Ninth Army in the Reboly (Repola) -Ukhta (Uhtua) - Kandalaksha (Kannanlahti) sector, and the Fourteenth Army on the Arctic coast. The total Soviet troop strength was about 1,000,000 men in 30 divisions. Approximately 1,000 tanks and 800 aircraft lent weight to the offensive.

The Finnish commander in chief, Field Marshal (later Marshal of Finland) Baron Carl G. E. Mannerheim, assembled 6 of his divisions on the Karelian Isthmus, stationed 2 divisions on a short line north of Lake Ladoga, and held 1 division in reserve. Nearly 600 miles of frontier northward to the Arctic coast could be screened only by scattered companies and battalions. Mannerheim had no choice but to mass his forces on the isthmus, the most direct route into the heartland of Finland, the narrow coastal strip between Helsinki and Viipuri (now Vyborg).

Most alarming for the Finnish High Command were the strength and speed with which the Soviet forces moved against the long frontier north of Lake Ladoga. In what at the time seemed a near miracle, two Finnish regiments under Col. (later Gen.) Paavo Talvela beginning on December 12 attacked and destroyed the Soviet 139th Division at Tolvaj arvi (now Tolvayarvi), and then defeated the 75th Division. In a nearly monthlong battle that began on December 11, a second small force under Col. (later Gen.) Hjalmar F. Siilasvuo encircled the Soviet 163d Division at Suomussalmi and destroyed the 44th Division, which had come to break the encirclement. These victories put an end to Russian attempts to sweep around Lake Ladoga from the north and to cut across the waist of Finland to the Gulf of Bothnia, and they also raised Finnish morale.

During the early fighting the Finns developed their celebrated motti (literally, a bundle of sticks) tactics. The mottis were small, tight encirclements suited to the heavily forested Finnish terrain. In one of the later battles the personnel of a single Soviet division was trapped in 10 separate mottis.

The Finnish divisions on the Karelian Isthmus fought a delaying action in early December, withstood a full-scale assault on their main defense line at mid-month, and on December 23 counterattacked. The counterattack failed to gain much ground, but it took the Soviet command by surprise, and during the entire next month the fighting on the isthmus subsided into positional warfare.

In January 1940, Marshal Kliment Y. Voroshilov assumed over-all command, and Timoshenko took command on the isthmus, where the Thirteenth Army had been moved in on the right of the Seventh Army. The Soviet setbacks had resulted from a combination of supply problems, a winter of record cold, rigid and unimaginative leadership, and a lack of coordination between the various services. Mannerheim described the Soviet attacks in December as similar to a performance by a badly directed orchestra. In January, the Soviet High Command pulled out units and retrained them immediately behind the front.

On February 1, the Russians opened their final offensive on the Karelian Isthmus. By that time, Soviet propaganda had inflated the Mannerheim Line into something like a super-Maginot Line. The offensive made steady if not rapid progress. On March 4, Soviet units on the west side of the isthmus began attacking across Viipuri (Vyborg) Bay, where the ice had frozen thickly enough to carry tanks. A few miles farther, and the Russians would have reached the open country north of the isthmus. On March 6, the Finnish government sent a deputation to Moscow, and on March 12 the Treaty of Moscow was signed, ending the war. The Finnish Army was still holding well, but, since it had suffered casualties of 24,923 killed and missing and 43,557 wounded, lacked manpower to continue much longer. The Russians probably lost about 200,000 men killed in battle or by the cold.

The terms of the treaty were onerous. Finland was forced to cede the Karelian Isthmus, including Viipuri and a strip of territory northeast of Lake Ladoga, the islands in the Gulf of Finland, the western half of the Rybachi Peninsula, and terriory around Salla (now Kuolayarvi) and Kuusamo. The Soviet Union also acquired a 30-year lease on Hango for use as a naval base. Finland lost its most defensible territory and had to absorb 400,000 refugees into an already badly shaken economy.