84 years ago the Winter War between USSR and Finland ended. The harsh peace terms came as a shock to the public and flags were flown in half-staff.

by SpaceEngineering

20 comments

  1. Background:

    The propaganda campaign to keep up the morale worked so well that the populace were oblivious to the harsh reality in the front. When Finland started running out of artillery shells and ammunition in the front, a Soviet breakthrough in the Karelian Isthmus could not be stopped. Finland still tried to negotiate for a possible intervention of French and British troops. This intervention was not forthcoming as the Franco-British plan was mainly to capture the Swedish ore mines using the Winter War as an excuse. When the defence lines started to collapse around the city of Vyborg Finland was forced to sue for peace.

    Stalin demanded more land than USSR had gained in the war. Finland protested this and ~~Stalin~~ Molotov famously replied: “We can wait until we have captured those areas”. Finland had to cede half of the Karelia, including the important city of Vyborg. Finland also ceded islands on the Baltic sea, parts of the Salla region and the Rybachi peninsula which meant Finland lost the access to the Barents Sea. The city of Hanko was to be in Soviet control for 50 years.

    Just before the peace came to effect at 12:00 Moscow time today, many Soviet artillery and mortar batteries emptied their shell stocks on the Finnish lines.

    Mannerheim, Commander of the Finnish Army, concluded in his last order of the day:

    >Peace has been concluded between our country and the Soviet Union, an exacting peace which has ceded to Soviet Russia nearly every battlefield on which you have shed your blood on behalf of everything we hold dear and sacred.
    You did not want war; you loved peace, work and progress; but you were forced into a struggle in which you have done great deeds, deeds that will shine for centuries in the pages of history. More than fifteen thousand of you who took the field will never again see your homes, and how many those are who have lost for ever their ability to work. But you have also dealt hard blows, and if two hundred thousand of our enemies now lie on the snowdrifts, gazing with broken eyes at our starry sky, the fault is not yours. You did not hate them or wish them evil; you merely followed the stern law of war: kill or be killed.
    Soldiers: I have fought on many battlefields, but never have I seen your like as warriors. I am as proud of you as though you were my own children; … I am as proud of the sacrifice tendered by the child of a lowly cottage as of those of the wealthy.
    …
    Without the ready help in arms and equipment which Sweden and the Western Powers have given us, our struggle up to this date would have been inconceivable against the countless guns, tanks and aircraft of the enemy.
    Unfortunately, the valuable promise of assistance which the Western Powers have given us, could not be realised when our neighbours, concerned for their own security, refused the right of transit for troops.
    After sixteen weeks of bloody battle with no rest by day or by night, our Army still stands unconquered before an enemy which in spite of terrible losses has grown in numbers; nor has our home front, where countless air-raids have spread death and terror among women and children, ever wavered. Burned cities and ruined villages far behind the front, as far even as our western border, are the visible proofs of the nation’s sufferings during the past months. Our fate is hard, now that we are compelled to give up to an alien race, a race with a life philosophy and moral values different from ours, land which for centuries we have cultivated in sweat and labour. 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 an improved livelihood for all, and as before we must be ready to defend our diminished Fatherland with the same resolution and the same fire with which we defended our undivided Fatherland.
    We are proudly conscious of the historic duty which we shall continue to fulfil; the defence of that Western civilisation which has been our heritage for centuries, but we know also that we have paid to the very last penny any debt we may have owed the West.

    Sources:

    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War)

    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_plans_for_intervention_in_the_Winter_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_plans_for_intervention_in_the_Winter_War)
    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Peace_Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Peace_Treaty)

    [https://www.histdoc.net/history/mheim.html](https://www.histdoc.net/history/mheim.html)

    Recommended reading:

    A Frozen Hell by William R. Trotter

    edits: added details.

  2. Bravery and efficiency of Finnish people in Talvisota were a huge inspiration for Ukrainians in our fight against russian empire. Respect to Suomi.

  3. Russia has invaded, and brought war and destruction to almost every single neighboring country in the last century.

    Pretty crazy when you consider it’s a massive country that spans 2 continents.

    What a disgusting shithole of a country it is.

  4. It’s funny, but USSR was right, because he deliberately moved the borders away from Leningrad so that it would be harder for Hitler

  5. This sounds a lot like current Ukraine. With the shortage of shells the uncompromising demands and the russian attitude of “we can wait and throw more bodies at it”

  8. Time to take it back from ruzzia. The claims are 100x stronger than putins claims in Ukraine

  9. It was the threat of western involvement that forced Soviets to the table, otherwise they could’ve just kept pushing further into the country.

  10. Fuck Russia, a bane to it’s neighbours since the dawn of civilization.

  11. Finland later allied itself with Nazi Germany and invaded the USSR, to recoup its losses in the Winter War. Long story short, good guys won both wars.

    PS. Selective memory and recall is a bitch.

  12. It’s either Russia or Sweden. Stop this silly thing with being your own country :p

  13. In the GDR, we learned that WWII was Nazi Germany being the attacker and the Soviet Union was a peaceful nation that was attacked and pillaged and had to defend itself.

    I’m very grateful I now live in a world where the truth is known and written: That the Soviet Union was a belligerent conquerer who attacked and murdered many Finns and Poles before the Nazis turned on them.

  14. I was born in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, and I’ve seen Vyborg. I moved to Finland, homeland of my great grandmother after 22 years spent in rudsia. And since childhood i knew that it was a tragedy for Finland. And the state at which these Finnish lands on russian side are now is….undescribably bad.

  15. The costume worn by the two men – that was not too common in Sweden. Was that a Russian influence ?

  16. This is real history here and Russia is still a powerful army

    However if you reason with this nowadays people will call you a Russian troll and Finland or Ukraine will “win”no matter what, with help from other countries. Help that can come in many forms and sometimes too late to change anything

  17. Mannerheim’s words about this going into history books is still 100% true today. More than anything, it shows that Russia can be beaten, even by a smaller force. We would live in a very different world today if it wasn’t for the Finnish sacrifice to provide this example.

  18. Let’s be real

    A harsh treaty is much easier than becoming a Soviet republic

  20. Wherever Russians assemble it turns to shit, bringing everything down to their level.

    I can imagine the former Finnish cities being a shithole now.

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