As usual, the fickle herd that is UK news has drifted from Ukraine and focussed on more popular po-faced coverage of scandals and record-breaking heat waves. It has been left up to more obscure channels, such as BBC Alba, to sustain Auntie Beeb’s original mission to educate, as well as entertain.
Despite being primarily Gaelic-language, they do not restrict themselves to interviewing octogenarians about dying cultures, but frequently show themselves to be far-sighted and more cosmopolitan than their main metropolitan colleagues.
This was underscored on Sunday, July 16th when they broadcast the hour-long documentary Sgeulachd Cogaighd-nah-Artaigh (Untold Arctic Wars). At first sight, this might seem like an esoteric topic, of interest solely to aficionados of obscure military follies. But anyone who waded through the waves of subtitles in four languages would have discovered that the present stalemate in Ukraine is not the first time in the last century that the Russian juggernaut took on a smaller neighbour—and had its head handed to it for its troubles.
The precedent has become lost in the global nature of World War 2. The seeds of this other conflict were sown in the collapse of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union in 1917. During the several years while the Civil War raged, along with Poland and the Baltic States, Finland established themselves as sovereign nations and—once Stalin extended his iron rule over Russia itself—lead candidates for reintegration into the Soviet Union.
The urgency seemed especially acute in the case of Finland. It had established an ethnic border from Petsamo on the Arctic Ocean down through the wastes of Karelia to Lake Ladoga, then across the narrow isthmus between there and the Gulf of Finland to include the city of Viipuri (now Vyborg in Russian), the border lying just 20 miles from St Petersburg and the main Baltic Fleet base at Kroonstad. Between the wars, this created what is known in diplomatic circles as “tensions” and pressure on the Finns to cede most of their territory around Viipuri and Ladoga, as well as valuable nickel mines around Petsamo.
Despite being at ideological loggerheads with Nazi Germany, Stalin stunned the world in August 1939 by signing a non-aggression pact with von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister. This gave Hitler a free hand to invade Poland the next month, triggering World War 2. Although not part of the deal, Stalin saw this as giving him a free hand in the Baltic.
The Red Army, which had lurched clumsily across Poland’s Eastern border to occupy half the country, was also tasked with doing the same to Finland. After all, how hard could it be—4 million Finns against 180 million Russians? The Red Army had a massive tank park and air force; the Finns effectively none.
“The hostile policy pursued by the present Government of Finland towards our country compels us to take immediate measures to insure the external security of the state.”—Speech by Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov, November 29th1939.
Despite having three treaties in place, Stalin dispensed with the niceties of declaring war, just as another bitter Arctic winter was biting, on November 30th (do you detect any pattern here?). It became known as The Winter War. The 7th Army’s seven divisions and tank corps had orders to breach the Mannerheim Line across the isthmus and take Viipuri—300,000 Russians pitted against a third as many defenders. The 8th’s six divisions were to swing round the top of Lake Ladoga and take the Finns in the rear, while three divisions of the 9th were to bisect Finland at Rovaniemi, and the 14th launched three divisions towards Petsamo from Murmansk. Inspired by success of the German blitzkrieg in Poland, Stalin, like Putin in 2022, thought it a matter of massive deployment of mechanised might.
As in Ukraine eight decades later, poor timing, poor training, and much hubris meant it did not go that way.
On the Mannerheim Line, the Finns proved to be just as dogged in defence as Russians. North of Ladoga, the 8th found itself road-bound in otherwise trackless forest, out of which Finnish ski troops appeared like ghosts to cut floundering columns of the 44th and 155th Rifle Divisions to ribbons.
Not only were there parallels in the long column of Russian armour stranded NE of Kiev for days before retreating, but shameless disinformation was not a Putin invention. The Red Air Force terror-bombed Helsinki. Several hundred civilians died and over a hundred homes burned. Confronted by this at the League of Nations, Foreign Minister Molotov blithely explained they were simply dropping food parcels for the starving Finns.
Despite the League of Nations urging members to offer all aid to the Finns against unprovoked Russian aggression, unlike 2022/3, little help came, and a massively reinforced Russian effort ground the Finns down to surrender in March 1940. In exchange for peace, they lost Viipuri, Petsamo and a slice of their Eastern border to Russia. This Pyrrhic Victory cost the Russians 48,475 dead, plus 158,863 sick and wounded—2/3rds of their initial force.
Despite already being at war with Germany, Britain and France had been organising an expedition to come to the Finns’ aid. It would have landed in the Norwegian port of Narvik, crossed to the Swedish Gällivare iron ore mines and passed into Northern Finland. Violation of two neutral countries was deemed justified if it cut off much of Germany’s war-essential iron ore—the Machiavellian reason behind supposed magnanimity to the Finns. As it was, the Germans executed a lightning conquest of Norway themselves a month later and put a lid on the whole thing.
But people like Putin, who nurses grudges against perceived historical wrongs, would have done well to be less selective about their history. As for Finns who know theirs, is it surprising they have decided to join NATO.
“The Mannerheim Line is a Finnish soldier standing in the snow.”—Field Marshal Mannerheim
#1077—996 words.
davidsberry 