Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE WINTER WAR AND ITS CONTINUATION
Diplomatic manoeuvrings in Europe in the 1930s meant that Finland, inexperienced in the
sinuous negotiations of Great Power politics, had a few difficult choices to make. The se-
curity threat posed by the Soviet Union meant that some factions were in favour of devel-
oping closer ties with Nazi Germany, while others favoured rapprochement with Moscow.
On 23 August 1939, the Soviet and German foreign ministers, Molotov and Ribbentrop,
signed a nonaggression pact, which gave the Soviet Union a free hand in Finland. The
USSR argued that its security required a slice of southeastern Karelia and the right to
build bases on Finnish soil. Finland refused, and on 30 November 1939 the Winter War
between Finland and the Soviet Union began.
This was a harsh winter - temperatures reached -40°C and soldiers died in their thou-
sands. Despite a lack of artillery and planes, Finland resisted the Red Army, with mobile
skiing troops conducting successful guerrilla-style assaults in small groups. Stalin was
forced to send more and more divisions to the front, with some 600,000 soldiers eventu-
ally being committed. Several Russian divisions were destroyed, with an estimated
130,000 dead as the Finns stopped the Russian advance by early January. But this was
an unwinnable war; after 105 days of fighting in the harshest imaginable conditions, Fin-
land conceded. In the Treaty of Moscow (March 1940), Finland was forced to cede the
Karelian Isthmus, together with the eastern Salla and Kuusamo regions and some is-
lands: in total nearly one-tenth of its territory. Over 400,000 Karelian refugees flooded
across the new border into Finland.
In the following months, the Soviet Union attempted to persuade Finland to cede more
territory. Isolated from the Western Allies, Finland turned to Germany for help and al-
lowed the transit of German troops. When hostilities broke out between Germany and the
Soviets in June 1941, German troops were already on Finnish soil, and the Continuation
War between Finland and the Red Army followed. In the subsequent fighting, the Finns
advanced, reaching their old borderline in December. Finns began to resettle Karelia.
When Soviet forces staged a huge comeback in the summer of 1944, Finnish president
Risto Ryti, who had promised Ribbentrop that Finland would not negotiate peace with
Russia without German agreement, resigned, with Mannerheim taking his place. Manner-
heim negotiated an armistice with the Russians, ceding Finland's 'other arm', the Pet-
samo area of the Kola Peninsula, and ordered the evacuation of German troops. Finland
waged a bitter war in Lapland to oust the Germans, who staged a 'scorched earth' retreat
from the country until the general peace in the spring of 1945.
