On November 30, 1939 Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Army invaded Finland. The Russians had demanded certain tracts of land to be handed over to their control, but the Finns had told them to go pound snow. The Russians responded by invading with an army of half a million men. They bombed the civilian population of Helsinki, but later claimed their were only dropping “humanitarian aid” to the “starving people of Finland.”
The Russians vastly outnumbered the Finns in every category. They had 6000 tanks, the Finns had 32. The Soviet Air Force boasted 4000 war planes. The Finns had only 114. Stalin was told that his troops would be having a victory parade in Helsinki in a matter of weeks.
But the communist dictator and his generals had greatly underestimated the Finns, and overestimated their own capabilities. In the years leading up to this war, Stalin had “purged” (murdered in cold blood) his officer corps. Many of his best generals had been tortured and shot by his secret police (the NKVD). So, the Russian forces were incompetently led at first.
Also, Finland was mostly dense forests with few paved roads. The terrain was not suitable for tank warfare. The weather was incredibly cold (as low as -45 degrees Fahrenheit), and Stalin’s troops were not properly clad to fight in such Arctic conditions. And lastly, the Russians simply had not expected such fierce and skillful resistance from the small but determined Finnish military. They killed almost 170,000 Russians, and another 200,000 of Stalin’s troops were wounded…and all of this within three months!
But never underestimate the determination of a bloodthirsty dictator with vast resources. Stalin changed generals and tactics, and eventually the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Russians began to crush the small Finnish army.
On March 13, 1940 the Finns signed a peace treaty handing over parts of Finland to Soviet control.
Another brutal dictator, Adolf Hitler, had been observing this “Winter War,” and drew some conclusions. He thought that the Soviet Army’s poor performance showed that they would be easy to conquer…so he began making plans for Nazi Germany to invade Stalin’s Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Once again, an attacker underestimated his opponent, and the Germans soon found out that a people determined to defend their homeland are a formidable force to contend with.
Although the Russian military today does look rather incompetent, do not underestimate their ability to learn, change tactics, fight and win.