After a snowstorm, the snow in the woods somewhere in Finland gets thicker. When night came, Soviet soldiers camped in the wilderness lit wood in empty gasoline barrels and sat around to keep warm.
Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, and a companion who was giving up his sentry fell to the ground. The fire-roasting Soviet soldiers immediately scattered, lying on the ground, and in horror fired aimlessly into the surrounding jungle.
The Soviet soldiers did not know where their opponents were, but their bullets hit them with precision. In less than twenty minutes, the Soviet column was completely wiped out.
At the same time, Finnish soldier Simon Hayer added several figures to his sniper record, and since the outbreak of war, more than 500 Soviet officers and soldiers have died under his guns.
At 9:15 a.m. on November 30, 1939, Soviet bombers appeared over the Finnish city, the doors of the planes opened, and bombs rained down from the sky.
Fifteen minutes later, Soviet ground forces crossed more than 1,500 kilometers of the border and advanced inland Toward Finland, while Soviet naval vessels moved in the Baltic Waters in search of Finnish ships.
When the war broke out, the Soviet Union had a population of more than 170 million and millions of troops, hundreds of thousands of troops on the border between the two countries alone, while Finland had a total population of less than 4 million, and the army was only a few hundred thousand people.
Such a disparity in power gave the Soviet Union great confidence, and the Soviets expected Finland to be vulnerable, overthrowing the existing Finnish government and propping up a new pro-Soviet regime in a dozen days at most.
But unexpectedly, their wishful thinking was wrong, and it was so wrong that the later Soviet army was secretive about it.
The Soviet Union and Finland were actually very close, and they were both part of Tsarist Russia. In 1809, Tsarist Russia seized Finland from Sweden by means of war.
For more than a hundred years, Finland remained under the rule of the Tsar. As a result, a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917 brought the Tsar out of existence, and some countries, including Finland, declared independence and became sovereign states.
Revolutionary Tsarist Russia became Soviet Russia and then plunged into a full-scale civil war; coincidentally, a terrible civil war broke out in Finland.
But the civil war in Finland soon ended with the victory of the bourgeoisie, and it was only after years of arduous struggle that Soviet Russia finally established the leadership of the proletariat.
While The Soviet Union was still fighting a civil war, Finland signed a peace treaty with it: the Soviet Union recognized Finland's independence and defined the border between the two countries, and the two countries parted ways (Note: The Soviet Union was founded in 1922).
(Note: Nazi Germany)
After independence, Finland pursued a foreign policy of peace and friendship with the Soviet Union, hoping that its sovereign integrity and inviolability would be confirmed by the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union did not initially develop hostility toward this neighbor, and the two countries signed a treaty of peace, friendship and non-aggression.
But by the 1930s, the situation in Europe had changed, and the rise of Nazi Germany left no doubt that a world war might come again at any time.
In this case, both Finland and the Soviet Union had to think about how to deal with the situation. As a small country, Finland considered strict neutrality and did not involve itself in the war.
So it formed a neutral bloc with several other European countries, and the neutral countries said they would not join either Germany or Britain or France.
The Soviet Union, as a great power, knew that it was only a matter of time before war broke out and it was drawn up on its own, so it hoped to find allies who could stand together.
Moreover, with regard to the neutrality of the European countries, the Soviet Union regarded their neutrality as nothing more than false neutrality. When the war starts, it will not be long before these countries will fall to one side and become either friends or enemies of the Soviet Union.
The Soviets clearly did not want Finland to become an enemy, as it was only 32 kilometers from its northern stronghold of Leningrad, and finland's long-range artillery could soon threaten the city once the two countries were at war.
However, the Soviet Union's subsequent approach to Wooing Finland was clearly counterproductive.
The Soviet Union first proposed to Finland to conclude a mutual assistance treaty, lease islands, etc., and then hoped to exchange 5500 square kilometers of land for 2700 square kilometers of land in Finland, and finally hoped to establish a military alliance with finland to build military bases and garrison troops in Finland.
Finland rejected all these requests. On November 13, 1939, the Finnish representative, who was preparing to return home after the conclusion of the negotiations, received a threat from The Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Molotov: We civilian officials can do nothing about this, and now it is the turn of the military to speak!
Subsequent frictions ensued between the two countries, and the Soviet Union abrogated the non-aggression pact with Finland and severed diplomatic relations on the grounds that it had been shelled.
500,000 Soviet troops had assembled in the border areas and were ready to prop up a puppet government headed by Kussinin in Finland.
The Finns on the other side were not fools either, having learned the lessons of history long after independence and planned a possible Soviet offensive.
It took them a decade to build the 135-kilometre-long Mannerheim Line near the Soviet-Finnish border, with a depth of 95 kilometres, and the nation's armed forces and reserve forces were strengthened.
By November 30, 1939, as we mentioned earlier, the war was first fought by the Soviets.
The four Soviet armies, with about 500,000 troops, under the cover of more than 2,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft, launched an attack on Finland in four directions.
At this time, although Finland had expanded its troops from 30,000 to 100,000 in peacetime, it was still a bit stretched in the face of such a large enemy force.
What's more, Finland has fewer than 100 tanks and only 104 aircraft.
It is no exaggeration to say that against Finland's strength, the Soviet Union has already used a cattle knife to kill chickens. However, weak Finland, although inferior to its opponents, has the advantage of terrain and climate.
Relying on fortifications and forests, rivers, and swamps, they greatly slowed the advance of the Soviet army. Under the cover of blizzards, thick fog and darkness, the fragmented Finnish army gave full play to the advantages of mobility and flexibility, and slid sleds in squads and platoons to attack the Soviet army, and their target was the logistics supply of the Soviet army.
Many Soviet soldiers were frozen to death in the ice and snow due to lack of food and clothing, and the living people basically lost the ability to fight.
(Note: Simon Haye)
The Finnish Army also formed a number of sniper teams, and the sniper team soldiers were often hunter-turned-hunters, who were bold and skilled in marksmanship, and could inflict heavy casualties on the enemy.
Even after being spotted by an opponent, they can quickly evacuate or hide from detection. The Soviets were afraid and hated these people, but they could do nothing about them.
The sniper we mentioned at the beginning, Named Simon Hayer, who single-handedly sniped and killed more than 500 Soviet troops, was known as the "White Death."
To this day, Simon Hayer still ranks first in the Sniper Rankings.
In this way, under the flexible blows of the Finnish army, from the end of November to the end of December, the Soviet casualties were close to 150,000.
In one of the battles, the Finnish army wiped out 30,000 Soviet troops at the cost of only 900 dead and 1,700 wounded, and 2 of the divisions were annihilated.
In this way, the Soviet Union's intention to end the war in a dozen days was completely frustrated.
(Note: Voroshilov)
The bitter defeat spread from the front back to Moscow, and the Soviet hierarchy was so shocked that Stalin even confronted Voroshilov, who was the People's Commissar of Defense.
Stalin denounced the other side for being incompetent, and Voroshilov grabbed a plate and threw it to the ground, shouting that it was not because you had killed all the generals!
However, after stalin calmed down, he still chose to solve the problem by replacing the front-line command generals, and Timoshenko, who had participated in the First World War, became the new front-line commander.
After Timoshenko took office, he first replaced a large number of incompetent senior officers; second, he strengthened the ideological and disciplinary education of the army and raised morale; third, he reinforced the front line and improved the logistical supply conditions; and finally, he learned the lessons of failure and strengthened the training of the army.
For example, the Finnish army has a special ski unit, they wear white camouflage uniforms, hold automatic or semi-automatic weapons, and use skiing tools such as sleds to shuttle back and forth on the battlefield, which puts great pressure on the Soviet army.
After Timoshenko took office, he also followed the example of his opponents and formed a Soviet ski unit to compete with it.
(Note: Timoshenko)
The renovation lasted for more than a month, and it was not until February 1940 that the Soviets resumed their offensive. Moreover, in order to win the victory, the Soviet Union redeployed 600,000 troops from 45 divisions to the front.
With a large number of troops, the Soviet army ignored casualties and adopted the tactic of man-sea to attack the positions of the Finnish army.
Soviet aircraft artillery also spared no effort in ammunition and indiscriminately bombarded the Finnish army's defensive area.
Finland's troops were about to be exhausted, and they had no chance of winning against the overwhelmingly superior Soviet army, and the defensive lines were broken one after another.
Eventually, with the mediation of Sweden and other countries and the help of Britain and France, in March, Finland ended the war that would destroy the country if it continued to fight at the cost of accepting the soviet union's offer to cede territory and other conditions.
(Note: Fallen Soviet soldiers)
The months-long war caused huge losses to Finland, with only about 100,000 Finnish troops engaged in combat, resulting in more than 25,000 casualties, another 55,000 wounded, and more than 10% of the country lost.
But the victorious Soviet Union, apart from taking advantage of the country, suffered far more losses than Finland.
For this war, the Soviet Union mobilized nearly 1 million troops, resulting in about 200,000 casualties, another 300,000 wounded, in addition to the loss of more than 1,000 aircraft and more than 2,000 tanks, it can be said that more than half of the casualties have been suffered.
Although the victory of the Soviet Union is not false, it is also an extremely tragic victory, and if it were not for the national strength of completely crushing the opponent, it is not certain who will lose and who will win this Soviet-Finnish war.
(Note: Siege of Leningrad, 8 September 1941 – 27 January 1944)
However, we can't help but ask, why can the powerful Soviet Union only end in a crushing victory against such a small country? There are both subjective and objective reasons.
Objectively, the reason was Finland's extremely cold climate and complex terrain; subjectively, the Soviet Union despised Finland both strategically and tactically, seriously underestimated the resistance of its opponents, and thought that it would not take long to take them.
Therefore, all kinds of intelligence gathering and camouflage work were left behind by the Soviet Union, and as a result, the war began to suffer a big loss. Coupled with the fact that many officers at that time lacked the necessary command ability and were entrusted with heavy responsibilities, the results were predictable.
Although the Soviet-Finnish War brought some territory to the Soviet Union, it caused Finland to fall directly to the fascist camp, and the Soviet Union suffered a heavy loss in the Soviet-German War that broke out a year later.
Content Source:
Chen Junping: Studies on the Soviet-Finnish War, Master's Thesis of Shaanxi Normal University, 2008
"Commenting on the Soviet-Finnish War", Journal of the Civil Aviation University of China, No. 1, 1990