Fighting the Soviet Giant in the Russo-Finnish War

This Finnish Maxim M-32 machine gun nest was occupied by several Finnish fighters, who resorted to guerrilla warfare in freezing and difficult terrain to defeat the Russians. https://finna.fi/CC SA-BY 4.0 DEED

“Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in his book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.” History shows us that, indeed, seemingly monstrous, ironclad, invulnerable foes can be beaten—or at least badly bruised—by opponents who are far weaker than they. Sometimes, all that’s needed from the underdog is a refusal to give up, a leathery toughness and grit, a wry smile in the face of doom, and a generous tonic of courage.

These types of against-all-odds stories resonate and thrill us, touching the strings of hope and bravery in our soul—hope that maybe the evil giants of our day, too, can be beaten, in the end, or at least weakened, by the efforts of a few courageous people.

One such story from relatively recent history is the Russo-Finnish war, or “Winter War,” which took place at the beginning of World War II during the winter of 1939 to 1940.

Prelude to War

During the Russian Civil War, anti-communist forces known as “Whites” fought against the “Reds,” the Bolsheviks who had seized power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. As Winter War historian William Trotter explains in “A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940,” Stalin came to power with a bitter taste in his mouth regarding Finland because the White government of Finland had allowed Whites and the British Navy to use Finnish territory as launching pads for attacks against the communists.

In addition, the Karelian Isthmus, partly controlled by Finland, was a highly strategic land bridge between Russia and the Scandinavian peninsula that formed a doorway to the West. Moreover, it led to Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg), just over the Russian border, making this important Russian city and birthplace of the communist revolution highly vulnerable to an invading army coming over the isthmus.

The upshot was that the Soviet Union demanded Finland cede territory to create a larger buffer between Finland and Leningrad and abandon its main line of fortifications while allowing the Russians to build a military base on a leased peninsula.

Despite being outmanned and outgunned to an almost laughable degree, Finland refused these demands of its powerful neighbor, who possessed the largest army in the world at the time.

Nikita Khrushchev recalled that the Soviet brass arrogantly believed, “All we had to do was raise our voices a little bit and the Finns would obey. If that didn’t work, we could fire one shot and the Finns would put up their hands and surrender.”

Indeed, most military analysts, both Soviet and non-Soviet, estimated that the Finns would be defeated within a week or two.

The reality turned out to be quite different.

Outmanned and Outgunned

As Trotter tells us, in the spring of 1939, the Finnish Army did not possess a single working antitank gun (though they received a small supply from Sweden by the start of the war). They had only a dozen modern fighter planes in their small air force, which was mostly composed of outdated craft. Ammunition stockpiles were severely limited. Many soldiers drilled with either wooden or extremely antique rifles. Many of the artillery pieces were over 30 years old, with limited stocks of shells.

The Russians attacked with about a million men, 1,000 tanks, and significant air superiority. The Finns had just 200,000 men at the start of the war, although their force grew a little, partly due to volunteer fighters from other counties who were inspired by the Finns back-to-the-wall resistance.

What the Finns did have was “sisu”—their word for grit, determination, and courage. With this, and mostly just this, they faced the Soviet war machine as it rolled inexorably toward them in November of 1939.

The status of the Winter War as of December 1939. The black line represents the Mannerheim Line, a defense line fortified by Finnish soldiers against the Russians. The line was naturally punctuated by lakes and marshes, which made it more difficult for the Russians to advance. Public Domain

Heroic (and Clever) Resistance

The Russian battle plan was to use a conventional, frontal assault with heavy firepower and tanks, somewhat in imitation of Hitler’s successful Blitzkrieg tactic in his early European campaigns. But in addition to underestimating the Finnish will and ability to fight, the Russians quickly learned that they were trying to apply a good strategy in the wrong situation: Finland in 1939 was nothing like central Europe with its network of modern roads, familiar landmarks, and easily discernible targets, where Hitler’s “lightning war” approach worked so well.

Finland was a tapestry of icy lakes (more than 200,000 of them), sprawling marshes, thick and endless forests, and crisscrossing rivers—and all the terrain was unfamiliar to the invading forces. In addition, daylight during winter in Finland only lasts a few hours. Not surprisingly, winter in Finland is also extremely cold, and that winter was particularly harsh, with temperatures plunging to 30 degrees below zero or more. Like they were with the terrain, the Finns were much more accustomed to the brutal weather than their Russian counterparts were.

The Finnish strategy was the one used by so many underdog armies throughout history: guerilla warfare. Guerilla forces are, of course, unconventional troops who refuse to “fight fair,” so to speak. Since they know they can’t win a conventional pitched battle, they use hit-and-run tactics, and rely on sabotage and subterfuge to keep the fight going and minimize casualties. They take advantage of their knowledge of their native terrain and the element of surprise to terrorize and confuse their enemy, with the hope that, even if they can’t defeat the more powerful enemy, they can make life so uncertain and miserable that the attackers’ morale collapses and they decide it’s not worth it to continue the fight. According to Max Boot, who compiled a database of conflicts involving guerilla warfare for his book “Invisible Armies,” insurgent forces succeed in a surprising 25.5 to 40.3 percent of conflicts, despite being, as a rule, greatly overmatched.

As the massive, cumbersome columns of Soviet men, trucks, tanks, and equipment wound their way through the frosty landscape of Finland on primitive roads, they became easy targets for highly mobile Finnish squadrons who would launch surprise attacks and then vanish just as quickly into the whitened wilderness swirling with snow.

What would at first appear to be an advantage of the Soviet military giant—a huge number of troops and equipment—in this case became a liability. The large force was more easily bogged down; it was slow, inflexible, and hesitant in comparison with its Finnish foes, many of whom wore white to match the snow and operated on skis that allowed them to pass swiftly through forest and over hill like wintry wraiths.

Capt. Rick Cherslica details a number of guerilla tricks that—coupled with their willingness to fight to the last man, even when supplies and equipment were giving out, even when all hope seemed lost—allowed the Finns to fight far longer than anyone anticipated. Capt. Cherslica describes, for example, the booby traps set by the Finnish forces: “Cheap, trip-wire operated pipe mines were hidden in snow banks and detonated at the abdominal level. Undetectable by electronic devices, wooden mines were buried that could blow the tread off of a tank, resulting in Soviet infantry slowly advancing in front of tanks to probe the ground with sticks.”

The Finns also placed mines in lakes to blow up sections of ice, making the lake impassable by tanks. Fear of these ice-obliterating mines eventually forced the Russians to stick to the strips of land between, which is what the Finns intended. Barbed wire tangles and naturally occurring boulders and logs also served as obstacles to Russian forces. Finns used precise artillery fire and other tactics to separate and divide enemy units, breaking the enemy into “bite-sized” chunks that the outnumbered Finns could more easily deal with.

Because of their limited ammunition, Finnish soldiers had to be efficient marksman. And they were. Snipers formed a core part of the defensive strategy, including one legendary Finnish sniper, Simo Hayha, known as “The White Death,” who was among the most skilled snipers in history with 500 kills to his name (during a war that lasted only about 100 days).

A festive Simo "The White Death" Hayha upon being awarded an honorary rifle. Hayha was one of the most prolific snipers in modern history; active during the Winter War, he is estimated to have killed over 500 enemy soldiers. Public Domain

All of these techniques combined allowed the Finnish troops to inflict massive casualties on the invaders: 390,000 dead, missing, or wounded, while the Finns’ casualties numbered only 66,000.

Victory in Defeat

In the end, against the overwhelming resources the Russians could keep pouring into the fight even in the face of massive losses, the Finns had to sue for peace. But their resistance had made its mark on the course of world events. Because of a relatively small group of men’s stoic grit and heroic efforts, the Finns were able to evade the iron umbrella that overshadowed most of Eastern Europe. As Capt. Cherslica writes, “While Finland would eventually concede to harsh Russian demands, the time that was afforded to the diplomatic proceedings resulted in Finland retaining its independence.”

The unbreakable spirit and endless inventiveness of the Finnish warriors allowed them to buy their government time and, ultimately, ward off the communist shadow. They may have surrendered, but from a bird’s-eye perspective, they achieved their most important objective while inspiring countless onlookers down to our own day. Their incredible sacrifices were not for nothing.

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