30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invaded

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saddler
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30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invaded

#1 Post by saddler »

Rarely covered by Western media & covered up by the Soviets due to their heavy losses.

Four times more Soviet divisions took part than the total number of Allied divisions in the June '44 invasion of Normandy

Soviet losses were covered up by Stalin but are estimated at about a million men.

The Finns were heavily outnumbered, but outfought the Soviets with loss of little ground.
They regained the land lost in the "Continuation War", but were robbed of it a 2nd time in the post-'45 treaties!

The Winter War gave the English language a new phrase - MOLOTOV COCKTAIL


I'll post more info./facts & figures/links to websites, books, movies, etc. later in the day
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saddler
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#2 Post by saddler »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

http://clip.suabnag.com/?w=5GlYHaddVlw

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Simo Hayha
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Simo Hayha had a fairly boring life in Finland. He served his one mandatory year in the military (Civil Guard), and then became a farmer. But when the Soviet Union invaded his homeland in 1939, he decided he wanted to help his country.

Since the majority of fighting took place in the forest, he figured the best way to stop the invasion was to grab his trusty rifle, a couple of cans of food and hide in a tree all day shooting Russians. In six feet of snow. And 20-40 degrees below zero.

Of course when the Russians heard that dozens of their men were going down and that it was all one man with a rifle, they got scared. He became known as "The White Death" because of his white camouflage outfit, and they actually mounted whole missions just to kill him. They started by sending out a task force to find Hayha and take him out. He killed them all.
Then they tried getting together a team of counter-snipers and sent them in to eliminate Hayha. He killed all of them, too.

Over the course of 100 days, Hayha killed 542 people with his rifle. He took out another 150 or so with his SMG, sending his credited kill-count up to 705.

Since everyone they had was either too dead or too scared to go anywhere near him, the Russians just carpet-bombed everywhere they thought he might be. Supposedly, they had the location right, and he actually got hit by a cloud of shrapnel that tore his coat up, but didn't actually hurt him.

Finally on March 6th, 1940, some lucky b****** shot Hayha in the head with an exploding bullet. When some other soldiers found him and brought him back to base, he "had half his head missing." The White Death had finally been stopped...for about a week. In spite of having come down with a nasty case of shot-in-the-face syndrome, he was still very much alive, and regained consciousness on March 13, the very day the war ended.
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Christopher Lee
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Christopher Lee fought in the Finnish army fighting off the soviet invasion of Finland, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1940, where he worked as an intelligence officer specializing in cracking German ciphers he came in contact with.
In North Africa he was attached to the Long Range Desert Patrol, the forerunner of the SAS, where he would jump in a jeep with a gigantic machine gun mounted in the back, drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, survive the heat of the Desert, then sneak-attack Luftwaffe airfields with his .50-caliber machine guns and planting dynamite on their planes.
By the time he retired as a Flight Lieutenant in 1945 he’d been personally decorated for battlefield bravery by the Czech, Yugoslavian, English, and Polish governments and was good friends with Josip Broz Tito.
He’s been married to the same Danish supermodel for 44 years, is the Commander of the Order of St. John’s of Jerusalem, a Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire, and once received a medal from Mikael Gorbachev.
He’s a 6’5” tall world-class fencer and Squash player, he speaks six languages, does all of his own stunts, is the most prolific actor in history credited by IMDB with 274 acting roles and he’s the only person to play both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. He’s portrayed Englishmen, Egyptians, Spaniards, Transylvanians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Poles, Chinese, Indians, Italians, Wallachians, Romans, Germans, Arabs, Gypsies, and Russians, speaks English, German, Russian, Swedish, Italian, and French, can do any English accent he wants.
His cousin is Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, which got him his role as a Bond villain.
...links to movies on the Winter War to follow
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#3 Post by Christel »

Saddler, sign92

Just a thought, is it possible that some of the "dead" Russians went across the border and defected?
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Chuck
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#4 Post by Chuck »

Interesting and fascinating stuff saddler, well done..keep it coming.
Political Correctness is the language of lies, written by the corrupt , spoken by the inept!
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saddler
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#5 Post by saddler »

christel wrote:Saddler, sign92

Just a thought, is it possible that some of the "dead" Russians went across the border and defected?
Possibly, in very very small numbers - but they were VERY much hated by the Finns at the time for the invasion - so they'd have had less than a welcome reception AND the political doctrine of the then Soviet army & high number of political NKVD integrated would have made it a rare occurance.

The Soviets also thought that the invasion would be over in a matter of days with little resistance - so the troops will have initially had the mindset that they'd have an easy victory ahead of them = not the normal motivating factors to deserting
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#6 Post by Hauptman »

sign92 for the very informative post..................I've never seen this campaign described in such detail before.

The Finns also make very nice rifles these days............... :good:

H/man
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saddler
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#7 Post by saddler »

Hauptman wrote:sign92 for the very informative post..................I've never seen this campaign described in such detail before.

The Finns also make very nice rifles these days............... :good:

H/man
The UK/free world were VERY behind the Finns at the time. Soviet Russia was kicked out of the League of Nations for their invasion of Finland & don't forget that the Soviets were German allies & had actively invaded parts of Poland in 1939.

The problem with the history of the Soviet invasion of Finland is that once the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, the Finns then took the chance to regain lost ground - and by doing so, by default, were fighting on the same side as the Germans!!
Hence, 1945 & German defeat meant a de-facto defeat of the Finns; who having NOT changes sides at all in the war (technically their ONE enemy was Russia) but by fighting against Russia to regain lost Finnish lands, they were by default classed as an Axis friendly power: early-war pre-Barbarossa support of them was therefore brushed under the carpet at the peace talks.

The land lost in 1940 & retaken pre-'45 were handed back to Stalin in the post-'45 talks & are STILL part of Russia!!!
There is an active pettition which I can post a link for, to have the peninsular returned to Finland.
Long overdue.
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#8 Post by EagerNoSkill »

Saddler you right : The Forgotten War
Explains why Russia versus Finland Hockey Matches are more Street Fights than Hockey

The Soviet Union, worried by the rise of fascism in Europe, feared an attack by Germany via Finland, and attempted to acquire several tracts of land - by exchange in some cases and by loan in others - in Finland, mainly in the western and southern coasts in order to fortify its positions against possible invasion. The proposition was, however, denied, and the Soviet leadership deducted that Finland was allied with Germany, and proceeded to pour over the eastern border in a preemptive attack.
When a world power attacks a sparsely populated, agrarian backwood the only possibility is a Curb-Stomp Battle. As such, it was a shock to all concerned when the Finns got their act together and proceeded to fight the Winter War, dealing almost as much damage to the Soviets as the Soviets did to themselves. Peace broke out after three and a half months of frenzy: Finland was forced to accept the earlier offer, and also lost large tracts of valued land as a way of war reparations. It's said that one of the Soviet generals considered this roughly the amount of territory needed to bury all of their dead.
Despite this, Finns considered (and consider) this their finest hour, a storm-tossed people united into David in David Versus Goliath, inflicting incredible casualties with their wilderness savvy, Heroic Resolve ("sisu") and ingenuity. However, the Soviet losses at 125,000 dead were, for such a large army, incredibly tiny. On the other side, the USSR discovered what happens when one purges a large portion of one's entire military brass. This mess is actually a fine lesson in force multipliers and the disconnect between theoretical force and the ability to inflict damage on the other guy: it's amazing how little help two-to-one numbers and tanks can be when both are stretched into a column on a forest road, and the enemy has winter camouflage and skis. Once the Soviets actually got their act together and put competent officers in charge of their armies, they rolled the Finns flat.

The best quote ever ...
Cold Sniper: Both literally (given the climate) and figuratively.
Simo Häyhä, AKA the White Death, greatest sniper ever, AFAIK the second-greatest was another Finn during the Winter War. After having collected 522 confirmed kills with his Mosin-Nagant M28 rifle with no scope (he didn't trust scopes; the lens could frost up in the cold) and at least 200 confirmed with his Suomi M31 SMG in 96 days (a record 48 over Christmas, no time for celebration)note , having survived Soviet army snipers sent to assassinate him, artillery barrages designed solely to kill him, and air strikes to his position, the Soviets got lucky, and he was shot in the face by an explosive munition. He woke up from the resulting coma nine days later, the same day hostilities stopped. Simo then withdrew to a peaceful life of hunting moose and breeding dogs and living to be above 90 himself. Simo was so much of a Badass that it is hard to believe, when asked how he could kill so many, he replied "practice".

The Finns have a National Day for Simo Häyhä
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#9 Post by Sandgroper »

Saddler,
I've just started reading 'White Death' by Robert Edwards - again! I've lost track of how many times I've read it and other books on the Winter war.

If you can direct me to some good books on the Continuation War and a biography on Mannerheim, it would be appreciated. :good:
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Re: 30th Nov. 1939 - Biggest Invasion of WW2 - Finland Invad

#10 Post by Chuck »

Shows just how much damage a determined man with a rifle can do..was he always a sniper or was he from a hunting / target shoot background?
Political Correctness is the language of lies, written by the corrupt , spoken by the inept!
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