The Russian invasion of Finland in November 1939 came as a bloody shock to the people of the small Baltic state, not least the government which appeared to have misread Joseph Stalin’s intentions.
The location for this terrible saga lies at the easternmost end of the Baltic Sea, between the Gulf of Finland and the huge Lake Ladoga, this is the rugged and very narrow Karelian Isthmus.
Flying over this territory in a light plane reveals its stark and stern beauty, cut laterally by crisp blue lakes, blanketed in an evergreen forest, stubby grey and reddy grey hills pop up here and there.
There was virtually nothing of value here at least at first, no minerals, very little agriculture as the soils are poor. That was going to change when the Finns discovered large deposits of nickel in the Petsamo region and would hand over mining concessions to the British.
The Russians did not like that one little bit.
But it wasn’t minerals that led to Moscow invading their much smaller neighbour, it was the fear of the Germans. This little bit of land was going to be fought over as it had been so often through history.
The Karelian Isthmus is a land bridge between the seething eastward mass of mother Russia and Asia, and the immensity of the Scandinavian Peninsular that swells downward to the west. It’s like a highway for tribal migration, a route for trade, a channel for cultural movements, and a gateway for conquest.
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The Russian invasion of Finland in November 1939 came as a bloody shock to the people of the small Baltic state, not least the government which appeared to have misread Joseph Stalin’s intentions.
The location for this terrible saga lies at the easternmost end of the Baltic Sea, between the Gulf of Finland and the huge Lake Ladoga, this is the rugged and very narrow Karelian Isthmus.
Flying over this territory in a light plane reveals its stark and stern beauty, cut laterally by crisp blue lakes, blanketed in an evergreen forest, stubby grey and reddy grey hills pop up here and there.
There was virtually nothing of value here at least at first, no minerals, very little agriculture as the soils are poor. That was going to change when the Finns discovered large deposits of nickel in the Petsamo region and would hand over mining concessions to the British.
The Russians did not like that one little bit.
But it wasn’t minerals that led to Moscow invading their much smaller neighbour, it was the fear of the Germans. This little bit of land was going to be fought over as it had been so often through history.
The Karelian Isthmus is a land bridge between the seething eastward mass of mother Russia and Asia, and the immensity of the Scandinavian Peninsular that swells downward to the west. It’s like a highway for tribal migration, a route for trade, a channel for cultural movements, and a gateway for conquest.
Episode 6 - The Finns retake Suomussalmi and the Russians are repulsed in Lapland
The Winter War
22 minutes 24 seconds
1 year ago
Episode 6 - The Finns retake Suomussalmi and the Russians are repulsed in Lapland
This is episode six and we’re covering events at the end of December and into the first week of January.
First a quick situation report.
The Finns were fighting to maintain control over parts of the road to Raate from Suomussalmi, with the Russians having now decided to send an entire new Division to support the Ninth Army which had experienced some difficulty in the drive to cut Finland in half through what was known as the waist, planning if you remember to reach Oulu the eastern harbour port on the Baltic.
Captain Makinen had fought a rear-guard near the lakes of Kuivasjarvi and Kuomajarvi but the going was tough as his 350 men faced 14 000 Red Army troops. The Ninth Army receiving new orders for the 163rd and 44 Rifle Divisions to attack simultaneously on the 22nd December, but this was postponed to the 24th.
That was to allow the 9th Army commander Duhanov to be replaced by the highly successful Vasily Chuikov. For this phase of the attack, the Soviets wanted to send in reinforcements to Suomussalmi which they continued to hold despite Finnish attempts to drive them from this town based in the central eastern side of the waist, on the main road to Oulu.
The Soviet Stavka had taken over direct control of the war, it was going so badly, and they wanted to send mobile forces down the road to bolster the two infantry regiments, divisional artillery and the HQ in Suomussalmi. This was going to be a challenge, the Finns managed the cut the road along a five kilometer section.
So the Stavka used a new tactic, to bypass this cut off portion, to outflank the Finns in other words.
If you stand in the town of Suomussalmi and stare out direct north, you’re looking out across one of these quite vast lakes, out towards the Hulkonniemi peninsular opposite, more than a kilometer away across the Niskanselka portion of the lake.
o the Soviet battalion that detached from the 44th Rifle Division was forced to circle Finnish positions along a 200 kilometre route through the Lonkka-Palovaara territory, and this was a safe route, albeit a long march.
Intelligence reports indicated that the Russians were arriving in force and the Finns attack on Suomussalmi was delayed to the 26th December when sections of the Sixth bicycle battalion struck Russian logistics columns near kylanmaki. Despite desperate attempts, the bicycle battalion failed to overrun the Russian positions.
Things went better for the rest of the battalion hit a Red Army motorised column at the village of Kakimaki, causing chaos. The Russian troops abandoned their trucks and escaped across the frozen landscape back into to Soviet Union.
Let’s take a look at what was happening near the Arctic sea, far to the north. There the Soviet Fourteenth Army led by Commander Valerian Frolov was trying to seize Finland’s only Arctic port, Petsamo. The Finnish high command had split their forces here — one was under Major General Marrti Wallenius, and called the Lapland Group. Wallenius faced a grim situation, and Mannerheim had not expected his forces in the north to survive long.
He was going to be surprised, because the Lapland Group had managed to hold off the Fourteenth Army mainly because Frolov had decided to use only one third of his forces in the initial attack, the 52nd Rifle Division.
The Winter War
The Russian invasion of Finland in November 1939 came as a bloody shock to the people of the small Baltic state, not least the government which appeared to have misread Joseph Stalin’s intentions.
The location for this terrible saga lies at the easternmost end of the Baltic Sea, between the Gulf of Finland and the huge Lake Ladoga, this is the rugged and very narrow Karelian Isthmus.
Flying over this territory in a light plane reveals its stark and stern beauty, cut laterally by crisp blue lakes, blanketed in an evergreen forest, stubby grey and reddy grey hills pop up here and there.
There was virtually nothing of value here at least at first, no minerals, very little agriculture as the soils are poor. That was going to change when the Finns discovered large deposits of nickel in the Petsamo region and would hand over mining concessions to the British.
The Russians did not like that one little bit.
But it wasn’t minerals that led to Moscow invading their much smaller neighbour, it was the fear of the Germans. This little bit of land was going to be fought over as it had been so often through history.
The Karelian Isthmus is a land bridge between the seething eastward mass of mother Russia and Asia, and the immensity of the Scandinavian Peninsular that swells downward to the west. It’s like a highway for tribal migration, a route for trade, a channel for cultural movements, and a gateway for conquest.
