jarmo@tut.FI (Jarmo Sorvari) (10/28/87)
In article <8710260912.aa15754@note.nsf.gov> fbaube@NOTE.NSF.GOV (Fred Baube) writes: > Someone check me on this, but my impression is that Finland is > about the only country the Soviets gave a more than fair shake > to. It is mainly because Finland was the only country in the WWII that LOST but did not get actually INVADED. The peace was negotiated. > The Soviets invaded Finland in the thirties, and the Finns > made monkeys out of them. OK, I'm not a native english-speaker, but I understand the word 'invade' means to enter the country with troops, and gain control. This is not what happened. Finland was never invaded. The russians attacked in 1939, but they must have been surprised of how hard Finns faught back. There is a story (who knows if it's true or not) from the early days of the war: in a pocket of a dead Russian officer was found an order not to cross the Swedish border during the attack! The war lasted for six years. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Jarmo Sorvari Control Engineering Laboratory ! ! ...!mcvax!tut.fi!jarmo Tampere University of Technology ! --------------------------------------- BOX 527, 33101 Tampere, Finland -----
rupp@cod.NOSC.MIL (William L. Rupp) (11/03/87)
Flame me if this followup belongs elsewhere, but the Finnish story is an interesting one that Americans should know better. As I understand it, the Soviet Union was the agressor in 1939. I think Soviet troops did in fact cross the Finnish border, but the Finns put up a hell of a fight. They out-maneuvered the Ukrainian troops that had been brought up by Salin instead of the northern Russians who would have been more suited for Arctic fighting. The Russians lost many men and really did very poorly against the much smaller Finnish nation. I think I have read somewhere that Hitler based his poor opinion of the Russian forces on the Finnish experience. In the end, a peace settlement was reached in which Finland did cede a certain amount of territory to Russia. That all took place in 1939, or maybe into early 1940; can't remember exactly. In June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Finnland's forces invaded northern Russia as part of the German Army Group North. This was not because Finnland was Nazi, but because they wanted to regain territory grabbed by Russia. The same was true of Romania, which wanted to regain Bessarbia, which Stalin had incorporated into the Soviet Union (to be accurate, though, Romania was much closer to the fascism of Hitler than was Finland). I don't know why Stalin did not occupy Finland at the end of WWII. Maybe it was because the Finns still had enough military force left to make the job not worth the effort for the badly weakened Russians, who in any case had more important work to do in solidifying their Eastern European empire. By the way, I think Finland is the only country to have paid off its war debt to the United States. I promise not to say up any more Finland. Bill ====================================================================== I speak for myself, and not on behalf of any other person or organization .........................How's that, Gary? ======================================================================