Permanently Deleted
Before the war, around 90 out of the 200 seats in the Finnish parlament were held by parties that supported, to some degree, the idea of “Greater Finland”, conquering and ethnically cleansing parts of Russia. The fascist party had 14 seats. Finland was also deep in the German sphere of influence and would be a natural ally to the nazis in the upcoming war. Finland’s border was also very close to Leningrad.
The pre-emptive war was strategically sensible, and if it had ended in a quick Soviet victory as predicted, it would have probably led to fewer casualties in the war.
I feel like, despite the Finns doing fascism around the period, “temporary land loan” isn’t something anyone would trust from anyone else. That’s the kind of shit that invaders used as an excuse in Hamlet.
Funnily enough only to the civil war times Brief history of Russophobia
According to Karemaa, the class war of 1918 changed the Finns’ attitude towards the Russians. With the war, the white side transformed pan-European stereotypes and occasional anti-Russian sentiment into deep Russophobia. The war was easy to present propagandistically as a struggle for independence, a mythical struggle of the West against the East. The fearsome Bolshevik Russian represented the evil that had been unleashed. Especially the Jäger who had returned to Finland from Germany had adopted Germanic racial attitudes and anti-Russianism. The fearsome Bolshevik Russian represented the evil that had been let loose. Many Finnish writers and poets, from Juhani Siljo to Larin Kyösti and V. A. Koskenniemi, Ilmari Kianto, wrote insulting texts about the Russian people during the war that raised the fighting spirit. The Russians were described in racist terms as “sluts of the land”, while the Red Guards were “half-wits” who fraternised with “dogs and scum”.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Here’s a bit of info in english
This and this are in finnish and mostly concern the Winter War.
If you want to read about the time between 1917 and 1945 to get overall feel for fascist as fuck Finland there’s this and this again in finnish.
I recommend https://www.deepl.com/Translator or Google translate might work too.
edit: also had this bookmarked, it’s in english.
Basically, USSR wanted some buffer territory in Karelian Isthmus to protect Leningrad, while Finland understandably didn’t want to give it up. It was very shitty but probably necessary action.
It was very shitty but probably necessary action.
I mean the nazis ended up nearly taking Leningrad anyway. Seems like it would have been smarter for the Soviet’s to save all those resources for making a “buffer zone” and just build some big ass magonet line along the border.
The Maginot Line, a famous story of success :-/
I guess the lesson here is that they had no good options.
I mean not a literal maginot line, but yeah know, I think beefing up defense maybe would have been a better strat than throwing so much into making all these buffers that the Nazis ended up blowing through in like a week.
They literally did, but due to close proximity to border, it was vulnerable. Nevertheless, it did played an important role in stopping Finnish offensive on Karelian Isthmus in 1941.
