Lessons From the Winter War

In 1939, Stalin’s Red Army thought it would capture Helsinki in a matter of weeks. Finland had other ideas.

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A small democracy gets demands and threats from Moscow, refuses to budge, is then invaded by overwhelming force, but manages to defy the odds and survive and fight back. This is happening now in Ukraine, but it happened before in Finland back in 1939-40 during the so-called “Winter War.” I interviewed Dr. Tomas Ries about the parallels and differences between Stalin’s war against Finland and Putin’s war against Ukraine, and if there are any lessons that Ukraine can draw from this history. Ries is a recently retired senior lecturer in security and strategy at the National Defence College, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of Cold Will, a book about Finland’s wars with the USSR, and has followed Finnish defense policy closely for decades. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Fink: Could you tell us about the Winter War (the Soviet invasion of Finland)? Why did it start and what happened?

Dr. Tomas Ries: Basically, throughout the 1930s Stalin was getting more and more worried about Hitler, and Stalin tried several times to have some kind of defensive alliance with Britain and France, but they turned them down. Then he also saw what happened with the Austrian Anschluss and the Munich Agreement that dismembered Czechoslovakia, that the Western allies didn’t react, and that is when he switched over to Hitler in 1939. Stalin contacted the Germans in January 1939 and within six months they had ironed out a non-aggression pact with a secret appendix that divided up northeastern Europe and Poland. Stalin figured that if he can’t get an alliance with the Western powers, he could at least get defense in depth this way, because he was always worried about an attack from Hitler.

Stalin had earlier contacted the Finns saying he would like to have discussions about a “mutual defense arrangement” but he didn’t really get any response. Then after the Nazi Soviet pact he contacted the Finns again, and also the Baltic states [Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia] and presented his demands—which was the right to have some Soviet bases in their territory and changes in the border. His proposal would have pushed the Finnish border further north from Leningrad. The three Baltic states agreed to Stalin’s demands, but the Finns did not. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Great article!

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    Saied

    Martha Gellhorn’s book, The Face of War has two chapters on the war in Finland. She was there in Helsinki and on the Karelian front. She brings the heroism and the suffering of the Finns up close and personal.

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    John D. Wright

    Great article. Great guest. I love the historical tie in.

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    Paul Hoover

    This is a very interesting and informative article of the same high quality and value as Mr. Fink’s earlier contributions. Thank you very much!

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    BrettH

    Great read, thanks!

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  6. P Satter

    Very interesting information and comparison.
    Whenever I hear of the Winter War I think of Simo Häyhä, a humble man from a farming family. Yet considered the world's most successful sniper. Something of a symbol of Finnish determination.
    https://www.simohayha.com/

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  7. Natty Bumpo

    Excellent piece with a great historical description and discussion of parallels with current events. It occurs to me that there are differences between Stalin and Putin, not in their savagery but in their objectives and discipline, which may come to bear in how this plays out.

    The Finns pragmatism is impressive. They gave up a small part of their territory, but most of that was Karelia, which is very significant culturally to Finland (being the locus of the Finnish national epic Kalevala published in 1835, which was compiled from Karelian folk lore). Since Karelia formed the border area around Lake Ladoga and butting up against Leningrad/St. Petersburg, it was of greatest geographic importance to the USSR. So, Finland made the hard choice and agreed to redraw the boundary. They made judicious decisions during WWII, avoiding an alliance with the Nazis and setting themselves up for accomodation with the USSR after the war. Lastly, they danced with the soviets in the cold war by maintaining a credible military.

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    Dave Carson

    One of the weirder aspects of Finland's "co-belligerence" with the Germans in WW2 was Hitler's secret visit to Mannerheim on his 75th birthday in 1942, resulting in an unauthorized recording of Hitler speaking in a normal voice. It is the only one in existence:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recording

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    The Bell Tower

    This was incredibly insightful. I knew of the Winter War but hadn’t thought about the parallels.

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    Kev_WDE

    Excellent, informative post. Thanks much.

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