Aftermath of the Winter War

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The 105-day war had a profound and depressing effect in Finland. Useful international support was minimal, arrived late, and the German blockade prevented most armament shipments.^[1] The state of the Finnish Army on the Karelian Isthmus at the end of the war has been the subject of debate. Orders were already given to prepare a retreat to the next line of defence in the Taipale sector. Estimates of how long the enemy could have been held in these kinds of retreat-and-stand operations varied from a few days^[2] to a couple of months,^[3] most averaging around a few weeks.^[4] During the Interim Peace, Karelian local governments, parishes and provincial organizations established Karjalan Liitto, an interest group, in order to defend the rights and interests of Karelian evacuees and to find a solution for returning Karelia.

During the period between the war and the perestroika in late 1980s, Soviet historiography leaned solely on the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov's comments on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had been trying for two months to negotiate guarantees for the security for Leningrad. However, the Finns had taken a hostile stance in order to "please foreign imperialists". The Finns had undertaken military provocation and the Soviets could no longer honor nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, Soviets did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.^[5]

Another source, later used widely in Soviet historiography, was the speech of Molotov to the Supreme Soviet on 29 March 1940. Molotov blamed western countries for instigating the war and argued that they had used Finland as a proxy to fight against the Soviet Union. The Allies had furthermore tried to persuade Sweden and Norway to join the conflict. The main "antagonists" in Soviet eyes were the United Kingdom and France, but also Sweden, the United States, and Italy, which had issued massive amounts of materials, money, and manpower to Finland. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union was merciful in peace terms, as the problem of Leningrad's security had been solved.^[5]

It has been speculated that Stalin had practically wiped out his intelligence apparatus during the purges, thus damaging the effectiveness of spies in Finland and other countries, as well as cowing operatives into telling Stalin what he wanted to hear. He therefore was not aware of the real situation in Finland and amongst the Allies.^[6] Soviet intelligence sources had reported on Allied plans to intervene in the war, but not on the actual unpreparedness of the Allies. Therefore, the Soviets felt forced to seek a premature end to the war before possible Allied intervention and declaration of war on the Soviet Union.

In 1948, Stalin wrote in Falsifiers of History that "there could hardly be any doubt that the leading circles of Finland were in league with the Hitlerites and that they wanted to turn Finland into a springboard for Hitler Germany's attack on the U.S.S.R."^[7] Regarding the beginning of the war, Stalin wrote, "In the war which the Finnish reactionaries started against the Soviet Union, Britain and France rendered the Finnish militarists every kind of assistance. The Anglo-French ruling circles kept inciting the Finnish Government to continue hostilities."^[8]

Nikita Khrushchev, who had been a party leader during the war, reminisced later on: "In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."^[9]

In 1994, the President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, denounced the Winter War, conceding that it was a war of aggression.^[10]

The Winter War was a success for the Germans. Both the Red Army and the League of Nations were humiliated and furthermore, the Allied Supreme War Council had been revealed to be chaotic and powerless. However, the German policy of neutrality was not popular in the homeland and relations with Italy had also suffered badly. After the Peace of Moscow, the Germans did not hesitate to move to improve ties, and within two weeks, Finno-German relations were at the top of the agenda.^[11]

During the Interim Peace, the Finns gradually moved closer to Germany to fend off the perceived Soviet aggression and the Soviet interference into the Finnish domestic politics. Later Finland came to perceive the co-operation with Germany as a chance to reclaim areas ceded to the Soviet Union. Two days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Soviet–Finnish hostilities resumed with start of the Continuation War.

The Winter War put in question the organisation and effectiveness of not only the Red Army, but also that of the Western Allies. The Supreme War Council did not manage its way through the situation, but revealed its total unsuitability to make effective war in either Britain or France. This failure led to the collapse of the Daladier government in France, and later, after the failure in the Norwegian Campaign, the fall of Chamberlain government in the United Kingdom.^[12]

The Supreme Military Soviet met in April 1940, sifted through the lessons of the Finnish campaign, and recommended reforms. The role of frontline political commissars was reduced and old-fashioned ranks and forms of discipline were reintroduced. Clothing, equipment and tactics for winter operations were improved. However, not all of these reforms had been completed when the Germans started Operation Barbarossa fourteen months later.^[13]

In the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.^[14] Finland aimed to improve its defensive capabilities and conducted negotiations with Sweden regarding a military alliance, but negotiations ended once it became clear that both Germany and the Soviet Union opposed such an alliance.^[15] On 31 July 1940, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler gave the order to plan an assault on the Soviet Union, meaning that Germany had to reassess its position regarding Finland. Until then, Germany had rejected Finnish appeals to purchase arms, but with the prospect of an invasion of Russia, this policy was reversed, and in August the secret sale of weapons to Finland was permitted.^[16]

Karelian evacuees established an interest group, the Finnish Karelian League, to defend Karelian rights and interests, and to find a way to return ceded regions of Karelia to Finland.^[17][18] Finland wished to re-enter World War II mainly because of the Soviet invasion of Finland during the Winter War – which had taken place after Finland's reliance on the League of Nations and Nordic neutrality in order to avoid conflict had failed.^[19] Finland primarily aimed to reverse its territorial losses from the Moscow Peace Treaty and, depending on the success of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, to possibly expand its borders, especially into East Karelia. Some right-wing groups, such as the Academic Karelia Society, supported a Greater Finland ideology.^[20] The Continuation War began in June 1941, leading to Finnish participation in the siege of Leningrad as well as the Finnish occupation of East Karelia.^[21][22]

During the four months of fighting, the Soviet Army suffered massive losses. One Red Army General, looking at a map of the territory just conquered, is said to have remarked: "We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead." The official Soviet figure, issued just after the war, listed 48,745 dead and 150,863 wounded.^[13]

According to Nikita Khrushchev, 1.5 million men were sent to Finland and one million of them were killed, while 1,000 aircraft, 2,300 tanks and armored cars and an enormous amount of other war materials were lost.^[23][24] Finland's losses were limited to 25,904 dead or missing^[25] and 43,557 wounded.^[26]

In 1990, professor Mikhail Semiryaga used the Red Army Casualty Notifications to publish a book in which he gave exact figures: 53,522 dead, 16,208 missing, 163,772 wounded and 12,064 frostbitten. Meanwhile, professor N. I. Baryshikov estimated 53,500 dead, a figure close to that of Semiryaga. In 1999, Finnish historian Ohto Manninen estimated Red Army casualties to have been 84,994 dead or prisoners, 186,584 wounded or disabled, 51,892 sick and 9,614 frostbitten.^[27] Russian historian Grigoriy Krivosheyev calculated 126,875 dead and 264,908 wounded.^[28] In 1999, Yuri Kilin, professor at Petrozavodsk State University, calculated 63,990 dead, and 207,538 wounded and frostbitten, making total casualties 271,528. A further 58,390 men were tagged as sick.^[29] In 2007, he revised the estimate of dead to 134,000^[30] and in 2012, he updated the estimate to 138,533.^[31] In 2013, Pavel Petrov stated that the Russian State Military Archive has a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.^[32]