Russia at war 1941-1945

It is now openly admitted that the first month of the war was an almost undiluted disaster.

The most the Russians achieved in December was to advance, in the course of "very heavy fighting", between fifteen and forty miles; but, having reached the Mannerheim Line proper, with its network of powerful fortifications, they came to a halt. On the Karelian Isthmus, as well as in Central Finland, the Russians were handicapped by snow, in some places five or six feet deep. The few available roads were heavily defended by the Finns, and the Russians had practically no trained ski troops, in which the Finnish army abounded. To move heavy equipment on such terrain was as good as impossible.

The Finns were heavily armed with automatic rifles and tommyguns, while the Russians were not. Temperatures—around minus 30°C. —were abnormally low. A large

proportion of the Soviet troops "were simply unprepared for this kind of warfare; they had had no experience of moving on skis through lake and forest country, and had no

experience at all of breaking through permanent lines of fortifications, or of storming pillboxes and other reinforced concrete structures".

[IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 266.]

By the beginning of January, the offensive was stopped. Marshal Timoshenko was

appointed Commander-in-Chief, and, for a whole month, the Russians planned and

prepared for a break-through of the Mannerheim Line. Large reinforcements, especially of engineers, were to be mustered for the purpose. Massive support of tanks, planes and guns was provided for in an all-out offensive effort to overcome the Finnish

fortifications. Moreover, three infantry divisions, reinforced by cavalry and tanks, were assigned the task of out-flanking the Mannerheim Line in the Viborg area across the ice of the Gulf of Finland.

The storming of the Mannerheim Line, preceded by a tremendous artillery barrage "from thousands of guns", did not begin till February 11. But the advance was still slow; although the Russians destroyed and captured many of the pillboxes, the Finns in the surviving pillboxes continued their desperate resistance, and casualties were very high on both sides. The steel and concrete fortifications of the Mannerheim Line, many of them connected by underground passages, with reinforced concrete walls three feet thick, were, indeed, in many cases almost invulnerable even to the heaviest pounding. It took nearly a week after a breakthrough along an eight-mile front before the Russians began to make any decisive progress. By February 21 most of the western part of the Mannerheim Line had been overrun, but the Russian losses had been so heavy that their forces had to be regrouped and further heavy reinforcements had to be brought up before the offensive could be resumed, what remained of the Mannerheim Line conquered and Viborg

captured.

Full-scale operations were only re-started on February 28. As the Russians approached Viborg, they met with another major obstacle —the flooding of large areas by the Finns

—but they finally reached the Viborg-Helsinki highway. By now the resistance of the

Finnish Army had, in the main, been broken. On March 4, Mannerheim informed the

Finnish Government that the Army could no longer resist successfully. The Soviet-

Finnish Peace Treaty was signed in Moscow on March 12.

[After the Finnish attempts to obtain German or American mediation had failed, tentative negotiations were started in January in Stockholm between the well-known Finnish

playwright, Hella Wuolijoki—with Foreign Minister Tanner's consent—and Mme

Kollontai, the Soviet Ambassador. A variety of negotiations continued throughout

January and February, though the Finns still hoped to obtain substantial military aid—

including troops—from Sweden, and also hoped that the Swedes would allow French and

British troops to go to Finland via Sweden. On this point the Swedes, afraid of becoming involved in a major war, would not yield and, indeed, advised the Finns to make peace with the Russians on the best possible terms.]

Almost throughout the "Winter War" there had been something of a news blackout in Russia, even though people in Moscow, and especially Leningrad, had a fair idea of what was going on. But very little was said at first about the great offensive against the Mannerheim Line in February, and still less about the abortive advance into Central

Finland; and it was not till the first week of March, after three months of inconclusive and mostly frustrating news, that the Soviet press at last began to speak of "victories on the Mannerheim Line". And then, suddenly, on March 12, it was announced that the Peace Treaty between the USSR and Finland had been signed. The signing was done by