WINTER WAR FINLAND'S FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

Outnumbered and outgunned, the Finns used the harshest winter in living memory to defy Stalin and turn their snow-covered home red with Soviet blood

- WORDS LOUIS HARDIMAN

Seven artillery rounds screamed through the overcast mid-afternoon sky and exploded near the border village of Mainila, 2,600ft (800m) inside Soviet territory. Three Red Army privates and one NCO died during the 26 November bombardment. In a note handed to a Finnish official in Moscow, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov called the artillery strike a “revolting act committed by troops belonging to the Finnish Army”. Yet it was Soviet guns that fired the rounds during a false flag operation that served as provocation for the Winter War, which began four days later.

Joseph Stalin's 1939 invasion had a primarily geographical objective. That autumn, the Soviets had demanded territory in the Bjorko Region alongside the Hanko Peninsula, both on Finland's southwest coast, and requested that the border on the Karelian Isthmus be moved northwest to within 19 miles (30km) of Viipuri. The territory handover would obstruct future German attempts to use Finland as a staging point for an attack on Leningrad. It would also yield control of the Gulf of Finland to the Soviet Navy.

Unsurprisingly, Finland did not agree to the territorial loss. Henrik Meinander, professor of History at the University of Helsinki and author of Helsinki: The History of a Nordic City, tells History of War. The Soviet Union had forced Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into Mutual Assistance Pacts to establish Red Army military bases on Baltic territory. Now the Soviets met the Finns’ refusal with preparations for war. After Red Army aircraft conducted reconnaissance operations along the 800-mile (1,300km) border, Stalin concluded that Finland was entirely unprepared for an invasion.