Thursday Things of Interest V

Continuation War

Ok, this is too much for one post and I'm not going to split this into several posts, so what follows is a very quick and simplified description of the Continuation War. Winter War ended in March 1940 and Finland was in peace, but the threat of the Soviets didn't disappear and the whole Europe was in war. Soviet Union was part of the Allied, so the list of help was thin. There was practically one option to get support and that was Germany. A lot happened here and there, but in June 1941 Hitler said in his speech, that Finland and Germany will fight together even though there were not formal allies. That was enough for Soviets and they started a war. At the same time Germany started Barbarossa and actions of Finland were part of that.

Finland lost 10% of the area in the Winter War and people were eager to get those back. Cooperation with Germany gave a possibility for that. There was international and internal pressure, that the old border should not be crossed, but Germany was expecting Finland to help capture Leningrad (current St. Petersburg) and forces went far further than the old borders. After the initial assault things started to stall, Finnish army was not that large, but the area was. Trench war period of couple of years started, which ended in a massive Soviet attack in 1944, 9th of June - so right after Normandy. The assault was part of (or practice of) Operation Bagration and Finland was pushed back. One again the losses of Soviets were far higher than Finns, but they had more to begin with.

President of Finland was changed from Risto Ryti to C.G.E. Mannerheim in order to make a peace with Soviets. Ryti had made a personal commitment to Hitler and Germany, that Finland would continue the war in order to get more help, so he couldn't make peace. Finland lost the war again, but the independence was kept. More areas were lost, there were restrictions to army size and so on. One part of the peace treaty was that German army had to fought off and their possessions to be given to the Allied. That led to a short war called Lapland War were Finns fought Germans. More of that next week.

From a gamers point of view, the Finnish wars during WW2 offer a quite short list of "pitched battles", but if one is interested in trench wars or fighting against or for an underdog, then there is plenty to choose from. For more information regarding Continuation War please read wikipedia (or something relevant) or the novel "The Unknown Soldier" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Soldier_(novel) or watch any of the several film adaptations of it. One version of the movies is shown by national TV on every independence day.

Soldiers practicing the river crossing

--- In other news ---

The posts seem to be the same as usual... The weather however, it is late January and it has been raining  here in Southern Finland for two days. Yes. Raining water, not snow or anything snowlike.