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The Soviet Invasion of Finland, 1939-40
Western accounts of the Soviet-Finnish war have been reliant on Western sources. Using Russian archival and previously classified secondary sources to document the experience of the Red Army in conflict with Finland, Carl Van Dyke offers a reassessment of the conflict.
- GenresRussian History
286 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 30, 1997
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January 3, 2023
A study of the Soviet Russian military operations and diplomacy involved in the invasion of Finland in the late fall of 1939 through the late winter of 1940. The narrative is almost completely from the Soviet perspective, of which it is relatively complete.
Red Army column after being attacked in January 1940 during the battle of Suomussalmi, Finland.
My dead tree version was 270-pages. It had a UK 1997 copyright. This book includes: Footnotes, Bibliography, Figures, and an Index.
Carl Van Dyke was a PhD. British Military and Diplomatic historian specializing in Imperial and Soviet Russia. He wrote two (2) books on late 19th and early 20th Century Russian military history. This is the first book I’ve read by the author.
This book was an advanced-intermediate work. It’s strongly recommended having a background knowledge of WWI and early 20th century central European military and diplomatic history before reading this book. Familiarity with period military operational-level warfare and doctrine would also be helpful.
TL;DR Synopsis
The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939-1949 is a compact history of that brief (5-month) conflict. In that military incursion, in a very short period of time, the Red Army recovered from a near-military disaster in a war against a much weaker opponent. The book’s greatest strength was that it covers the Red Army’s operations and evolution of doctrine to meet the disaster and recover in some detail. The organizational and professional conflicts in the evolving Soviet strategy were particularly well done. It also provides brief, although good descriptions of the Finnish and Soviet diplomacy to resolve the conflict. In addition, it includes descriptions of significant ground engagements pointing-out the: doctrinal, organizational, technological or weather reasons for the Red Army’s victory or defeat in particular battles.
Modern war involves: men, organizations, doctrine and machines. The Soviet influencers from Stalin on down were identified. The Russian organizations within and without the Red Army were likewise identified, and somewhat well-described. The forced evolution of Red Army military doctrine, the keystone of the book, was well told. The period war fighting technology (machines) was only incidentally covered.
Having read this book, I better understood the organizational behavior of the Red Army that entered WWII.
The War
The Soviet Russian dictator Stalin entered into a strategy of a limited act of territorial aggrandizement with Finland to secure the Gulf of Finland and its naval approaches and the Karelian land approaches to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on the Baltic Sea. Diplomacy was tried first. Finnish recalcitrance to cede territory or give basing rights to the Soviets led to Stalin attempting to seize the territories outright in an undeclared war in November of 1939.
The war exposed a host of problems with the Red Army’s ability to conduct modern warfare. The invasion was executed too quickly leaving it ill planned and under resourced. In addition, the Red Army’s doctrine and training was deficient. They were ill prepared to practice the modern combined arms warfare needed to defeat a: well-trained opponent, in strong defensive positions, in heavy forests and swamps, under severe winter conditions. This was despite the great Finnish numerical and equipment inferiority. Red Army casualties were horrendous. More importantly (to Stalin), the Red Army was exposed as a Paper Tiger in a fraught international situation.
The Russians had a preponderance of men and modern war material. However, they had a severely defective doctrine and command structure. The Red Army was oriented toward mobile war on the central European plains. This was a relic of the Russian Civil War. In addition, Stalin had recently, and violently, purged the Red Army’s officer corps in a political consolidation of power. There was a severe shortage of high and middle rank, experienced, officers in the Red Army. At the highest-level Russian doctrine hadn’t yet adapted to the new ideas, technologies, and organizational designs that would be perfected in the near future WWII warfare. Their training, tactics, techniques, and procedures were not a match to the Finn’s slim advantages.
The Finnish Army had the: the military advantage of defense, the advantage of thorough knowledge of the terrain, severe winter weather conditions and qualitative superiority in manpower. Finnish doctrine was adopted from the German military, and also relatively mature. Although it was predicated on defense. The Mannerheim Line was a thick, static, fortified, defensive 'belt' protecting the most vulnerable portion of the Finnish/Russian frontier. This was their main and best line of resistance. However, the Finnish strategy was flawed. The strategy of static defense had already been superseded by new tactics and technology (aircraft and large calibre, mobile, artillery). There was nothing between the Mannerheim Line and the capital Helsinki. Their objective was to inflict from behind the Mannerheim Line either a Pyrrhic victory on the Russians or hold-out long enough to set-up the diplomatic conditions for international intervention. In either case the Finn’s small nation would have to take a heavy toll in casualties that their achievement would not make worthwhile.
Stalin avoided defeat, by finding new battle commanders for his Finnish war: Semyon Timoshenko and Kirill Meretskov while the war was in progress. They were capable, Old School, soldiers, who had survived the purges of the officer corps. Stalin also doubled down on reinforcing the invasion. In an amazingly short period of time, the Keralan Northwest Front was reinforced with both equipment and veteran replacements. In addition, the troops were retrained to use German Stoßtruppen tactics against the Mannerheim Line’s defenses with the rudiments of combined arms warfare. Although, in general Timoshenko’s battles were more like a regression to late WWI assualt tactics, than the those of the future WWII.
The: new tactics, weight of numbers and rearming produced a breakthrough. With Red Army success, Finnish hopes for foreign intervention collapsed along with their front. Unable to contain the Red Army, they sued for peace in March 1940. They ceded more territory than was demanded in November 1939. The Russian, diplomatic Logic of War was, any ground occupied by the Red Army was Russian.
The Book
Prose was good. Technically, the book was well edited. I found only one or two minor grammar and spelling errors. Although I would quibble over the use of “Stavka” (Russian High Command) versus it being written in uppercase (STAVKA) as in many English language military histories.
Overall style was that of the modern British military history. Note the author is a Cambridge PhD. Some folks may consider this to be rather dry, with its absence of anecdotes to provide local colour and context.
The organization of the book was good. There were only five (5) chapters and an Epilogue. There was a generally chronological progression with detailed breakdowns of the different actions along the Northwest Front. Land operations received the greatest majority of attention. Air operations were appropriately integrated into the narrative, but contained minimal detail. Naval operations received significantly less attention than air operations.
Descriptions of combat in the individual points of action along the front were good. The Smoke of Battle was conveyed in enough detail to illustrate the need for doctrinal and tactical changes and their effects when implemented.
There were brief descriptions of the diplomatic history of the conflict. This was primarily between the Finns, Swedes, League of Nations and the Soviets. However, I thought the book would have benefited from a larger discussion. In particular, the diplomatic efforts with the Anglo-French Entente and Nazi Germans could have benefitted the narrative.
Use of maps was adequate for a military history. There were barely enough maps and they were not positioned to completely support the narrative. In addition, not all of the maps included a ‘scale’, needed to determine distance. Units were sometimes, but not always indicated on the maps. I needed to use a proper Atlas to better understand the front. I would have appreciated the use of modern, standard tactical symbols.
Use of figures was peculiar. I spent a long-time poring over them. All photos were from Soviet archives. Many of them were for propaganda usage. Of note was the inclusion of several, untranslated, but English captioned Soviet propaganda ‘comic strips’. I didn’t see the need for them. There were several figures (really charts and tables) to show air and artillery bombardment numbers. However, the accompanying analysis was scant and left me feeling suspect.
There were no diagrams. I thought these would have been helpful. In particular diagrams of the Finnish, concrete fortifications and obstacle fields of the Mannerheim Line to supplement the descriptions would have been extremely helpful in understanding the Finnish defense.
Mannerheim Line, concrete fortification example
The included Notes were very detailed. I found myself reading them after each chapter. Likewise, the Bibliography was detailed and extensive. I recognized several of the English language books referenced as being authoritative in pre-WWII military and diplomatic history. The greatest portion of the references in both the Notes and Bibliography were Russian language.
A serious deficiency to the book was a missing Table of Organization (TOE) for both the Red Army and the Finns. I never had a firm grasp of the combatants Force Structures. That there was no organizational description of the Russian military organization led to some confusion and also exposed some likely errors in the author’s theses.
The Red Army’s TOE can be easily be found in other military histories of the period. I could not find a corresponding TOE for the Finns. Although, I assume Finn formations were similar to the German in organization? The author made several quantitative comparisons between the number of Soviet vs. Finnish Divisions. The Finns were always outnumbered division-to-division.
However, a Russian Rifle (Infantry) Division was 8700 men in three regiments. The post-WWI divisional model of the German army was 6500 men in three regiments. A Russian Infantry division was about a third larger in manpower than a Finnish division. The author was grossly understating the Russian manpower advantage in his division-to-division comparisons.
A detailed, quantitative inventory of the military hardware would also have been very helpful. Aircraft were rarely described by name. Mostly they were, “medium bombers” or "heavy bombers". Individual units of the Baltic fleet were mentioned. However, there was no overall description of the fleet, other than there were 60 ships. Finnish military hardware was nowhere addressed, other than in the most general terms: mortars, artillery, anti-tank guns, battleships, aircraft, etc. Russian armour and artillery was occasionally discussed. Although, I was not at all familiar with the oft referenced pre-WWII Russian military hardware, such as the T-26 tank that was always falling through the ice of frozen lakes and the Gulf of Finland.
Again, the author’s comparison of the two combatants suffered, due to the lack of a TOE for both sides. In the end, I found this critical omission to be very ironic. In the Soviet after-action analysis of the invasion, the author wrote of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) responsible for protection of Soviet borders and espionage being criticized for not having or providing the Red Army with a Finnish TOE before the invasion. That led to a gross underestimation of Finnish military capabilities. How could the book's readers also be left without one?
Finally, the operations against the Mannerheim Line were the largest part of the operational narrative. Although, this was the most important area of conflict, considering there were no Finnish Navy/Russian Baltic Fleet naval actions. However, I thought the Red Army operations on the Finnish eastern border north of the the Line to the Barents Sea received too brief a discussion.
Summary
This was very much a Soviet history. The author had free access to Russian archives and used them to the greatest extent. In particular, the evolution of Russian strategic objectives and the evolution of operations was very complete.
This was a good read for those interested in the development of the Red Army through one of the several, brief, peripheral, conflicts prior to WWII. Many of these have been almost forgotten in the West. However, the book was critically one-sided as serious military and diplomatic history scholarship. The Finns were almost absent from the narrative. The exception being their diplomatic efforts. If, modern war involves: men, organizations, doctrine and machines. The principal Soviet characters (they were all men), and the doctrine (Mobile War vs. Combined Arms Warfare) were well handled. The organizations were somewhat well done. However, important aspects of the combatant’s Force Structure was missing. This removed a necessary dimension to the narrative. While informative on the Red Army’s side, this book provides an incomplete picture of the Russo-Finnish War. Its best used as a supplement to other books on that conflict.
Finally, reading this book reminded me that Russian wars of aggression are not unique to modern times. Russian leaders from Peter the Great forward to the present have many times sought to extend their territory to achieve minimum security requirements at the expense of their neighbors. Russian armies have generally been successful in achieving their political leadership’s strategic goals in the end.
Readers interested in a very Finnish-oriented book on the conflict may be interested in The Winter War: The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 by William R. Trotter (my review).
Red Army column after being attacked in January 1940 during the battle of Suomussalmi, Finland.
My dead tree version was 270-pages. It had a UK 1997 copyright. This book includes: Footnotes, Bibliography, Figures, and an Index.
Carl Van Dyke was a PhD. British Military and Diplomatic historian specializing in Imperial and Soviet Russia. He wrote two (2) books on late 19th and early 20th Century Russian military history. This is the first book I’ve read by the author.
This book was an advanced-intermediate work. It’s strongly recommended having a background knowledge of WWI and early 20th century central European military and diplomatic history before reading this book. Familiarity with period military operational-level warfare and doctrine would also be helpful.
TL;DR Synopsis
The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939-1949 is a compact history of that brief (5-month) conflict. In that military incursion, in a very short period of time, the Red Army recovered from a near-military disaster in a war against a much weaker opponent. The book’s greatest strength was that it covers the Red Army’s operations and evolution of doctrine to meet the disaster and recover in some detail. The organizational and professional conflicts in the evolving Soviet strategy were particularly well done. It also provides brief, although good descriptions of the Finnish and Soviet diplomacy to resolve the conflict. In addition, it includes descriptions of significant ground engagements pointing-out the: doctrinal, organizational, technological or weather reasons for the Red Army’s victory or defeat in particular battles.
Modern war involves: men, organizations, doctrine and machines. The Soviet influencers from Stalin on down were identified. The Russian organizations within and without the Red Army were likewise identified, and somewhat well-described. The forced evolution of Red Army military doctrine, the keystone of the book, was well told. The period war fighting technology (machines) was only incidentally covered.
Having read this book, I better understood the organizational behavior of the Red Army that entered WWII.
The War
The Soviet Russian dictator Stalin entered into a strategy of a limited act of territorial aggrandizement with Finland to secure the Gulf of Finland and its naval approaches and the Karelian land approaches to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on the Baltic Sea. Diplomacy was tried first. Finnish recalcitrance to cede territory or give basing rights to the Soviets led to Stalin attempting to seize the territories outright in an undeclared war in November of 1939.
The war exposed a host of problems with the Red Army’s ability to conduct modern warfare. The invasion was executed too quickly leaving it ill planned and under resourced. In addition, the Red Army’s doctrine and training was deficient. They were ill prepared to practice the modern combined arms warfare needed to defeat a: well-trained opponent, in strong defensive positions, in heavy forests and swamps, under severe winter conditions. This was despite the great Finnish numerical and equipment inferiority. Red Army casualties were horrendous. More importantly (to Stalin), the Red Army was exposed as a Paper Tiger in a fraught international situation.
The Russians had a preponderance of men and modern war material. However, they had a severely defective doctrine and command structure. The Red Army was oriented toward mobile war on the central European plains. This was a relic of the Russian Civil War. In addition, Stalin had recently, and violently, purged the Red Army’s officer corps in a political consolidation of power. There was a severe shortage of high and middle rank, experienced, officers in the Red Army. At the highest-level Russian doctrine hadn’t yet adapted to the new ideas, technologies, and organizational designs that would be perfected in the near future WWII warfare. Their training, tactics, techniques, and procedures were not a match to the Finn’s slim advantages.
The Finnish Army had the: the military advantage of defense, the advantage of thorough knowledge of the terrain, severe winter weather conditions and qualitative superiority in manpower. Finnish doctrine was adopted from the German military, and also relatively mature. Although it was predicated on defense. The Mannerheim Line was a thick, static, fortified, defensive 'belt' protecting the most vulnerable portion of the Finnish/Russian frontier. This was their main and best line of resistance. However, the Finnish strategy was flawed. The strategy of static defense had already been superseded by new tactics and technology (aircraft and large calibre, mobile, artillery). There was nothing between the Mannerheim Line and the capital Helsinki. Their objective was to inflict from behind the Mannerheim Line either a Pyrrhic victory on the Russians or hold-out long enough to set-up the diplomatic conditions for international intervention. In either case the Finn’s small nation would have to take a heavy toll in casualties that their achievement would not make worthwhile.
Stalin avoided defeat, by finding new battle commanders for his Finnish war: Semyon Timoshenko and Kirill Meretskov while the war was in progress. They were capable, Old School, soldiers, who had survived the purges of the officer corps. Stalin also doubled down on reinforcing the invasion. In an amazingly short period of time, the Keralan Northwest Front was reinforced with both equipment and veteran replacements. In addition, the troops were retrained to use German Stoßtruppen tactics against the Mannerheim Line’s defenses with the rudiments of combined arms warfare. Although, in general Timoshenko’s battles were more like a regression to late WWI assualt tactics, than the those of the future WWII.
The: new tactics, weight of numbers and rearming produced a breakthrough. With Red Army success, Finnish hopes for foreign intervention collapsed along with their front. Unable to contain the Red Army, they sued for peace in March 1940. They ceded more territory than was demanded in November 1939. The Russian, diplomatic Logic of War was, any ground occupied by the Red Army was Russian.
The Book
Prose was good. Technically, the book was well edited. I found only one or two minor grammar and spelling errors. Although I would quibble over the use of “Stavka” (Russian High Command) versus it being written in uppercase (STAVKA) as in many English language military histories.
Overall style was that of the modern British military history. Note the author is a Cambridge PhD. Some folks may consider this to be rather dry, with its absence of anecdotes to provide local colour and context.
The organization of the book was good. There were only five (5) chapters and an Epilogue. There was a generally chronological progression with detailed breakdowns of the different actions along the Northwest Front. Land operations received the greatest majority of attention. Air operations were appropriately integrated into the narrative, but contained minimal detail. Naval operations received significantly less attention than air operations.
Descriptions of combat in the individual points of action along the front were good. The Smoke of Battle was conveyed in enough detail to illustrate the need for doctrinal and tactical changes and their effects when implemented.
There were brief descriptions of the diplomatic history of the conflict. This was primarily between the Finns, Swedes, League of Nations and the Soviets. However, I thought the book would have benefited from a larger discussion. In particular, the diplomatic efforts with the Anglo-French Entente and Nazi Germans could have benefitted the narrative.
Use of maps was adequate for a military history. There were barely enough maps and they were not positioned to completely support the narrative. In addition, not all of the maps included a ‘scale’, needed to determine distance. Units were sometimes, but not always indicated on the maps. I needed to use a proper Atlas to better understand the front. I would have appreciated the use of modern, standard tactical symbols.
Use of figures was peculiar. I spent a long-time poring over them. All photos were from Soviet archives. Many of them were for propaganda usage. Of note was the inclusion of several, untranslated, but English captioned Soviet propaganda ‘comic strips’. I didn’t see the need for them. There were several figures (really charts and tables) to show air and artillery bombardment numbers. However, the accompanying analysis was scant and left me feeling suspect.
There were no diagrams. I thought these would have been helpful. In particular diagrams of the Finnish, concrete fortifications and obstacle fields of the Mannerheim Line to supplement the descriptions would have been extremely helpful in understanding the Finnish defense.
Mannerheim Line, concrete fortification example
The included Notes were very detailed. I found myself reading them after each chapter. Likewise, the Bibliography was detailed and extensive. I recognized several of the English language books referenced as being authoritative in pre-WWII military and diplomatic history. The greatest portion of the references in both the Notes and Bibliography were Russian language.
A serious deficiency to the book was a missing Table of Organization (TOE) for both the Red Army and the Finns. I never had a firm grasp of the combatants Force Structures. That there was no organizational description of the Russian military organization led to some confusion and also exposed some likely errors in the author’s theses.
The Red Army’s TOE can be easily be found in other military histories of the period. I could not find a corresponding TOE for the Finns. Although, I assume Finn formations were similar to the German in organization? The author made several quantitative comparisons between the number of Soviet vs. Finnish Divisions. The Finns were always outnumbered division-to-division.
However, a Russian Rifle (Infantry) Division was 8700 men in three regiments. The post-WWI divisional model of the German army was 6500 men in three regiments. A Russian Infantry division was about a third larger in manpower than a Finnish division. The author was grossly understating the Russian manpower advantage in his division-to-division comparisons.
A detailed, quantitative inventory of the military hardware would also have been very helpful. Aircraft were rarely described by name. Mostly they were, “medium bombers” or "heavy bombers". Individual units of the Baltic fleet were mentioned. However, there was no overall description of the fleet, other than there were 60 ships. Finnish military hardware was nowhere addressed, other than in the most general terms: mortars, artillery, anti-tank guns, battleships, aircraft, etc. Russian armour and artillery was occasionally discussed. Although, I was not at all familiar with the oft referenced pre-WWII Russian military hardware, such as the T-26 tank that was always falling through the ice of frozen lakes and the Gulf of Finland.
Again, the author’s comparison of the two combatants suffered, due to the lack of a TOE for both sides. In the end, I found this critical omission to be very ironic. In the Soviet after-action analysis of the invasion, the author wrote of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) responsible for protection of Soviet borders and espionage being criticized for not having or providing the Red Army with a Finnish TOE before the invasion. That led to a gross underestimation of Finnish military capabilities. How could the book's readers also be left without one?
Finally, the operations against the Mannerheim Line were the largest part of the operational narrative. Although, this was the most important area of conflict, considering there were no Finnish Navy/Russian Baltic Fleet naval actions. However, I thought the Red Army operations on the Finnish eastern border north of the the Line to the Barents Sea received too brief a discussion.
Summary
This was very much a Soviet history. The author had free access to Russian archives and used them to the greatest extent. In particular, the evolution of Russian strategic objectives and the evolution of operations was very complete.
This was a good read for those interested in the development of the Red Army through one of the several, brief, peripheral, conflicts prior to WWII. Many of these have been almost forgotten in the West. However, the book was critically one-sided as serious military and diplomatic history scholarship. The Finns were almost absent from the narrative. The exception being their diplomatic efforts. If, modern war involves: men, organizations, doctrine and machines. The principal Soviet characters (they were all men), and the doctrine (Mobile War vs. Combined Arms Warfare) were well handled. The organizations were somewhat well done. However, important aspects of the combatant’s Force Structure was missing. This removed a necessary dimension to the narrative. While informative on the Red Army’s side, this book provides an incomplete picture of the Russo-Finnish War. Its best used as a supplement to other books on that conflict.
Finally, reading this book reminded me that Russian wars of aggression are not unique to modern times. Russian leaders from Peter the Great forward to the present have many times sought to extend their territory to achieve minimum security requirements at the expense of their neighbors. Russian armies have generally been successful in achieving their political leadership’s strategic goals in the end.
Readers interested in a very Finnish-oriented book on the conflict may be interested in The Winter War: The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 by William R. Trotter (my review).
December 16, 2015
Straight-forward, succinct look at Soviet military command and Red Army's adjustments while fighting the Russo-Soviet "Winter War". Very much focused on Soviet perspective. Finnish actions aren't delved into except in broad terms of counter-attacks and how the M-Line was set up. Focus is on Soviet military doctrine, command restructure. I was surprised by how much adjustment Timoshenko managed to bring during the Jan interregnum. The more sensational/surprising, and better known aspects of the war- motti tactics, Finnish snipers, dramatic Soviet failures aren't gone into. Great for betting a bead on Soviet side of the conflict.
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