Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 89 - Winter War Part 5: The Booty Call Armistice

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

On the finale of the Winter War the Mannerheim Line begins to crumble and Finland is only saved due the connections of a Government Minister's booty call. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy some stuff: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow us @lions_by

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today as always is Nick. The beautiful Joe, thank you. We're in part five, the ending of the Winter War. Finally. We made it. It's been five weeks, and I've learned how to pronounce at least five Finnish words incredibly badly. How did your sober January go?

It's not going well. I've actually discovered a superpower, and that is I cannot drink for a month, and I did not lose a single pound, which is like most people are like, oh, yeah, I quit drinking. I did a sober month, and I lost 20 pounds. I'm like, how?

Whatever. So when we left you last week, General Haglund was about to launch his legendary modi attacks a term that would become so well known it has forced the most most of the military historian community to learn at least one finnish word so thanks a lot asshole i'm still probably pronouncing it right wrong whichever cool uh now the modi is nothing new it's kind of like the german blitzkrieg in that it's something of a propaganda term that became so popular that has long since swallowed the historical discourse uh the moddy is simply a unique evolution of a classic encirclement

technique um because as long as humans have been killing each other over stupid shit they have learned that if you surround their enemy they can kill him a whole lot better. That's it. That's the trick. Now, it should come as no surprise to absolutely anybody when I say that Mannheim and Haglund were intimately knowledgeable of Soviet military doctrine, as remained largely unchanged since the Civil War, if not slightly less chaotic.

And remember, they did russian troops during the civil war right so you know they're used to it um what the soviets did never surprised anyone even if they couldn't physically stop them like they always kind of knew what the soviets are gonna do the soviets hardly ever surprised them um with the exception of invading the north of the country in the first place because it's bare nothingness. Right. But yeah, I mean, and the harsh conditions of the Finnish countryside made Soviet doctrine even easier to figure out. They knew they would stick to the roads, cities, railroads,

you know, the normal things. They were going to do their best to launch a traditional conventional European war with traditional conventional European tactics. Unfortunately for them, Finland was not a place to do that. It's like snowy Afghanistan.

Conventional tactics simply don't work there. Sounds terrible. It's not fun. I mean, Northeast Afghanistan got snowy as hell and it was miserable. Well, I imagine you guys weren't going over frozen lakes.

No, no, just frozen roads. Yeah. Large, slowly moving just frozen roads. Getting mined. Yeah. Large, slowly moving columns of soldiers quickly made it easy to launch encirclement tactics against them. The finished tactics boiled down to three simple steps,

one that the Soviets never actually quite figured out. The first step was to send out scouts to figure out where the enemy column was. The scouts would wait until the enemy was in a narrow area or somewhere where they had bad terrain, like up against a lake, somewhere where they were already at disadvantage. The second step was to alert the main force,

which would spring out and encircle the group of enemy soldiers. At that point, the encirclement would then launch raids into the enemy, harassing them and pinning them into place. At this stage, they would target the enemy's supplies, food, water, and logistical needs. Whenever you say harass, I just think they just make fun of them. Fuck you, bitch!

Like, ow. Now, then the encirclement would do its best to turn the enemy from one large body of troops into dozens, separating them from one another and destroying their ability to organize a defense. So they take a division, they cut it down to the companies and surround each company and slowly snuff them

off. Oh god. Yeah. The last step was a systematic destruction of every single pocket. They would start at the smallest, weakest pocket, and as they did that, cold, hunger, and thirst would weaken the strongest, which would then be destroyed in turn. It's siege warfare by an entire army.

And you're not in a castle. No. Or anywhere. No, you're just stuck and fucked. Yeah. The tactic worked absolute wonders on large, slow-moving, terribly-led Soviet forces. Even if a competent Soviet commander did see this encirclement coming, and many of them did after it happened a couple of times. Remember, they would have to run things through their unit commissar

before they could launch any kind of counterattack. Oh, yeah, that asshole. Or organize a defense. The system was so slow and cumbersome that by the time it finally worked, it's way through. They're already encircled. Yeah, they're already fucked. Like, give me the radio.

I need to organize. Well, sir, our headquarters detachment is surrounded. God damn it. Commissar. Commissar. Commissar's dead. Hmm. Looks like we have no decisions being made here. Well, I guess we all shoot ourselves now.

Yeah. Um, you know, cause they had almost two completely parallel chains of command. And, you know, by the time it worked its way through, it was almost always too late. Um, and that's exactly how the Finns registered their most legendary military victory in Finnish history and one of the more remarkable in modern warfare at the Battle of Sulmusulami. Um, so apologies to the people of Finland for butchering that name, which I know I did, but I researched it, how to pronounce it and found literally fucking nothing. So don't blame me. Salami is good. Yeah.

Uh, yeah. Yep. You're not down with salami? I'm fine with salami. Okay. I have no strong opinions for or against salami. I never see it in your fridge, so I don't know how you... Salami's a very centrist issue for me.

Now, this battle, which will not be named again, also encompasses another Finnish victory at the Battle of Rate Road. For the sake of simplicity, I will consider them one in the same. It's just, it's much... Salami Road. It makes this a lot easier. So in December 1939,

the Soviets launched an attack across a frozen lake, which, like many of their others, had been quickly turned back, and the Finns held in place until they were reinforced. The two sides launched attack and counterattack over and over again, and they were all fighting over a nearby village,

largely unremarkable and had since been burnt down. That was until the Soviet 44th Rifle Division decided to retreat. While they were being successfully held in place and committed to battle by the Finns, another Finnish unit went around them, cutting off their supply route and entrenching around the surrounding terrain and around Rate Road. And the Soviets figured this out as they were retreating.

So they're kind of fucked. It was not long before their division commander, a guy named Alexei Vinogradov, realized that they were totally fucked. As his division was slowly but surely being cut into smaller pieces for the Finns to snuff out one by one, he attempted a breakout, losing most of his tanks and gaining largely nothing. As the Mahdi wore on, the Soviets began to crumble and fall apart. The Finnish tactics worked as they managed to capture massive amounts of supplies that were meant to go to their enemies. This included thousands of rifles, tanks, artillery, horses, anti-tank guns, you name it. But this also meant food and clothing and water.

The Finns intercepted the Soviet communications, which revealed that the men within the body had no winter clothing and some of them even lacked boots. Wow. In another instance, a group of Soviet officers beat their commissar to death out of frustration. Like, I'm trying to organize a defense and he's like, I don't know about that, comrade. We really need to read some theory before we try to make any practical decisions. Like, fuck this motherfucker. It just beats him to death with a cinder block. I don't know if you should be tying your shoes like that.

Did you let me know? I don't really approve of these actions. Slava, get my cane. I'm surprised, and I'm sure that happened more often, but this is like the one that the Finns were listening to the radio. Just while it was happening live? Sir, what did the commissar say? He said, it's fine.

The Finnish raids began to destroy the pockets little by little. what did the commissar say? He's here. He said, it's fine. Uh, the Finnish raids began to destroy the pockets little by little. Normally they would consist of assault forces, cloaked in white, sneaking as close as they could to the Soviet lines before popping up out of the snow. That's fucking terrifying. Oh, fuck.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, and killing as many people in as short amount of time as possible with submachine guns before breaking contact and running going back into the snow to make it even more terrifying

the sub was like did you guys just fucking see that fucking snow people as they did so scouts would call in artillery and machine guns to cover their withdrawal which is another thing the Finns were so low on artillery they began to use machine guns as artillery

and it worked kinda it worked better than nothing all this would happen so fast that the Soviets wouldn't be able to form a defense

as soon as one raid ended on like one end of the Mahdi another would pop up from somewhere else never allowing them to sleep or rest

or anything now with these methods during this battle nearly 17,000 Soviets were killed for the loss of 400 Finns. Those are some good numbers. Yeah, this is one of those times it's like

those are rookie numbers. No, you're good. You're solid. 17,000. I don't know. How much did you do? 400? Alright. That means each Finn killed like 20 people. It's fucking nuts. Especially with their fucking trapdoor spider tactic.

Yeah, and like imagine how I mean, I don't want to talk about how laborious it is to kill a guy, but like imagine how like, oh, bolt action rifle, gotta kill these people all day long. Yeah. Get in the old carpal tunnel. Oh, bother as the fin pulled back into action oh

bother uh eventually after nearly a week of this the soviets broke in uh managed to retreat through a crack in the moddy oh go go there's a gap slightly larger than one finished man fucking like the sun beams down on it yeah finally Vinogradov's like for the love of god everybody run I can't imagine the commissar's like did you ask me though somebody killed the commissar on the way out

uh it couldn't have been an organized retreat either I see more of a panicked fleeing um gentlemen good day. Just run. Screaming and running into the snow. Good day. Punches the fucking nearest

guy near him. Their defense was all but broken and most of the Soviet soldiers surrendered without a fight. Most of the POWs were released back into the Red Army, like we talked about before. Most of these POWs were released back into the Red Army like we talked about before. Most of these POWs were executed by the NKVD upon arrival.

Fucking sucks. The dude that was partying with them must have been so down on his way like, I'm about to go fucking die but I had a good night. One last rager. There's a good bet that the Finns kind of sort of knew that that's what the MKVD did.

But we don't have to waste our ammo. We didn't kill them. Yeah. Yeah. So the Soviet POWs were not the only people executed. So was their commander, Vinogradov, and his commissar. For the retreat? Yeah.

Oh, okay. I mean, for losses, losing divisions of people to 400 and retreat a bunch of years there's a lot there's a lot of things to be executed for now soviet casualties for this battle were so high that manorheim himself did not believe them he thought like his generals were just lying like the cf like we killed 17 000 reds he's like no fucking way poor shit uh and one of the commanders remarked that there were thousands of captured rifles outside and the field marshal was more than welcome to come count himself if you wanted to he never questioned them again saying quote i never thought my men would be so good or that the russians could be so bad

now even with these victories, it did not mean Finland was in a great place. Finland was still losing the war and badly. They were being smothered by a pile of dead Soviet soldiers, slowly but surely. Thankfully for Finland, the outside world was

starting to react to the situation. Now, if you remember all the way back to episode one or two, this was actually one of their plans. It's like, well, the West isn't going to let the communists attack us for so long before they do nothing. Well, Finland's about to be let down. Volunteers were arriving to help. At least 8,000 Swedes crossed the border

to help them defend their former colonial subjects. And around 1,000 Norwegians and Danes showed up. An entire battalion of Hungarians and a few Italian pilots. Also in one strange happenstance so did one guy from Jamaica and a dozen or so Japanese people. What? No idea how that happened. Uh, I can understand the Swede.

Cool, you're good. That's your unit. Oh, you're good. Where the fuck and how the fuck did you get here? Imagine how bad that boat ride from Jamaica sucked. It's not like he took a plane. It's 1939. We got lost. Yeah. By a lot. It's awfully cold

to be in Jamaica. Wow. I can't find an account of whatever happened to the Jamaican guy. I assume he survived. I'd really like to think that the Jamaican guy lived. Makes me feel better. Yeah. I imagine the Italians are still really like to think that the Jamaican guy lived. It makes me feel better. Yeah.

I imagine the Italians are still flying baguettes. Stale baguettes. The Italians at the time were actually all fascists. So, because remember, this is Mussolini, Italy time. Stale baguettes.

They would definitely be stale. It's, it's baguettes, but when you bite into them, they just say anti-Semitic slurs. Ooh. Now, the dumbest group of volunteers, I'm going to let Nick guess this, where do you think they were from?

You know. Deep down in your soul, you know who I'm about to say. Is it the US? Yep! Ding, ding, ding, dear! We've got a winner! And they were led by none other than Kermit Roosevelt! The son of Teddy Roosevelt. Oh, fuck!

So he attempted to form what he called a legion. And he actually pulled it off. A rough rider, if you will. He rounded up 200 people and got them to Finland by the end of March. Unfortunately for Finland, the war ended at the beginning

of March. Meaning that they had absolutely no use for these men. Imagine Roosevelt, we're here! War's over. They knew we were coming. But we're here though. Also, Finnish doctors found that 30%

of the men were unfit for duty. They went through a MEP service in the Finnish? Now, why do you think so many men were found unfit? They were literally missing body parts and eyes. Like, really, America? You sent me dude with no fucking arms? How will you ski?

Sir, I have no feet either. God damn it. Now, most of them ended up settling in Finland, which I guess if any Finns are listening to this and you have an American grandfather, he was a fucking idiot. I imagine they couldn't go anywhere because they were like,

well, we're amputated and that move kind of sucked. I got frostbite on my nubs. Now, a large number of them decided that fuck this, we're going to go back to England. They got lost and landed in Oslo, Norway. At the exact same time the Nazis invaded. Oh, fuck. Which led to them being believed to be foreign soldiers and got them chucked in prison camps until the end of the war. Wow.

Oh, my God. Wow. Oh my god. Hilarity ensued. This is what happens when you listen to a guy named fucking Kermit Roosevelt. Any Roosevelt. Though all this inventorism and volunteerism was nice, but Finland was really hoping for, I don't know, diplomatic

pressure or military supplies or something. That Kermit to show up with an army of amputees. What can you provide for us? Half of a few men. All together we have about 75. We brought 200.

Together we were about 75. Unfortunately, none of that happened. While the people of Sweden openly supported the war effort, the Swedish government did not want to be involved leaning hard into their neutrality uh to the point it was kind of ridiculous like their own government was against their own neutrality which is kind of weird like overall swedish public support is like we need to go to war to save finland and like the foreign minister said the government stances quote neutrality carried to the point of pure idiocy but for some reason they were still neutral

all right this okay those goddamn neutrals it it like at one point I'm not going to go into it at length but England and America came to an agreement mostly England and France is

involved as well where they were like we can help Finland. We'll invade through all these neutral countries without even talking to them beforehand. Like to beat the Nazis, we must become the Nazis. And that's like how Narvik became a thing, which didn't end well.

Uh, but yeah, it was a really badly thought out plan that they didn't clear with. Like part of their plan was going through Sweden. They didn't even talk to Sweden about it and then Sweden ended up finding out and they're like no you can't invade

us but yeah now the one thing the government seemed willing and able to do to openly help Finland was and this is going to make everybody kind of hate this the one guy who decided he really wanted to help Finland was, and this is going to make everybody kind of hate this. The one guy who decided that he really wanted to help Finland,

Mussolini. Fuck. God damn it. Mussolini's shitty fucking ass supplied the Finns with more than anything else and anybody else. He gave them more weapons, more supplies. This included hundreds of tanks, hundreds of planes and artillery pieces.

Now, it's not because the fascists are suddenly like super giving. It's because both he and Il Dujay really believed in the, like they really liked the idea of the Red Army being tied down in a war to the north rather than moving into the Balkans because they both really liked that

area. They wanted to move and dominate that area. It was in their best interest to keep the Finns fighting for as long as possible in a shitty proxy war to bleed the Soviet Union. I guess speaking, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,

but also fuck him. I don't know. There's layers here. And obviously we've talked about before, but Finland and Nazi Germany will definitely join forces and they fight the continuation war together. But it's really weird. Even that's kind of iffy.

Cause then they fought against each other in the Lapland War and Finland kicked the Nazis out. With their pasta rifles? Finland is a land of contrast. But we're not going to talk about the continuation of the Lapland War quite yet. We might cover that at a later time. But say what you will about the guys who allied with the Nazis, but they also beat the Nazis with their own weapons, which is kind of funny. It neutrals out.

Yeah. Same, but different. It's funny, too, because the Nazis are like, yeah, here's all these tanks and planes and guns. Here's all this cool shit. And Finland's like, thanks, though. Get the fuck out. Yeah, they do that all cool.

And then they do a little quick 360. Get out. Yeah. And it's like, they. Get the fuck out. They do that all cool. And then they do a little quick 360. Get out. Yeah. And it's like they could have helped more. Like during Operation Barbarossa, they really didn't. They just wanted to retake the parts of Finland that the Soviet Union took. Like during the siege of Leningrad, Finland was right over the border and very easily could have sent like 10 divisions in, which probably would have broken Leningrad. But they didn't.

We got what we want. Yeah. They just kind of hung out. Like they were nearby. They were chilling. Yeah. I would. So like,

and there's another time when like, you know, Hitler came and visited Mannerheim when Mannerheim was president or prime minister during the war, but he didn't, but Mannerheim didn't want to look like an official state visit and like invite him to the hat, like the main residence of the the finnish government so he invited him to like a fucking rail car and then chain smoke throughout the entire thing because he knew

hitler hated cigarettes which is fucking hilarious uh like total alpha moving in his face too just like so and what's unique is uh it's like one of the only times uh i Just blowing it in his face, too. What's unique is it's one of the only times, I'll embed it in the show notes, since we're going way off topic here. It's the only time that they really record Hitler's voice, that he's not in speech mode. Sounds completely different.

That's because a Finnish TV broadcaster snuck a microphone in there. You hear him speaking candidly about yeah we're getting our asses kicked in the Soviet Union like he recorded like 11 minutes of the movie I wonder if he's trying to hint like kind of need your help

that's exactly what he's doing and there's a reason why like he didn't tell it Mannerheim to put the fucking cigarette out it's because like he wasn't in a dominant position no yeah he's in a rail car he's in a fucking rail car in Finland. Next I'll show you our bus station.

Hey, you want to go have our next meeting in the fucking chow hall, you stupid mustache-having bitch? Anyway, back on topic. Now, American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did want to help Finland, and he rightfully should have,

but the U.S. was still stuck strongly in isolationist mode FDR wanted to sever all relations with the USSR after the bombing of Helsinki but Congress threw a bitch fit and he was forced to drop the idea which would have rightfully changed the course of history

yeah the US eventually did offer a 4 million dollar loan which is later up to 10 million with the small caveat that it could not be used to spend on weapons. Now what they use it for. As one critic put it, Finland asked for ammunition.

We send them beans. They asked for explosives and we give them tea. They asked for artillery and then we'd send them broomsticks. Uh, now FDR was not a dumb man. He knew exactly what was going to happen next. Finland spent that $10 million on food, which they then sold to Britain for hard cash,

which they then used to buy weapons from America. America has never changed, y'all. I mean, there's no hint. You can't stop the hustle. Right. Um, and there's no hint that FDR knew that, but he fucking knew that. He had to. Because he still sold them weapons

yeah exactly unless no fuck that he had to yeah now the Soviets attempted to counteract all this with an aggressive propaganda push that made Finland to be at the aggressor which is kind of hilarious now they even made some in English for American

consumption because remember America's isolationist their rhyme for propaganda because they don't really have a side not to mention the labor movement was huge we're in the middle of the depression the New Deal's a thing you know American communists were a thing that you didn't really have to laugh at quite yet but one of the propaganda pieces had quote nuts and bolts clink into the help of Finland's collection boxes posted in Detroit auto plants. Not a dime for Mannerheim, the boys on the assembly line say. They did not say that.

Now, they're attempting to win over the labor movement against the Finns. they were trying to win them over using manor heim in the guise of the white terror which happened decades before which rightfully so manor heim is a piece of shit for that uh but now america actually had a population of several thousand communists and socialists who had fought in the spanish civil war um so like so it's trying to curry their favor right um this may have worked if stalin had not just voltron together with hitler to destroy poland uh and then invading a country with the population smaller than that of moscow so like whoops like it's the same reason why finnish reds supported the government that did not like them uh because they're like okay we don't like the finnish government but the soviets the Finnish government. But the Soviets will kill us.

Kind of forcing our hand here, chief. And also, the Soviet Union kind of fucked the leftist side of the Spanish Civil War and most of the people who fought in it knew that. Because they were fighting the Eagles Legion

or the Condor Legion that Nazi Germany sent in to support the fascists. And the Soviets sent them virtually nothing, even though they're the preeminent communist world power. So they're like, man, fuck those guys. Name sucks. Yeah.

Now, instead, the posters were torn down. And in my hometown, in the Detroit autoworkers area, they actually pledged thousands in dues to the Finnish cause. What up? Nice. That's a level of nuance that I really wish more American leftists had nowadays. Don't support the Soviet Union. Not hard.

That's something kind of cool coming from Detroit because that's pretty much the only thing cool I've heard come from Detroit. Detroit has gone through a lot of stuff in its history, but it did very rightly used to be a hotbed for labor

unionism and activities and stuff like that. And especially back then, this is kind of interesting that they were openly like, we'd rather give our money to the guys who might be fascists. Cause like the,

the coalition of the Finnish government was pretty wide and most of it, right. Leaning. So like they actively dislike communists and socialists and they're like, we still like them better. That really says something. Yeah, it really does.

Meanwhile, at war, the red army also turned up the propaganda. This included setting trucks with sound systems to the front line to play pro-soviet propaganda speeches at the finnish troops um now obviously it's in finnish so they could hear them uh but the soviets wanted them to hear them and maybe they'll maybe they'll defect or whatever um so that to make sure that they could be listened to they'd make sure that there's no bombardments or offensives that would go on while

they were played. The Finns eventually figured that out and use like, Oh, the propaganda trucks here. Let's take a nap. I mean, they knew, they knew they'd be safe.

Like they would shell us until the propaganda stops. But in Moscow, the red army was trying to get its shit together after an episode, uh, where like at Stalin's birthday, uh, where he berated his worthless yes men who told him that the war be one in a week and this included him throwing a suckling pig at somebody's head where the fuck did you get that from uh it's probably dinner uh

they decided that they would redo this whole war thing now if you remember way back when we were talking about the planning of this war the lack thereof we talked about Shapshnov that said that like we need to take this with a normal offensive build up slow advance shit like that they decided to dust off those plans under his direction

Semyon Tamashenko was put in charge of the war and under him a future Soviet legend four time hero of the Soviet Union commander at Kursk and Berlin, Yorgi Zhukov. So you sound like a WWE announcer. He kind of should be, uh,

the guy has, he, yeah, he's a fucking, uh, Soviet military legend. And he's kind of piece of shit. Like most generals are really.

Um, but he's one of the few that you can be like he's actually good and so is tamashiko uh but like uh tamashiko knew that they were going to win a very specific way and he made stalin promise that he wouldn't be at fault for any losses that they incurred probably not good if you're a soviet soldier when your officer's like we're gonna kill a lot of people i need assurances i'm'm not going to be executed for this. And he got it. Yeah, so RIP to like 10,000 people that agreement killed.

Now, they also decide to revamp the army. Officers would no longer have to listen to commissars. So they'd actually be able to... That's solid. They'd actually be able to command their units like they should. Do you think they were lost at that point? Come on. I don't need you anymore.

Maybe some of them, because remember that at this point, the army is populated by largely yes-men that survived the purge. Some of the classically trained people who remember what it was like when they could do their fucking job, they're like, oh, thank God. Somebody beat that dude to death. First order of business. Kill that man. Hey, Private private you want to get promoted uh go ahead and brain that guy

okay now Zhukov and Tomashenko or reorganize the entire army from top to bottom doctrine was changed to face the reality of fighting in Finland rather than some blind theory units were shaken up and troops were allowed to actually train before being thrown into battle. Simply revolutionary. Nice. This was in short, a brand new army. And one they probably should have in the first place. And they probably did before the purges. I imagine the old army guys, training? We didn't

have any training back then. Back in my day, you trained by getting thrown at a Finnish trench. If you survived, you got training. When Temeshenko finally unleashed his new army on the Mannerheim Line, he began with an offensive bombardment so heavy, it was second to only Verdun in its intensity.

Over 300,000 shells hit the line the first 24 hours. It sounds so loud that it could be heard from the capital, Helsinki, a full 100 miles away. 400 shells fell in the Summa sector every minute. I can't imagine how dog shit, horse shit that would feel. At this point, you remember all the way back when we talked about the Summa sector?

Yeah. 10th Division, still those guys. Wow. They had been there unrelieved since the beginning of the war. And there was nobody to relieve them. So Mannerheim just changed their name to the 7th Division, hoping that the trick would... Hey, name change.

You guys feel better? Well, they were hoping that the Soviets were like, hmm, new division there. It must be fresh. That's seriously what his idea was. If we call it the 7th, they'll think it's the 7th. They're used to fighting the 10th. Boom, problem solved.

This is an idea that gets brought up at like a tech startup and in the same sense that someone says synergy and like unironically but yeah that was his plan yeah it turns out at this point in the war that Manorheim's bag of treks is running pretty low yeah that's honestly that's he's

reaching he's reaching deep yeah like how do you guys feel new name you guys morale better? Can we have food? No, we don't have that. Relief? Nope. You're actually going to stay here until the Soviet Union is defeated or the heat death of the universe.

Or until I change your name again. How did you guys feel if you were airborne? We don't have planes. You can be airborne if you'd like. I mean, that's how 101st still has their name uh there were a few divisions spread out across the isthmus most of them were burned out and beaten as the 10th and none of them had any reserves left tim mosheiko's plan hinged on the simple fact that the soviets outnumbered them and badly the red army could be cycled out to rest after they fought the finns couldns could not. So they

would bombard them ruthlessly for 10 days, then begin a slow grinding offensive directly into their line. Their plan was to literally bleed the Finnish army dry. In the Summa sector alone, 200 pieces of artillery were ranged against them. In other parts, it was just as bad

or worse. After the bombardment came a Soviet air attack of over 500 bombers, which, at this point, the Finns had really not had to worry about. Did they have any type of anti-air? Not really. If they had any, it was captured from the Soviets.

Oh, okay. Like most of their stuff, really. Now, once the Soviet forces committed the ground attack, they did something new. If an attack was repulsed, it would immediately be reordered but this time with a fresh unit so the the units that got battered would just get set back and in the back of the line right meaning the fins never got to wear them down as they'd been doing every time they won they'd be fighting the same battle all over again but now they were the ones getting tired jeez by rotating units out this way the soviets could hypothetically keep up this attack they'd be fighting the Singh battle all over again, but now they were the ones getting tired. Jeez.

By rotating units out this way, the Soviets could hypothetically keep up this attack indefinitely until the Finnish broke, which did begin to happen. One by one, the Finnish strong points fell to waves of Soviet attacks. But still, two weeks later, the Mannerheim line itself held. The Finnish soldiers had been reduced to sleep-deprived,

shell-shocked, and mostly wounded crazy crazy people with most of their fortifications being reduced a little more than corpses. They refused to break at this point. Like remember, if you remember all the way back to like episode two, um, that most of their concrete bunkers are not reinforced. So artillery shell will turn them into powder.

That's pretty much what happened. And it like, and, and the ones that were reinforced had actually been hit by so many artillery that when Soviets took them over, they actually found whole squads of dead Finns inside with no wounds. They'd just been killed by the concussion. Yeah. They had their brains shaken to death.

Throughout the Finnish line, command and control largely broke down. Sector commanders demanded relief that didn't exist and support from artillery that no longer had ammunition. Mannerheim had nothing left to give, so the Finns broke. Now, if you remember, the Mannerheim line has several layers. That's just one line.

It held. It held for 90-ish days at this point, which is more than most people gave them credit for. The Soviets finally busting a hole in the Mannerheim line and with the road to Valkyrie wide open, stopped. Really?

They had been trying to break the line for so long, they had no idea what to do once they actually did it. Assuming that the road in front of them, which was wide open, was one giant ambush, like the million of ambushes that they had ran into, they just kind of stopped. You think the were like what are they doing yeah and in the in the lapse of that time from just sitting there and doing nothing the fins rushed whatever survivors

they couldn't do the gap and plug the hole manorheim finally authorized the withdrawal of the suma sector which held up of 70 days of consistent soviet assault now that did not mean the manorheim line was gone that just mean they fell into a secondary line which was not as good as the first one uh the second the next day soviet attacks stormed the position and found them abandoned now when stalin found out that the suma had fallen he didn't believe it until they brought a eyewitness from the battlefield to tell him. Really? Yeah. Did he bring some fucking regular private?

I would hope so. That'd be awesome. Like, private, get on the train. Wait, where the fuck am I going? You're going to see Stalin. Wait, what? Why? Just shut up and get on the train. Meanwhile, in Finland, they were running out of people to give rifles. Boys as young as 15 or as old as 60, convicts with

sentences less than 10 years were all given uniforms and rifles and pushed to the front. Most of them did not have any training. With all this going on, Finland was trying desperately to end the war diplomatically. Since the beginning, Foreign Minister Tanner had been trying to reopen talks with

Moscow without success. This was changed. Finally, when he made contact with a Finnish communist, also feminist playwright who had once fucked Boris Yartsev. Now, if you remember who Boris Yartsev is, he's the NKVD agent who began

this entire diplomatic row in the first place about leasing the Soviet Union parts of Finland before the war started. Yeah. Hold on. Talk about fucked. yeah okay booty call she was formerly boris yart's booty okay yeah um it was through those means that diplomacy was restored which what yeah cool yep the first time in probably history that a booty call was ever used to end a war i'm not entirely sure i've never heard of anything like that until now i read that part of the book twice just to make sure i was getting

that right hold on hold on you're bullshitting me buy another book to make sure it's not a fuck up really leads me to believe that tanner was also fucking her because like why else would they like they're just not hanging out he's the foreign minister of of Finland and she's a communist playwright. She was probably trying to double age in his ass or something. I don't know. I can't be certain of that, but it's really strange that he's like, yep, I'm just gonna go hang out with this communist while we're fighting the Soviet Union

and yes, I work for the government. This isn't shady at all. But, yep. Her vagina saved Finland. Good job. Way to fuck. If more people fucked with that kind of gusto, the world her vagina saved Finland. Good job. Yeah, I can't. Way to fuck. If more people fucked with that kind of gusto, the world would be at peace. Thank God for feminist playwrights everywhere.

The first thing the USSR did was to quit trying to form the Finnish state. Flaring Kusin in a stupid puppet government where they would go on to work in meaningless bureaucratic jobs in the Soviet Union and everybody forgot they existed again. So bye. Yeah.

After decades of loyalty and fighting a war for the USSR, they were aborted him with less than 100 days in power in a country that never actually existed. Oh, yikes. Too bad. It's like the ultimate participation trophy. Have you ever had your friend be so powerful he created a government for you?

Yeah, didn't really work out. In return, Finland would offer the USSR a massive slice of the Isthmus, which is largely empty wasteland, and a large amount of money. Like, we'll give you all this land, you give us money so we can rebuild our fucking country. There's already a lot

of your dead soldiers on that land. Now, if you remember, this is actually kind of the same deal the Soviets wanted in on that land. Now, if you remember, this is actually kind of the same deal the Soviets wanted in the very beginning, which, if you remember, Mannerheim wanted Finland to take. So somehow, at the end of all this, Mannerheim was the most correct. While negotiations

were ongoing, the USSR made it clear that there would be no armistice during the process, meaning the Finnish army was crumbling and the Red Army was steamrolling their way towards Helsinki. The time they had to negotiate literally decreased every single day they debated the terms of the armistice. Wow.

And the secondary line also fell during this time in the Mannerheim Line. But the Finns did attempt to launch their first tank attack with captured Soviet tanks. Really? And it failed immediately because none of them had tank training. You don't need it.

It turns out, deploying armor at war, it's hard. Yep. When the Finnish delegation showed up to sign the final agreement, they intended on arguing for different terms and changing small things. A negotiation. This isn't like a signing ceremony.

They were pretty horrified to find out they were given two choices. Sign the agreement or fight. Stalin didn't even show up. Really? Yeah. He'd be drunk? Probably. Hungover? Fucking in his apartment. Yeah. They also discovered the Soviets had added several things to the agreement without consulting them, such as

constructing a railway through Murmansk and ceding even more territory to the Soviet Union. The Finns were, as you can imagine, pretty hesitant about signing these things. Molotov joked that he could always bring back the Kusinin government and they would sign it. A veiled threat to the fact that everybody knew it was only a matter of time before the Red Army was at the gates of Helsinki. Many of the places that the USSR demanded land-wise had not actually been taken by the Red Army yet. When the Finns brought that up, Molotov said, quote, I can always come back once we do.

Wow. The treaty was signed in the early hours of March 13th, 1940. Though the ceasefire did not take effect until 11 a.m. Helsinki time. though the ceasefire did not take effect until 11 a.m. Helsinki time. So the Soviets wait until about 1045 for no other reason than they are pieces of shit launched as a massive artillery bombardment. Hundreds of Finnish soldiers were killed in the last 15 minutes of the war for no reason other than revenge for not letting the genocidal Soviet dictator have their way with their own country.

That's dog shit. Yeah. At least it's not like World War I. They didn't like order an all out frontal assault or something because that I was honestly waiting for that. Yeah. Like a giant frontal assault. I'm kind of surprised by that too.

In the end, Finland gave up 25,000 miles of land, including every single one of those natural barriers that made the Soviet invasion hell on earth in the first place. And around half a million Finns became homeless. 25,000 Finns lost their life, while another 45,000 were wounded. Now, those casualty numbers seem kind of low.

But remember, Finland only had a population of about 4 million. If those same percentage of losses per population had been inflicted on the United States, 2.6 million people

would have been casualties in 105 days of war. Yeah, that's a lot. They literally hemorrhaged their country to try to save it. A Soviet general remarked, quote, we have won just enough ground to bury our dead. How many was that?

It depends on who you believe on just what the official Soviet count is. The Soviet government says about 50,000 were killed. But modern historians admit those numbers are definitely bullshit and it was more likely around 200,000 Soviet dead. It's like the Soviet-Afghan where you're trying to get accurate numbers. Not going to happen.

You know, and it's almost worse than that somehow. There's really still not an accurate number of how many Soviets died in Afghanistan. Soviets died in Afghanistan. However, Soviet historians kind of combed a lot of enlistment records and found families. Like, did your son

come back from Finland? No? Okay. Good. Yeah. So 200,000 thereabouts and another 300,000 wounded. Around 5,000 Soviet POWs were repatriated at the end of the war and almost all of them were packed off to NKVD camps and never saw again.

Wow. So 200,005. 15 months later, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the USSR with one of the largest armies ever assembled on Earth. Peace would not last between the USSR and Finland, partially for revenge, possibly because they didn't have much of a choice. Finland joined

forces with Nazi Germany to regain the territory they'd lost, and then the Continuation War started almost a year after the Winter War ended, June 1941. In the end of the Winter War, a farewell from Field Marshal

Gustav Mannerheim to the soldiers of Finland, he said, "...an army so inferior in numbers and equipment should have inflicted such serious farewell from Field Marshal Gustav Mannerheim to the soldiers of Finland, he said, quote, an army so inferior in numbers and equipment should have inflicted such serious defeats on an overwhelming, powerful enemy is a thing for which it is hard for people to find a parallel in the history of war. But it's equally admirable that the Finnish people, face to face with an apparent hopeless situation, were able to resist giving in to despair and instead grow with devotion and greatness. Such a nation has earned the right to live. Suck my dick, Joseph Stalin.

I may have added that last part. And that, folks, is the Winter War, a small slice of a very confused part of history for Finland. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I did too. I really enjoyed researching it because unlike, I put it

up there with Iran-Iraq, where people really don't know much about it. Almost everybody is sort of semi-ohiha. Everybody knows, like, the Soviets got their ass kicked by a handful of Finns. But the details behind it are sorely lacking. And it's not,

it's not fair. That's such an interesting story. It is lost to history. Um, now obviously it's almost certainly very well known in Finland. Uh, but like, you know,

uh, we on the West, we really like to, um, championship that is largely not true or blown out of proportion like thermopylae or spartans in general like finland's right there that fucking happened like not that long ago right and something that there's a few uh episodes where we do where i'm just like fuck i want to dig deeper into this or I want to just know about it.

This is one of them for sure for me. I think this is awesome. Yeah, there's not a lot of things I can compare to this. The Iran situation was really interesting for the Iran-Iraq war because they should have collapsed and didn't. But that was largely because Iraq didn't have the good of the military as everybody thought they did and Iran was in the middle of a revolution and could like whip up

revolutionary spirit and smother people with blood effectively this one the Finns absolutely shouldn't have survived and you can see that the seeds of it were placed in the birth of the Soviet

union and Lenin not getting his shit together and making sure Stalin can't take over. Once Stalin takes over, he kills half the goddamn military. Um, now there has been people that have said that the purge did not impact the red army as much as people let on, but that is hard to fucking see when, um, you know, I'm, I'm sure they're better historians than i am i'm hardly a historian uh i have a podcast where we normally came up with while we were drunk and watching youtube i don't call myself a historian uh and there's people with much better pedigree than me who say that the uh that the purge did not impact the red army it was just

bad leadership but you know when you look at the numbers of of red army leadership that were purged before the war started like almost all the admirals almost all the fucking staff generals like and then you see their how they perform in the winter war it's hard to say that it didn't right and then you see how they reacted in the opening stages of world war ii collapsing in general, but then you see the bright spots that did come out of the Winter War. They got rid of the commissars. They reinstituted a normal rank structure.

They gave Georgi Zhukov a command, which would end up taking Berlin. Fighting Finland was the best thing that the Red Army could have done to prepare to fight the Nazis because if they would have fought the Nazis with the same war they invaded Finland with, the Soviet Union would have fell. Because they were already at the gates of fucking Moscow

before they got their shit together during World War II. I mean, a lot of that's conjecture. Obviously, it's mostly opinion. I could see it. I'm not a scholar of the fucking Eastern Front of World War II. This is just what I see from reading our source material. But thank you, you everybody for joining us for the last five weeks

this series was awesome and now since we're at the end of the series we do have our question from the Legion and we actually got a few of them we'll actually do two because one is very simple what is the name of your dog Nick? Chewy

everybody knows Laika, Laika is the podcast laika like is the podcast dog chewy is the podcast dog in reserve that we call up when laika is inevitably killed by machine gun fire okay and the second one why do people keep thinking that dictators make good generals i honestly don't know all right so i think it's a daddy complex, unlike a government's sage. Like, you know what I mean? Like you have strongmen, like Idi Amin comes to mind, who we modeled Doug the donkey's uniform after.

I actually... Which is a great uniform. I actually told the artist, I'm like, I want Idi Amin, but a donkey. And that's how Doug was born. You have Muammar Gaddafi. You have Hugo Chavez who took power.

A lot of these guys were in the military and then they took over. So you assume if they're, if they are a colonel or whatever, like Gaddafi was a colonel

and he famously never made himself a general when he took over. He was still Colonel Gaddafi. That they must know what they're doing. But a lot of those guys must know how to lead a country.

Right. Well, at least they're good at war stuff like qaddafi destroyed the libyan army even before he destroyed the country in the toyota war um uh you know edie amin largely did the same thing that's how he fell he got his he got his shit stomped in almost immediately when he actually tried to use his army for more than killing unarmed civilians um Hugo Chavez took over Venezuela and

he never tried to do any wars with his military, but it did try to overthrow him at a different point. I think it's a strongman thing. I think it's combined with you assume somebody at a specific rank will be competent. I think

that has to do with just a general misunderstanding of how militaries work. Like imagine if I think of a general in your head, I'm not very familiar with the generals in the military anymore. Cause I'm not in it. Imagine if they suddenly had dictatorial powers of the United States, probably not good because they can probably hardly manage division. But you know,

then you have, especially in countries like that, you have an Idi Amin or a Muammar Gaddafi. It's not exactly... Saddam Hussein, who's never really in the military, but he wore a military uniform an awful lot. You're in a country where you have to...

You're forced to shut the fuck up about anything bad about that person. so you assume they're very very good at what they say they're very very good at it's in your best interest to believe that so when they attempt to use that power outside of the confines of people who have to listen to them because they're or like in the case of edm or mohamed kadafi they turn their guns against people who also have guns you suddenly realize they're not very good at a commander. And normally you combine that with strong men.

Like you see the, well, Stalin was a military commander, but he made himself out to be one. They surround themselves with sycophants, not good officers. So like, I don't want a chief of staff or whatever that is like a top pedigree general right you want someone who's like yes general casanova you did a very good job today that was an amazing job bring me the preschool teacher that's my next general yep you want that guy so like when that comes to like um i think it was like the dictator of belarusia made his son a general or something stupid like that his son's like 13 makes sense or like um north korea kim jong-un son a general or something stupid like that. His son's like 13. Makes sense.

Or like North Korea, Kim Jong-un was a general when he was like 10. It's because ranks and titles don't mean anything anymore in strongman dictatorships. Right. They're just accolades that throw at people. So like when they're actually supposed to be officers, they fucking suck at their job. Because that's kind of what happens when you get rid of the ability to be fired as a military commander. Not many dictatorships, uh, have won in modern war. They normally get stomped, uh, the Soviet union being a glaring example, otherwise during world war two. Uh, but yeah, so that's that questions from the Legion. Um,

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put a sticker on a stranger's car, which somebody told me they did. Don't do that. I think that's vandalism. Awesome. Did you get a picture? No. If you're going to commit crimes with the Lions Led by Donkeys sticker.

Send it straight to Joe. Do not take photo evidence. It makes it very easy to get caught. I know from examples. I mean, that's how I got arrested when I was like 14. Really? Yeah. It's like a petty arrest.

It was literally petty vandalism, yeah. But yeah yeah don't don't stick it on Apaches don't do crimes do revolution I don't know put that in a bumper sticker

we'll see y'all next week later