True it became independent there, but the country had been settled for a long time before that.
Of course Finnish history is complex, when you consider how it was initially Swedish-owned, then became an autonomous (remarkably so) part of the Russian empire between 1809-1917. The brief outline here is presents a good summary:
Finland was there, however, already long before that, as an eastern province of Sweden.
It should be noted, though, that if Finland had stayed as a part of Sweden, it might not exist as a country today; Sweden has had a policy of forced assimilation which is shown in how the traditionally Finnish (and Sami) culture in contemporary northern Sweden has been largely replaced.
Tsar Alexander I ended war against Sweden (1808-1809) with a pact with the local nobility, if we may call it so, where Finland would be "lifted to be a nation among nations", and as a result, Finland indeed did become an autonomous nation.
This is why the "faithful Tsars" have statues in Finland. Finland did not see itself as a part of Russia, but as a separate nation which just has Russian emperor as the ruler (Grand Duke). Swedish legislation was preserved (some laws in law book still date from 1734).
Weaker, pan-Slavic Tsars (Alexander III and Nicholas II) then tried to reverse this development, and suppress Finnish nationalism, and as a result of this, Nicholas II was called "the oathbreaker", and due to this and many other similar bad policies elsewhere in his empire he lost his crown and his life.
Yes, that was definitely over the line for the Soviet Union to demand that Finland hand over a buffer zone. But in fairness the soviets did have some reason for concern. Finland had historic ties with Germany. Germany had helped the non-communist side of the Finnish War, notably by training the Jaeger troops.
Still, I expect Finland would have been only too happy to sit out the war as a neutral, like Sweden did. But the Soviets didn't give them that option.
They resisted a much larger force for a very long time, considering how few men and resources they had.
Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution. This war was planned as a quick campaign before the main event, which was scheduled in July 1941. Hitler beat him by a couple of weeks.
From that page: "the assertions that Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler, are generally discounted."
Note that this hypothesis is almost entirely based on Viktor Suvorov's work, which has problems. From Wikipedia [0] (and also from Glantz, which I have read):
"Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg). Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings have 'virtually no evidentiary base'."
and
> "David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay"
and Beevor shows serious doubts (note that a 41 winter attack is not what the original hypothesis is about):
> "Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..."
There's some support for this theory in the West, but very little. The vast majority of works seem to discount it. It seems to be a fringe theory.
Of course, eventually the Soviet Union and Germany would have been at war, what with Hitler's ideology being anti "Bolshevism" and considering most Slavs to be subhumans to be ethnically cleansed as part of Generalplan Ost.
One other thing. You also wrote:
> Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution.
That doesn't seem to have been Stalin's plan [1], at least initially. It was precisely a point of contention with his political opponents that Stalin favored the "Socialism in one country" position instead of "world revolution".
This seems to clash with the export of the revolution to other countrys during the cold war. Even in the early years , when stalin was still alive. Its also hard to imagine, that any dictator willingly would hold back- after he already coluded with another dictator to share the spoils of war (poland).
I don't think any historian disputes that the USSR was planning to go to war against Germany eventually. The dispute is that the USSR was planning to go to war in late 1941/early 1942.
Also militaries plan for lots of scenarios to be prepared it doesn't mean someone actually has any intention of using those plans - e.g. War Plan Red for the USA vs British Empire in the 1930s:
Why does it clash? After WWII and the start of the Cold War, the world stage had radically changed. Some world powers had been diminished while others were ascendant, and plans were redrawn.
The specific claim that's likely false is that the Soviet Union, as early as 1941, planned to conquer Europe (as part of some bid to implement "world communism") and specifically attack Germany, and that Hitler's Barbarossa was some sort of "preemptive/defensive" strike. The first goes against Stalin's philosophy at the time, the latter goes against what we know about Red Army readiness and also what we know about Hitler's racial ideology.
Henrik O. Lunde's "Finland's War of Choice" is a very good and objective description. It's focus is in the German-Finnish co-operation, but I think it gives a very good overview of the war as well.
Why do so many of these articles on the Winter War just narrowly focus that particular conflict, instead of covering the Continuation War as well?
Was it a fundamentally different sort of conflict after what amounted to a brief ceasefire, or is it just politically expedient to ignore that the Finns continued fighting the Soviets shortly after the Winter War as allies of the Nazi regime?
The brief cease fire was 1.5 years. While the two wars are certainly linked, they were separate campaigns different in many military & political aspects.
Given a choice between a free but war torn Finland with blood on its hands, and a Soviet Finland, I think it's hard to imagine much preference for the latter from the perspective of a Finn.
Tens of thousands of Finnish workers gave their lives during the Finnish Civil War because they preferred a Soviet Finland to the bourgeois, Nazi-aligned country it became.
In 1918, they hardly did understand what they were preferring. By 1939, they did (after land reforms and many other policies that improved the lives of the losing side of civil war).
In 1939 Finland was Anglophilic rather than Nazi-aligned, but it's not a good setup when friends are far away and weak, and enemies are close and strong.
In retrospect, surely that seems foolish. The Soviet union was effectively renting the country to the Finnish people. The Nazi political dream failed rapidly, and the Finns were granted an otherwise-unlikely generation of prosperity without the failing Soviets' noose around their necks.
There was no practical way for them to align themselves with anyone but the Nazis or the Soviets, so whether you like what the political class became in that context or not, it's not as though the people had a choice between liberal democracy and state socialism, and picked the latter.
That people with uncertain, unpleasant lives were taken in by Soviet propaganda is no surprise. Some people still believe the things they learned from Soviet propagandists to this day.
Well that's just simply not true. Firstly, there weren't "tens of thousands" of casualties; secondly, not all the "reds" fought for a Soviet Finland, and certainly not to be a part of Russia; and thirdly, as far as the conflict had anything to do with Germany, it was the Imperial Germany of the old. Resisting Nazis was certainly not in anyone's mind, that's for sure.
Allying with Stalin's enemy (Hitler) was pretty much the only option for Finland (population 3.7 million) to keep the independence against the Soviet Union (population 170 million). But after 1944, having been allied with Germany became highly unfashionable, so we try to be a little quiet about it. But we don't apologize for staying independent.
This is a bit of a diversion from topic, but the population of Soviet Union, and how it was calculated, is a very interesting issue.
Stalin expected a fast population growth, and when the 1937 census showed that he was mistaken, and population of USSR was only 162 million, Stalin had statisticians sent to the GULAG and some were even executed. After that, many tried to avoid being nominated for top jobs, out of fear for meeting the same fate.
This kind of dictatorship and purges of competent people certainly lessened the capabilities of Soviet Union, lead to the unexpected result of the Winter War, and greatly increased the losses of USSR in the coming great war.
> This kind of dictatorship and purges of competent people certainly lessened the capabilities of Soviet Union, lead to the unexpected result of the Winter War, and greatly increased the losses of USSR in the coming great war.
It's quite a feat to lessen your capabilities, and still be able to repel an invasion by all of Europe (sans England, as well as smaller countries like Switzerland, Ireland etc.)
The other view is Stalin had loyal cadre around him during the war, and did not have lieutenant colonels with links through the high command making bomb attempts against him.
Well, not "all of Europe" was attacking USSR, Germany had fronts also towards Britain as well as North Africa, and USSR did get an immense amount of material support from the USA.
It is quite clear that USSR's surprisingly weak performance in Winter War did encourage Hitler to think that he could crush Soviets with a quick summer war.
> It's quite a feat to lessen your capabilities, and still be able to repel an invasion by all of Europe
Most of Europe was being attacked (or actively suppressed) by Germany, not attacking the USSR with Germany, and even Germany was fighting on other fronts, so it wasn't even “all of Germany”.
Yea, it was an impossible position for Finland to be in, for exactly the reasons you mention: very small population, and potential to be washed away by they wave of Soviets rolling west in 44-45. All told, I think Finland conducted itself pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Finland
Also, at the time- it couldnt get much worse then stalin, for most invaded countries. The ukraine had the holdomor and enthusiastically joined the german "liberators" in driving sovjet forces back.
Of course, these "national" liberation movements where double betrayed when the german racism became obvious.
The Continuation War doesn't have the same kind of simple, plucky David vs Goliath narrative. Small country strikes back to reconquer lost territory with Nazi help, goes a bit beyond the original borders, tacitly contributes to the Siege of Leningrad and the death from starvation of hundreds of thousands of civilians, is beaten back to where they were during the Winter War and then some when the Soviets finally have some men to spare, then switches sides and allies with the Soviets to fight against the remaining Nazis, who proceed to go lay waste to most of Lapland as they retreat... Not exactly Hollywood material.
Exactly the latter. If Russia had stayed on good terms with the West after the war, instead of being retconned as a villain, Finland would only be mentioned in the history books as an evil Nazi ally.
You don't think illegal invasion of Poland and much of the Eastern Europe qualifies you as a villain without "retconning"?
See, the only thing they had going for them was the "enemy of my enemy" thing, and that just wasn't the case after the war, for that enemy did not exist any more, unlike everything else they had done.
On social media platforms, pointing out the common Nazi-Soviet victory parade in Brest-Litovsk tends to get a lot of negative attention from Russia-minded activists (one often wonders how many of those accounts are real, but perhaps it is unimportant).
Calling them allies is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not defending the Soviets, they certainly played their role in Nazi imperialism(supply of raw materials, carving up Poland and so on). But a non-aggression pact doesn't automatically make them allies. Poland had also signed one with the Nazis and they helped themselves to annex a part of Czechoslovakia before the Nazi invasion of Poland. And we know that Poles and Nazis were far from allies.
They fought same war on the same side, against same enemy, simultaneously. Ended it with bilateral military parade. Supported each other with training and materiel right until summer 1941. Sounds like allies to me.
> They fought same war on the same side, against same enemy, simultaneously.
Are you referring to Poland? Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known. As for the Soviets, a buffer with the Nazis was paramount. Not justifying their actions but looking from their perspective they were able to delay the war by two years. Even if the enemy was same, the objectives were vastly different. However, the enemy wasn't really the same considering Czechoslovakia, which the Soviets wanted to defend.
> Ended it with bilateral military parade. Supported each other with training and materiel right until summer 1941.
The parade was more or less just a show-off to fool each other. Just like how India-China have military drills(despite having territorial disputes) to soothe each other. Nazi-Soviets did have trade but from Soviets' perspective it was more likely done to avoid war.
When you say allies, what comes to my mind is US-UK or US-Israel relationship. Nazi-Soviet relationship was nothing close to that. I would agree with you if it we had been discussing this in 1938-41. But we have the benefit of hindsight.
Look, it was more than drills, they partitioned Eastern Europe and fought a campaign together. They were allies for all purposes unless you are specifically set on nitpicking. That they were enemies afterwards does not negate that. Opportunistic alliance is an alliance none the less.
When you say allies, what comes to my mind is US-UK or US-Israel relationship.
It's quite a narrow view, I dare to say. There's no need any for any stable special relationship, or even shared objectives to form an alliance. Expecting some sort of positive returns is quite enough. E.g. since Germans attacked USSR the latter became ally of UK, and then US in spite of the fact that Soviet ideology made it a natural enemy to both (and predictably USSR became an enemy once Germany lost).
There was an addendum to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Secret protocol) which was a plan to divide Eastern Europe between two empires, and it means Soviet-Nazi allyship in 1939 was neither an accident, nor a forced decision.
Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known.
It's not correct in the context. While wish to expand Reich was certainly known, Hitler didn't publicly advertize any clear plans regarding territories under Soviet rule. And Stalin obviously trusted Hitler because he personally discarded intelligence indicating German war preparations as ridiculous. Soviet press in line with party directives kept neutral, or friendly tone towards Germans till the moment of the invasion.
The Soviets also helped retrain the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in secret camps/bases before Hitler was strong enough to tell the Allies to pound sand when they complained about violating the Versailles Treaty.
They aren't two separate wars. They are two campaigns within the same war.
You wouldn't divide ww2 into two separate wars because the germans and the soviets were allied in the first half of ww2 ( when they invaded poland and divided europe in half between them ) and then they fought a war against each other in the 2nd half.
The "continuation war" doesn't get much attention because of political reasons. Just like much of europe ( including france, most of scandinavia, netherlands, belgium, ukraine, etc ) underplays their cooperation with nazi germany for much of ww2 when nazi germany was on the ascent.
As they say, the first casualty of war is the truth. This applies not only during the war, but post-war as well.
Sort of, but even in Finland, the Moscow treaty was called "interim peace" (välirauha) already before 1941, indicating that it was obvious that the European war will again spread to Finland's borders again.
The Soviets occupied Baltic countries, and continued and increased the political and military pressure against Finland already by late 1940, so that Finns did not believe it really is "peace".
Many unfortunate incidents worsened the situation; for instance, the day when the new Soviet ambassador arrived in Finland after the Moscow peace treaty, Finland had a national day of remembrance for the fallen soldiers (akin to Memorial Day in US). With about 25 000 men lost just few months before, this was of course done with flags in half-mast throughout the country and the mood was solemn and grave.
But the new ambassador did not know this, and he thought Finns are just demonstrating against his arrival. A wiser ambassador would have known better, but Stalin preferred ideological purity and refusal to listen to facts.
I've been of the opinion that it's simply easier to analyze the era from ~1914-1945 as one long era of war with ill-defined boundaries of conflicts, rather than looking at WW1, Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, WW2, and a host of other smaller conflicts (including Continuation War and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War).
As a practical matter, the European/African theater against Germany/Italy and the Pacific theater against Japan are two separate wars that happened contemporaneously and with some powers fighting the two wars at the same time. The Continuation War was in large part pushed by the Germans to extend the front of the USSR, and as such is essentially part of the Eurafrican WW2, although the Finns did not entirely cooperate in actually pursuing Axis objectives.
This does show the difficulty of drawing firm boundaries around the wars in this era.
This is a great story, and I've read some of it before, but the UX is just terrible. I was a quarter of the way through before I realised half the story was hidden in the photos.
History Lapse is meant to be read in cadence with the bits of text. The association is meant to stay in memory for a longer time since it is the natural way our brain works. Also, there is almost no reading fatigue because of the start-stop UX.
I would add an overlay to the images prompting people to mouse over for more text, and then hide it once they have done it once. It lacks discoverability as it is currently.
Because your response to criticism sounded, frankly, like a petulant teenager. It's hard to square that with the quality of the writing in the article.
Thank you for recognizing the quality of the article. The "UX is great" response was more of an answer on the same level as "UX is terrible": it did not provide any explanation on why it is terrible and it seemed to be a quick judgement. History Lapse is meant towards the uninitiated youth and not the avid reader. You can read more about it in our whitepaper here https://en.historylapse.org/whitepaper
The UX is terrible for me. If I have to do that much work to make the content show up, it breaks me out of the flow of reading and I do not absorb the material as well. I rapidly lost interest and did not finish the article. I applaud your experiment, and I imagine that there are people for whom it will be effective, but it is a mistake to imagine that any single form of presentation can be "in fact great" in an objective way that works for everyone.
I see your point and I agree. You seem to be an experienced reader with an interest in history. History Lapse is meant towards the uninitiated youth who lost interest in history because it is "boring". You can read more about it in our whitepaper here https://en.historylapse.org/whitepaper. In this context of operation I maintain my opinion that the UX solution is great.
Thank you for explaining the context. I appreciate your willingness to engage here. Your characterization of my perspective is correct. I had not heard of your project before encountering this link, and if I've got a moment later I'd be happy to read your paper and find out more about what you are doing.
[after reading: this is a great project and I deeply appreciate the amount of thought that went into its design. It would have been nice if there were some way to bring more of that awareness into the initial reading experience, instead of just dropping us into something unfamiliar and confusing, but that's a limitation of the hackernews interface and I'm not sure what you could have done about it other than show up and explain as you are doing here. Keep up the good work!]
> Kulik and Mekhlis then proceeded to ask how much ammunition Voronov needed for the forthcoming campaign. ‘That depends,’ replied Voronov. ‘Are you planning to attack or defend? … With which forces and on which sectors? … And by the way, how much time is allotted for the operation?’ The reply to the last point came quickly: ‘Between 10 and 12 days.’ Eyeing the map of Finland hanging on the wall, Voronov replied: ‘I will be happy if everything can be resolved within two to three months.’ Everybody laughed derisively. ‘Marshal Voronov,’ Kulik replied sternly. ‘You are ordered to base all your estimates on the assumption that the operation will last a maximum of 12 days.’
Latvia being my second home country, I found one photo [0] from the article particularly interesting. It depicts a communist rally on (at the time) Brīvibas bulvaris, one of the main boulevards of Riga.
The picture can be dated between July 5th 1940, the announcement of Soviet rigged elections, and the elections themselves on July 14 and 15, 1940 [1].
The slogans are only half readable, but say something like:
* "Long live our agricultural labourers, farmers and worker intelligentsia!"
* "On July 14-15, at the election, vote for ?our? Latvian labourer bloc"
Very notable in the photo are at least four Latvian flags on the buildings.
For those interested, there's a fairly good wikipedia article [2] about the first Soviet occupation of Latvia.
91 comments
[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadOf course Finnish history is complex, when you consider how it was initially Swedish-owned, then became an autonomous (remarkably so) part of the Russian empire between 1809-1917. The brief outline here is presents a good summary:
https://finland.fi/life-society/main-outlines-of-finnish-his...
For more details I enjoyed reading "A Concise history of Finland" :
https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Finland-Cambridge-His...
(I moved to Finland a couple of years ago, and have spent a fair bit of time learning of local-history.)
It should be noted, though, that if Finland had stayed as a part of Sweden, it might not exist as a country today; Sweden has had a policy of forced assimilation which is shown in how the traditionally Finnish (and Sami) culture in contemporary northern Sweden has been largely replaced.
Tsar Alexander I ended war against Sweden (1808-1809) with a pact with the local nobility, if we may call it so, where Finland would be "lifted to be a nation among nations", and as a result, Finland indeed did become an autonomous nation.
This is why the "faithful Tsars" have statues in Finland. Finland did not see itself as a part of Russia, but as a separate nation which just has Russian emperor as the ruler (Grand Duke). Swedish legislation was preserved (some laws in law book still date from 1734).
Weaker, pan-Slavic Tsars (Alexander III and Nicholas II) then tried to reverse this development, and suppress Finnish nationalism, and as a result of this, Nicholas II was called "the oathbreaker", and due to this and many other similar bad policies elsewhere in his empire he lost his crown and his life.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg
Still, I expect Finland would have been only too happy to sit out the war as a neutral, like Sweden did. But the Soviets didn't give them that option.
Here's an episode at the start of the Winter War[0]. The whole series is worth a watch though.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUwCd-j5xL4
Edit: Related, the same people did an entire week by week version of WW1, The Great War (now complete)[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjS...
Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution. This war was planned as a quick campaign before the main event, which was scheduled in July 1941. Hitler beat him by a couple of weeks.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv...
I do subscribe to this point of view. One needs to look at the actions Stalin took prior to the war. I think Rezun documented it fairly well.
And there is a great impetus to whitewash history - back then and even today.
Note that this hypothesis is almost entirely based on Viktor Suvorov's work, which has problems. From Wikipedia [0] (and also from Glantz, which I have read):
"Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg). Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings have 'virtually no evidentiary base'."
and
> "David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay"
and Beevor shows serious doubts (note that a 41 winter attack is not what the original hypothesis is about):
> "Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..."
There's some support for this theory in the West, but very little. The vast majority of works seem to discount it. It seems to be a fringe theory.
Of course, eventually the Soviet Union and Germany would have been at war, what with Hitler's ideology being anti "Bolshevism" and considering most Slavs to be subhumans to be ethnically cleansed as part of Generalplan Ost.
One other thing. You also wrote:
> Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution.
That doesn't seem to have been Stalin's plan [1], at least initially. It was precisely a point of contention with his political opponents that Stalin favored the "Socialism in one country" position instead of "world revolution".
----
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
The specific claim that's likely false is that the Soviet Union, as early as 1941, planned to conquer Europe (as part of some bid to implement "world communism") and specifically attack Germany, and that Hitler's Barbarossa was some sort of "preemptive/defensive" strike. The first goes against Stalin's philosophy at the time, the latter goes against what we know about Red Army readiness and also what we know about Hitler's racial ideology.
Yes. Incidentally that one country had to have Moscow as the capital, but span across whole Europe and most of the Asia.
1. Declared a hidden mobilization.
2. Increased term of military service.
3. Created ~20.000 tanks (hardly a defensive weapon).
4. Removed fortifications on old Polish-Soviet border.
5. Started to concentrate forces close to German-occupied part of Poland.
6. Trained a lot of paratroopers (again, hardly a defense material)
7. In June 1941 plans that were opened by attacked Soviet forces were all-out offensive.
That didn't look like defense preparations to me.
1) fighting against forces of much larger scale,
2) inflicting much more damage to the opposing force than getting, and
3) still keeping independence (when compared to, for example, baltic states).
Fair enough?
Was it a fundamentally different sort of conflict after what amounted to a brief ceasefire, or is it just politically expedient to ignore that the Finns continued fighting the Soviets shortly after the Winter War as allies of the Nazi regime?
In 1939 Finland was Anglophilic rather than Nazi-aligned, but it's not a good setup when friends are far away and weak, and enemies are close and strong.
There was no practical way for them to align themselves with anyone but the Nazis or the Soviets, so whether you like what the political class became in that context or not, it's not as though the people had a choice between liberal democracy and state socialism, and picked the latter.
That people with uncertain, unpleasant lives were taken in by Soviet propaganda is no surprise. Some people still believe the things they learned from Soviet propagandists to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion
Stalin expected a fast population growth, and when the 1937 census showed that he was mistaken, and population of USSR was only 162 million, Stalin had statisticians sent to the GULAG and some were even executed. After that, many tried to avoid being nominated for top jobs, out of fear for meeting the same fate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)
This kind of dictatorship and purges of competent people certainly lessened the capabilities of Soviet Union, lead to the unexpected result of the Winter War, and greatly increased the losses of USSR in the coming great war.
It's quite a feat to lessen your capabilities, and still be able to repel an invasion by all of Europe (sans England, as well as smaller countries like Switzerland, Ireland etc.)
The other view is Stalin had loyal cadre around him during the war, and did not have lieutenant colonels with links through the high command making bomb attempts against him.
It is quite clear that USSR's surprisingly weak performance in Winter War did encourage Hitler to think that he could crush Soviets with a quick summer war.
Most of Europe was being attacked (or actively suppressed) by Germany, not attacking the USSR with Germany, and even Germany was fighting on other fronts, so it wasn't even “all of Germany”.
Of course, these "national" liberation movements where double betrayed when the german racism became obvious.
See, the only thing they had going for them was the "enemy of my enemy" thing, and that just wasn't the case after the war, for that enemy did not exist any more, unlike everything else they had done.
Are you referring to Poland? Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known. As for the Soviets, a buffer with the Nazis was paramount. Not justifying their actions but looking from their perspective they were able to delay the war by two years. Even if the enemy was same, the objectives were vastly different. However, the enemy wasn't really the same considering Czechoslovakia, which the Soviets wanted to defend.
> Ended it with bilateral military parade. Supported each other with training and materiel right until summer 1941.
The parade was more or less just a show-off to fool each other. Just like how India-China have military drills(despite having territorial disputes) to soothe each other. Nazi-Soviets did have trade but from Soviets' perspective it was more likely done to avoid war.
When you say allies, what comes to my mind is US-UK or US-Israel relationship. Nazi-Soviet relationship was nothing close to that. I would agree with you if it we had been discussing this in 1938-41. But we have the benefit of hindsight.
If that's the case, why was the Soviet Union so spectacularly unprepared for the German invasion?
It's quite a narrow view, I dare to say. There's no need any for any stable special relationship, or even shared objectives to form an alliance. Expecting some sort of positive returns is quite enough. E.g. since Germans attacked USSR the latter became ally of UK, and then US in spite of the fact that Soviet ideology made it a natural enemy to both (and predictably USSR became an enemy once Germany lost).
There was an addendum to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Secret protocol) which was a plan to divide Eastern Europe between two empires, and it means Soviet-Nazi allyship in 1939 was neither an accident, nor a forced decision.
Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known.
It's not correct in the context. While wish to expand Reich was certainly known, Hitler didn't publicly advertize any clear plans regarding territories under Soviet rule. And Stalin obviously trusted Hitler because he personally discarded intelligence indicating German war preparations as ridiculous. Soviet press in line with party directives kept neutral, or friendly tone towards Germans till the moment of the invasion.
You kind of answered your own question there. They're two separate wars. Of course articles on the Winter War would focus on the Winter War.
Now you may ask instead why the Continuation war doesn't get as much coverage as the Winter War. Well because it frankly isn't as interesting.
You wouldn't divide ww2 into two separate wars because the germans and the soviets were allied in the first half of ww2 ( when they invaded poland and divided europe in half between them ) and then they fought a war against each other in the 2nd half.
The "continuation war" doesn't get much attention because of political reasons. Just like much of europe ( including france, most of scandinavia, netherlands, belgium, ukraine, etc ) underplays their cooperation with nazi germany for much of ww2 when nazi germany was on the ascent.
As they say, the first casualty of war is the truth. This applies not only during the war, but post-war as well.
The Soviets occupied Baltic countries, and continued and increased the political and military pressure against Finland already by late 1940, so that Finns did not believe it really is "peace".
Many unfortunate incidents worsened the situation; for instance, the day when the new Soviet ambassador arrived in Finland after the Moscow peace treaty, Finland had a national day of remembrance for the fallen soldiers (akin to Memorial Day in US). With about 25 000 men lost just few months before, this was of course done with flags in half-mast throughout the country and the mood was solemn and grave.
But the new ambassador did not know this, and he thought Finns are just demonstrating against his arrival. A wiser ambassador would have known better, but Stalin preferred ideological purity and refusal to listen to facts.
As a practical matter, the European/African theater against Germany/Italy and the Pacific theater against Japan are two separate wars that happened contemporaneously and with some powers fighting the two wars at the same time. The Continuation War was in large part pushed by the Germans to extend the front of the USSR, and as such is essentially part of the Eurafrican WW2, although the Finns did not entirely cooperate in actually pursuing Axis objectives.
This does show the difficulty of drawing firm boundaries around the wars in this era.
As I can remember Parliament of Finland in 1941 was against the war... until Soviets decided to bomb them.
So, one of the pushes definitely came from the East (or South East in this case).
I prefer this js hack[0] which shows everything and after mouseover it allows to hide text for better image viewing.
But content and quality of texts are great!
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19495172
Also appreciated would be a way to expose every image's text at once, for those of us who don't use our mice to read. (like the mobile layout)
[after reading: this is a great project and I deeply appreciate the amount of thought that went into its design. It would have been nice if there were some way to bring more of that awareness into the initial reading experience, instead of just dropping us into something unfamiliar and confusing, but that's a limitation of the hackernews interface and I'm not sure what you could have done about it other than show up and explain as you are doing here. Keep up the good work!]
Well, doesn't that sound familiar...
The picture can be dated between July 5th 1940, the announcement of Soviet rigged elections, and the elections themselves on July 14 and 15, 1940 [1].
The slogans are only half readable, but say something like:
* "Long live our agricultural labourers, farmers and worker intelligentsia!"
* "On July 14-15, at the election, vote for ?our? Latvian labourer bloc"
Very notable in the photo are at least four Latvian flags on the buildings.
For those interested, there's a fairly good wikipedia article [2] about the first Soviet occupation of Latvia.
[0] https://en.historylapse.org/l/be4WoPyQxGOv6enG5lVYznV305LlAm...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Latvian_parliamentary_ele...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in...