Russo-Finnish wars

How come did Soviet Union fuck up something so simple so badly? They couldn't conquer Finland even in the Continuation war even though they had all the time.

you know how Autists freak out when you touch their toys?

You mean bunch of autistic Finns freaked so hard that Soviet army couldn't handle it?

Winter war was basically a big blunder on the soviets part. Their intel on the country was decades old, they insisted on trying to conquer the whole country in 2 weeks and their leadership had been purged so they didnt have a lot of experienced leaders.

While I understand the purges, they had ridiculous numerical advantage and didn't Soviets have very good intelligence agencies with cells all around the world during WW2?

you know the finnish slur for russians also means "fuck-up"?

Well to explain the poor intel: What the soviets expected to happen when they invaded was for the communists in Finland to rise up in arms and join the soviets because they thought the white Finns were still murdering them. Now if this was 10 or more years ago this might have happened since the whole whites and reds was still a very hot topic. But the civil war had been about 30 years ago and the hate between the two had already been mostly mended. 3 years before winter war the communists were already allowed to have a political party and everything.
So when the soviets started their invasion and propaganda declaring that they have come to save their communist comrades the finnish communists just saw a bunch of imperialists assholes coming to invade. There was no communist uprising going to happen because there was no need. It just made the Finnish communists angry. The point of propaganda is supposed to make you not want to fight, the opposite basically happened.

Ah, makes more sense now. But how about the Continuation war? I know Germans were now supplying the Finnish troops and there were Germans fighting in Lapland but how come this happened?

Im not really sure what exactly youre asking. If you mean why the Finns didnt stop the US supplies from reaching the soviets by stopping the train lines well they basically didnt want to piss off the US. Finns kept insisting their war is only with the soviets and reclaiming their lands back the lost during the winter war. Germans were just brothers in war that just happen to be fighting the same enemy.

Because the Finns are naturally good fighters and they had a solid leadership. I can't think of any other reasons because the Soviets were already much better organized than they were during the winter war and especially in 1944 they absolutely dwarfed the Finnish forces. Yet they were still unable to defeat them in the middle of the summer after the Finns were down to almost no reinforcements

Finnish autism and incapability of seeing the big picture doesn't match German super autism very well it seems

Underrated post

Autism all around, that's the reason my dude

Yeah

Basically everything went wrong with the Soviet attack to Finland. It's a really complicated mess, but the major factors were a really harsh winter (during the Winter War), lack of competent leadership, lack of motivation of troops (nobody wanted to be there), and just how incredibly hardy and determined the finnish soldiers were to defend their homeland.

You should read a book on the subject, written by some neutral party (so no russian/russian-minded author; they still insist Finland started the hostilities which is nothing more than Stalin's propaganda).

In particular, I've always found interesting how the Soviets failed on the road of Raate. It was a monumental blunder, where finnish sissi forces (guerillas) on skis, a couple of hundred of them, totally annihilated an ukranian regiment, several hundred times larger than theirs, resulting in enormous soviet losses of both men and means (I think the finnish got their first tanks by scavenging them from this battle). It's a really interesting read; check it out on wikipedia if nowhere else.

source: I'm finnish myself. Years back, I was so inspired by this particular battle, that I learned how to cross-country ski and later on enlisted into a sissi jaeger unit for my mandatory.

The end of Continuation War was basically deciding it's more worth to focus on a far more important front. It was no point of knocking Finland out of war, if Finland wants to knock itself out.

But the Soviets brought in a huge amount of troops and wanted to knock Finland out of the war quickly. It completely failed after the Finns stopped them in multiple important battles and only after that did the Soviets think it wasn't worth the effort

>I was so inspired by this particular battle, that I learned how to cross-country ski and later on enlisted into a sissi jaeger unit for my mandatory.
That's pretty hardcore Pekka

Thing is that Soviets win the war.
They break fortification line and Finland aske for peace as they have no means to resist further.

>I think the finnish got their first tanks by scavenging them from this battle

Nah we had some really dogshit tanks from early interwar period but yeah, most our good shit was captured or German.

Yeah but in both wars they were just horribly brute forcing it through.

You will never have a qt sissi bf

What exactly they could do it other way? There were no really place for manouver.
>Winter and not only winter but FINNISH WINTER.
>fortification line
>forest with frozen lakes and shit
>FINNISH forest with frozen lakes and shit
>hardened natives who know terrain well
Soviets biggest blunder was logistic failure and Party control over armed forces rather than trying to break it by brute force. This and them using Ukrainians divisions who were completly not prepared for this sort of combat.
I am amazed that they even break it trought but they did.

>win the war
They """won""" by getting the territory but it was far from their ultimate goal of seizing control over the whole Finland.