The Russo-Finnish War

On the 30^th of November 1939 Joseph Stalin entered into one of the most epic of military blunders. It was an error that helped set the stage for the Hitlerite stab in the back that was the invasion of the Soviet Union. Fresh from his easy occupation of Poland, Uncle Joe decided to add some more territory to his Bolshevik Empire. In quick secession the Soviets occupied the small Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Next on the bill of fare was Finland.


On paper it did not look like that much of an issue, Finland was tiny; it had a miniscule Army with next to no heavy weapons. Russia on the other hand had a huge Army buttressed by a monstrous territory containing boundless supplies of men and materials. The great Stalin, the terror and awe of his subject peoples, was to relearn the painful lesson that battles are not won on paper but in the real world where Murphy's Law always sides with the hidden flaw.


Not that the flaws in the Soviet juggernaut were all that hidden. The entire nineteen thirties was one long display of Soviet Russia being ripped apart by the paranoid megalomaniac ruler at its center. Show trial followed show trial and the military along with all other governing structures was ruthlessly purged. The officer core of the Red Army was decimated. Experienced cadres were cashiered and then liquidated by Stalin's security apparatus. Many qualified leaders ended their days with a bullet to the back of the head or the slower death of the Gulags. Thus when the Soviets entered Finland their officer corps were both green and incompetent.


Finland on the other hand was lead by one of the true military geniuses of the 20^th Century, Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim. With his highly motivated troops Mannerheim made a hash of Soviet military operations. Using the rugged terrain of Finland to his advantage Mannerheim waged a persistent guerilla war against the Soviets. Big and blundering, the Soviet Armies were picked apart piece-by-piece by the quicker, more flexible Finns. The Finns became the ne-plus-ultra of asymmetrical warfare, as case study of how a small nation can humiliate a much larger power.


Stalin did not appreciate the lesson the Finns were offering. He especially did not like the fact that he was being made the fool in international affairs. The greater war in the West had entered the doldrums making the conflict between the Finns and the Soviets the only action of note. The performance of Soviet Army under the harsh light international attention was a constant embarrassment for the Soviet state in general and Stalin in particular.


Worse for the Soviet leader, the misbegotten war emboldened Hitler who thought that the Soviet Union would be an easy mark for invasion. If tiny Finland could run roughshod over the Soviet Army, just think what Germany could do. Hitler was convinced that his blitzkrieging Armies would make short work of the Red Army. In Hitler's mind he saw Soviet Union a carbon copy of the old Imperial Russia that fell apart in WWI. Just one well placed blow would bring the whole rotten Bolshevik structure crashing down. The Finnish war was proof positive that Russians were Untermenschen, subhuman louts, who were no match for the superior Aryan race. The Winter War breaded a dangerous contempt for Russia by Hitler. Fifteen months later that contempt would become manifest in Operation Barbarossa.


The only good that came out of the Finnish War for Russia is that it was a huge wake-up call for Stalin. The military purges ended, the lucky few who survived the NKVD's clutches were returned to lists. The greatest commanders of WWII were graduates of the harsh school set up by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria. They learned their ruthlessness and monomaniacal drive from the tender ministrations of their jailers. These men had learned the lesson of absolute obedience to Stalin's orders. Stalin, by way of contrast, learned to trust these mens' military judgments and mostly let them get on with the business of defeating Hitler's Germany.


It was a near thing for Stalin though. The reforms that finally helped Soviet Russia defeat the Nazi menace were not all in place when Hitler invaded. In 1941 and 1942 Soviet Russia would pay dearly for Stalin's paranoia and purges. The cities that paid the highest price still are a by-word for unimaginable suffering: Leningrad and Stalingrad. Both have been renamed since the fall of the Bolshevik Empire, Leningrad is once again St. Petersburg, Stalingrad is now Volgograd. Still history lies heavily on both these cities and the citizens of both metropolises remember and deeply honor the sacrifices of those who preceded them.


The chain of causation that history records can be a seriously tangled one; uncoiling this particular serpentine form is never easy. A short and foolish war for some frozen patches of real estate in 1939 lead , by twist, turns and the most improbable of Gordian Knots, to the greatest military operation of the 20^th Century: the Ostfront—the Eastern Front of WWII. History is full of these kinds of improbabilities. It is filled with rulers who rush into places were angels dare not thread. It offers object lessons in the cruel mechanics of unintended consequences. The tragedy is so few bother to pay the least attention to these lessons.

The Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day Of Eleventh Month

This is no ordinary fall day it is quite special. In the United States it is Veterans Day.  In Europe, today is more properly called Memorial Day or Remembrance Day.  What is being remembered is the end of one of the greater disasters of history.  The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh day of 1918 is when the armistice of WW I was signed.

World War One was the great game changers of history. At the beginning of the “War to end all Wars”  there were five empires in Europe.  There was Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the Ottomans. After the war Austria-Hungary had shattered, Germany became a republic, the Ottomans were in the process of becoming Turkey and Russia had turned Communist.  The only empire left standing was the U.K.

Looking at a map the British Empire looked to be the big winner.  It had expanded into what it called the Near East. It controlled either directly or indirectly all of the Ottoman areas between Anatolia (Asia Minor) to Egypt. The French, not nearly so fortunate, manage to grab Syria and Lebanon as a consolation prize. But looks were entirely deceiving.

The U.K. was a shell of its former self and the new acquisitions only added to a colonial burden that the British could no longer support.  Looking back with hindsight we now know that Colonialism was dealt a mortal blow by the Great War. Canada, New Zealand and Australia had national awakenings that began their journey to independence. In other parts of the Empire native peoples began to stir. The legitimacy of the Colonial governments, always suspect in the best of times, became null and void as local elites abandoned their subservience to distant, detached, foreign masters.

Those foreign masters and foreign elites no longer had their previous gumption and will to power.  Large portions of those elites had died in the trenches and survivors had lost their claim to leadership.  By leading their nations into the meat grinder that was WW 1 they had evaporated any claims of superior ability or superior knowledge.

The cat was out of the bag as far as aristocratic power went. WW1 started in Europe because two great nation-states had laid dynastic eggs. If Germany or Russia was lead by even the standard mediocrities that crop up all too often in monarchies the Great War would never have happened or at least taken a different course.  But the nations were lead by two epic historical incompetents: Willy and Nicky. Neither the German Kaiser nor the Autocrat of all the Russians had the innate ability to lead a Cub Scout troop never mind great and powerful empires.

Europe entered a butcher shop of horrors because the conventional wisdom and the status quo of Power Politics lead it there.  If there is a lesson to be gained from this date it is to be constantly wary of people who blithely try to explain why we must spend lives and treasures in obscure parts of the world for supposed grand strategic designs.  Often the best and the brightest are the most ignorant of people.

Well this is a fine How-Do-You-Do

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.
Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.
Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Snip

Source Guardian  UK