Heck. Finland didn't even join the Axis. So I don't know what he's droning about.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
It always does when I play Hoi 2 to the point that I thought too it was in the Axis
Brainwashing I tell ya.
Cooperative war on the Soviet Union kind of superseded a defensive pact. Could make the argument that Finland had no military alliance with Germany just allowed military access. For that matter USSR and Britain had a direct military alliance and yet Russia is portrayed as some kind of lone wolf madman in the HoI series.
Germans should have laid better plans of capturing Leningrad from the north with Finland's assistance before the war. Leningrad was never properly besieged with tons of supplies and communications getting in while the Finnish army stood by silently. According to Ryti the situation was "paradoxical". I'd say it was ludicrous. Carving territory for a greater Finland without realizing war goals of actually capitulating concentrations of the enemy army, occupying his rail heads, ports, and cities.
Germans should have laid better plans of capturing Leningrad from the north with Finland's assistance before the war. Leningrad was never properly besieged with tons of supplies and communications getting in while the Finnish army stood by silently. According to Ryti the situation was "paradoxical". I'd say it was ludicrous. Carving territory for a greater Finland without realizing war goals of actually capitulating concentrations of the enemy army, occupying his rail heads, ports, and cities.
Unlike Germany, which expected total war of annihilation, Finnish leadership never bought into the idea of total victory and expected that any peace with the Soviets would be a negotiated one. At minimum this was expected to be the return of territory lost in Winter War, at best it was the annexation of Finnic speaking territories in Karelia. Finnish attack on Leningrad would only have advanced German, not Finnish, war aims and made any peace negotiations with the Soviets more difficult and costlier by increasing Soviet animosity.
Given that Germany went and lost the war, it was the right decision. Had Finnish troops been involved in sacking Leningrad, we certainly wouldn't have received as light peace terms in 44 as we did historically, as the Russians would have wanted revenge.
Not only did not advance the Finnish war aims, it would acounterproductive. Finnish war aim: create a "defensible front" which can be manned by the small manpower the Finns had. Bleeding during an attack on Leningrad had exactly the opposite effect.
The Germans had prepared a good plan for the Finnish contribution for the Siege of Leningrad in order to capture the city, the problem for the Germans was that Mannerheim refused obey the orders from the German Army. There were mainly two reasons for this - firstly, unlike other Hitler's allies Mannerheim didn't give in under the German will, it would had looked like just being an other German puppet if acting so. Mannerheim was the supreme commander of the sovereign Finnish Army and this army received orders only from its own commander-in-chief - secondly, already in 1941 Mannerheim doubted the German possibility to win the war against the Soviet Union. Capturing Leningrad wouldn't had been a decisive turning point of the war, the Soviets would have been able to tolerate the loss. The Soviets didn't put a halt for the Finnish attack towards Leningrad, but the order came from Mannerheim to stop the attack. Furthermore, the Finnish artillery was prohibited to bombard the city, as well the Finnish air activity above the city was forbidden by the same order. Like @DarthJF said, surely the Soviets would had proceeded for measures of retaliation and the peace terms would had been less favorable for the Finns.
A far less know Finnish-German operation associated to the Siege of Leningrad was a military operation called Handshake at the River Svir. Its objective was to lay another surrounding ring further eastwards from Leningrad and encircle the Soviet forces inside the area. The Finns had crossed the River Svir connecting Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega during their offensive phase - about 50-60 km to south from the Finnish lines the Germans had captured city of Tikhvin. The Finns would had advanced more to south from the River Svir and the Germans would had advanced north from Tikhvin. When the both armies would had encountered it would had been the Handshake at the River Svir. The second encircling of Leningrad would had been laid here. Even Mannerheim accepted this plan, but the operation was abandoned as the Soviets began their counter-attack throwing the Germans away from Tikhvin.
The Svir is a wide river and the flow of currents strong. The Finnish Army of Karelia crossed the river advancing circa 10 km from its eastern and southern banks. SA-kuva.
The Germans originally idealised the conquest of Leningrad as a purely German operation, hoping the Finns would focus their forces on a push towards east of Lake Ladoga instead. During the war they did try to get Finland to join in against Leningrad, but that was not the original idea.
I don't have the time to translate these pages on the topic from Finnish to English, but I'll post them here since there's a lot of Finns in this thread anyway. They don't quite fit in my scanner, so I had to photograph them:
Source: Suomi Sodassa: Talvi- ja jatkosodan tärkeät päivät, p. 197 & 224-225.
I don't have the time to translate these pages on the topic from Finnish to English, but I'll post them here since there's a lot of Finns in this thread anyway. They don't quite fit in my scanner, so I had to photograph them:
Source: Suomi Sodassa: Talvi- ja jatkosodan tärkeät päivät, p. 197 & 224-225.
It does get lumped on Mannerheim but, there was probably an anti-German sentiment throughout the Finnish army officer corps despite Germany's contribution to their independence. Mannerheim was venerably old and had been an adventurous cavalry officer before the Russian and Finnish civil war. Ryti seems to have been very pro-German. I wonder what Airo's feelings were politically? If the eventual defeat of the campaign was divined than Finland should have remained neutral.
Finland was not neutral and they did not advance where they should have according to military strategy. For the armed forces in Leningrad to surrender the west bank of lake Ladoga needed to be captured. The Murmansk railway needed to be cut before the Zapadnaya Litsa could be assaulted. I can see why in July-December they might be reticent but, by 1942 Finland had potential to advance on northern Russia and possibly end the war. They could have capitulated Leningrad allowing supplies into Novgorod properly linking the frontline. Basically the same problem of Axis (broadly) forces in regard to Japan's non-aggression pact with the USSR.
As the leading anti-Soviet military power Germany should have demanded more action from it's allies. I believe the USSR could have been destroyed but, the Axis wasn't half as mobilized as they needed to be to occupy so much territory and population. The Soviet's for their part not only managed to supply a unified frontline from July 1941 to December 1942 but, attack without superiority at the salient gaps in their enemies poorly strung together frontlines in Northern Russia and Kola. Keeping the enemy off balance and shaping their strategy to bottleneck dead ends like the Svir river offensive.
Finland was not neutral and they did not advance where they should have according to military strategy. For the armed forces in Leningrad to surrender the west bank of lake Ladoga needed to be captured. The Murmansk railway needed to be cut before the Zapadnaya Litsa could be assaulted. I can see why in July-December they might be reticent but, by 1942 Finland had potential to advance on northern Russia and possibly end the war. They could have capitulated Leningrad allowing supplies into Novgorod properly linking the frontline. Basically the same problem of Axis (broadly) forces in regard to Japan's non-aggression pact with the USSR.
As the leading anti-Soviet military power Germany should have demanded more action from it's allies. I believe the USSR could have been destroyed but, the Axis wasn't half as mobilized as they needed to be to occupy so much territory and population. The Soviet's for their part not only managed to supply a unified frontline from July 1941 to December 1942 but, attack without superiority at the salient gaps in their enemies poorly strung together frontlines in Northern Russia and Kola. Keeping the enemy off balance and shaping their strategy to bottleneck dead ends like the Svir river offensive.
Mannerheim, Ryti and Airo were mostly Anglo-Francophile.
Not possible.
They did, with the exception of the Murmansk railway. To not permanently cut that was a political decision. Leningrad is debatable.
???
Finland at least was mobilised to the hilt, actually past her capacity in the summer of '41, expecting a short war, and had to demobilise a sizable portion of her forces in late 1941 to early 1942 to stave off famine and keep the economy afloat.
Possibly end the war if Finland's objective from the outset was the destruction of the Northern Front of Soviet forces. Which isn't an unrealistic objective and which leads subjectively to collapse of the Soviet northwest front and so on as elements filter southward from the 'safely' captured territory. The campaign season of 1942 was the Finnish armies time to shine but, an undocumented collapse in strategic planning happened. I seriously doubt it was consideration of the US-Finnish relations. That sounds like some half baked 1980s NATO propaganda. Probably the early 1942 Soviet counter attacks caused routing which Finnish high command feared might lead to early collapse of the army.
The early 1942 Soviet counter-attacks caused routing exactly in where in your opinion? The Soviets didn't conduct a counter-attack against the Finns during the winter of 1941-1942, but they did execute an early spring general offensive throughout the front known as Rasputitsa Offensive. It was a decisive Finnish victory - the Soviet sources announce Soviet casualties 44 000 dead and 120 000 wounded - the Finnish casualties were in total 3 000.
It was the attacker shattered and routing during the Soviet spring offensive in the Finnish Front - the Finnish Army proved to be a capable in defense in the trenches and fortifications created after the Finnish offensive phase of 1941. The morale and the confidence were high after repelling the Rasputitsa-attack. There was not a lightest sign of the Finnish Army collapsing in 1942 - but the routing and the collapse was very near two years later in 1944.
This is actually very unrealistic. Russia losing Kola and all of East Karelia would have been insignificant to the outcome of the war once the Murmansk railway would already have been cut anyway, with an assault in the south to Sorokka (officially Belomorsk since 1938). All that really mattered in the region that the Finns or Germans didn't already hold, was such a portion of the Murmansk railway that would have allowed cutting it off completely. On top of that, the railway itself greatly decreased in significance after 1941, and alternative routes of lend-lease would've opened sooner, had the Russians lost it.
Not only all that, but taking those territories was realistically not even possible. The infrastructure and terrain for such an operation was not there, which General Airo warned the Germans about when their military was inspecting terrain in Finnish Lapland prior to Barbarossa. Not only that, but neither Finland nor Germany had the forces to spare on what essentially was throwing men away on a fool's errand, though arguably the Germans tried at first, before giving up, opting to learn the hard way what Airo had already told them.
Germany had lost the war by December 1941. She was not coming back from failing to route Russia's army before the onset of winter. There was nothing more for Finland to do, except perhaps take Sorokka, cutting the Murmansk railway, which she easily could have, and then relinquished control of the area to German divisions redeploying there from the north, as to not overstretch the scarce Finnish forces too much.
Getting involved in Leningrad was both militarily and politically a high-risk, high-cost, low-reward option. Finland had leaders smart enough not to take it. Yes, Finland getting involved would maybe, IMO probably, have meant the city would have eventually fallen, but so what? It would have come at a great cost in lives and materiel, would've taken a sizable, likely primarily German garrison to police (Finns didn't have a lot of manpower to spare), it would not have saved Germany by late-'41 anyway, and then there's the question of what kind of backlash would have come from the Russians once they came back knocking: the Karelian Offensive might've been even greater, or another offensive of similar scale could have come afterwards, which even if repulsed, would've resulted in a great many more Finns losing their lives.
I used to think that maybe if Finland opted to push on Leningrad in 1941 and took it together with the Germans, that could maybe, possibly, have changed the outcome of the Eastern Front and by extension WW2 in Europe, by allowing Heeresgruppe Nord to continue east and then south to help Heeresgruppe Mitte with taking Moscow, as per German plans, allowing the city to fall, which in turn would have screwed up Russian supply, communications, etc.
But honestly the more I read into it I realise:
a) There probably was not enough time to take Leningrad in a timely manner to help HG Mitte take Moscow before the onset of the mud season or even winter.
b) HG Nord would probably have become bogged down east of Leningrad anyway, before getting a chance to help HG Mitte.
c) The Germans weren't really capable of taking Moscow, its surrounding region and then holding on to it in the first place.
d) Even if the Germans by some act of providence did, it's possible the Allies would simply have stepped up their lend-lease game even more and kept Russia from collapsing (the latter which they pretty much did already IRL).
So no, I don't think there's much the Finnish army could have done differently in 1942, besides not taking Sorokka.
It was a political decision, and this is well-documented. Militarily there was no major obstacle to cutting the Murmansk railway by taking Sorokka, and it could have been accomplished with ease. Airo made a plan for it, it was displayed to Mannerheim and Ryti, and they mutually agreed against it, mostly because USA threatened to declare war on Finland if she cut the railway. The idea was that USA could keep the Russians off Finland's back post-war in case Germany lost. Of course in reality it ended up being the Finnish military that kept the Russians from Sovietizing the country, not American diplomatic pressure, so politically this strategy of not angering the US didn't amount to much, if anything at all. But 20/20 hindsight.
This accusation is baseless. The Russian 1942 counter-attacks were repulsed with ease. AFAIK some of the partly demobilised and thus understrength units south of the river Syväri (Svir in Russian) initially had some issues, but it was nothing actually threatening to the Finnish situation.
I think this is one of those things that's got some tiny grain of truth to it, but is mostly a myth that has been overplayed in the Finnish "popular history" culture. While I'm sure there were some individual cases of panicking at the start of the Russian Karelian Offensive in June 1944, by and large the Finnish military conducted an orderly retreat as the first Finnish lines of defence were breached, all the while engaged in delaying action against the Russians, until eventually halting the Russian advance on all fronts.
>the Soviet sources announce Soviet casualties 44 000 dead and 120 000 wounded - the Finnish casualties were in total 3 000.
How can I argue with "Soviet sources" right? Something caused the lack of Finnish initiative during the campaign season of 1942. There is always routing from any combat zone and the smaller the forces the quicker it snowballs. Which is why coverups of unit routs are key to war propaganda. There were also Soviet partisan attacks behind the front lines at this time which may have worried high command that they were under counter invasion. Perhaps it was lack of munitions since German supplies and engineers were being rerouted for their Ukraine offensive.
How can I argue with "Soviet sources" right? Something caused the lack of Finnish initiative during the campaign season of 1942. There is always routing from any combat zone and the smaller the forces the quicker it snowballs. Which is why coverups of unit routs are key to war propaganda. There were also Soviet partisan attacks behind the front lines at this time which may have worried high command that they were under counter invasion. Perhaps it was lack of munitions since German supplies and engineers were being rerouted for their Ukraine offensive.
By finding a conclusive smoking gun fact.
Yes, you are absolutely right in this point, but no reason was associated with Soviet partisan activity:
- After 1941 the Finnish Army was largely demobilized and this remained in 1942 - proceeding the attacking phase was an option but was overruled for instance the Finnish government and the military leadership considering the objectives already as achieved
- To support the Finnish view of separate war -thesis, if the attack was to be launched and further advance to the Soviet Union it would had probably involved all the Western Countries declaration of war. Only waging war with the Soviet Union Finland justified its own conclusion and idea fighting only for own endeavors, separated from the global conflict
- The waiting-game. If the German campaign of 1942 would be successful and the Soviets would perform very bad they would probably be willing to sign a separate peace with the Finns - it was a Finnish view
https://b-ok.cc/dl/3572674/41762f
One of my favorite WW2 operations was Silver Fox. Superior German and Soviet forces with exceptional tactical prowess going at it in the arctic wasteland. Found this while searching up decent books of the Continuation War. There aren't many with neutral military analysis suffice it to say.
One of my favorite WW2 operations was Silver Fox. Superior German and Soviet forces with exceptional tactical prowess going at it in the arctic wasteland. Found this while searching up decent books of the Continuation War. There aren't many with neutral military analysis suffice it to say.
Partisans were not really that big of a thing. Finns relocated the civilians from areas with partisan activity so the partisans were left without support - in fact most of the Soviet partisans operating against the Finns were essentially long range patrols, since there was no local support, rather than anything else. And it wasn't for lack of trying. The Soviets tried inserting about 700 men strong patrol into the Finnish rear in 1942 (aka the 1st Partisan Brigade) which the Finns promptly destroyed. In fact Finnish forces were quite effective in hunting such partisan patrols, which was one of the reasons why the Germans insisted that one Finnish battalion (Petsamo Separate Detachment - Petsamon Erillisosasto, abrv. Er.Os.P) had to stay up north until the end of the Continuation War. Simply because they could deal with partisans far more effectively than what the Germans could.
In the end the Soviet partisans ended up mainly attacking undefended & isolated Finnish villages leading to several civilian massacres.
To be honest the Finns were largely unimpressed by the Germans in the north. And this is putting it politely. The abysmal performance of the SS-Kampfgruppe Nord (later 6th SS Mountain Division Nord) during the summer of 1941 is perhaps the most descriptive. In such terrain and conditions the lighter Finnish troops had significant advantages. To quote Erfurt: '...German officers would occasionally make remarks more or less as follows: "The German soldier is anxious to leave these never-ending Karelian woods; with half the losses, the Finns will accomplish twice as much here as the Germans."' There was a reason why the Germans could not advance in the north after the Finns in November 1941 chose to halt their advance there due to political concerns.
That was like the first SS combat unit who were amateurs compared with the actual mountain divisions to their north. Finns should have definitely handled the arctic while Germans concentrated on the gulf of Finland instead. Strategic goals and power sharing between Germany and Finland was short sighted and sabotaged from the start.
You should read Lunde's book 'Finland's War of Choice: The Troubled German-Finnish Coalition in World War II' which actually discusses this very issue. However what you wrote is only true if you believe that the Finns and the Germans would have shared the same goals. They did not. The Finns would have actually preferred to see both the Soviets and the Nazis gone.
German troops were just where the Finns wanted them. Long way from anything important.