The "war" between Germans and Fins was not very hotly fought, it started out downright phoney (both sides informing each other when they would "attack" and such) although there were some ugly scenes at the very end. Finland, like all of Germanys enemies, finally switched to the winning side. Be proud of it.
Reminds me a bit of the many French or Dutch who joined the Resistance in the days after the German withdrawal.
Better late than never, I suppose...
I gotta stick up for Finland here, hehe. They were pretty abused by all sides during WW2 and merely fought for survival and independence. They started off as Allies, Britain and USA selling them warplanes and other equipment. This being during the Winter War in 1939 when Russia was part of the Axis. Russia changed sides and joined the Allies ONLY after Hitler invaded Russia. Seizing upon that opportunity, Russia again invaded Finland to finish what they had started 2 years before. That's why the 2nd war with the Russians is called "The Continuation War". Finland was left totally alone at that point. When Finland started fighting back, and hard, and whipping the Russians (again), that got some of the Allies upset. Most noteably Churchill. He became obsessed with the outrage that Finland would actually fight for it's survival and independence and was already calling for no less than a brutal and unconditional surrender of Finland as far back as early 1943. The USA, on the other hand, was more cordial to Finland. They actually sent a peace delegation to Moscow to hammer out a peace treaty between Russia and Finland so that they could bring Finland back into the Alliance, stop Finland and Russia's distraction, and focus on wiping out Hitler. Moscow proposed a brutal set of terms to the American delegation, the Finns never got the chance to decline it. The Americans declined it on behalf of the Finns because they said it was too excessive. Eventually after months of negotiations, the USA had to conceded that they would never be able to get Russia to lessen it's treaty conditions and gave up in futility. All the while, Churchill is still thinking of Finland as being as bad, if not worse, than Hitler. I'll never figure out why he was so passionate about punishing Finland. So he's still calling for their complete and unconditional surrender, which dragged out the Continuation War for another full year. Unbelievably, and possibly due to the American pressure, Stalin reverses course and actually says that Finland has put up such a heroic fight for it's very survival, that he didn't see a need to impose unconditional surrender terms. Course, at that time, Leningrad near the border with Finland was still under seige. Speaking of which, Finland never made a point to invade Russia, even tho they could easily have done so. Perhaps that changed Stalins mind. As soon as Finland advanced to the 1939 borders, they stopped. And even tho they had a bit of a relationship with Germany during this time, they told the Germans that the Leningrad seige was all on them, that they wouldn't interfere with it. However, Finland did say that if Germany did take Leningrad and were able to prove that they could completely defeat Russia, then they would consider any proposals to drive into the heartland with them. But it never came to them even having to make such a decision.
In the end, Finland finally had to accept tough peace terms when the Allies and Russia were able to finally able to lift the seige of Leningrad, thereby putting Finland square in the bullseye of all-out allied fury. If Russia had pushed for another major invasion at that point, the British and Americans would have been forced to go in with them. Not to mention the fact that it could have seriously prolonged the war with another huge distraction, simply because Russia wanted a bigger buffer between the Finland border and Leningrad. Eventually, with the writing on the wall, the Finns had to accept the conditions or keep fighting much longer and possibly against all the Allies. Finland didn't have any beef with the Allies at all. Russia, as I pointed out, was never originally part of the Alliance. British had trained alot of the Finn pilots also. Peace conditions I'd have to research to be totally accurate, but was roughly the post Winter War borders, Finland having to agree to only ever have a 58,000 man total military, ceding almost all their entire navy, sweep mines/barriers from Gulf of Finland and Baltic Sea areas and lots of other "reparations".
That leads to the one big condition. The Lapland War. As part of the peace treaty, Finland had to make war upon the Germans. They had lended/leased some of their bases to the Germans. So now they had to fight them and kick them out. As well as help fight out the rest of the war. And yeah, early on in that, Finland basically told the Germans if they immediately set about leaving, they would take it easy on them. But in the end, the Germans had operational plans in place for the peace between Russia and Finland. So Germany, in some areas of Finland, then went on the offensive and were gonna make Finland pay. And though the fighting probably wasn't as brutal as the war with the Russians, it was war nonetheless. And there wasn't any of this "we're coming to attack you" stuff, as you say, once German went on the offensive against the Finns. Thankfully, German was getting put on the ropes and couldn't afford a prolonged war with Finland cause they were getting their clocked cleaned in France and on the Eastern Front after D-Day and the Allied juggernaut of dominance got rolling along.
All in all, Finland just wanted to be independent and a democracy. They wouldn't have had that under the Russians. And with Russia changing sides, then using that as an excuse to attack Finland a 2nd time and try to draw in the USA and Britain, what do you expect Finland to do? Lay down and surrender? Hell no, they did what any reasonable human beings would do. They fought for their freedom. And they are/were the only country who fought against Russia, who remained free after WW2. All the others ended up being swallowed by the infamous "Soviet Union".
I hold the Finns in high regard for their strong will and determination. Their passion for freedom and self determination. Their brilliant military tactics and innovations. They were just doing what they had to do to survive, any other government/leader like that would have done the same I'm sure.
The fact that the Finns had to beg, borrow or steal what military equipment they could get their hands on, most of which was useless or outdated, and then used it to embarass a military no less than 10x what they were and soundly whip them every time out, speaks volumes. I mean, the Finns were whipping ass with BIPLANES early on. You'd have to give them some votes for sure. Outgunned, outmanned and outclassed technologically, yet still managed to reel off victory after victory.
Originally Posted by Lokos
I'm getting good at predicting these things.)
