Finnish Winter War Quotes

One Soviet general, looking at a map of the territory Russia had acquired on the Karelian Isthmus, is said to have remarked: "We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead

Stalin was especially furious with the "Leningrad Clique" of Zhdanov, who had assured him that the Finnish war would amount to little more than a police action, a nuisance that could be concluded in two weeks.

To be sure, the Finnish soldier was aware of the numerical odds against him, but he rendered those odds less terrible by cracking jokes about them: “They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?

Finnish troops knew they were in the army to fight, not to march in parades, and in the kind of war they were called upon to fight, that was precisely the right set of priorities.

Incidents of Red aircraft strafing hospitals and hospital trains were so common that the Finns finally painted over any Red Cross insignia that were visible from the air.

So many small nations had been bullied into humiliating surrender, the dictators had won so many cheap victories, that idealism had been left starving....

One of them remarked, in a flat weary voice, "The wolves will eat well this year.

The Soviet propaganda apparatus continued to crank out shrill, contorted documents attempting to convince whoever was listening that Finland was the real aggressor, that the Kuusinen government was legitimate, and the Mannerheim/Tanner/Ryti regime was enslaving the workers, etc.

The Russians' wanton though often ineffectual attacks on civilians generated a wave of moral outrage all over the world. Typical was the reaction of former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, who denounced the Russian air attacks as a throwback to "the morals and butchery of Genghis Khan.

As President Kallio signed the document that gave the Moscow delegation authority to conclude the war on Moscow’s terms, he growled, “May the hand wither that is forced to sign such a document as this.” A few months later, the old man suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed in his right arm.

this German officer produced a cigar before Mannerheim had finished eating and asked if it would bother the Marshal if he smoked it. Mannerheim fixed the Wehrmacht officer with a gaze that would penetrate armor plate and cut him dead by replying evenly: 'I don't know. No one has ever tried it.' ',

All told, Finnish fighter pilots shot down 240 confirmed Red aircraft, against the loss of 26 of their own planes. It was standard practice to send at least one interceptor up to meet every Russian bomber sortie within range. Not infrequently the appearance of a single Fokker caused an entire squadron of SB-2s to jettison its bombs into the snow and turn tail.

The blitzkrieg, in short, had been perfected for a sleek, hard-muscled, superbly trained, and passionately motivated army, such as the German General Staff had fashioned during the decades between the wars. It was quite unsuited for a ponderous, top-heavy army of ill-trained soldiers led by timid officers, overseen by inexperienced party ideologues, and sent forth to conquer a country whose terrain consists of practically nothing but natural obstacles to military operations.

Finland is not Scandinavia, nor is it Russia. Nevertheless, Finnish tradition owes something to both cultures. But the modern Finn is staunchly independent. The long struggle for emancipation and the battle to survive in a harsh environment have engendered an ordered society that solves its own problems in its own way. They have also given birth to the Finnish trait of sisu, often translated as ‘guts’, or the resilience to survive prolonged hardship. Even if all looks lost, a Finn with sisu will fight – or swim, or run, or work – valiantly until the final defeat. This trait is valued highly, with the country’s heroic resistance against the Red Army in the Winter War usually thought of as the ultimate example.

Soldiers of the Eastern Front! In countless battles in the year 1941, you not only removed from the Finnish, German, Slovak, Hungarian, and Romanian borders the enemy who was ready to launch an attack, but you also drove him back over a thousand kilometers into his own land. In attempting to bring about a turn of events in the winter of 1941–1942 and to move against us once more, he must and will fail! Yes, on the contrary, in the year 1942, after all the preparations that have been made, we will engage this enemy of mankind anew and do battle with him for as long as it takes to break the destructive will of the Jewish-capitalist and Bolshevik world. Germany will not and cannot be dragged into a new war for its existence or nonexistence by the same criminals every twenty-five years! Europe cannot and will not tear itself to pieces forever, just so that a bunch of Anglo American and Jewish conspirators can find satisfaction for their business machinations in the dissatisfaction of the people. It is our hope that the blood that is spilled in this war will be the last in Europe for generations. May the Lord help us with this in the coming year! Address to the Wehrmacht: January 1, 1942

For the moment we have not informed the Finnish people of them, as we have not wished to make the negotiations more difficult through public discussion.

There were special problems involved in tending the wounded, too, for the same cold that immobilized a man with low blood pressure also tended to freeze drugs solid. Finnish medics went into battle with ampoules of morphine tucked inside their mouths or taped to their armpits.

scratch units made up of raw draftees, many of whom were so ignorant they didn't even know the name of the country they were invading.

Whole divisions entered Finland with no worthwhile intelligence estimates of their opposition, guided by hopelessly inaccurate maps, yet fully burdened with truckloads of propaganda material including reams of posters and brass bands.

Leadership beyond the NCO level was brittle, sluggish, and marked by a rigid adherence to the same primitive tactics over and over again, no matter what the actual situation.

At the beginning of the war, Mannerheim's biggest problem was not men but materiel. Shipments of antitank and antiaircraft guns were arriving in small quantities and at a glacially slow pace.

The Russian Army had always believed in the power of artillery.

While the meal was still in progress, “this German officer produced a cigar before Mannerheim had finished eating and asked if it would bother the Marshal if he smoked it. Mannerheim fixed the Wehrmacht officer with a gaze that would penetrate armor plate and cut him dead by replying evenly: ‘I don’t know. No one has ever tried it.’”12

They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?

Stalin was unrealistically influenced by the headline-grabbing antics of the Lapuans, the grotesque fantasies of the Karelian irredentists, and the exaggerated reports of agents who were eager to tell the Kremlin what they thought the Kremlin wanted to hear. From remarks made during his later negotiations with the Finns, it seems clear that Stalin really did believe that the interior of Finland seethed with class antagonism and fascist plotters and that all of Finnish society was undercut by smouldering grudges left over from the civil war days. Ill feeling persisted, of course—the conflict had been too bloody for all the scars to have healed in just two decades—but Moscow’s estimate of its extent, importance, and potential for outside exploitation was wildly inaccurate. In fact, the old wounds were healing faster than even the Finns themselves realized; with the onset of a massive contemporary threat from the Soviet Union, those old enmities looked remote and historic.

conventional, professional, military skills, the fiber of their discipline, the worthiness of their commanders—and above all else, on the depth and stubbornness of their sisu. That bristling little word was once the most famous Finnish idiom ever to become part of the outside world’s vocabulary. It can be translated as “guts” or “spunk” or “grit” or “balls,” or as a combination of all those words together. The word in Finnish has nuances that resist easy translation.

To maximize Finland’s bargaining power, the military strategy would be to hold on to every inch of Finnish soil and to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy—to present Stalin with such a butcher’s bill that he, too, would be eager for negotiations.

When Stalin says “dance,” a wise man dances. —Nikita S. Khrushchev, in Khrushchev Remembers

The average Finnish soldier looked at matters much differently. He knew, in his bones, that on a man-to-man basis he was worth several of his opponents. His ancestors, as far back as recorded Finnish history existed, had fought Russians on this same soil and usually won. The Finn knew what he was fighting for and why.

Mannerheim’s plans, therefore, were not based on the absurd hope of outright victory, but on “the most honorable annihilation, with the faint hope that the conscience of mankind would find an alternative solution as a reward for bravery and singleness of purpose.”3

Finland alone, in danger of death—superb, sublime Finland—shows what free men can do. —Winston Churchill, January 1940