Finland in WWII is actually one of the more fascinating under-told and stories of the war.
When the USSR and Germany were divvying up Poland and the other countries between them, Finland ended up in the USSR column. That invasion didn’t go so well, partially because Finns are to the Soviets as Russians are to French/Germans when it comes to winter war, and partly because the ranks of the USSR career military were depleted by Stalins purges.
Finland looked for international aid, but what would eventually become the allies didn’t want to piss off the USSR, so they were shit out of luck. They eventually got help from Germany (who some think was emboldened by the weakness the USSR showed in Finland), largely because the enemy of my enemy etc.
Eventually, the Finns had to fight to oust the German forces late in the war to show to show the allies that the weren’t particularly pro-Germany, they just primarily needed military aid, and the allies had kind of fucked them over there.
Hitler seriously thought his blitzkrieg of mechanized troops would be in and done before winter, he didn’t even issue them winter clothing until it was way too late, many froze for that reason alone. One of the most chilling parts was watching the repeated pincer envelopings of the Red Army as the Wehrmacht advanced.
An unbelievably great narrative on the Russian front is a 5 part Podcast series, by Dan Carlin on his superb Hardcore History show, called “Ghosts of the Ostfront”.
Kind of. The Fins were epic bad asses during World War II. The Soviets invaded Finland with basically 3 times more soldiers than the Fins had, and orders of magnitude more tanks and airpower. The Fins utterly slaughtered the Soviets during the Winter War, but in the end they surrendered up some territory for peace. If you ever want to get lost in epic badassery, read about the Winter War. The entire time they were crying out for allied help, but the allies refused to help because they didn’t want to piss off Russia. So, when the Germans invade Russia the Fins jumped on board and freaking invaded Russia, not only recapturing most of their lost territory, but driving a little ways into Russia too. The Russians and Fins battled it out until 1944 with the Russians always having vast numeric superiority and the Fins slowly retreating, but kicking ass as they did.
There are some political shenanigans that go on where the Fins convince the Germans to arm them better and the president swears he will not make peace with the Russians as long as he is president. The Fins take the weapons, the president resigns, and they sign a peace treaty with the Russias and then apparently not satisfied with the mountains of dead Russians they had produced (and trying to keep the Soviets from going after them again), proceed to start beating on Nazis.
The whole story is a fantastic war story about an epic underdog fight that I don’t do justice. The moral of the story is that you do not fuck with the Fins, and if you are going to fuck with them, you seriously don’t fuck with them during the winter.
Very interesting, if you make the (Astonishing) assumption that WWII started on Dec. 7 1942 in the Pacific. Which is pretty amazing for the Chinese, who were several years in at that point, not to mention the other Allies (Britain, Canada, Australia etc) who had been in since 1939.
At least the European map starts when the war actually starts, instead of when the US finally got around to joining.
Hitler could have won the second world war by sane and well thought out decisions. But had he been sane he would not have started the bloody thing in the first place.
Too bad it didn’t include the Anschluss with Austria and the annexation of Czechoslovakia after they got sold out by their allies in the Munich Agreement.
Czechoslovakia had a mutual pact with Britain and France, that each state would go to the other’s aid if attacked. But the Czechs weren’t even invited to the conference. After Munich, even Poland grabbed some disputed border territory in the Czech north.
Also interesting to note that a million Russian soldiers died fighting the Germans in Czechoslovakia.
AFAIK the “throwing out nazis” was at start a joint effort: nazis retreated a bit and then finnish forces advanced a bit. The russian got whiff of the shenanigans and demanded real fighting.
Even the creator if the video didn’t call it just “World War II”. He called it “World War II in Europe”. The other half of the war was in the Pacific and is here
It seems a little culturally insensitive to label the entire war as only the part concerning almost exclusively white people
If all things were equal, and Stalin were also sane, then he would not have dismantled his military prior to WW2 and things would not have been so piss poor for the Russians for the first couple of years of the war.
There’s a similar map for the American Civil War in the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois; I think that the time scale is 1 second = 1 day. The really striking (and horrifying) thing about it is that they also include a running total of the casualties for both sides.
Back on the Scandinavian saga, another often overlooked aspect is that with Finland driven into the pro-Axis camp, post-Winter War, the Allies were seriously considering their own invasion of Norway to deny it to the Axis (and partial control of the North Sea). Germany only beat them to the punch by a matter of a week or two. This whole theater could have gone very differently with a little changed planning by either side…
My mistake, but my point remains. December 1941. About 4 years after the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and 4 years after a shift to ‘total war’
between China and Japan.
The creator of the videos says pretty clearly in the YouTube comments that they are focused on what happened after the Second Sino-Japanese War merged with WWII.
