The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union (1/8)

This documentary tells the story of the Winter War, the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland in November, 1939. The Soviets were convinced they could win the war in a matter of days. No one expected that tiny Finland could resist the highly mechanized Red Army, the largest military force in the world. And no one anticipated that 1939 would be one of the coldest winters in recorded history.

During 105 days of intensely bloody and brutal combat, Finland improvised a devastating and deadly defense, for an environment historians have called a frozen hell.

The Winter War changed the course of what would soon become World War II.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• winter
• war
• soviet
• union
• finland
• world war
• II
• ww
• maailmansota
• talvisota
• suomi
• finn
• suomalainen
• stalin
• hitler
• mannerheim
• nazi
• germany
• 1939
• 1940
• independence
• jack
• hasey
• russia
• ww2
• wwii
• adolf
• army
• finnish

[TheEmpowered787]

Take the subtitles off they're annoying.

[MembThePenguinIII]

@TheEmpowered787

I'm a Finn, so the subtitles are there for a reason.

[kosiak10851]

Stalin was great as military leader. Red army had some flaws in late 30es, but he quickly updated it, cleaned it from all those traitors and prepared new generation of vehicles to replace those have shown themselves as outdated at Spanish civil war, conflict in Manchuria and Karelian liberation war

[MembThePenguinIII]

@kosiak10851

In my opinion Stalin was a paranoid and thus not a capable military leader. However, I think people can have many opinions about that. :)

[PolishWingedHussar10]

In my opinion the finnish winter war was the most astonishing defensive war of entire world war 2 Finland having probably the smallest army in europe defeated the greatest military giant at the time. I now salute finnish soldiers who defended their country with such undisputed bravery and heroism. Many people are often are not intrested in finlands part in ww2 because they were allied of germany, infact they were forced into that conflict and alliance having no other choice

Greetings from Poland

[cadmus98]

"Stalin was confident of a quick victory. Most of his military agreed."

Of course they agreed. The ones who disagreed were killed.

[Ravensteinzh]

@zudikas8 I hope you realize if the Winter War drafted any longer, Finland would have lost completely.

[Forvolet]

@PolishWingedHussar10 *shakes hand*

[Forvolet]

@counterstrikenerd321 yes, we joined the attack when germany attacked russia. some consider us full allies with nazis at that time but in fact we ONLY used their assistance because we couldn´t do it alone. winter war depleted the resources.

[fullmetaljaco]

@LichGeneral i know, but the marshall plan did not OFFICIALLY provide for finland, and that little words changes it all. A lot of foreign banks and investors served to make the finnish agencies grow, many from federal germany, others from switzerland and many others from the vatican bank and the FR, and without them they would never had Nokia, for example. Go in the National archives of Helsinki and read for yourself. they are the reason Finland is not the Carelian province of Russia now.

[LichGeneral]

@fullmetaljaco

Did you know that Finland was forced to pay enormous debts to soviet union after WW2? and that they did not take ANY aid from the marshall plan?

[fullmetaljaco]

@zudikas8 it would have never done it.To resist the Soviets during the Winter War Finland made HUGE debts with Britain,US and even with Germany,Denmark,Sweden and Norway.If Finland had gone in war it would have been on the verge of economical collapse and its debts would have crashed it.Probably after the Marshall plan partially cleaned Finland's debt they thought about it but by the time the USSR had become even stronger then before.They were lucky indeed USSR could not attack them after WW2.

[zudikas8]

I'm surprised Finland hasn't kicked the USSRs ass after WW2!

[Dualismoassoluto]

@kosiak10851

The only good place for people like you is in the range of Simo Häyhä's rifle.

[counterstrikenerd321]

So did Finland do a recovery for WW2?