The end of the Winter
War
During February the Finnish defenders on the Carelian isthmus were
slowly pushed further and further west and in early March the Russian
troops started to advance over the frozen sea south of Viipuri and
threatened the defenders of that town with encirclement while at the
same time cutting the main coastal road from Carelia to Helsinki. With
the frontline now lengthened by tens of kilometres and with the troops
completely worn out by incessant fighting the Finnish army was reaching
its breaking point. Already before starting the latest offensive the
Russians had let it be known that they were prepared to side-step the
puppet government created by them and negotiate with the true Finnish
government. As there was no moderation of the terms Finland did not show
any interest. Now, at the time of crises, the offer was picked up and
after some machinations worthy a cheap thriller novel negotiation
contact with the Russians was re-established and on March 13 the weapons
fell still. The terms were hard, Finland lost 10% of its area, far in
excess of the demands originally made in 1939 and the Hanko peninsula
should be leased as a naval base to Russia for 30 years.
The interesting question is however: If the Finnish defence obviously
was on the verge of collapsing, why did Stalin then not continue the
attack and occupy the whole of Finland?
The theories explaining this are many.
On the far left the official answer is of course that it was because
Stalin never intended to occupy Finland and now stopped when he could
get the border adjustments he had been demanding all the time. This
explanation is negated by i.e. Molotov’s request in Berlin in the fall
1940 to get free hands to “finally solve the problem Finland”.
“The “national romantics” have claimed that after the experience
of the Winter War Stalin realized that joining Finland to the Soviet
Union was to be an experience equal to putting a hedgehog into one’s
pocket. This interpretation in turn is negated by the fact that Stalin
neither before nor later showed any unwillingness to take any action he
deemed necessary with recalcitrant people.
A third theory is that Stalin just didn’t realize that the Finnish
army was about to break. This theory is credible as one can assume that
his army most certainly had informed him more than once during the past
months that the enemy “was just about to break”. So why should he
believe in that estimate now, when it happened to be correct, when it
had proven to be false so many times before?
Relating this theory with a statement made by a Russian general captured
in 1941 makes for an interesting combination: The general who in 1940
was commanding one of the divisions attacking across the ice south of
Viipuri said “On March 10 my division (16000 men) was so worn out that
a counterattack by one fresh Finnish battalion (1000 men) would have
thrown us into the sea”. (At that moment he was of course unaware that
in the whole Finnish army at that moment there was not a single fresh
battalion available to make that counterattack.)
The conclusion is that the Russian units were almost as worn out as the
Finnish ones. So maybe Stalin took the opportunity to accept peace
before it became apparent that the Russian offensive power was spent?
The real joker in this context was however found in the Moscow archives
after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. After the peace those
Russian units at the Finnish front still in fighting condition were
immediately refitted and sent south to the Persian border. Stalin’s
anglophobia hade made him expect an attack by Britain when Russia was
busy fighting Finland. And here the infamous Anglo-French rescue plan
earns its place in history: Stalin saw that plan as the northern arm of
a pincer attack; under the pretext of helping Finland the British and
French troops would attack Russia from the north while simultaneously
other troops attacked through Persia and the Black Sea in the south. By
quickly terminating the war in Finland the northern pincer was
neutralized and then the troops released from there could be moved to
Caucasus in order to counter the threat from the south. So maybe the
much-criticised rescue plan in the end played quite an important part in
saving Finland!
Late addition.
There has for quite some time been a theory floating around here arguing
that Finland agreed to the harsh peace terms because Germany had
secretly promised that Finland would later regain what it was now
loosing. Quite recently (July 2005) an official letter supporting this
theory was found. It confirmed that Göring in March 1940 had urged
Finland to make peace at any cost as “You will later recover, with
interest, all you loose today”. It is quite plausible that Göring had
uttered this but from there to go on and assume that the Finnish
government agreed to the harsh terms because they had a commitment from
Germany to get back what was lost now is ridiculous.
Göring said a lot of things, as a private person, and his utterances
were thus far from an official statement of German policy. Everyone knew
that the real decisions were made by Hitler. Furthermore it should be
noted that we are talking about March 1940, The battle of France was
still to be fought and in Germany the Army High Command had not even
began seriously to plan the invasion of Russia. No one in his right mind
was going to give any promises about the future borders of Finland under
those circumstances, and if given, no one would take such a promise
seriously.
But on the other hand, anyone could make the qualified guess that when
in the future Germany and Russia clashed, as everyone expected, there
might be an opportunity for Finland to do some pickings.