Finnish-Soviet War (25 June 1941- 4 September 1944) (Continuation War)

Finnish troops passing by the remains of a destroyed Soviet T-34 at the battle of Tali-Ihantala.

Finnish, German, and Soviet troops at the start of the Continuation War in June/July 1941. The Germans began their assault on 29 June from Petsamo area, and the Finns attacked on 1 July from Suomussalmi and Kuusamo area.

Renewal of warfare between Finland and the Soviet Union, also called the Continuation War. The fighting occurred mainly northwest and northeast of the Soviet city of Leningrad. 

Finland's rejection of Soviet demands for territory and bases to protect access to Leningrad-including the cession of Viipuri (Vyborg), Finland's second-largest city, and the surrounding Karelian Isthmus-led to the first Finnish- Soviet War, known as the Winter War. The war began in November 1939, and although the Finns fought well, the odds against them were hopeless. In March 1940, Finland was obliged to sue for peace, in which it had to cede even more territory that the Soviets had originally demanded. 

Fearing additional Soviet demands and resenting Soviet interference in its policies, Finland aligned itself with Germany. In fall 1940, chief of the Finnish General Staff Lieutenant General Erik Heinrichs held talks in Berlin with German leaders, who requested Finnish assistance during Operation BARBAROSSA, the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union (chiefly of Leningrad and Murmansk). The Finnish government welcomed this as an opportunity to recover territory lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War. As planning progressed, the Germans and Finns agreed that German forces would secure the nickel-rich Petsamo region and attack Murmansk in the far north, while the Finns would be responsible for operations in the southeast toward Leningrad and Soviet Karelia, centered around Petrozavodsk. General Carl Mannerheim (he was raised to field marshal in 1942) commanded the Finnish forces, as he had in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Mannerheim had 16 divisions: 11 along the frontiers, 1 opposite the Russian base at Hanko, and 4 in reserve.

On 22 June 1941, the Germans launched their massive invasion of the Soviet Union. Finland had already secretly mobilized its forces and declared war on 25 June, but as a cobelligerent of Germany rather than as an ally. The German drive in the far north from Petsamo eastward fell short of both Murmansk and the large Soviet naval base at Polyarny. German forces also had little luck driving east from the northern city of Rovaniemi, failing to cut the Soviet rail line running from Murmansk south along the White Sea coast. In the south, however, the Finns made much better progress. Preoccupied with the massive German onslaught, Red Army forces north of Leningrad were outnumbered. 

General Mannerheim divided his forces into two armies: one drove down the Karelian Isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the other marched southeast between Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega toward the Svir River to take Petrozavodsk, capital of Karelia. On 29 June, the Finnish Karelian Army (II, IV, VI, and VII Corps) attacked to the west and east of Lake Ladoga, crossing the Russo-Finnish border of 1940, recapturing Finnish Karelia, and driving on toward Leningrad. Aided by German contingents, Army Group Mannerheim attacked Soviet Karelia. Farther north, combined Finnish and German forces recaptured lost Finnish territory around Salla while the German mountain troops, coming from Norway, reached as far as the Litsa River on their drive toward Murmansk. 

The Finns had originally planned to unite their troops with German Army Group North around Leningrad. On 1 September, the Finns reached the old Russo-Finnish border. Despite heavy fighting, the Soviets were able to withdraw, but by late August the Finns had recovered all territory lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War. The Finnish attacks stalled north of Lake Ladoga in September.

Although the Finns were not eager to take non-Finnish land, they did advance somewhat beyond the pre- November 1939 borders for defensive purposes. Much to Germany's displeasure, however, they refused to cooperate with German troops against the city of Leningrad. Finnish and German commanders disliked each other, and the German air force failed to provide as much air cover as had been promised. German troops did not perform well in the northern part of the front. In the dense forests and swamps that marked the terrain in the north, tanks, heavy artillery, and aircraft were often ineffective. Finnish casualties were not light, and Finland had a small population and insufficient resources for a long war. Given these points, the Finns only undertook those operations that suited them, and that did not include Leningrad. The Finns were nonetheless disappointed that the German army was unable to secure a rapid defeat of the Soviet Union. 

After capturing Petrozavodsk and Medweschjegorsk on the western and northern shore of Lake Onega, in December the Finns established a defensive position somewhat inside Soviet territory and about 20 miles from Leningrad. Had the Finns advanced farther, Leningrad would probably have fallen to the Germans, with uncertain consequences for the fighting on the Eastern Front. The Finnish Front remained largely static from early 1942. Despite some Soviet counterattacks toward Petsamo, the battle lines changed very little in the months to follow.

At this point, in August 1942, Moscow offered the Finns extensive territorial concessions in return for a separate peace, but the Finns, confident of an ultimate German victory, refused. In September 1941, London and Washington made it clear to Helsinki that any Finnish effort to advance beyond its prewar frontiers would mean war. Indeed, Britain declared war on Finland in December 1941.

As the war continued into 1942 and then 1943, the Finns lost enthusiasm for the struggle, especially when German military fortunes changed. In January 1944, a Soviet offensive south of Leningrad broke the blockade of that city. With the tide fast turning against Germany, the Finns asked the Soviets for peace terms, but the response was so harsh that Finland rejected it. Not only would Finland have to surrender all its territorial gains, but it would have to pay a large indemnity. 

Soviet leader Josef Stalin then decided to drive Finland from the war. The Soviets assembled some 45 divisions with about half a million men, more than 800 tanks, and some 2,000 aircraft. Using these assets, in June 1944 the Soviets began an advance into Finland on both flanks of Lake Ladoga on the relatively narrow Karelian and Leningrad Fronts. While the Finns were well entrenched along three defensive lines, they could not withstand the Soviet onslaught. Viipuri fell on 20 June after less stubborn resistance than during the Winter War. Heavy fighting also occurred in eastern Karelia. Although they failed to achieve a breakthrough, Soviet forces caused the Finns to retreat and took the Murmansk Railway. 

After the fall of Viipuri, the Finnish government requested German assistance. The Germans furnished dive-bombers, artillery, and then some troops, but it demanded in return that Finland ally itself firmly with Germany and promise not to conclude a separate peace. President Risto Ryti, who had been forced to provide a letter to that effect to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (which bound him, but not his country, to such a policy), resigned on 1 August in favor of Marshal Mannerheim. 

On 25 August, Helsinki asked for terms. Moscow agreed to a cease-fire to take effect on 4 September, but Soviet forces actually fought on for another day after that. One of the ceasefire terms was that the Finns should break diplomatic relations with Berlin and order all German troops from Finnish soil by 15 September. German leader Adolf Hitler refused the Finnish request for an orderly departure of his forces and ordered German troops in northern Finland to resist expulsion and, if forced to retreat, to lay waste to the countryside. The German troops followed this order to the letter. Because there were 200,000 Germans in Finland, the damage to Lapland, where they were located, was considerable. During October, the Russian Fourteenth Army threw back German forces at Liza, supported by a large amphibious landing near Petsamo, and by the end of the month the Germans had withdrawn completely into Norway. 

The war ended for Finland on 15 October 1944. The Continuation War cost Finland some 200,000 casualties (55,000 dead)-a catastrophic figure for a nation of fewer than 4 million people. Finland also had to absorb 200,000 refugees. Finland agreed to withdraw its forces back to the 1940 frontiers, placed its military on a peacetime footing within two and one-half months, granted a 50-year lease of the Porkkala District, allowed the Soviets access to ports and airfields in southern Finland, and provided the Soviet Union use of the Finnish merchant navy while the war continued in Europe. Finland also paid reparations of US$300 million in gold over a six-year period. Stalin did refrain from absorbing the entire country, but in the coming decades Western-oriented democratic Finland was obliged to follow policies that would not alienate the Soviet Union.

References Lundin, C. Leonard. Finland in the Second World War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957. Vehviläinen, Olli. Finland in the Second World War. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Wuorinen, J. H. Finland and World War II, 1939-1944. New York: Ronald Press, 1948.

Finland Leaves WWII

The northern theatre of war in 1944.

It came as a great relief to the Germans when they realized that the Finns would do their best to get German troops out of the country as peacefully and as quickly as possible by 15 September 1944, which was the deadline for internment according to the armistice conditions. When Romania had laid down its arms, the German 6th Army, which had been fighting there, had been trapped and destroyed. Above all, the Germans wanted to avoid the same fate in Finland. There was just enough time to save the military staffs, the medical personal, the wounded and civilians in southern Finland. Hitler immediately issued an order on 3 September that relations with Finland should be handled in a spirit of `friendly accord'. By avoiding any kind of conflict with the Finns, the Germans also gained the time to extract the 20th Mountain Army from northern Finland. 

When the time limit ran out on 15 September, the Germans made a surprise attack and tried to seize Hogland Island. In accordance with his instructions, the commander of the Finnish forces on the island gave the order to open fire. The invasion was repelled, and over a thousand Germans were taken prisoner. The battle of Hogland demonstrated that the Finnish Army was willing and able to fight against its recent brothers- in-arms. This to some extent eased the position of the Finnish government at a time when matters in Moscow were delicately balanced. 

When Finland withdrew from the war, the 20th Mountain Army found itself in an untenable position. Its southern flank was left completely open, and its supply lines to the harbours of Finland were cut. The order that Hitler had given in September 1943 to withdraw to northern Lapland but to keep control of the Pechenga nickel mines in the event of Finland pulling out of the war was still in force. 

The Germans expected the Russians to give pursuit, and in order to make this pursuit more difficult, it would be necessary to lay waste wide tracts of land. The withdrawal of the Mountain Army began at the beginning of September 1944, a few days after the armistice came into force. In northern Finland and adjoining areas, the Germans had over 200,000 men - mostly unmotorized infantry - and large stores. Nobody imagined that it would be possible for them to pack up and go in a couple of weeks. According to calculations previously made by the Finnish military authorities, three months would hardly suffice. The Finns were weary of the war and wanted to save their land from devastation. The Germans, too, wished to avoid an armed confrontation as far as possible. Thus there was a certain unity of interests although official relations were severed, and this resulted in a secret agreement between the Finnish and German military authorities in which the Germans agreed to limit the devastation of the country and the Finns to facilitate the Germans' withdrawal even after 15 September. At first, the Finnish forces followed behind the retreating Germans in accordance with an agreed timetable in such a way as to avoid contact with them. Wide tracts of the country were spared from destruction, and the people of Lapland were successfully evacuated from the war zone to areas further south and to Sweden.  

At the beginning of October, Hitler finally renounced the earlier plan for the Germans to hold northern Lapland and ordered the 20th Mountain Army to pull out into Norway. He was prompted to do this by difficulties in maintaining supplies to the German forces as well as by the realization that the nickel from Pechenga was no longer indispensable to the German war economy. The Germans might have left northern Finland without a fight, but this did not suit the Russians. The phoney war that the Finns were conducting in the north was glaringly at odds with the terms of the armistice agreement, and it placed the whole country in jeopardy. The Allied Control Commission, which had arrived in Finland at the end of September, intervened sharply and demanded effective measures against the Germans. Finally, on 30 September, the acting Chairman of the Control Commission, Lieutenant-General Savonenkov, presented the Finns with a direct ultimatum. The Finns had now got their troops into position in northern Finland and Mannerheim ordered their commander, General Hjalmar Siilasvuo, to do something spectacular enough to satisfy the Russians. `The fate of Finland now rests on the shoulders of the general!' he said. 

The Finns' war against the Germans began with Siilasvuo's daring landing behind German lines at Tornio on 1 October. His advance northwards was slow, however, as the Germans blew up the bridges and mined the roads. In this they no longer showed any scruples, and they also burned down all dwellings. Soviet troops did not take part in the war operations conducted on Finnish soil. On the other hand, they did launch an offensive of their own on the coast of the Barents Sea, taking Pechenga and advancing into northern Norway. By the end of the year, the Germans had withdrawn from Finnish territory completely, apart from the extreme north-western corner. The Finns were left with a devastated Lapland, which only slowly came back to life as the population returned to their burned villages. 

Finland succeeded in making peace much more easily and with less damage than the other states that had fought alongside Germany. The Soviet Union occupied Romania and Bulgaria in its prosecution of the war, Hungary remained a theatre of war for a long time, and in the end it, too, was occupied by the Soviet Union. All three ended up with communist regimes as a result of the occupation. Finland never became a field of battle between the great powers, and it was never occupied. Losses among the civilian population were small, and the major centres of population and industry together with the road and rail network survived intact, except in Lapland. However, in the autumn of 1944, the Finns were prepared for the worst. Surrender was out of the question. The army prepared to continue the struggle by means of guerrilla warfare if the country was occupied. Under cover of the darkness of autumn, intelligence personnel, technical equipment and files were shipped to Sweden, and arms for nearly 35,000 men were hidden in caches around the country. 

The USSR indeed threatened to occupy Finland if it did not comply with the armistice conditions. However, Stalin probably thought that the armistice was enough to secure Soviet interests in Finland. The Soviet Union held all the trump cards. Above all, it had the base in Porkkala. The central part of the `Sea Fortress of Peter the Great', which had been built in the last years of the Czars to defend the capital of the empire, was constituted by the heavy gun emplacements in Porkkala and on the Estonian coast, which could close off access to the Gulf of Finland by means of cross-fire. Porkkala was to serve the same purpose again in 1944. And just as in the days of the last czar, the Russian coastal fortifications had another function: to curb the unreliable Finns, whose capital was now within the range of their heavy guns. 

Although the immediate threat of occupation had been avoided, the post-war situation frightened many Finns. The communists would come out into the open. They would be able to take advantage of the people's economic plight and their frustration at defeat in the war. `From now on, Aaltonen is the commander-in-chief', Mannerheim is reported to have said. Aleksi Aaltonen was the Social Democratic Party Secretary. The battle would go on, but the front line would now be inside the borders of the country.

FINLAND IN WWII

Finns. Talvisota, Jatkosota & Lapisota, three wars during WW2.

Finnish, German, and Soviet troops at the start of the Continuation War in June/July 1941. The Germans began their assault on 29 June from Petsamo area, and the Finns attacked on 1 July from Suomussalmi and Kuusamo area.

In the interwar period Finland maintained an uneasy neutrality. In 1939-1940 it fought the defensive Finnish-Soviet War (1939-1940). Its territorial losses as a result of that conflict were an outcome foreordained by the demographic reality that just 4 million Finns faced a population of 171 million in the pre-1941 Soviet Union, and that the Red Army was the largest armed force in the world. Finland did not have German support while fighting the Soviets in 1939. Adolf Hitler began to view Finland differently as he prepared to launch Operation BARBAROSSA, starting as early as July 1940. 

German arms were delivered to the Finns, transit agreements were signed permitting German troops to move across Finnish territory to and from conquered Norway, and full military staff conversations began in December. Moscow did not know the full extent of Finish-German military coordination, but even its fear of Germany's unabated appetite for ever more territory was finally aroused. Hitler's creeping influence in a country that Joseph Stalin viewed as within his sphere of influence, as previously agreed between Moscow and Berlin, raised anger and fear in the Kremlin. The question of which Great Power would exercise ultimate hegemony over Finland thus became a critical diplomatic issue in the year between the fall of France in June 1940 and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Finland joined the Axis attack on the Soviet Union after a strictly operational delay of a few days, but Finland was never a full Axis state in spirit or intent. For the Finns, resumption of active hostilities with the Soviet Union was solely an effort to reverse their loss of 1940, a strictly limited war aim reflected in their term for the conflict: "Continuation War." 

The Finnish Army of 1941 was greatly expanded from its dispositions of 1939: it fielded 16 excellent divisions equipped with modern German weapons. Wehrmacht land, air, and naval forces took up attack positions in northern Finland in April-June, 1941. Preparatory to BARBAROSSA, four German divisions were allowed into Lapland to open a high Arctic front. On the opening day of the campaign, June 22, the Finnish Navy occupied the Aland Islands without interference by the Soviet Navy. German troops also attacked out of Lapland toward Murmansk and the Kola Peninsula. Finnish troops opened a southern front in Karelia a few days later. Once the Finns reached their old 1939 boundary they stopped, encouraged to do so by heavy pressure from the United States, but not before Great Britain declared war on Finland in solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that desperate hour for London, any enemy of Hitler was Britain's ally, and any ally of Germany was necessarily Britain's enemy. The Finns did not advance farther during the rest of the war. Trying to take Leningrad and Moscow were German, not Finnish, war aims. Even so, the effort to recover lost territory by swimming with the turn of the geopolitical tide in 1941 engaged the Finns in a long war on what became the northernmost section of the Eastern Front: fighting against the Red Army lasted from June 1941 to September 1944, with more limited fighting against the Germans after that. 

Over the course of the naval war, the Finnish Navy lost one monitor, six minesweepers, and 50 merchantmen and coastal patrol ships. Finland lost far more men in land combat, as Hitler's BARBAROSSA operation failed by the end of November 1941. The Red Army counterattacked in the Moscow offensive operation (December 5, 1941-January 7, 1942) and the Rzhev-Viazma strategic operation (January 8-April 20, 1942). The Finnish front thereafter stretched from German positions outside Leningrad, across southern Karelia and along the forest zone of the eastern frontier, to a distant fight by mainly German troops in the high Arctic Circle. The Finns again held back from advancing toward Leningrad, but their presence in southern Karelia completed a three-sided German lock on that starving city throughout the 900-day siege of Leningrad. The Finns also placed restrictions on permitted Wehrmacht operations in their high Arctic territory, including during Operation LACHSFANG. By the end of 1942 the Finns were in the increasingly difficult position of waiting to see which of their vastly more powerful neighbors would win the war along the Eastern Front. They were also influenced by pressure from Washington not to exceed recovery of their national territory, on pain of incurring American displeasure or even a declaration of war to match Britain's. 

Germany was clearly losing the war at the start of 1943, a fact brought home to the Finns by German defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad. The Finns opened secret talks with Moscow in an effort to withdraw from the war by negotiating a limited frontier settlement. But Moscow and Helsinki could not agree on where to draw the border in Karelia, the mutual casus belli in 1939 and again in 1941. The Red Army went over to the permanent offensive all along the Eastern Front in the late summer of 1943, following another great victory at Kursk and follow-on counteroffensives in the north and in Ukraine. Finnish-Soviet talks broke down in February 1944, even as German Army Group North was pushed back from Leningrad to the Panther Line section of the Ostwall. The Red Army attacked the main Finnish position on the Mannerheim Line on June 10, 1944, achieving complete operational surprise. Soviet tanks and mobile infantry broke through the next day. The Finns now discovered how greatly improved in combat performance the Red Army was since the winter of 1939-1940. Soviet forces were far superior in weapons, veteran troops, and proven commanders. General Leonid A. Govorov's Karelian Front took Vyborg within two weeks, a triumph for which he was promoted to "Marshal of the Soviet Union." The Stavka launched the second phase of the "Svir-Petrozavodsk operation," a full-scale invasion of lower Finland, through the southern forests on June 21. At first, Hitler sent German reinforcements to Finland in exchange for agreement that Helsinki would not accept a separate peace with Moscow. But the combat pressure from Karelian Front was relentless, while the Germans were themselves knocked backward 300 miles by the stunning Soviet achievement of Operation BAGRATION in Belorussia. That marked the start of a cascading series of Soviet victories and catastrophic German defeats in the center of the Eastern Front, which left the more northern German and Finnish flank hanging. 

Compared to its performance in Finland in 1939-1940, the Red Army's second campaign in Karelia was a superior example of combined arms warfare, or Blitzkrieg. Yet, Moscow did not pursue total war against Finland the way it did against all other Axis states. Stalin was prepared to offer terms to the Finns partly in response to intervention by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the wider issues of alliance politics that might be adversely affected. Nevertheless, events on the ground had a life of their own. Elements of the powerful Karelian Front crossed the Svir River, forcing the Finnish Army back under great pressure. The Soviets took the provincial capital of Petrozavodsk on June 28. Other Red Army Fronts simultaneously attacked in central and northern Finland, at Salla and Petsamo, where they battered German 20th Mountain Army. That isolated 200,000 Axis troops, left guarding a peripheral position by Hitler, while the center and south of the entire Eastern Front were collapsing for want of men. By August 9, the Red Army achieved all goals set by the Stavka for the summer campaign in the north. Events outside Finland also conduced to lessened Soviet operations. German resistance in Estonia and Latvia collapsed during late July, in tandem with a general military crisis for the Germans attendant on the devastation of Army Group Center in BAGRATION. That defeat signaled to Helsinki that it needed to get out of the war before Finland, too, was wholly overrun. 

Mannerheim was brought back to the presidency on August 4, tasked to negotiate an exit from the war. On August 24 the cabinet agreed to seek a ceasefire and armistice with Moscow. Soviet troops stopped advancing five days later. On September 2 the Finns formally severed alliance ties to Germany. A ceasefire was agreed with the Soviets three days after that. Retreating Germans tried to seize the critical Finnish island of Suursaan (or Hogland) in the Gulf of Finland. The attempt was beaten off by Soviets and Finns fighting in tandem against the Germans for the first time. 

Finland signed a formal armistice with Moscow on September 19, 1944. The agreement restored the expanded Soviet border of 1940, confirming that Finland had lost the "Continuation War" as well as the earlier Finnish-Soviet War. Helsinki surrendered rights to a Soviet naval base at Petsamo and to a Red Army and VVS air base outside Helsinki. The key to the armistice was that it required Finland to declare war on Germany and the Finnish Army to actively expel all Wehrmacht and SS troops from the country. But Finnish soldiers proved lax about enforcing that clause against men who were comrades-in-arms just days earlier. Instead, the Finnish Army simply watched German troops flee the country. In some cases, the Finns peacefully escorted rather than harried German troops on their way out during the Wehrmacht's BIRKE withdrawal operation (September 3-29, 1944). There was only one serious armed clash during September between Finnish and German troops. More serious clashes between Finns and Germans marked the later Lapland War, fought during the winter of 1944-1945 with the last German troops in the high Arctic. Under great Soviet pressure, Finland formally declared war on Germany on March 3, 1945. The last German troops left the high north a month later.

American support for Finland's independence helped prevent its incorporation into the Soviet Union as another lost tsarist province and kept it outside the quickly forming bloc of Soviet client states. In 1947 a formal peace treaty was signed between Finland and those Allied states with which it had been formally at war. Helsinki permanently surrendered its disputed Karelian territory to the Soviet Union. It was thereafter compelled to adopt the Soviet foreign policy line throughout the Cold War, but it was not forced to host Soviet armed forces beyond a single base at Porkkala. That base was later exchanged for a Soviet lease on Hangö, which was in turn given up by Moscow in 1955. Unlike Czechs, Poles, or Rumanians, the Finns did not have to adopt Soviet domestic policies and were never ruled by a puppet Communist Party. Similar Cold War arrangements in which foreign policy obeisance to a Great Power was combined with domestic independence became known internationally as "Finlandization."

LINK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Finland_during_World_War_II

LINK

http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/