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Winter War
- theorique 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s43yLMgXXOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s43yLMgXXOU
- java-man 8y agopahoillani hyökkäyksestä
- pavlov 8y agosattuuhan sitä
- aljmyl 8y agotikulla silmään joka vanhoja muistelee
- java-man 8y agoI was shocked when, as a kid, I learned that the official justification for this war was "the border is too close to Leningrad".
- blarg1 8y agoThey build the city too close to Finland and then complain Finland is too close to their city.
- mikeash 8y agoNot defending the Soviets in any way here, but St. Petersburg was founded in 1703, and Finland became an independent country in 1917.
- stevekemp 8y agoTrue it became independent there, but the country had been settled for a long time before that. Of course Finnish history is complex, when you consider how it was initially Swedish-owned, then became an autonomous (remarkably so) part of the Russian empire between 1809-1917. The brief outline here is presents a good summary: https://finland.fi/life-society/main-outlines-of-finnish-history/ https://finland.fi/life-society/main-outlines-of-finnish-his... For more details I enjoyed reading "A Concise history of Finland" : https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Finland-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521539897 https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Finland-Cambridge-His... (I moved to Finland a couple of years ago, and have spent a fair bit of time learning of local-history.)
- ptaipale 8y agoFinland was there, however, already long before that, as an eastern province of Sweden. It should be noted, though, that if Finland had stayed as a part of Sweden, it might not exist as a country today; Sweden has had a policy of forced assimilation which is shown in how the traditionally Finnish (and Sami) culture in contemporary northern Sweden has been largely replaced. Tsar Alexander I ended war against Sweden (1808-1809) with a pact with the local nobility, if we may call it so, where Finland would be "lifted to be a nation among nations", and as a result, Finland indeed did become an autonomous nation. This is why the "faithful Tsars" have statues in Finland. Finland did not see itself as a part of Russia, but as a separate nation which just has Russian emperor as the ruler (Grand Duke). Swedish legislation was preserved (some laws in law book still date from 1734). Weaker, pan-Slavic Tsars (Alexander III and Nicholas II) then tried to reverse this development, and suppress Finnish nationalism, and as a result of this, Nicholas II was called "the oathbreaker", and due to this and many other similar bad policies elsewhere in his empire he lost his crown and his life.
- java-man 8y agoThat was in 1703. and yes, the intent was to fight the dominance of Swedes in the Baltic. If Peter only knew about IKEA... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg
- i_am_proteus 8y agoRussia seems generally content to invade its neighbors with the rationale "the border is too close to Russia."
- johan_larson 8y agoYes, that was definitely over the line for the Soviet Union to demand that Finland hand over a buffer zone. But in fairness the soviets did have some reason for concern. Finland had historic ties with Germany. Germany had helped the non-communist side of the Finnish War, notably by training the Jaeger troops. Still, I expect Finland would have been only too happy to sit out the war as a neutral, like Sweden did. But the Soviets didn't give them that option.
- halbrukk 8y agoGreat documentary, going over ww2 week by week (still ongoing). Here's an episode at the start of the Winter War[0]. The whole series is worth a watch though. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUwCd-j5xL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUwCd-j5xL4 Edit: Related, the same people did an entire week by week version of WW1, The Great War (now complete)[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxO1lsrC98VOyOzfW0Gn8Tga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjS...
- StephenAmar 8y agoGreat series. I created a patreon account just to support them.
- domnuprofesor 8y agoHistory Lapse also has a Patreon account here: https://www.patreon.com/historylapse https://www.patreon.com/historylapse
- johan_larson 8y agoIt's kind of amazing how much credit the Finns get for losing a war.
- java-man 8y agoThey resisted a much larger force for a very long time, considering how few men and resources they had. Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution. This war was planned as a quick campaign before the main event, which was scheduled in July 1941. Hitler beat him by a couple of weeks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv...
- arethuza 8y agoFrom that page: "the assertions that Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler, are generally discounted."
- java-man 8y ago[by whom?] I do subscribe to this point of view. One needs to look at the actions Stalin took prior to the war. I think Rezun documented it fairly well. And there is a great impetus to whitewash history - back then and even today.
- the_af 8y ago> by whom? Note that this hypothesis is almost entirely based on Viktor Suvorov's work, which has problems. From Wikipedia [0] (and also from Glantz, which I have read): "Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg). Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings have 'virtually no evidentiary base'." and > "David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay" and Beevor shows serious doubts (note that a 41 winter attack is not what the original hypothesis is about): > "Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..." There's some support for this theory in the West, but very little. The vast majority of works seem to discount it. It seems to be a fringe theory. Of course, eventually the Soviet Union and Germany would have been at war, what with Hitler's ideology being anti "Bolshevism" and considering most Slavs to be subhumans to be ethnically cleansed as part of Generalplan Ost. One other thing. You also wrote: > Stalin intended to roll over Europe armed with Lenin's concept of a world revolution. That doesn't seem to have been Stalin's plan [1], at least initially. It was precisely a point of contention with his political opponents that Stalin favored the "Socialism in one country" position instead of "world revolution". ---- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country
- blarg1 8y agoAnyone know a good book on the continuation war in english?
- avar 8y agoWhy do so many of these articles on the Winter War just narrowly focus that particular conflict, instead of covering the Continuation War as well? Was it a fundamentally different sort of conflict after what amounted to a brief ceasefire, or is it just politically expedient to ignore that the Finns continued fighting the Soviets shortly after the Winter War as allies of the Nazi regime?
- varjag 8y agoThe brief cease fire was 1.5 years. While the two wars are certainly linked, they were separate campaigns different in many military & political aspects.
- microcolonel 8y agoGiven a choice between a free but war torn Finland with blood on its hands, and a Soviet Finland, I think it's hard to imagine much preference for the latter from the perspective of a Finn.
- sampo 8y agoEverybody in WW2 has blood on their hands anyway.
- peisistratos 8y agoTens of thousands of Finnish workers gave their lives during the Finnish Civil War because they preferred a Soviet Finland to the bourgeois, Nazi-aligned country it became.
- ptaipale 8y agoIn 1918, they hardly did understand what they were preferring. By 1939, they did (after land reforms and many other policies that improved the lives of the losing side of civil war). In 1939 Finland was Anglophilic rather than Nazi-aligned, but it's not a good setup when friends are far away and weak, and enemies are close and strong.
- 8y ago
- vertis 8y agoThis is a great story, and I've read some of it before, but the UX is just terrible. I was a quarter of the way through before I realised half the story was hidden in the photos.
- domnuprofesor 8y agothe creator of History Lapse here. the UX is not terrible, it is in fact great. You’re just mouse lazy.
- domnuprofesor 8y agoHistory Lapse is meant to be read in cadence with the bits of text. The association is meant to stay in memory for a longer time since it is the natural way our brain works. Also, there is almost no reading fatigue because of the start-stop UX.
- sccxy 8y agoPeople are used to scrolling up-down, not moving mouse around in zig-zag. I prefer this js hack[0] which shows everything and after mouseover it allows to hide text for better image viewing. But content and quality of texts are great! 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19495172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19495172
- VoiceOfWisdom 8y agoI would add an overlay to the images prompting people to mouse over for more text, and then hide it once they have done it once. It lacks discoverability as it is currently.
- domnuprofesor 8y agoi think an overlay for the first image would do. will implement.
- 8y ago
- Sharlin 8y ago> Kulik and Mekhlis then proceeded to ask how much ammunition Voronov needed for the forthcoming campaign. ‘That depends,’ replied Voronov. ‘Are you planning to attack or defend? … With which forces and on which sectors? … And by the way, how much time is allotted for the operation?’ The reply to the last point came quickly: ‘Between 10 and 12 days.’ Eyeing the map of Finland hanging on the wall, Voronov replied: ‘I will be happy if everything can be resolved within two to three months.’ Everybody laughed derisively. ‘Marshal Voronov,’ Kulik replied sternly. ‘You are ordered to base all your estimates on the assumption that the operation will last a maximum of 12 days.’ Well, doesn't that sound familiar...
- sorokod 8y agoThis scene has a Dilbert quality.
- markvdb 8y agoLatvia being my second home country, I found one photo [0] from the article particularly interesting. It depicts a communist rally on (at the time) Brīvibas bulvaris, one of the main boulevards of Riga. The picture can be dated between July 5th 1940, the announcement of Soviet rigged elections, and the elections themselves on July 14 and 15, 1940 [1]. The slogans are only half readable, but say something like: * "Long live our agricultural labourers, farmers and worker intelligentsia!" * "On July 14-15, at the election, vote for ?our? Latvian labourer bloc" Very notable in the photo are at least four Latvian flags on the buildings. For those interested, there's a fairly good wikipedia article [2] about the first Soviet occupation of Latvia. [0] https://en.historylapse.org/l/be4WoPyQxGOv6enG5lVYznV305LlAmDN.jpg https://en.historylapse.org/l/be4WoPyQxGOv6enG5lVYznV305LlAm... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Latvian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Latvian_parliamentary_ele... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in_1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in...