Not
everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth
reading. "Something old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique
classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
THIS
WEEK”S ‘SOMETHING OLD’ REVIEW IS BY GUEST REVIEWER CHRISTOPHER REID
“A FROZEN HELL: THE RUSSO-FINNISH WINTER
WAR OF 1939-40” by William R. Trotter (Algonquin Books of Chappell Hill 1991) Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER REID
Even a few years
after publication, an historical account can remain significant because few
other English-language studies have appeared on the topic. By chance I bought a
copy of William R. Trotter’s A Frozen
Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 in a second hand bookshop. The
proprietor told me that interest in this work remains high and he rapidly sold
the few copies he had in stock.
From the outset
Trotter explains why accounts of the diplomatic and political aspects of the
Winter War have fared much better in English than its military aspects have.
Finland was remote and did not figure as highly in accounts of events during
the Phoney War period of World War II, which was when the Winter War occurred.
It became ‘forgotten’ when subsequent conflicts took place.
Stalin was
furious at the humiliation of Russian defeat after a few weeks’ campaign. Victory
would have been part of his 60th birthday celebrations, so Soviet
records cover only the subsequent war against the Soviet Union (June
1941-September 1944) which Finns call the “Continuation War”. All Russian
prisoners of war who had been returned by the Finns, and many commanders, were
packed off to NKVD camps near the White Sea to be “re-educated” and/or shot.
The only Soviet account of the Winter War is a brief reference in Nikita
Krushchev’s memoirs as part of his criticism of the Stalin era. Even
post-Soviet Russian accounts remain sparse for lack of contemporary Russian
documentation.
So the most
detailed accounts of the war have appeared in Finnish, which is admittedly a
most difficult language. William Trotter has a reading knowledge of the
language and supplemented his study with interviews with veteran combatants and
others.
Though Trotter
discusses diplomacy briefly, the implications for foreign relations and the
subsequent “Continuation War”, the bulk of his account follows much the same
approach that Anthony Beevor takes in his books Stalingrad, Berlin and D-Day of recounting campaigns in detail
and chronological order.
As background he
explains that under tsarist rule the Russians “left the Finns to their own
Count Carl
Gustav Mannerheim to this day is regarded as the great national hero of
Finland. Mannerheim’s own memoirs are essential yet Trotter found them “disappointingly flat and reticent; reading
them was a duty not a pleasure.” However Trotter supplemented the
information with interviews and his own “demonic
struggles with written Finnish”. He suggests that a fuller biography of
this paradoxical figure, who is probably “one
of the greatest generals of recent times”, has yet to appear in English
At that time of
the war, already in his 70s and a member of Finland’s large population of
Swedish descent, Mannerheim had inherited a noble title that was awarded to his
ancestors centuries before. He was fluent not only in Swedish, but in German,
French, English, and Russian, yet only late in life did he learn Finnish, the
language that most foreigners find difficult, and his grammar and
pronunciation, as revealed in recordings, were apparently not good.
Mannerheim
believed in absolute monarchy, had received Russian noble honours, and to the
end of his life displayed prominently a portrait of Tsar Nicholas. He greatly
admired the traditional cultures of Germany and Russia yet loathed equally the
totalitarianism of Nazism and the Soviets. He had no illusions whatsoever about
Hitler and Mussolini, describing them as “little
men with little minds swollen by undeserved self grandeur”.
During the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia, when the Soviets tried to export Bolshevism to
his homeland, he returned to Finland and in the civil war between the Whites
and the Reds, he took command of the Whites, and was victorious with some help
from the Imperial German army during the final stages of the First World War.
Trotter does not gloss over the fact that Mannerheim was ruthless in the
treatment of captured Finnish Reds, imprisoning them and having them executed.
After centuries
of being a fiefdom of Sweden and tsarist Russia, the Finns valued obtaining in
1919 a democratic constitution that permitted the election of a president, a prime
minister and a single-chamber parliament. Most of all, the Finns it seems,
would not yield lightly a long-sought self-rule free from totalitarianism.
Despite his
distrust of democracy, Mannerheim abided by all its processes, being a Minister
of Defence in a Finnish government and eventually accepting the Presidency of
Finland. I did not realise until I read this that Mannerheim counselled against
entering a war against the Soviet Union, and from knowing his country’s much
smaller population and limited and non-existent military resources, he surmised
correctly that in the long run Stalin would conquer all or some of Finland. Yet
he bowed to the decision of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Though proud of
his aristocratic origins, he understood well that in this war of desperation,
where every participant had to fight to the utmost, there was no point in
insisting on rigid military protocol and hierarchy. He agreed that all
combatants could address each other by first name and not by military rank. He
could be autocratic in his decisions, yet commanded strong loyalty because he
was truthful about situations not given to making completely impossible
requests.
Trotter suggests
some of the reasons why the achievements of the Winter War, and initial foreign
admiration for the courage and fortitude of the Finns, became forgotten:
“That Finland should fight the Soviet
Union again, only fifteen months after the Winter War- and that in doing so
should compromise its national image if not its honour – seems a cruel twist of
history. That Finland fought at the side of Nazi Germany, officially as a “co-belligerent”
but in every practical aspect as a close ally, seems tragic. There was a
disturbing aspect to the Continuation War in that only fifteen months before a
nation that had been held up as a shining example of freedom and democracy
should now make aggressive war on the side of one of history’s most ruthless
totalitarian regimes.”
Also, although
fascist parties were banned in Finland during this period, strong criticism
lingers that some Finns, admittedly few in numbers, were permitted to volunteer
for the Waffen SS and there is scepticism about their claims that they did not
take part in any atrocities against civilians.
What was new to
me was the account of the strong part Swedish diplomacy played in the outcome
of the Winter War and the Continuation War.
With the other
Scandinavian countries occupied by Germany, neutral Sweden, already anxious
about possible Nazi invasion, but desiring German trade, feared that Finland
could turn into a Nazi ally, and target for counter occupation by the Soviets,
thus making Sweden vulnerable to attack from the East or West. Sweden almost
permitted volunteers to join Finnish combatants in the Winter War, but withdrew
consent and closed its border to Finland at the last moment. As Trotter puts it,
Swedish diplomacy strongly urged “Finland
to make peace with Russia in order to preserve its independence, which would
leave the nation of Finland in place as an armed buffer between Sweden and the
Soviet giant.”
Ultimately, too,
with the loss of almost half a million killed out of a population of four
million and 420, 000 homes destroyed Finland may have preserved its democracy
and independence but it could not prevail.
Thus, forced to make an armistice with the Soviet Union the Finns lost
everything they had gained in the Winter War. They lost the Karelian Isthmus,
which to this day is the Republic of Karelia and, until the fall of the Soviet
Union, they remained economically and politically dependent upon the USSR.
Also in exchange
for remaining independent and not suffering further Soviet incursions they
agreed to drive German troops from Northern Finland which was achieved but the
retreating Germans inflicted considerable scorched earth destruction.
However, the
bulk of the book is devoted to the Winter War in battle by battle detail.
Trotter not only gives harrowing details but his unalloyed admiration.
Against the
better-armed and equipped Russians, the Finns could only exhibit boundless
courage and ability to survive in the rigours of extreme conditions, and
employed great ingenuity with limited ammunition and resources. The undersides
of the Russian T-28 tanks were not well plated and were vulnerable, and the
fuel easily froze, so the Finns built low stone barricades that tilted the
tanks back and stalled their engines.
“They used a hair-raising tactic of working in close,
where the tanks’ machine guns could not depress sufficiently to hit them . . . and disabled several vehicles
with[Molotov cocktails} hand grenades and
by plying treads off [tanks]with a crowbar.”
When Russian
convoys of tanks and trucks, already unsuitable for the extreme winter
conditions, were bogged down the Finns attacked and disabled the first and
final vehicles forcing the vehicles to halt and be vulnerable to further
attack. While the Finns ensured that their own troops had frontline dugouts,
well heated, sheltered and providing hot food, the Russians had above ground
canteens with unarmed catering staff, who were vulnerable to attack. As
happened with Napoleon’s Grand Army retreating from Moscow and Hitler’s army
invading Russia pinned down by guerrilla tactics, many Soviets perished in the
extreme conditions of winter. The ‘frozen hell’ pinned down, without food,
heating or adequate shelter many Soviet troops. Russian morale was low but
deserters fared no better from the cold and Finnish snipers.
Trotter does not
spare on some of the grimmer details. A Finnish soldier who had spent three
days without sleep and little food who had shot 500 Russian troops, “either wearied or out of his mind”
wandered out to be brought down by enemy fire.
A Frozen Hell remains a useful account of what has been overlooked in accounts of
the larger conflict.
Two Footnotes
(a.) Although the swastika was the emblem
of the Nazi flag throughout the Second World War, no Nazi aircraft were
identified by it whereas the Finnish aircraft were. Long before Nazism came
into being, Finland had the used the ancient Sanskrit emblem as a symbol of
good fortune. The swastika inscribed on some of Finland’s orders of honour is
not related to Nazism.
(b.) This is not part of Trotter’s book but
lodged in Finnish archives is a recording made in 1942 when Hitler visited
Finland. Mannerheim arranged for them to have lunch in a railway carriage and
unbeknown to Hitler had their conversation secretly recorded. Although some
commentators have cast doubt on the authenticity of the recording, Finland
stands by its claim and has about 11 minutes of the conversation on disc. It is
intriguing to hear Hitler speaking in a different tone from that of his mobile
rousing oratory familiar from newsreels and radio broadcast recordings. In
usual Hitler fashion he turns the luncheon conversation into a monologue in
which one can hear the occasional aside from Mannerheim. One can hear it with an on-screen English
translation on Hitler meets Mannerheim monologue (with subtitles) YouTube
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