Quote Originally Posted by Husar
Thanks for the answers, few more things I came up with:

1. Were the dutch bicycles superior to those the finns used? How decisive were bicycles in the outcome of the war for both countries?
Ok, I can't really see a superior dutch bicycle stopping even a Panzer II but that the Finnish infantry could keep up with their tanks using bicycles could have been decisive, maybe they even used those superior dutch bicycles.*
To come to think of, im not quite sure where the Finnish bicycles were manufactured. But im positive those were not taken from the Russians, like the tanks were
Actually bicycle wasnt half bad for the supporting infantry for the tanks, to travel with. During WWII there was no such thing as IFV, infantry fighting vehicles, Germans and US preferred armored halftracks, while the armor of those was so thin that a heavy machine gun could destroy one, with the infantry many times with it.
The Soviet mechanized infantry tended to ride on the hull of their tanks into battle, but the negative thing about that is that tanks tend to gather fire when spotted and the poor infantry men tended to be shot or blown to pieces, when battle started,no matter if the tank survived or not. So in the end the bicycle was pretty good poor mans solution since when the sounds of fire in front would start the Jaegers dropped their bicycles in near ditches and started fighting on foot, once the path was clear, they would pick up the damn things and move on. Of course the continuous cycling might have caused the jaegers to have sore arses, but maybe that was one of the key elements behind their ferocity.