Well, first we must nail down exactly what kind of victory the Finns won. I would call it a tactical defensive victory, as the Finns defeated the Soviets by superior fighting skills (tactical), but only largley maintained pre-battle positions (defensive).Originally Posted by Kagemusha
The Eastern Front is replete with German defensive tactical victories against much larger forces.
To begin, I'll throw out Operation Mars in 1942 - which gets way too little attention by historians. A Soviet offensive involving more men and armour than the much more famous Operation Uranus, and Zhukov's largest defeat.
Or, if you'd like a curveball that really demonstrates German coordination, even on a cross-national basis, how about Narva and Tannenberg in 1944?
I feel those examples meet your conditions as they were defensive victories against enormous numerical superiority where large movements of men and machinery were required to achieve victory.
I would feel confident in comparing the combat performance of the original SS units against that of the best Finnish ones.But when it comes to the art of tactics,skill and strategy, or efficiency with the resources at hand, i cant accept your notion of Germany being superior, because if we want to go deeper into this we have the whole Northern front during Operation Barbarossa to talk about where Finnish and German armies were fighting alongside and comparisons of how normal Finnish infantry divisions performed compared to German Gebirgsjäger and SS formations can be easily made.![]()
But that wasn't my point. The Finns simply did not engage in the type of large scale mechanized combat that required a higher degree of training, tactics, coordination and leadership - so I cannot say they were the best.
It is almost hard to compare Germany and Finland. Or the UK and Greece. Or the United States and Norway. The difference in the scale of operations is just too large.
I will say that the average Finnish soldier was the equal to his German all... co-fighter. () That is a lot more that can be said for Germany's other allies.
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