Quote Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger View Post
I'm not faulting Finland. The nation's leadership did what had to be done to remain internally independent. I'm simply disputing the notion that Finland remained fully independent due to its vaunted military. The country had to cede quite a lot to keep Russia out.

A lot of people seem to think Finland won those wars when, in fact, they only lost them less severely than they could have. There's this idea that the Finns gloriously routed the Soviets with impunity during the Winter War, and while they did perform well and certainly stymied the Russian plans, their position became increasingly precarious as the conflict dragged on. They were on a slow path to defeat simply do to resource constraints.






I completely agree, and I disagree with Sarmation's conclusion about small countries and military expenditure. A capable military certainly does not guarantee a small nation security against a superpower, but it does give it options. In 1940, Finland's military could not have held out against Russia, but it did extract enough blood to bring Russia to the negotiating table. Instead of annexation, Russia settled on only 10% of the nation.

There is a definite value in a strong national defense for small nations. Even authoritarian regimes face wartime pressures. A nation that can exacerbate those pressures is much better off than one that cannot.





-I'm sure that he knows what the Continuation War was. I think that may have been a misstatement.

-1945 was , of course, the end of WW2, when Russia created the various Eastern European satellites. With Germany defeated, Russia could have easily defeated Finland if Finland had not acceded to all of Russia's demands.

-I'm sure that Stalin would have loved to have conquered all of Finland during the Winter War, but the main goal of the effort was to create a buffer for Leningrad. This was accomplished through the negotiations. If Finland hadn't agreed, Russia would have eventually defeated her.

Maybe there is such idea about Finland winning, but to me there was and never will be a realistic way for Finland to defeat Russia in open war. All that Finnish army could and can do is to make the enemy bleed enough to have second thoughts about taking possession of this piece of Frozen forest. As a small country.You cant defeat and conquer someone 20 times larger then you.It is simply impossible.

All a small country with it´s military can do is to show to any aggressor that the investment of casualties and resources to conquer that land is not of comparative worth to the gain you would be making. There is no victory in such sense, but that does not stop one for fighting what is his.