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Comment by cjslep | Hacker News Reader

You would be interested in the Winter War between Finland and Soviet Russia in 1939. Finland absolutely outperformed the Red Army to such an extreme that it convinced Hitler invading Soviet Russia was not going to be a problem at all.

Nothing more entertaining in my mind than Finns chucking logs into tank treads to disable an entire armored division.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

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Finland was lucky to be invaded by the Soviets when their military was at their peak of incompetency, after Stalin had killed tons of the officers.

They quickly learned, and in the followup war(s), Finland was thoroughly beat, and lost 1/10 of it's territory.

It wouldn't pan out that well today though. I don't see how Sweden could ever stand up to a modernized Russian military without external assistance. But they would probably fare better than Ukraine.

It's not that Sweden or Finland could alone stop Russia from conquering their territory. It's that they would make it costly to achieve, and much, much costlier to maintain.

During the Cold War, Sweden had one the most formidable air forces in the European theater (supported by homegrown industrial base), whatever passes for a navy in Baltic Sea and large not that badly armed conscript force, together probably quite capable of at least providing a credible hindrance to any forces the Soviets would throw against them.

I always wondered how quickly that was dismantled. I guess they still have a navy.

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