Winter War
en.historylapse.org
en.historylapse.org
Here's an episode at the start of the Winter War[0]. The whole series is worth a watch though.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUwCd-j5xL4
Edit: Related, the same people did an entire week by week version of WW1, The Great War (now complete)[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjS...
Well, doesn't that sound familiar...
The picture can be dated between July 5th 1940, the announcement of Soviet rigged elections, and the elections themselves on July 14 and 15, 1940 [1].
The slogans are only half readable, but say something like:
* "Long live our agricultural labourers, farmers and worker intelligentsia!"
* "On July 14-15, at the election, vote for ?our? Latvian labourer bloc"
Very notable in the photo are at least four Latvian flags on the buildings.
For those interested, there's a fairly good wikipedia article [2] about the first Soviet occupation of Latvia.
[0] https://en.historylapse.org/l/be4WoPyQxGOv6enG5lVYznV305LlAm...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Latvian_parliamentary_ele...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in...
Was it a fundamentally different sort of conflict after what amounted to a brief ceasefire, or is it just politically expedient to ignore that the Finns continued fighting the Soviets shortly after the Winter War as allies of the Nazi regime?
In 1939 Finland was Anglophilic rather than Nazi-aligned, but it's not a good setup when friends are far away and weak, and enemies are close and strong.
There was no practical way for them to align themselves with anyone but the Nazis or the Soviets, so whether you like what the political class became in that context or not, it's not as though the people had a choice between liberal democracy and state socialism, and picked the latter.
That people with uncertain, unpleasant lives were taken in by Soviet propaganda is no surprise. Some people still believe the things they learned from Soviet propagandists to this day.
Stalin expected a fast population growth, and when the 1937 census showed that he was mistaken, and population of USSR was only 162 million, Stalin had statisticians sent to the GULAG and some were even executed. After that, many tried to avoid being nominated for top jobs, out of fear for meeting the same fate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)
This kind of dictatorship and purges of competent people certainly lessened the capabilities of Soviet Union, lead to the unexpected result of the Winter War, and greatly increased the losses of USSR in the coming great war.
It's quite a feat to lessen your capabilities, and still be able to repel an invasion by all of Europe (sans England, as well as smaller countries like Switzerland, Ireland etc.)
The other view is Stalin had loyal cadre around him during the war, and did not have lieutenant colonels with links through the high command making bomb attempts against him.
It is quite clear that USSR's surprisingly weak performance in Winter War did encourage Hitler to think that he could crush Soviets with a quick summer war.
Most of Europe was being attacked (or actively suppressed) by Germany, not attacking the USSR with Germany, and even Germany was fighting on other fronts, so it wasn't even “all of Germany”.
Of course, these "national" liberation movements where double betrayed when the german racism became obvious.
See, the only thing they had going for them was the "enemy of my enemy" thing, and that just wasn't the case after the war, for that enemy did not exist any more, unlike everything else they had done.
Are you referring to Poland? Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known. As for the Soviets, a buffer with the Nazis was paramount. Not justifying their actions but looking from their perspective they were able to delay the war by two years. Even if the enemy was same, the objectives were vastly different. However, the enemy wasn't really the same considering Czechoslovakia, which the Soviets wanted to defend.
> Ended it with bilateral military parade. Supported each other with training and materiel right until summer 1941.
The parade was more or less just a show-off to fool each other. Just like how India-China have military drills(despite having territorial disputes) to soothe each other. Nazi-Soviets did have trade but from Soviets' perspective it was more likely done to avoid war.
When you say allies, what comes to my mind is US-UK or US-Israel relationship. Nazi-Soviet relationship was nothing close to that. I would agree with you if it we had been discussing this in 1938-41. But we have the benefit of hindsight.
If that's the case, why was the Soviet Union so spectacularly unprepared for the German invasion?
It's quite a narrow view, I dare to say. There's no need any for any stable special relationship, or even shared objectives to form an alliance. Expecting some sort of positive returns is quite enough. E.g. since Germans attacked USSR the latter became ally of UK, and then US in spite of the fact that Soviet ideology made it a natural enemy to both (and predictably USSR became an enemy once Germany lost).
There was an addendum to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Secret protocol) which was a plan to divide Eastern Europe between two empires, and it means Soviet-Nazi allyship in 1939 was neither an accident, nor a forced decision.
Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known.
It's not correct in the context. While wish to expand Reich was certainly known, Hitler didn't publicly advertize any clear plans regarding territories under Soviet rule. And Stalin obviously trusted Hitler because he personally discarded intelligence indicating German war preparations as ridiculous. Soviet press in line with party directives kept neutral, or friendly tone towards Germans till the moment of the invasion.
You kind of answered your own question there. They're two separate wars. Of course articles on the Winter War would focus on the Winter War.
Now you may ask instead why the Continuation war doesn't get as much coverage as the Winter War. Well because it frankly isn't as interesting.
You wouldn't divide ww2 into two separate wars because the germans and the soviets were allied in the first half of ww2 ( when they invaded poland and divided europe in half between them ) and then they fought a war against each other in the 2nd half.
The "continuation war" doesn't get much attention because of political reasons. Just like much of europe ( including france, most of scandinavia, netherlands, belgium, ukraine, etc ) underplays their cooperation with nazi germany for much of ww2 when nazi germany was on the ascent.
As they say, the first casualty of war is the truth. This applies not only during the war, but post-war as well.
The Soviets occupied Baltic countries, and continued and increased the political and military pressure against Finland already by late 1940, so that Finns did not believe it really is "peace".
Many unfortunate incidents worsened the situation; for instance, the day when the new Soviet ambassador arrived in Finland after the Moscow peace treaty, Finland had a national day of remembrance for the fallen soldiers (akin to Memorial Day in US). With about 25 000 men lost just few months before, this was of course done with flags in half-mast throughout the country and the mood was solemn and grave.
But the new ambassador did not know this, and he thought Finns are just demonstrating against his arrival. A wiser ambassador would have known better, but Stalin preferred ideological purity and refusal to listen to facts.
As a practical matter, the European/African theater against Germany/Italy and the Pacific theater against Japan are two separate wars that happened contemporaneously and with some powers fighting the two wars at the same time. The Continuation War was in large part pushed by the Germans to extend the front of the USSR, and as such is essentially part of the Eurafrican WW2, although the Finns did not entirely cooperate in actually pursuing Axis objectives.
This does show the difficulty of drawing firm boundaries around the wars in this era.
I prefer this js hack[0] which shows everything and after mouseover it allows to hide text for better image viewing.
But content and quality of texts are great!
Also appreciated would be a way to expose every image's text at once, for those of us who don't use our mice to read. (like the mobile layout)
[after reading: this is a great project and I deeply appreciate the amount of thought that went into its design. It would have been nice if there were some way to bring more of that awareness into the initial reading experience, instead of just dropping us into something unfamiliar and confusing, but that's a limitation of the hackernews interface and I'm not sure what you could have done about it other than show up and explain as you are doing here. Keep up the good work!]
document.querySelectorAll('.h-overlay').forEach((x) => x.style.cssText="display: block; left: 0px; top: 0px;");Of course Finnish history is complex, when you consider how it was initially Swedish-owned, then became an autonomous (remarkably so) part of the Russian empire between 1809-1917. The brief outline here is presents a good summary:
https://finland.fi/life-society/main-outlines-of-finnish-his...
For more details I enjoyed reading "A Concise history of Finland" :
https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Finland-Cambridge-His...
(I moved to Finland a couple of years ago, and have spent a fair bit of time learning of local-history.)
It should be noted, though, that if Finland had stayed as a part of Sweden, it might not exist as a country today; Sweden has had a policy of forced assimilation which is shown in how the traditionally Finnish (and Sami) culture in contemporary northern Sweden has been largely replaced.
Tsar Alexander I ended war against Sweden (1808-1809) with a pact with the local nobility, if we may call it so, where Finland would be "lifted to be a nation among nations", and as a result, Finland indeed did become an autonomous nation.
This is why the "faithful Tsars" have statues in Finland. Finland did not see itself as a part of Russia, but as a separate nation which just has Russian emperor as the ruler (Grand Duke). Swedish legislation was preserved (some laws in law book still date from 1734).
Weaker, pan-Slavic Tsars (Alexander III and Nicholas II) then tried to reverse this development, and suppress Finnish nationalism, and as a result of this, Nicholas II was called "the oathbreaker", and due to this and many other similar bad policies elsewhere in his empire he lost his crown and his life.
Still, I expect Finland would have been only too happy to sit out the war as a neutral, like Sweden did. But the Soviets didn't give them that option.