On outrageous Wargaming history posts

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Hello everyone,

Wargaming usually presents us with articles, that are kinda nice. For example the history of the British flamethrower tanks (was it by Listy? I think so) – or Challenger’s historical posts. Every now and then however, they have what Rita would probably call a “brain fart” and just copy stuff from Russian portal.

Needless to say, that is not a good idea. For all their vaunted “remember history” campaigns, what Wargaming generally means is “remember Russian history”. SerB wrote it himself: if you want to do business in Russia, you have to be patriotic. No “we are all equal” – it’s more like “Russia stronk”. This of course comes with a “price” of having the historical post somewhat biased. I actually hate the word “biased”, but I guess it describes the situation best. This is not the first time Wargaming EU did this (some of you odlschool players might remember the Kliment Voroshilov weekend), but it’s not very common, thanks god.

With that being said, the recent Karelia article was one of those outrageous articles, that were written from Soviet perspective. It reminded me of a thing I’ve read recently somewhere on the internet:

“Those imperialist dogs have only one toilet per room, but here in Soviet Russia, we have TWO toilets per room! Soviet Russia is victorious once again!”

Nah, I don’t have anything against Russians obviously, but this stuff makes me pissed. Let’s have a look at the article itself:

However, more conflict was to come. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the opportunist Finns took their chance to strike back as well. This would be known as the Continuation War. In just three months, the Finns had pushed all the way back through Karelia, halting at the original border. They held this point for the next two and a half years.

OPPORTUNIST Finns? Really? So you steal a part of the country that isn’t yours and when the owners try to take it back, you call them “opportunists”? Shame on those opportunist Czech and Polish resistance members then for attempting to fight the nazi (and Soviet) occupants.

On 26th November 1939 a border incident resulted in artillery shots seemingly being fired at Soviet troops. The result was the suspension of all non-aggression pacts between the USSR and Finland two days later. To date, it is suspected that this incident was staged by the Soviets, although full proof has never emerged.

Well, wikipedia seems to think otherwise. Those evil, evil Finnish, shelling the poor Russians…

At this point, I checked the discussion and of course, this picture just had to appear :)

FinlandvsSovietUnion

The truth is, the war was a complete disaster for the Soviets. Unprepared for the harsh weather, unable to cope with the Finnish guerilla tactics and poorly trained, they were completely decimated by the Finnish resistance and managed to advance only with horrendous casualities (something Soviet Russia was never afraid of). Note that even the Russians admit that no war was ever declared, making the invasion essentially a war crime, but somehow, noone seems to be bothered by that fact.

The article also mentions the Finnish allying with the Germans (conveniently omitting the fact that by that time, the Germans were the allies of the Soviets as well). Now, the discussion under the article is much more interesting than the article itself and since I am no expert on Finnish history, I am going to copypaste one post from a player named AngelofAwe, explaining some of the mistakes in the article (fixed the obvious typos).

- the Soviet Union didn’t just demand Karelia, but also the islands south of Finland and a naval base on Hanko, next to the Finnish capital Helsinki! Who in their right mind would accept that? Especially after the Soviets did the same thing to the Baltic states and then proceeded to completely occupy them – which was also the ultimate goal in Finland. The soviets even established a Soviet friendly new “finnish government” in Karelia to place in Helsinki once they had conquered the nation (SS: this is true, these were later viewed as traitors). Marskin_ryyppy adds the following:

“You didn’t mention that Finland would also have to destroy all existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus, even those which would be left in the Finnish side. I think especially this demand states what Stalin really had in his mind. The annexation of Finland.”

- the shelling of Mainila is not just “suspected” to have been staged by the Soviets, it’s been proven and even the Soviets themselves finally admitted they started the Winter War a couple of decades ago.

- “For a whole month, the Finns managed to stall the Soviets, slowing down their advance, but by the end of December they had fallen back to the Mannerheim Line and held them there for several weeks. This caused humiliation for the Soviet army and Stalin”

It talks about the war as if the Finns put up some resistance, but the glorious Red Army eventually beat them anyway and focuses on the Mannerheim line. Meanwhile, it ignores the action north of Ladoga, where the actual huge battles and defeats of the Red Army took place, such as the Raate Road, where just 400 Finnish troops halted the advance of 2 mechanized Soviet divisions long enough for (still outnumbered) Finnish troops to catch up, cut the soviet columns into pockets and annihilate them completely one after another. The soviet commanders in charge retreated and fled only to immediately be executed for the disastrous failure once they reached Soviet lines.

- “One by one, the Finnish defensive fortifications began to fall, although not without a cost to the invaders – Soviet casualties were high.”

Technically not true at all. The Finnish lines only broke after the Soviets focused everything they had on the Mannerheim line and bombarded it day and night along the 100km front with massive amounts of artillery. On the day of the breakthrough, the Mannerheim line was hit by 300,000 artillery shells within 24 hours – several times more than the finnish artillery fired in the entire war.

- “On 11 February, the Soviets had about 460,000 men, over 3,350 artillery pieces, about 3,000 tanks and about 1,300 aircraft deployed on the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was constantly receiving new recruits after the breakthrough. Opposing them the Finns had eight divisions, totalling about 150,000 men.”

Remember also that these 150,000 Finns had fought for 3 months with little rest and no reserves to switch with, meaning they were exhausted, not to mention that the Finns were out of ammunition and the artillery had been ordered not to fire unless in case of absolute emergency. Soviet losses were indeed high, 5 times more than the Finns in men, 10 times in aircraft and 100 times in tanks. The Finns barely even had any anti tank weapons, but invented one… the Molotov cocktail, that was often used in combination with running up to the tank and jamming logs into the tracks after which they threw the molotov into the ventilation and set the engine on fire. 1 ski-trooper was also decorated for taking out a russian tank by himself… with a crowbar.

- the Continuation war was inevitable, the Soviets immediately started planning a new attack on Finland as soon as the peace was concluded. The Finns were stuck with nobody to turn to after the nordic nations and allied democracies said no. Germany saw the situation and approached Finland offering modern weapons and equipment, Finland’s only hope. When Germany initiated operation Barbarossa, Finland did not immediately join in. Not until the soviets bombed Finnish cities did the government declare war and struck back.

- the Continuation war was also mentioned in a single paragraph while it held the most important battles in the history of Finland and perhaps all the nordic nations. After things went south for Germany, Stalin and his command decided to crush Finland first before racing to Berlin. They focused the might of the Red Army on this single task and indeed crushed the Finnish line with overwhelming numbers.

“On 9 June 1944, the Soviet Union opened a major offensive against Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus and in the area of Lake Ladoga (it was timed to accompany D-Day). On the 21.7 km (13.5 mi)-wide breakthrough segment the Red Army had concentrated 3,000 guns and mortars. In some places, the concentration of artillery pieces exceeded 200 guns for every kilometer of the front (one every 5 m (5.5 yd)).”

The first line fell quickly, the second one as well. Finland’s second largest city Viipuri was lost nearly without resistance. The Finns were pushed back to the final defense line, a line that existed only on the maps with no real fortifications. If this line was broken, the road to Helsinki would be open and the nation of Finland would be completely destroyed. At this final line, the Soviets would try time and time again, one of their first defeats came at Tienhaara, “the lock of finland”, where the Finn-Swede regiment IR61 (meaning my own grandparents) fought. Their positions were attacked by 2 Soviet divisions but the regiment, supported by strong Finnish artillery held on despite suffering 70% casualties. After that followed more huge battles, each one critical for the survival of the entire nation, Tali-ihantala to mention one, the largest battle in the history of the nordic nations.

Finnish intelligence intercepted the Soviet radio transmissions and knew when the attack was coming. 3 minutes before the Soviet attack all finnish artillery, bombers, mortars and the german Stuka detachment opened fire at the Soviet deployment area. After days of combat the 50,000 defending Finnish troops were victorious against the 150,000 soviet troops supported by 600 tanks. After suffering defeat after defeat, the Soviets decided Finland would not break so easily and wasn’t worth the time, effort and casualties suffered and started to withdraw equipment to focus on the German line. Not long after that, peace was concluded between Finland and the Soviet union.

- “Although Finland claimed to be neutral during World War II, its conflict being only with the Soviet Union, its success against the USSR relied upon German victory.”

After the Continuation War, Soviet Union demanded Finland to expel all German troops from its territory within 14 days, but the Germans didn’t agree on that and thus the Lapland War started. So Finland fought against Germany too.

- “Finnish soldiers tended to use German helmets that had been issued to them as part of the German support to the war effort.”

About half of the helmets Finland used in the Continuation War were given as an aid from Germany, but most of those weren’t German made. Germany sent about 175 000 helmets to Finland, which 75 000 were Hungarian, 50 000 Czech and the rest German. Finland also bought 80 000 German WW1 model helmets in 20′s.

Well, that’s it. Let’s hope to see no more “Russia stronk” articles for a while again.

126 thoughts on “On outrageous Wargaming history posts”

  2. Fascist lies, all of them. “Talvisota” was big party, lots of vodka, in gulag. Everybody happy. Glorious Communist regime is friend of Finland.
    [/Disbelief].

    Although this “History is written by the victors” is understandable, it gets pretty stupid sometimes.
    Vae victis, I guess.

    –I say this because the Soviet Union was on the winning side of WW2 and, although it costed them, in the Winter War as well… They DO have the “Right” to say whatever they want and blame it on Finland… Which doesn’t mean that we have to belive them–

    • “History is written by the victors”

      But it always was, it always will be. Nothing you know about wars and nations ever since the classic era is not the viewpoint of the victorious parties.

      When I was younger I read a lot of alternative history SciFi novels: Some were good, a lot were bad, but those novels really sharpen your mind when it comes to reading actual history: What is there, what is omitted, how it is spun – it all depends on who won.

      Stalin won. History as we know it reflects that. While i find silentstalkers anger understandable it is also only the tip of the iceberg.

      There is only one thing to learn from all this: There is history and there is truth – and those two rarely are the same and we won’t ever be able to tell when.

      • Don’t fuck with the Finns – Liberate Karelia!! I will post this on chat when I play that map!!

        • Leaving aside the detail that pretty much the whole population was evacuated and the place has been inhabited by Russians for the past sixty-plus years, WTF would we do with yet *more* decaying and economically meaningless countryside? Never seen the actual “Karelia back” wankers explain that…

        • I hate the Karelia map because it is a terrible representation of Finnish Karelia, I wish they’d remove it and put one in that actually looks something like Karelia in its place. Same with Arctic Region, the was supposed to be the Mannerheim Line but, alas, looks nothing like anywhere in Finland.

          Sad really.

          • Well… technically speaking there *is* no “Finnish Karelia” and hasn’t been since the Forties…
            And I wouldn’t be all that sure about “nothing like anywhere in Finland”. ‘S not like this corner of the world had some kind of shortage of rocky outcroppings and marshes.

            Have to agree on Arctic though. I’ve read a bit of the Mannerheim Line fortifications and the terrain on the Ishtmus they were built in, and… yeah. No.

    • lol i have the same idea with you dude. Maybe he was Gordon’s great grandpa :P. But how he did it anyway? threw it into the engine?

      • At least he had a crowbar to work with. Considering the more desperate last-ditch efforts tended to involve bits of wood, that could be considered a positive luxury.

        As an aside, the analytically minded will likely have already realised that such stunts could even be attempted tells a fair bit of the degree of coordination between Soviet infantry and tanks at the time – improving which was, indeed, an important part of Timoshenko’s reforms after he took over command.

  7. Thanks very much for this article. I read the WG EU portal article and, not knowing much about the subject, took it at face value.

    It is extremely worrying that WG, through their large customer base, have the opportunity to spread the Russian approach to history, so detached from factual accuracy and tied instead to nationalist propaganda.

  8. why they let a developer out of his cage and interface with people I dont know!! I am not a nationalist or a racist. But I do hate biased people and WG should look very closely at their political standing and for PR sake hire someone who knows what there doing at an international level. WG is a russian company that continually has a bias for russians and russia. For god sake sort it out!!! you dont see other top gaming manufacturers doing that!!!

      • I spotted an article on the EU site that said that Rommel was an active participant in the 20th July plot to kill Hitler. When it was pointed out in the forum (not by me) that there was no evidence that he was active in the plot but he was aware of the existence of it, the article disappeared. I don’t know if it was reposted in corrected form. Should have taken a screen dump but it was pulled to quickly.

        The EU team need to stop being glove puppets of WGRU, get some sort of grip on objective reality and check the facts before they publish anything.

        • *WG are incompetent in *everything* they are doing – software or whatever else. Hadn’t noticed yet?*

          Yeah, totally. That is why no one plays their games or read their stuff. Those milions of users are only there to have a laugh at their fail and those milions of euros in revenues are just comunist fail propaganda.

          • Agreed. I must always laught at those mocking WG while playing their horrible, failed, biased and overall screwed games.

            If WG failed at everything, we would hardly have this blog. WG is highly profittable and successful company like any other, not a garage experiment. And failed MM, TD flood, soviet point-of-view-history or zero hits wont change it.

            Can any of those armchair critics show us results of their ‘competent’ work? MaterielDefender, where can we see it?

  9. *sees picture*

    O_O
    Whoa if you count the casualties that…roughly almost ALL of the russian troops are fucked in some way !

    It’s like real-life Finnish Dynasty Warrior, and they just suddenly have unlimited musou bar O_o

    To those who prefer WoT terms, think T-26 vs Waffletragers. LOTS of Waffletragers. All loaded up with enough HE to blow back the T-26s all the way back to Vladivostok after a world trip around the equator.

    • One historian described it as something along the lines of “advancing frontally into minefields while flanked by snipers”. Red Army at the time was a black farce.

  10. Finland kicked the soviets @ss, thats a FACT even if they want to distort the history. But why they try it?? Beyond the pure nationalism, the fact is that the Mighty and Glorious Stalin’s Great Purge was like a head shot for the Red Army. That was a serious factor of the Winter War semi-defeat and the initial fails during Op. Barbarossa. If they admit this, they have to admit that Stalin was rather a treasonous paranoid psycho, an actual enemy of his own country than a true hero…

    • And we all know that’s not going to happen. Because you know, comrade stalinfag WAS a true hero!!! You capitalist dogs know shit!!!

      • Quote Wieros
        *an actual enemy of his own country than a true hero…*
        He was Georgian, in a wat you can argue that he was not the enemy of hos own country since in really was not his. Since most russians (and others including me) feel that tsarist russia-ussr-russian federation is the same thing only with slight border changes.

        Quote Medjej
        *comrade stalinfag WAS a true hero!!! You capitalist dogs know shit!!!*
        Angry barking. Woff woff woff.

        • As I know for this day there is a Stalin-cult in Georgia, strongest in Stalin’s birth-town, Gori. On the other hand, he never acted as a “georgian”, rather the leader of the peoples and communists of the USSR (thats the way I mean country – not Russia nor Georgia). During his reign, with the exception of his high-level georgian-origined comrades, most georgians sucked as much as other people in the USSR.

  11. Whoever wrote this article on EU is gonna get raise from SerB for spreading the mighty 100% true russki histori.

  12. Considering the amount of bullshit that I’ve seen on the WG article it’s just not possible to trust any piece of this “fact”. I would not even consider mentioning the Soviets to be victorious in Winter War as they lost a massive amount of troops and they failed horribly in their attempts to take over Finland.

    Lets just mention Simo Häyhä, who had over 500 confirmed kills: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4

    • The Soviets got the territorial concessions they’d originally tried to barter for whereas Finland lost some very strategically important territory we for sound military reasons already weren’t keen on giving up, so yeah, that’s a Soviet victory. Taking over the whole of Finland was never a priority goal, all the more so given how ape the Entente was going over the whole thing as it was.

      Which brings us to an important point that tends to get conveniently glossed over in both Finnish national mythmaking and most Russian commentaries I’ve read, namely, why exactly Stalin agreed for a negotiated peace when the Finnish defenses were blatantly reaching a breaking point and could not conceivably hold out for much longer.
      Well, thing is he was working on a time limit with the very real threat of a rather serious escalation breathing down his neck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_plans_for_intervention_in_the_Winter_War
      The intervention force assembled for the purpose later fought the Germans in Norway, incidentally.

  13. Other coll “Russia stronk” story: http://worldofwarplanes.eu/en/news/special-offers/end-of-battle-stalingrad/

    Quoting:

    On 26th January, the remaining Germans divided into two forces to try and take strategic objectives, but even this ultimately failed. On 31st January, the southern group surrendered, and a few days later on February 2nd, the northern group followed. The Soviets took over 91,000 prisoners.

    End quote

    Fuck yeah, on 26th January Germans encircled since November 22nd (2 months) divided to try to take strategic objectives.

  15. Funny story behind the name “molotov’s coctail”. Vyacheslab Molotov who was responsible for soviet propaganda during the war declared on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours. The Finns, far from starving and engaged in a bitter war for national survival with the Soviet forces, sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs “Molotov bread baskets” in reference to Molotov’s propaganda broadcasts. When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the “Molotov cocktail”, as “a drink to go with the food”

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_cocktail

    • I heard it was named that because Mr Molotov stated he and his Soviet high command buddies would be in Helsinki drinking celebratory cocktails in a matter of days, implying the Red Army would crush Finland.
      So the Finns called their fire-bombs Molotov cocktails, in reference to those cocktails he wanted to drink.

      To be honest, I don’t think we will ever know the exact story, it’s all myth and folklore, but I do enjoy seeing all the possible variations, they are all hilarious =D

    • The firebombs were gainfully employed already in the Spanish Civil War if not earlier (and doubtless any number of riots and other instances of civil disobedience) you know, we just contributed the pithy name.

      • You are absolutelly correct, firebomb was first used in Spanish Civil war. What finns added to it was fine tuning the recipe by adding kerosine, tar and potassium chlorate to gasoline. Also they attached windproof matches to side of bottle making it more safer for the user.

  16. 1940 In Summa fights, When lacking any better AT weapons, Finnish sergeant Einar Schadewitz climbed on Soviet tank & tried to open the turret hatch with his knife. When it didn’t open he yelled & knocked on the hatch with a hand granade. The crew (probably thinking it was their own infantry) opened it and Schadewitz threw the grenade in.

    • IIRC something similar happened to the occasional Italian tankette in Abyssinia, for much the same reasons.

      Yet another reason why it’s a good idea to have radio communications between the infantry and the tenks, or failing that at least field telephones attached to the rear hull as the Allies liked to do in the late war.

  19. So basically to demolish Russian fantasies about the Winter War and Continuation War, you make your own fantasies about both ? Great, history is clearly the winner of this…

  21. Well, I’m certainly waiting for World of Warships.
    And as the Soviet Fleet was announced, we can expect even more outrageous lies and misinformation.
    Sinking non-existent ships, their own warships blowing up on SOVIET minefields blamed on submarines and planes, turning distant meeting of their submarine with Tirpitz into “heavily damaging it” and more.

    • The Dogger bank Incident, and indeed the entire journey of the Russian baltic fleet to the far east during the Russo Japanese war is full of hilarious acts of woeful incompetence from their leadership. Though you can’t help but feel sorry for the regular troops going to their doom.

      • Most would actually have been conscripts doing their mandatory service, but anyway… yeah, the old Imperial Russian military was a bad joke. Unlike its Communist successor it also didn’t learn from its mistakes and get better, which for that matter is one reason the Revolution came about in the first place.

        By all accounts the Russian military has consistently been rather unpleasant to serve in at least since Peter the Great, but at some periods it has at least been reasonably good at its actual job (usually despite the best efforts of the political leadership). The twilight decades of the Empire empathically weren’t one of those.

        • Actually, I would not call Imperial Russia military a “bad joke”. Even in WWI, in the process of reequipment and change of doctrine, they fared much better than Red Army in 1941.
          About Fleet? Actually First World War has quite few tales of heroism, both from regular sailors and officers. Much more than during WW2.
          And the whole “Whole fleet was Red” myth is, surprise, surprise, a myth. On some warships crews refused to send their officers away, and did it only when threatened with guns from “revolutionized” ships.

          And Soviet Fleet “learning” from their mistakes manifested itself mainly in staying in their ports for most of the war, after blood casualties of first months.

          • The last I checked the Russian Army was still failing with relentless determination in ’17 which had its part in bringing about the Revolution; the Red Army actually got its shit together rather quickly despite the lobotomisation of the Purges and the absolute faggotry of the early war.

            Put this way: Imperial Russia finished WW1 by completely coming apart at the seams, the USSR finished WW2 in Berlin and master over half of Europe. That says an awful lot about the institutional competence of their respective militaries, among other things.

            Also seriously failing to see how cases of individual heroism are supposed to be topical.

            • Well, both wars were vastly different, I wanted only to avoid oversimplification, like
              “lost the war = weak losers”, “reached Berlin = veteran supersoldiers”.
              Russian soldiers during WWI were regarded very highly by German High Command – they noticed outdated equipment, and average-only leadership, but soldiers themselves were generaly praised, as tough, reliable and able to survive in much worse conditions then their counterparts.

              About “institutional competence” – please remember, that Russians, despite their defeat at Tannenberg, still managed to utterly crush Austro-Hungary in first year of war. They were only stopped after desperate defense in Carpathians, and success of Limanowa-Łapanów Operation (where German reinforcements were needed). Austro-Hungary lost around 70% of its regular army in first year of war.

              About “individual heroism”.
              Let me put it that way – during WWI, we have interesting naval skirmishes in the Black Sea and Baltic, heroic tale of Battleship “Slava”, Admiral Kolchak and his mining excursions into the west Baltic, and so on.
              During WW2…
              Well, we have Marinesko. And almost no one else.
              Black Sea Fleet? Botched operations forced by STAVKA and/or Kuzniecow, Soviet ships blowning up on their own minefields, and finally spending most of the war in ports.
              Baltic Fleet? Sub after sub lost in 1940 and 1941, then complete inaction (beside artillery support for defenders) during Leningrad siege, and then some action in 1944-45 period, with biggest succeses against shipping, not warships.
              Northern Fleet? Fairytale upon fairytale. Heroic defense of soviet far north convoys (not Lend Lease ones, no) against herds of U-boots. That weren’t there. At all.
              My favourite story is about Soviet Navy HQ turning chance meeting of patrolling submarine with Tirpitz task force (sub fired some torpedoes at extreme range, Germans didn’t even noticed), into torpedo attack, that then turned into torpedoing of Tirpitz, that then turned into damaging it (and as I said, Germans didn’t even noticed the attack), that forced German task force back into the port (!). Which was utter bullshit, as even sub’s captain only noted in his log “seen Tirpitz, fired torpedoes, contact was lost after evading maneuvers”.

              The main problem is that Red Banner Navy had almost no action and no successes, and many embarassing defeats.
              So they started writing their own “history” after the war.

              • Austria-Hungary was almost as terminally shambles as the Russian Empire, so that don’t mean squat. And it was likewise torn apart by its own chronic incompetence.

                Why are you babbling about the soldiery in the first place? They were never the topic, and the WW2 “Frontoviks” survived at least as grueling conditions as their fathers anyway.

                As for the Navy, meh. Russia has ever been a continental empire and this changed not a whit under Communism. The Baltic was kind of a quiet theater in WW2 anyway and the Baltic Red fleet being kind of bottled up in Leningrad certainly didn’t add to the action, but AFAIK the Northern and Black Sea fleets made themselves quite useful – primarily by moving people and things around, playing fire support and especially in the Arctic being a real nuisance with opportunistic amphibious landings and raids.

                You want grand fleet actions, go to the Pacific.

    • Oh, I have bad news for you. In between world wars, Soviet engineers were busy drawing unconventional-class battleships (they didn’t sign it anyway). None were built of course, but hey, it’s WG. Brace yourself for the arrival of enormously overpowered paper avatars of the wrath of the People. *evil laugh*

      • …are you talking about the Sovetsky Soyuzes? Four of those were laid down too you know, though the design wasn’t *that* special – ‘merely’ in the Yamato/Montana ballpark. Certainly well short of the sheer titanic what-the-fuckery the German H-class proposals degenerated into…

  22. It’s absolutely normal thing for WG to write shit like this. It shows how mentally behind some of the staff is and it makes me smile. Keep doing this WG, you will only look more stupid with time lol.

  23. I would also mention Simo Hayha – best sniper in history. Took down 500 men (mostly NKVD and officers) with his rifle and another 200 with pistol. Russian called him White Death.

    • Pistol?? :D I think you mean Suomi-SMG? That NKVD & Officers part is pretty silly too, he shot all targets he got, many of his kills was made in defending fights against soviet infantry assaults.

      • The command echelon *is* a prime sniper target though, and doubtless this was doubly so in the Winter War as AFAIK removing the leadership tended to leave the grunts hunkering in their trenches for lack of orders. Which likely suited them just as well as us, the average Soviet trooper’s motivation to get killed in a stupid war whose claimed reasons made no sense to him by all accounts having been very low.

        Plus I understand the Finnish soldiers tended to view the political officers as slave-drivers who sent the grunts to die in droves in idiotic frontal assaults while themselves sitting back safe and sound, which actually wasn’t too far off and AFAIK a common enough opinion within the Red Army as well.

  24. I have an idea for a drinking game, take a sip everytime some wikipedia historian mentions Simo Häyhä or posts that not so accurate “finland be afraid”-image and see if you can make in the end of the day. Nevertheless wgs article entertainment value is golden and i hope i would know computers enough to be able use google translator and see what they think about article in commie forum.

  25. I’m famous!

    On a more serious note, I’ve been following FTR for a long time but I finally decided to make an actual account to personally thank SS for bringing this up for all his blog readers to see. That article was truly some of the worst bullshit I’ve ever had the chance to read and I couldn’t pass it by without commenting… a lot.

    Anyway, thanks!

  27. Hmmm… thats why we wont get infantry as a PVE opponent in WoT ! They would be able to disable the mighty russian tanks with … a CROWBAR :P

  28. Like our Croatian brothers and us the MF Serbs, Fins and Russians have their versions and both are just propaganda and lies :) :) :)

    In Croatian public, Serbs have invaded Croatia, and in Serbian public, Croats have invaded Serbia. This is very easy to explain and understand, we are the same kind of people, the same ethnic group and the same blood, so we are huge assholes, shiteaters, motherfuckers, scums, retards and lairs. The same goes for Fins and Russians, they are neighbors doing the same thing :) :) :)

    • Teknik’ly speaking we and the Russians are quite different ethnic groups actually, but anyway. The late-Empire Russification nonsesne and whole WW2 thing aside our neighbourly relationship has actually been relatively unproblematic (ie. just the usual mutual warring and raiding over the centuries) and the Czars actually considered us pretty much their least troublesome and best-behaved subjects.
      Hell.
      These days the Russian wealthy stratum has reverted to their 19th-century habit of coming here for vacations and whatnot and are probably the single most profit-generating tourist segment. I’m pretty sure quite a few of the luxury stores you can find in Helsinki would go under very quickly indeed if that lot stopped visiting…

  30. That sounds like a Tactical Finnish Victory and a Pyrrhic Russian Victory. How can you claim victory when most of your armor gets whipped like a dog and these small groups of troops keep you back? Open your eyes man. Even us poor americans admit when we screwed up, Takes 100 years but we get to it.

    • *shrug* The Soviets got everything they *really* wanted, which was securing the approaches of Leningrad and sundry lesser geostrategically convenient border adjustements. Taking Finland over wholesale was never a high priority and off the books by ’44.

      We, conversely, had to give up the sole natural chokepoint between the Russian heartlands and the alarmingly open and comparatively unobstructed southern Finnish coastal plain – there’s a reason why in both wars the high command was absolutely desperate to keep the Soviets from reaching it.

  32. Awwww…poor soviets. The finns bullied them and bombed them and they had no choice but to fight back to defend themselves, surely not to annex another country. And they bravely win the war with their might, losing only 5 times more troops than the evil finns.

    • At least in the Artillery museum in St. Petersburg, in the tiny section about the Finnish front, Finns are referred as fascist agressors. :)

      • To be fair, they were probably a little bitter over the whole Siege of Leningrad thing – however blatantly we now may have sat on our hands.

  34. Finland sided with the white army and attacked the Bolsheviks in the revolution, they had it coming.
    Stalin should have tested the tsar bomb in Finland, would be nice to taste some crisp Finnish meat.

    • you’re a very funny troll so i will only comment on the historical inaccuracies.

      - finland sided with nobody in the revolution and didn’t attack anyone, we simply became independent.
      - stalin died 8 years before the tsar bomba test.

      • The savage Fascists basically massacred the so called Reds which where nothing but poor people of Finland wanting better conditions.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

        Ops, looks like savage Fascist Finland is an evil nation that deserved to be annexed by USSR and not just give away some dirty territories that did not belong to Finland in the first place.

        Finland was a Swedish colony first, there never was a Finland until 1918.

        • Maybe look up what “Fascism” actually means? kthx.

          That aside, our ugly little domestic spat ranks at most “mediocre” in the scale of brutality for period civil strife and is entirely irrelevant for Fenno-Soviet relations and WW2, aside from the meaningless sideshow of the Terijoki Governement sockpuppets.
          Who, it should probably be noted, consisted of such Red Finnish leadership refugees as had dodged the Purges, AFAIK chiefly by the virtue of being sufficiently unthreatening nobodies.

          And get your facts straight, we were a Swedish *province*.

          Full disclosure: both my maternal and paternal ancestors were on the Red side.

            • “Fascism views political violence, war, and imperialism as a means to achieve national rejuvenation and asserts that stronger nations have the right to expand their territory by displacing weaker nations.”

              thank you for the article, that sounds like another nation we know.

            • Yeah, have fun explaining how *any* of that is relevant to Finnish political history. The Left was well represented in the very first general elections in ’19, our actual homegrown Fascist wannabes the Lapua Movement were summarily banned in ’32 after a downright farcical coup attempt, and we hold the somewhat questionable distinction of being the sole Axis combatant to have maintained a textbook parliamentary democracy throughout WW2.

              Also feel free to elaborate on that “colony” nonsense. Please. I *insist*.

            • “Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism”

              Hmmm, sounds strangely soviet :)

    • lels. The White generals had the Idiot Ball glued to their hands and roundly refused to accept the fait accompli of Finnish independence, whereas Lenin couldn’t recognise it fast enough (the Bolsheviks may actually have been the very first to do so) – the *last* thing he needed at the time was the White Finns fresh from winning our nasty little civil war breathing down his neck.

      There was some minor border skirmishing between over-enthusiastic “Greater Finland” militant groups and the Red Army a bit later, but as Helsinki wanted nothing to do with those yahoos and the Soviets had little trouble evicting them these “Tribal Wars” were of no consequence.

  35. Added to the pile of evidences of Soviet Bias™ in WoT

    The Finn must be pissed! Tbh its an idiot move for WG to soviet glorified
    This kind of crap should remain in the RUS webpage according to “How to Succeed in Russia market” by SerB
    or best of all never posted AT ALL

    • Eh, the article isn’t too bad. Kinda tries to tiptoe around the more embarassing bits with the usual euphemisms and gloss-overs but the basic facts are solid enough.
      The muddled geographical history is kinda funny though. As if the physical existence of the region referred to as Karelia, or the ishtmus between Ladoga and the Gulf, were dependent on political borders.

  36. “- “Finnish soldiers tended to use German helmets that had been issued to them as part of the German support to the war effort.”

    About half of the helmets Finland used in the Continuation War were given as an aid from Germany, but most of those weren’t German made. Germany sent about 175 000 helmets to Finland, which 75 000 were Hungarian, 50 000 Czech and the rest German. Finland also bought 80 000 German WW1 model helmets in 20′s.”

    AFAIK the Stahlhelm pattern was second only to the Casque Adrian in terms of interwar popularity, but anyway. (Wartime photographs sometimes have the random Soviet helmet mixed in incidentally – such recycling of booty is hardly surprising given the rather consistently parlous equipement situation of the Finnish army of the period.) It is, however, quite correct that the interwar Finnish army was strongly influenced by German examples although AFAIK our uniforms tended to be a fair bit more practical. This harks back to WW1 and the volunteer “Jägers” who’d fought Russia under the Germans and effectively formed the lower officer and NCO corps of the White Finns during the Civil War – not to neglect the direct material and military support the Germans provided (to wit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea_Division). Many of these returnees became career officers in the new Finnish military which naturally enough contributed to a certain Germanophilia, all the more so as Russia having turned into the USSR rather precluded a comparative influence by diverse ex-Czarist senior officers like Mannerheim.
    Plus, frankly, if *I* had to choose a role model between the Great War German and Russian armies it’d never even be a contest.

    Anyways, preferred helmet designs aside this was actually most visible in the style of the officer uniforms; for a number of practical reasons much of the actual military hardware, particularly small arms, was and for that matter remains today strongly Russian-derived.

  37. Not any different than your stories on Czechoslovakia/Czech Legion strong! articles you had during Red/White Russian civil war.

    Everyone sensationalizes stuff to their liking. Not much to see here.

  38. In what way was the continuation war not opportunistic? I think some people think the word has connotations it doesn’t actually have. The Finns took opportunity of the greatest war machine on the planet at that time invading their enemy to get their territory back. Opportunity taken = opportunist. Rights and wrongs have absolutely nothing to do with it.

    • Everything is about context.
      And in this context, “opportunist” has negative connotations, as in: “Those damned Finns are opportunists little bastards and outrageously attacked our glorious, liberating Stalin”

        • Oh, look who’s talking out of his ass again. “Opportunist” is used pejoratively more often than not. Since the article is blatantly biased against Finns, it’s obvious that exocet’s and SilentStalker’s interpretation of the meaning of this particular word is correct, but I can see why a person afflicted with autism would have trouble determining that – after all you’re not capable of comprehending the art of interpersonal communication.

          opportunist – someone who tries to get an advantage or something valuable from a situation without thinking about what is fair or right
          Synonyms
          chameleon, chancer [British], acrobat, temporizer, timeserver, trimmer, weathercock
          Related Words
          egoist, egotist, self-seeker; conniver, machinator, plotter, schemer
          Near Antonyms
          altruist

          • I take it besides being painfully stupid and a bad troll you’re unfamiliar with the concept of “Realpolitik”?

            Plus “opportunistic” is an entirely accurate descriptor of Finnish policy throughout the Continuation War. (Gave the Germans no small amount of gray hairs that.) Given that when the dust settled we were still independent and not a smoking ruin it was rather succesful too.

        • Actually “opportunistic” apparently does have negative connotations more than “taking opportunity” and i have been using it wrong my entire life. Oh well, learn something new every day and all that.

  39. My grandpa was a finn that fought in the war against USSR, he drove some kind of Pnz 35(t) that they probably got from the germans, also I still have his tank drivers helmet.

  40. Yes it was me who wrote he Flamethrowers article.

    However everyone is biased. The good articles try to keep that to a minimum.

    Hell I am biased, just count the number of articles I’ve stuck up focusing on the British. Now compare that to the other nations articles I’ve put up.
    I do try to mix things up every now and again, with something weird, but still. In my defence I did start out trying to talk about little known stories (including the two Finnish articles I’ve done), and most of my studies are on the UK armed forces.