[MRM]

Originally Posted by stuartj

Thanks, good write up. Certainly colourful.

It was a disgraceful gap im my knowledge, I had never realised till a few years ago till visiting Finland that it was allied to Nazi Germany during WW2, that Britain declared war on it. Not sure about the US. Certainly a special case, strange fellows, as the Finns were fighting the invading Russians. Fascinating country and history.

Oh Beygon, I think you are projecting. This is just a topical post about an interesting historical character defending his home from an invading power that may have been of some interest. Clearly not to you, and that's fine. Carry on.

It's disgraceful that you're so uneducated and stupid that you think that Finland was allied with Nazi Germany during WWII. Your grammar and punctuation are beyond disgrace, even more than usual, along with your usual lack of critical thinking and insistence on trolling.

Simo Häyhä is well known to even causal students of military history. A quiet, soft-spoken carpenter, his hobby before the war was carpentry, making cabinets for his many shooting trophies.

You might want to Google something called the Winter War some time. I'm not surprised you don't know about it because the gaps in your knowledge would fill volumes. Allow me to give you a brief primer. It was a precursor to WWII, if you subscribe to the theory that WWII started with the invasion of Poland. But it is rightly understood as one of the first battles of WWII in which the Soviet Union invaded Finland, partly to gain its ports and natural resources but even more to set an example to Germany and the western European powers that the Soviets had the might and the will to roll over anyone who resisted them.

The Finns declined the opportunity to be steamrolled and had the distasteful lack of grace to fight back against their one world government neighbors. The western governments were afraid to antagonize the Soviets and placed an embargo on them. Americans trying to travel to Finland to fight for the Finns were subject to arrest (as were Americans who tried to join the Battle of Britain) and the Finns turned down the Nazi's offer of assistance. Yes, the Finns turned down the Nazi's offer of assistance even while the western powers sacrificed the Finns to the Greater Good and Joseph Stalin.

For 90 days over the bitter winter of 1939-1940 the Finns fought the Soviets to a standstill because of the valor of ordinary citizens like Häyhä. No matter his duties, whenever he was able he would put on his sniper kit and "go hunting Russians". Surely you recognize him as a hero. "But if you're on the roof of your home defending it from invaders who've come 7K miles, you are not a sniper, u are brave, u are a neighbor." Right?

By the end of the Winter War the Finns had something in the 25,000 total casualty figure and the Russians something in the 350,000 range. Quite a catastrophe for 90 days. Most military historians credit the lessons learned by the Russians in this engagement to the tactics they eventually were able to use successfully against the Nazis, just as the Nazis discovered effective fighting tactics in the Spanish Civil War.

You have certainly heard of the general in charge of the Finnish invasion. His name was Molotov. It turned out that Soviet tanks had a fatal flaw in their design. If you broke a flaming bottle of gasoline over the air intake of a Soviet tank, it would suck the fire into the tank and cause it to explode. Quite a mixed drink, that was. Some still call it a Molotov Cocktail.

At the end of the Winter War the Soviets occupied the Karelia Peninsula and significant parts of the eastern half of the country, but the population was intact and it fled Soviet rule and resettled to the west.

As WWII continued the Soviets continued to menace Finland even as the Nazis fought the Soviets on the eastern front. The Nazis never had the resources or strategic desire to invade Finland, so they entered into a tacit agreement with the Finns that they would maintain lines against the Soviets. Therefore the Finns and Nazis had lines next to each other and never attacked each other, as they fought the Soviets. All the while the western powers denied the Finns of war material our of fear of the Soviets.

So it's a bit of a stretch to say that the Finns were allies with the Nazis. It's more correct to say that the Finns were one of the few countries in the history of the world to stand up to all the major powers in a world-wide dispute and insist on their own sovereignty. Almost every other country that has fought a war of liberation has been a proxy of another of the world's great powers. Not the Finns. They weren't pawns in an international game of diplomatic chess. And neither was Häyhä.

We have Finns here in Minnesota, more than a few who immigrated since WWII. Whenever I meet one of them I try to buy them a drink. If circumstances fail, I try to do something else to be nice to them. I'd buy the whole country a drink if I could, and the descendants of Häyhä deserve their own distilleries.