Happy Independence day

[JohnT]

Capitalist plots.

[Kassiopeia]

Unfortunately we refused it for fear of angering our Soviet overlords.

[Footie Mad]

A great text for the rightful heroes that deserve praise Pekka! In a way that victory against the Soviets is what kept the rest of the nordic countries from being made subordinate states to the russians. I wrote a paper on the finnish winter war way back and it was truely a great acheivement.

[Mao]

...your paper or the actual war?

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Japher
Finland is being renamed to Funland!

I betcha that would increase tourism.

But in the meantime: Hoorah for independence!!

[Pekka]

Well, the party is done and .. it was the usual. Kind of boring, with a taste of traitorism of leftist and rightist way. I personally agree with both of the critique voices from left and right about the practices this party holds.

What those are, I'll go to them later tomorrow etc.

[Ljube]

One of the founding fathers of Finland was a distinguished Russian General and later White-Russian Monarchist who became Regent of Finland. The funny thing about him is that he was of Swedish origin.

One cannot help but wonder if Finland would ever have become independent if Russia had not turned communist.

Still, happy Independence Day.


Could some of you provide a more detailed insight about Carl Gustaf Mannerheim and the turbulent years 1917, 1918 and 1919?

[Ljube]

If we're talking about veterans, perhaps a more remarkable was the feat of the Finnish army performed during the winter 1939-40. Then the whole Russian Red Army was held off for 3 months by a handful of Finnish defenders led once again by their inspired commander Mannerheim. Russian losses in men and material were catastrophic, but Finnish losses, though ten times smaller in numbers were nevertheless more difficult to compensate. This led to the ultimate Finnish defeat. Still, Russian victory in that war can only be called Pyrrhic, while Finnish loss undoubtedly deserves to be called heroic.

[Pekka]

Yeah Mannerheim was indeed someone with interesting .. tihngs, very accomplished man, and was also that in Russia. So it's interesting.. many stories.

http://www.mannerheim.fi/

check that out, it has stuff in many languages so you should find something.

To us the loss is victory. No one ever occupied us. Of course there is another debate about Finlandization, but that's another topic. That can be victory to us, while big armies were sweeping over countries back and forth, so it was victory for us to be able to just keep things normal.

And what we count as strategical victory in military terms is also that by winning many of the battles and making it tough for both sides, even though we did have to give up and would have been crushed at some point anyway, that the fight was tough so Stalin didn't particularly want to fight either, anymore. And that is the strategy today, we can't win anyone with normal definition of victory, but the idea is to make invasion or any kind of attack expensive to extent that it's not worth it. Not worth all the trouble.. so.. I think in those terms back then it was almost total victory.

But SU also won so hey, they say that in war there are no winners, in that match up there was two winners!

[Saras]

Finland standing up and fighting Soviets
Wussie, Soviet-paid Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian governments fleeing at first bullying by Stalin

[Pekka]

well there's always the next time

[laurentius]

I think it would have been suicide for the Baltic nations to try to fight back the Soviets. I'd rather see you guys alive and independent now than dead and heroic then

[Saras]

Well, at least ultranationalist Russian revisionists like Serb would not be able to say that we voluntarily joined, eh? That has to count for something