My 'different twentiet'h century' and Stalin attacks first TLs aren't real that good for various reasons. The former has turned into a bit of a flame thread and is admittedly a little far fetched. In the latter the outcome is rather clear: USSR is screwed with deus ex nukina. Hence this timeline which will be an evil wank of sorts.
The Winter War would prove to be – even though the minor conflict didn’t seem so at the time – one of the major turning points in the history of humanity. This took place against the background of the war between France and Britain on one hand and Germany on the other after the latter’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. Germany was under the rule of National Socialist dictator Adolf Hitler who had risen to power in 1933 by means of demagoguery to attain massive popular vote in which this intelligent and cunning propagandist prowes had succeeded all too well by appealing to popular sentiment against which the weak Weimar government couldn’t compete. The economic downturn after 1929 had hit Germany even harder as it was burdened by war reparations which, coupled with an enormous sense of national humiliation after the loss in World War I and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, led to the rise of a totalitarian regime which arguably controlled Germany fully by 1939. The regime of the other ‘great dictator’ Joseph Stalin had risen from the ashes of the Russian Empire which had collapsed during the same First World War. Stalin had risen by using the party apparatus in his position of secretary-general of the communist party which enabled him to influence the distribution of high party positions among temporary allies and his supporters. By 1928 he was already incredibly powerful, powerful enough to end Lenin’s New Economic Policy and institute a command economy to rapidly modernize and industrialize the Soviet Union. This included the collectivization of agriculture, resulting in a famine that had seven million victims, mostly in the Ukraine and the south of the country. The Five Year Plan was pressed on by Stalin regardless with astounding result such as 100% production increases in certain sectors. Hitler and Stalin were archenemies apart from their temporary alliance to carve up Poland and they knew it. Events, however, would force them together.
Stalin knew war was coming which he hinted to the Finnish. He wasn’t going to wait and would rather move his border forward. As part of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact, Finland was in his sphere of influence and so he put forward territorial demands. He suggested that Finland cede or lease several islands in the Finnish Gulf on the approach to Leningrad to the Soviet Union and the Hanko Peninsula where he wanted to create a naval base. The Finns had witnessed the purges in which 35.000 Soviet officers and millions of others had perished. They had also seen the brutality with which Moscow had quelled the opposition of the kulaks to the collectivization. They were unimpressed by Soviet demands, untrusting and stated their neutrality in any Soviet-German conflict. They refused Soviet demands and negotiations were broken off. The situation escalated into war with the shelling of Mainila on November 26th 1939. War was soon declared by the Soviet Union where the leadership was rather confident of victory in spite of the fact that the Red Army had been fatally weakened by the purges of 1937. Helsinki was bombed and Soviet forces crossed the border on November 30th. The Red Army indeed performed poorly as some had feared although they manage to reach the Mannerheim line by December 7th, by which time the League of Nations was planning to (symbolically) expel the USSR. Here, Finland successfully stalled the Soviet advance while engaging in guerrilla tactics elsewhere, attacking Soviet columns on skis no less and this in spite of Soviet superiority in tanks, aircraft, machine guns, artillery and anti-tank weapons they held them back.
The Allies, in the meantime, were contemplating a suited response to this latest totalitarian aggression. They were hardly impressed by Soviet military prowess so they believed that a significant expeditionary force to Finland or perhaps some sign of disapproval like a bombing of Baku would cow Stalin into making peace with the Finns. By January 1940, Finnish forces had already scored a number of decisive victories despite inferior numbers and equipment, but in early February the Soviets began an all-out offensive on the Karelian Isthmus to overcome the powerful Mannerheim line which led to a Franco-British agreement to support Finland as well. Against common sense – as if fighting Nazi Germany wasn't already enough of a challenge – British bombers took off from Iraq and crossed into Turkish airspace (with the latter’s permission) to bomb Baku on the Caspian Sea which was a very large oil production centre. The bombing was preceded only barely by an Allied declaration of war. Stalin raged and fumed against his advisors who had told him that the Allies wouldn’t intervene yet and that therefore there weren’t any war plans against them. Hitler tried to take this chance immediately and offered to make peace with the west, but he was rebuffed since he refused to restore his 1939 borders with the Poles. He thundered about the decadence and idiocy of the liberal democracies who now forced him to ally with his arch nemesis, the communist Soviet Union. Reluctantly he ordered contacts to be made for a concerted effort against Britain and France, hoping to get Stalin embroiled in Persia and India, saying: “I will deal with Stalin when we’re finished here.”
Britain and France temporarily enhanced their stature in the international theatre as defenders of democracy and freedom against the fascist-communist hordes, but their next move to save at least Finland where they had failed to do so for Poland would have them come crashing down from their moral pedestal. The bombing didn’t affect the battle on the Karelian Isthmus where the Red Army broke through the Mannerheim Line on February 11th. Paris and London were very desperate to prevent the fall of Finland which now seemed a mere weeks away at best with the country’s main defensive line broken. Sweden and Norway refused to let French and British forces pass through their territory since they feared a joint Soviet-German invasion. Coincidentally, Sweden also provided Germany with iron ore which it needed to build tanks, rifles, locomotives, train cars, machine guns, mortars and other implements of war. The Swedish harbour of Lulea was frozen for a large part of the year so the valuable iron ore had to come through the Norse harbour of Narvik. This provided Britain and France with a solid strategic reason to invade Norway and seize the Swedish iron ore deposits and cripple the German war effort and support Finland as well with a 35.000 strong expeditionary force. Plan R 4 commenced without further delay on April 5th 1940 just as Soviet forces captured Vyborg on the Finnish Gulf. The decision to invade Norway was sound militarily, but was another political blunder, even more so than the declaration of war against Moscow which had widely been seen as valid unlike this one. HMS Renown started mining Norse waters to provoke the Germans, but also violate Norwegian neutrality. On April 7th, an 18.000 strong Franco-British force landed in Narvik. Hitler was awoken to the news and he ordered Operation Weserübung to begin immediately. Denmark surrendered almost immediately. German naval forces disembarked troops in Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand under the pretext of fighting Anglo-French aggression. This was indeed the picture among neutrals. They saw the invasion of a fellow neutral as unprovoked aggression and favour shifted in favour of Germany. The Oscarsborg Fortress with its old 28 cm Krupp guns didn’t fire and Oslo was secure within twenty-four hours as were the other cities. The Norwegian army was in a state of utter confusion and chaos about who was the enemy. Resistance was sporadic and uncoordinated. Vidkun Quisling and his Nasjonal Samling seized radio stations all over the country, beginning broadcasts in which they urged the population to welcome the German liberators and resist the French and British aggressors. Due to the confusion, German forces seized everything up to fifty kilometres south of Narvik, confining the Allies to the northern part of the country even though they utilized the mountainous features of the country for a strong defence. The pocket would hold until the fall of Finland in June. With May coming, Germany was planning for a final blow against France, this time with Soviet support.
The Great Mistake
Chapter I: Stupidity Galore!, November 1939 - April 1940.
The Winter War would prove to be – even though the minor conflict didn’t seem so at the time – one of the major turning points in the history of humanity. This took place against the background of the war between France and Britain on one hand and Germany on the other after the latter’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. Germany was under the rule of National Socialist dictator Adolf Hitler who had risen to power in 1933 by means of demagoguery to attain massive popular vote in which this intelligent and cunning propagandist prowes had succeeded all too well by appealing to popular sentiment against which the weak Weimar government couldn’t compete. The economic downturn after 1929 had hit Germany even harder as it was burdened by war reparations which, coupled with an enormous sense of national humiliation after the loss in World War I and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, led to the rise of a totalitarian regime which arguably controlled Germany fully by 1939. The regime of the other ‘great dictator’ Joseph Stalin had risen from the ashes of the Russian Empire which had collapsed during the same First World War. Stalin had risen by using the party apparatus in his position of secretary-general of the communist party which enabled him to influence the distribution of high party positions among temporary allies and his supporters. By 1928 he was already incredibly powerful, powerful enough to end Lenin’s New Economic Policy and institute a command economy to rapidly modernize and industrialize the Soviet Union. This included the collectivization of agriculture, resulting in a famine that had seven million victims, mostly in the Ukraine and the south of the country. The Five Year Plan was pressed on by Stalin regardless with astounding result such as 100% production increases in certain sectors. Hitler and Stalin were archenemies apart from their temporary alliance to carve up Poland and they knew it. Events, however, would force them together.
Stalin knew war was coming which he hinted to the Finnish. He wasn’t going to wait and would rather move his border forward. As part of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact, Finland was in his sphere of influence and so he put forward territorial demands. He suggested that Finland cede or lease several islands in the Finnish Gulf on the approach to Leningrad to the Soviet Union and the Hanko Peninsula where he wanted to create a naval base. The Finns had witnessed the purges in which 35.000 Soviet officers and millions of others had perished. They had also seen the brutality with which Moscow had quelled the opposition of the kulaks to the collectivization. They were unimpressed by Soviet demands, untrusting and stated their neutrality in any Soviet-German conflict. They refused Soviet demands and negotiations were broken off. The situation escalated into war with the shelling of Mainila on November 26th 1939. War was soon declared by the Soviet Union where the leadership was rather confident of victory in spite of the fact that the Red Army had been fatally weakened by the purges of 1937. Helsinki was bombed and Soviet forces crossed the border on November 30th. The Red Army indeed performed poorly as some had feared although they manage to reach the Mannerheim line by December 7th, by which time the League of Nations was planning to (symbolically) expel the USSR. Here, Finland successfully stalled the Soviet advance while engaging in guerrilla tactics elsewhere, attacking Soviet columns on skis no less and this in spite of Soviet superiority in tanks, aircraft, machine guns, artillery and anti-tank weapons they held them back.
The Allies, in the meantime, were contemplating a suited response to this latest totalitarian aggression. They were hardly impressed by Soviet military prowess so they believed that a significant expeditionary force to Finland or perhaps some sign of disapproval like a bombing of Baku would cow Stalin into making peace with the Finns. By January 1940, Finnish forces had already scored a number of decisive victories despite inferior numbers and equipment, but in early February the Soviets began an all-out offensive on the Karelian Isthmus to overcome the powerful Mannerheim line which led to a Franco-British agreement to support Finland as well. Against common sense – as if fighting Nazi Germany wasn't already enough of a challenge – British bombers took off from Iraq and crossed into Turkish airspace (with the latter’s permission) to bomb Baku on the Caspian Sea which was a very large oil production centre. The bombing was preceded only barely by an Allied declaration of war. Stalin raged and fumed against his advisors who had told him that the Allies wouldn’t intervene yet and that therefore there weren’t any war plans against them. Hitler tried to take this chance immediately and offered to make peace with the west, but he was rebuffed since he refused to restore his 1939 borders with the Poles. He thundered about the decadence and idiocy of the liberal democracies who now forced him to ally with his arch nemesis, the communist Soviet Union. Reluctantly he ordered contacts to be made for a concerted effort against Britain and France, hoping to get Stalin embroiled in Persia and India, saying: “I will deal with Stalin when we’re finished here.”
Britain and France temporarily enhanced their stature in the international theatre as defenders of democracy and freedom against the fascist-communist hordes, but their next move to save at least Finland where they had failed to do so for Poland would have them come crashing down from their moral pedestal. The bombing didn’t affect the battle on the Karelian Isthmus where the Red Army broke through the Mannerheim Line on February 11th. Paris and London were very desperate to prevent the fall of Finland which now seemed a mere weeks away at best with the country’s main defensive line broken. Sweden and Norway refused to let French and British forces pass through their territory since they feared a joint Soviet-German invasion. Coincidentally, Sweden also provided Germany with iron ore which it needed to build tanks, rifles, locomotives, train cars, machine guns, mortars and other implements of war. The Swedish harbour of Lulea was frozen for a large part of the year so the valuable iron ore had to come through the Norse harbour of Narvik. This provided Britain and France with a solid strategic reason to invade Norway and seize the Swedish iron ore deposits and cripple the German war effort and support Finland as well with a 35.000 strong expeditionary force. Plan R 4 commenced without further delay on April 5th 1940 just as Soviet forces captured Vyborg on the Finnish Gulf. The decision to invade Norway was sound militarily, but was another political blunder, even more so than the declaration of war against Moscow which had widely been seen as valid unlike this one. HMS Renown started mining Norse waters to provoke the Germans, but also violate Norwegian neutrality. On April 7th, an 18.000 strong Franco-British force landed in Narvik. Hitler was awoken to the news and he ordered Operation Weserübung to begin immediately. Denmark surrendered almost immediately. German naval forces disembarked troops in Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand under the pretext of fighting Anglo-French aggression. This was indeed the picture among neutrals. They saw the invasion of a fellow neutral as unprovoked aggression and favour shifted in favour of Germany. The Oscarsborg Fortress with its old 28 cm Krupp guns didn’t fire and Oslo was secure within twenty-four hours as were the other cities. The Norwegian army was in a state of utter confusion and chaos about who was the enemy. Resistance was sporadic and uncoordinated. Vidkun Quisling and his Nasjonal Samling seized radio stations all over the country, beginning broadcasts in which they urged the population to welcome the German liberators and resist the French and British aggressors. Due to the confusion, German forces seized everything up to fifty kilometres south of Narvik, confining the Allies to the northern part of the country even though they utilized the mountainous features of the country for a strong defence. The pocket would hold until the fall of Finland in June. With May coming, Germany was planning for a final blow against France, this time with Soviet support.
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