What If - Finland had been prepared for the Winter War?
- Thread starter CanKiwi
- Start date
Ohhhh whoaaaa, it does date back a year or three doesn't it. That first post was back in February 2011, and the bulk of it was written over 2011-2014. Not a whole lot since then, for sure. Glad it made enough of an impression to remember though
Not a bad idea. I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't want to work there way through 50 odd pages of old posts. Might be a good way for me to get back into it as well, write a summary of where things are. Looking back, I can see a lot of the images I used have disappeared too. Sounds like a plan to me.
could you maybe restart the timeline make it flow way more and make a more clear timeline maybe?
maybe just a summary of the old page if they want a more detalied stuff but then just start from square one from pod 1 becuase correct me If I am wrong that you didn't except the pod to go back to the russian revolution right?
No, it starts in the early 1920's, altho there's references to earlier history, particularly the economic and social aspects. But the kickoff was the mid-1920's.
ah been a little while since an I read it any way really great timeline, one of the best I read in a while
That's great news my man.
I always had a particular soft spot for this series and I look forward to reading the novels!
I always had a particular soft spot for this series and I look forward to reading the novels!
Nice to see this is back! It's the first timeline I actively followed on this site. Quite the series you're planning.
That's IMO one of the reasons I gave up on this about 20 or so pages in. For a timeline about the winter war, there's a lot of research on a lot of obscure stuff, and little to no war.
The stuff is interesting in an academic sense, but at times it's honestly a real struggle to read at times. I'd honestly wondered if you had gotten to the point so many authors here and other forums get to and burned yourself out.
When I started this, I'd intended it to be background for a series of novels. Waaaay detailed background, and I got far more down into the weeds than I actually needed to out of sheer interest in all the different aspects of this. In the end, I actually got far more interested in building my fiction-writing skills, and went off doing writing workshops and working on fiction-writing in another couple of genres under a pseudonym, fairly successfully so far. Looking back over what I'd written, yes, a lot of research on obscure stuff, which was interesting for me, but mostly waaaaay detailed background for what I'd intended originally to be a rather fast-paced and action-oriented series of alternative history novels. Been re-reading, getting myself back into the frame of mind I was in when I was originally writing this. So no, not burned out so much as doing a reset. Definitely picking this up again in the very near future and continuing as background, but far faster moving, a lot less exhaustive detail, and much more oriented to getting my background lined up for the novels I'd been planning to write. Think a blend of WEB Griffin / Tom Kratman / John Ringo / Sven Hassel as what I'm shooting for as far as the novels are concerned, and I think over the last four or five years I've developed my fiction-writing skills enough to get close.
And so, yep, getting myself geared up to continue, but with a lot less detail and moving along rather faster.....
I have thought about what Finland could have done to get a better result and these are my ideas. I have not read all the 54 previous pages, but I doubt someone has thought of it.
So what Finland before the war could have done is focus a bit more on automatic weapons, during the war the SMGs proved very valuable with Finnish soldiers during the night jumping into trenches and and clearing them, sometimes with the Soviet soldiers looking forwards, with bolt action rifles, whilst the Finns came from the side inside the trench. And the Finns would also use ski troops to travel around in the snow quickly attacking and then moving away, with more automatic weapons, they can increase the number of such attacks. Travling in snow without skis or snowshoes is difficult and tiring. The Soviet soldiers did not have this equipment in anywhere near enough supply.
In this alternative version Finland begins to produce the Fedorov avtomat, and moderately tinkering with it. The Soviet leadership did not understand the value of SMGs, and definitely not proto assault rifles before the war so they would dismiss such a development and Stalin would attack in the same way.
Another big change Finland could have done is during the war focus even more on attacking field kitchens and the few tents the USSR had. During the war the Finns did attack field kitchens to lower morale, and the USSR had not given their soldiers winter uniforms, and there were no winter tents, in the best case scenario there were "normal" tents. This all lead to losses because of the weather.
If a person does not have shelter and no where enough food then in minus 40, which is the same in Fahrenheit and in Celsius, the person will not last a day and will die, unless they make several fires around them. There is a large chance that the commissars and officers will not allow the soldiers to do so because it gives away the location, which means death for the soldiers, and if they are allowed, then they can not move and need to be close to the fires, which means they are easier to attack.
So the Finnish strategy should have focused more on attacking field kitchens and tents. Even if the soldiers have food they can not consume it and the soldiers will die within a day in minus 40 unless they are allowed to make food and know how to construct shelter. If the Finns focus more on these supplies then there is less need to focus on the soldiers since they will day within a day.
And now comes the big change to history, a change that may allow Finland the chance to outright defeat the USSR.
What the Finns should have done is to say that they offer the Soviet people democracy, land and no Stalin. Each Soviet soldier could have been given a piece of land, and the Finns act as true liberators as they advance, offer full citizenship, equal rights and promising to give the land to the people.
In the OTL when the Germans invaded many Soviet citizens welcomed them as liberators, and then the Germans began with their plans of enslavement and extermination.
Now if the Finns offer land and freedom then the Soldiers might switch sides, these soldiers can be given land in Finland and / or, offered jobs. This may lead to a chain reaction where the armies collapse and the Finnish army can advance unopposed, which might mean that Stalin even tries to peace out, giving Finland all of the peninsula and maybe even more. There is a chance that Finland could take Leningrad and perhaps even the whole of the USSR, or accept the peace offer and take the peninsula.
In a nutshell the Finns offer full democracy, land and come as true liberators. Whilst in battle focusing on attacking field kitchen and shelter.
So what Finland before the war could have done is focus a bit more on automatic weapons, during the war the SMGs proved very valuable with Finnish soldiers during the night jumping into trenches and and clearing them, sometimes with the Soviet soldiers looking forwards, with bolt action rifles, whilst the Finns came from the side inside the trench. And the Finns would also use ski troops to travel around in the snow quickly attacking and then moving away, with more automatic weapons, they can increase the number of such attacks. Travling in snow without skis or snowshoes is difficult and tiring. The Soviet soldiers did not have this equipment in anywhere near enough supply.
In this alternative version Finland begins to produce the Fedorov avtomat, and moderately tinkering with it. The Soviet leadership did not understand the value of SMGs, and definitely not proto assault rifles before the war so they would dismiss such a development and Stalin would attack in the same way.
Another big change Finland could have done is during the war focus even more on attacking field kitchens and the few tents the USSR had. During the war the Finns did attack field kitchens to lower morale, and the USSR had not given their soldiers winter uniforms, and there were no winter tents, in the best case scenario there were "normal" tents. This all lead to losses because of the weather.
If a person does not have shelter and no where enough food then in minus 40, which is the same in Fahrenheit and in Celsius, the person will not last a day and will die, unless they make several fires around them. There is a large chance that the commissars and officers will not allow the soldiers to do so because it gives away the location, which means death for the soldiers, and if they are allowed, then they can not move and need to be close to the fires, which means they are easier to attack.
So the Finnish strategy should have focused more on attacking field kitchens and tents. Even if the soldiers have food they can not consume it and the soldiers will die within a day in minus 40 unless they are allowed to make food and know how to construct shelter. If the Finns focus more on these supplies then there is less need to focus on the soldiers since they will day within a day.
And now comes the big change to history, a change that may allow Finland the chance to outright defeat the USSR.
What the Finns should have done is to say that they offer the Soviet people democracy, land and no Stalin. Each Soviet soldier could have been given a piece of land, and the Finns act as true liberators as they advance, offer full citizenship, equal rights and promising to give the land to the people.
In the OTL when the Germans invaded many Soviet citizens welcomed them as liberators, and then the Germans began with their plans of enslavement and extermination.
Now if the Finns offer land and freedom then the Soldiers might switch sides, these soldiers can be given land in Finland and / or, offered jobs. This may lead to a chain reaction where the armies collapse and the Finnish army can advance unopposed, which might mean that Stalin even tries to peace out, giving Finland all of the peninsula and maybe even more. There is a chance that Finland could take Leningrad and perhaps even the whole of the USSR, or accept the peace offer and take the peninsula.
In a nutshell the Finns offer full democracy, land and come as true liberators. Whilst in battle focusing on attacking field kitchen and shelter.
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In the end, there would have been a lot more than that, and that's what the previous 54 pages was working towards. Finland's army was majorly outnumbered and outgunned, as was their air force, and yet the Winter War ended with Finland unoccupied. As did WW2. Helsinki was one of only three European capitals of a combatant in WW2 Europe that was NOT occupied by the enemy. The other two were Moscow and London. For a small peripheral country, that tells you a lot all by itself. Even Stalin wasn't prepared to take the losses that conquering Finland outright would've involved.
The whole basis of the previous 54 pages was geared towards a scenario where Finland could've taken on the USSR, and not so much won, as brought the Winter War to a satisfactory conclusion for Finland. The follow-on scenario was where Finland joined the Allies in the war against Germany, starting with E-Day - the invasion of Estonia, and the race down the Baltic coast, into Poland, and a right hook in to Germany and on to Berlin, where Finnish soldiers raised the Finnish flag. Now, you ask yourself, how could Finland do that? There's a huge range of factors that would be involved. Industry. Weapons. Manpower. Tactics. Strategy, Military experience. That was what I was attempting to pull together in the background.
The gist of the 54 pages has been an economic boom in Finland post-WW1, with Finland largely bootstrapping itself up, and you have to look at all sorts of factors there. Power. Metallurgical industries. Steel and all the rest of it. Trade. Industrial manpower, and I'd worked in greater ties to Estonia, with those linguistic and cultural ties. At the same time, Finland would have to devote mych more attention and financing to the military, and to the needs of the military - and I'd worked through a lot of the weapons the Army would need - Suomi SMG's, machineguns, semi-automatic rifles, artillery, flamethrowers, as well as the Navy and Air Force. I was working my way through tanks and AFV's when I took a break, so I'll put together a summary of what was in place and then resume...
Finland changing its history and attacking Germany is an interesting idea.
However I like my idea more
Finland focuses a bit more on autmatic weapons, and offers all Soviet citizens democracy and possibly installs democracy in all of the USSR, and at the very least gets the whole penisula