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I believe terrain is rather crucial: in effect most fighting happened in a giant forest with very few and bad roads. There I think Finns were by far the best soldiers around - Germans actually did pityfully badly in 1941 in the north clogging the roads with their heavy equipment with Finns...

[/LIST] Yes, pretty much this. In OTL Finns were absolutely desperate in the summer of 1940, and were constantly fearing a Soviet ultimatum and invasion (which likely would have come had Germany invaded Britain). The problem was not only that both Germany and the Soviet Union wanted Finland to...

Not being Nazis might have helped a lot: not coming offering a genocide but peace and prosperity and religion for the oppressed Soviet masses, genuine independence for Ukraine, Belarus and the Caucasus republics and the Balts. Though had they not been Nazis they probably wouldn't have invaded in...

I just hate having missed this crazily good tl! For some reason I thought it was about an even more failed Schlieffen Plan which didn't sound that interesting, and I even thought that I had taken a look, so idiotic... Have now been reading it for a day and am halfway done. This is one the very...

Well, knowing what Bush did iotl I think we can safely add Iraq to the list...

This is really is the still point of that century, almost mythical - such a random thing, random meeting at a street corner. And so random that it doesn't really feel right to invest such huge, still unfolding meaning to such a small moment. But what else can we think? Yes, there could have...

It's just so difficult even to imagine a neutral Finland so very close to raging world war - Hanko and Petsamo come first to mind, but not only them. It would have needed to be absolutely an armed to the teeth neutrality with at the same time being almost totally dependent on either Germany or...

Well, yes, thank you for that, I think I somehow knew it - but in Finland, I'm afraid, people routinely say England instead of Britain, which does sound rather overly fancy in Finnish anyway (Englanti vs Britannia). I believe rather a common mistake abroad. I'll try to mend my ways!

Well, Finland actually was the "last unfilled part" of the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty as Molotov reminded Hitler in November 1940 - and up till January-February 1941 Finland was under intense pressure from the Soviet Union. It was widely thought that had Germany invaded Britain in the summer of...

Yeah, fair enough, but it is quite rare that one sees a timeline that is still rather, well, current... For a Finn this is not a remote subject - I myself have not been worried for two decades, but I am now. Russia does not seem to be predictable any longer, and it's going to have a severe...

Off-topic comment but following the news, it still could happen... Strange how quickly things can change, bitterly cold eastern winds in Europe currently.

Well, most earlier critics of Elizabeth criticized her for not going all out in the Netherlands. In fact, she didn't go all out pretty much in anything. For a premodern monarch that's pretty good. I think that also her posthumous reputation tells us something - she wasn't much mourned at all...

This is already beyond my paygrade, but maybe several years of favourable economic conditions (instead of a nightmare war) would have led to economic diversification and strengthening of the civil society. Though, of course, any profound historical change would have been beyond the "powers" of...

Well, I'm no expert but there certainly has been a strong argument for the Russian economy having been very much on the upswing. If that is the case, the semi-feudal state would certainly have been under strain nevertheless, but the reaction against it would surely not have been as pathological...

With the bulk of the forces committed elsewhere I really don't see running through the forests and lakes this fast... The Soviets were really not that good in attacking in those early years and the Finnish military was actually much strengthened after the Winter War (Germany released the arms...

Great and rather scary stuff! What is quite strange that this is from this year and not totally far fetched as a scenario for our time - it has become rather freezing in Europe in quite a short time. Would have been quite poignant for a great European (or likely World) war starting in August...

Well, I believe that the Caribbean sugar plantations for example were rather horrid places - in a different category perhaps than say the traditional African and Middle Eastern kind of slavery, but I must say that I don't know much about the subject. But I think there are rather authoritative...

Impressive, very impressive. Lots of kudos to you! Quite chilling too - I'm old enough to remember that last big freeze of the early 80's before the Cold War finally thawed: the atmosphere was really different those times, nuclear war was not a distant subject on people's minds...

Well, to be honest, I really can't see a Red Finland that would remain even nominally independent for long. It is practically impossible to imagine a "People's Government" that would not need prolonged terror and in concequence strong Soviet support to keep in power, or then it would need to...

Yep, it's hard to see a realistic socialist victory. They would have needed to be much better prepared and much, much more ruthless, but had they been that it would have been quite a different Finland too.