Search results

If you look at the Finnish position in 1940 in detail, you will see that Finland was *totally alone*. Together, the Soviets and the Germans could practically blockade all Finnish routes of foreign trade. The British trade policies towards Finland were also practically increasingly hostile. Any...

It is the Baltic Sea. The enemy will use mines. Anyone building a navy for the Baltic knows this. The thing is, though, that both coastal defense ships and sea mines are mainly defensive weapons. You build them to work together, coastal defence ships being protected by mine barrages, operating...

Yes, we'll see how it all goes, COVID-19 sure has thrown a spanner into the works. The Meyer shipyard in Turku, as well as the German parent company, will see a few lean years at least as necessarily some orders will get cancelled and others postponed. The developments in China regarding cruise...

That Finns still build ships today is exactly due to specialization. Building cruise ships in Turku and icebreakers (and other Arctic vessels) in Helsinki has been a case of specializing in demanding, complex niche production where the Finns have been able to beat Korean, Japanese and Chinese...

You mean Finland should have chosen something like the path taken by the Baltic states? What they did was to accommodate Moscow's wishes, and look what it got them. Annexation and loss of independence for decades. I think you make the mistake of assuming that in 40-41 Finland could have chosen...

Your comment sort of betrays that you have not studied the Finnish position during WWII and the difficulty of being a sane, democratic nation caught between totalitarian giants, one of which attacked Finland first and was later the biggest existential threat to Finland while being allied with...

More support alone would not cut it. Mannerheim saw attacking Leningrad as too risky both militarily and politically, he was not going to bloody Finnish hands in that particular atrocity. Taking part in an invasion of Leningrad, in his view, would make it impossible for Finland to survive should...

A full regiment of Finnish volunteers joining the fight by February 1915? You've done a lot of work with the story, and kudos to you for that. But again it seems that you are rushing things. It would take longer to get a Finnish resistance movement going than just c. six months, at least to a...

The Finns would not attack Leningrad itself directly as long as Mannerheim is in charge. He was dead set against such an attack. Leningrad was Germany's responsibility, the Finns would not touch it.

Please note that the 22nd Corps had not received orders yet to leave the Grand Duchy IOTL before the Swedish declaration of war here. And it would not be ordered out of Finland in case of a war with Sweden ITTL, its whole raison d'etre being to protect Finland (and thus St. Petersburg) from a...

The Swedish still need to cross water to get to Finland. They can bring a lot of troops and materiel to the border, but still there's crossing the Tornio River at least to get to Finland which will be a serious bottleneck (like it was IOTL for any traffic between the Grand Duchy and neutral...

The Russians have a railway line up to Tornio and Kemi as well, so they are not that much behind in terms of logistics. On the other hand, the Swedish can't use captured Finnish rail lines to any real advantage before they capture enough locos and rolling stock, due to different gauge and there...

It is one thing to order a general mobilization, and another to complete it to the extent that you have an army to send to fight. Would the Swedish military of 1914 been ready to invade Russia in under three weeks from a cold start? I am sceptical, but clearly I would need to consult some...

This is interesting and I'll be following the thread. Are you sure that the Swedish military could be mobilized for actual operations so soon? As it is in this first chapter, it looks like Sweden was already fully mobilized before von Essen's attack, and thus could prepare for an offensive...

I agree that we can certainly improve things with artillery in the 30s. One thing to add from the top of my head would be using coastal artillery guns in railway batteries. J.L. Rikama, considered one of the top minds behind Finnish coastal artillery development in the interwar, had a plan of...

How do you manage to get the Finns to "comprehensively defeat" the February offensive? It is IMO impossible to increase Finnish readiness in late 1939 to such a degree that it will matter. As things stood, Finland was exceptionally ready to fight, its limited resources notwithstanding. We can...

I don't think there ever was such a belief. At best, I think that there was the mistaken belief/hope that Finland could bow out of the war with the pre-Winter War borders, in 43-44. But I think the Finnish leadership understood that if the USSR did beat Germany, Eastern Karelia would have to be...

A very good point. In the early WWII era, there were very few coastal areas in the world that were better protected by heavy and super-heavy coastal guns than the area just outside Helsinki. If the Finnish coastal artillery around Helsinki is manned and operational ITTL as much as IOTL, it...

Avoiding any and all measures that would be seen as Russification would be the only way to go. It would require incredible constraint on part of the Russian government, though. Likely a different, stronger tsar who understands that Finns are more loyal with their rights intact, and one that does...

Estonia: In 1922, ethnic Russians amounted to 8,2% of the Estonian population. In 1989, the number was 30,3%. Comparing these two points in time in absolute numbers, there was almost exactly as many ethnic Estonians in Estonia in 1989 as there was in 1922 (from 963K to 969K), but the number of...