How well could Finland realistically perform in the war for liberation of areas lost in the Winter War, from a tactical and strategic point? Were there any missed opportunities or mistakes that were avoidable? Ultimate question: could Finland establish a defense along the Three Isthmuses?
Best possible performance of Finland in the Continuation War?
- Thread starter Changundramon
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IMO Finland's successes early in the campaign had far more to do with Russian 'gross' errors in leadership, strategy and tactics.
Aside from that Finlands army despite its lack of equipment etc did very well - so it hard to see them doing 'better' unless the Russians do even worse!
Deleted member 1487
What are you referring to? They attacked it IOTL and lost.
There wasn't anything major that I can think of as far as realistic improvements go, but the biggest thing they could have done differently strategically is not restricting their attack on Leningrad. Stopping short in 1941 probably ensured they'd lose all else being the same. They wouldn't have had to actually attack the city, just not stop at the 1939 border and thus divert vital Soviet forces when the city at at risk of falling.
Somehow get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to approve the landing to the Arctic coast of Norway, trapping the Germans to Lapland and allowing Western Allies to occupy Finland as the Finns hoped the US would do: https://faravid.journal.fi/article/download/91901/50710/
Deleted member 1487
Which one? AFAIK the reason it was cancelled was logistics, something that could only be solved by conquering Leningrad first.
History Learner
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My understanding it was more a matter of the troops tied down on the Isthmus.
you do realize the Americans threathened to declare war on Finland if they interfered with the lend-lease supplies right? Allied bombing would have decimated Finland and made its ability to fight off the Soviets later on impossible.
In my opinion it was a miracle the Finnish managed to sign a peace deal with the Soviets.
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History Learner
Banned
There are no Allied bombers in service that can reach Finland. If the Finns cut the railway, it's likely the USSR will start to collapse in 1942 and then fall apart in 1943.
because 1 lend-lease route is forced to transfer to Archangelsk? How does that collapse the Soviet union?
History Learner
Banned
Because Archangelsk is closed in the winter and is undergoing a port expansion until 1943; even post expansion, it cannot make up for the loss of Murmansk.
Many convoys arrived in Archangelsk in the winters. They redirected ships to nearby Severodvinsk as well. They had allied craneships anchored there to help unloading.
Have you ever seen the percentages of the Lend-Lease routes i.e. how much each route carried?
There you go. The Murmansk/Arkhangelsk route provided only the third most shipments to the Soviet Union, after the Persian Gulf and Soviet Far East routes. Losing Murmansk would hurt but it wouldn't be a killing blow that would neither knock the Soviets out of the war or bleed them out.
It would heavily attrition the Finnish Army because the Soviets would actively counterattack to reopen the White Sea coast. This might actually allow the Finns to gain a more realistic view of the steadily improving Soviet operational capabilities, but such battles might wear down the forces that in OTL formed the last reserves that allowed Finns to check the Soviet breakthrough attempts at Tali-Ihantala. What is important is that it would firmly place Finland to a state of war with the United States - and this was something the Finnish political leadership and Marshal Mannerheim were not willing to risk. Many generals wanted to go ahead, though.
Back in the Karelian Isthmus in summer 1944 a potential PODs would be to make the Finns to put more emphasis to VT line with more forces and fortifications instead of focusing the same efforts to Karhumäki (Медвежьего́рск ) isthmus. This might stop the Soviets earlier on with lesser casualties than in OTL - the VKT-line was just hastily dug trenches and the forces engaged suffered grievous attrition in the ensuing artillery battles. Or alternatively the Soviets would still break through, and this time the Finns would not have anything left to plug the gaps. Like people have posted above, the OTL result was among the most optimistic realistically possible outcomes of the war.
History Learner
Banned
I'm very well aware of the overall total. Let us look at the relevant timeframe:
1941: 360,778t, of which 13,502t Persian Gulf, 193,229t Soviet Far East, 153,977t North Russia.
1942: 2,453,097t of which 705,259t Persian Gulf, 734,020 Soviet Far East, 949,711 North Russia, 64,107 Soviet Artic.
1943: 4,794,545t of which 1,606,979 Persian Gulf, 2,388,577 Soviet Far East, 681,043 North Russia, 117,946 Soviet Artic.
1944: 6,217,622t of which 1,788,864 Persian Gulf, 2,848,181 Soviet Far East, 1,452,775 North Russia, 127,802 Soviet Artic.
1945 3,673,819t (last shipments 20 Sept) of which: 44,513 Persian Gulf, 2,079,320 Soviet Far East, 726,725 North Russia, 680,723 Black Sea, 142,538 Soviet Artic.
In 1942, the Northern Route thus accounted for ~40% of Lend Lease totals. Why is this important? The USSR and Total War: Why Didn’t the Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942? by Mark Harrison:
Roosevelt also contributed to Soviet stabilization. The first installment of wartime Allied aid that reached the Soviet Union in 1942, although small by later standards, amounted to some 5 per cent of Soviet GNP in that year. Although Allied aid was used directly to supply the armed forces with both durable goods and consumables, indirectly it probably released resources to households. By improving the balance of overall resources it brought about a ceteris paribus increase in the payoff to patriotic citizens. In other words, Lend-Lease was stabilizing. We cannot measure the distance of the Soviet economy from the point of collapse in 1942, but it seems beyond doubt that collapse was near. Without Lend-Lease it would have been nearer. Stalin himself recognized this, although he expressed himself more directly. He told Khrushchev several times that the Soviet Union had suffered such heavy losses that without Allied aid it would have lost the war.19
Boris V. Sokolov (2007). The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies: Vol. 7, issue 3, pages 567-586.
One of the bottlenecks of the Soviet economy before the war was the production of aviation and, to a lesser extent, automobile gasoline. High-octane benzoins were especially lacking. So, in 1941, on the eve of the war, the need for aviation gasoline B-78 was satisfied by only 4%. {7} In 1940, the USSR produced 889 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, in 1941 - 1269 thousand tons, in 1942 - 912, in 1943 - 1007, in 1944 - 1334 and in 194 5. - 1017 thousand tons. {8} In total, during the war years in the United States under Lend-Lease and within the framework of Soviet orders, 666 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were delivered, of which, after shipment, 37.65 thousand tons were redirected to other places, so that the net delivery was 628.4 thousand tons. {9}In addition, the net supply of light gasoline fractions from the USA to the USSR reached 732.3 thousand tons.In addition, Great Britain supplied 14.7 thousand tons of aviation gasoline and 902.1 thousand tons of light gasoline fractions to the USSR from the Abadan oil refinery ( these supplies were reimbursed by the United Kingdom (USA). To this must also be added 573 thousand tons of aviation gasoline supplied to the USSR from oil refineries in Great Britain and Canada. {ten}In total, all this gives 2850.5 thousand short tons of aviation gasoline and light gasoline fractions received by the USSR from the USA, Great Britain and Canada, which is equal to 2586 thousand metric tons. In the Soviet Union, imported aviation gasoline and light gasoline fractions were used almost exclusively for mixing with Soviet aviation gasoline in order to increase their octane number, since Soviet aircraft were adapted to use gasolines with a much lower octane number than in the West. Suffice it to say that more than 97% of imported gasoline had an octane rating of 99 and higher, while in the USSR, as we have already seen, there was even B-78 gasoline in a huge deficit. Therefore, in fact, the aviation gasoline supplied under the Lend-Lease was included in the Soviet production of aviation gasoline and amounted, therefore (together with light gasoline fractions), 51, 5% of Soviet production 1941-1945 If we subtract from the total Soviet aviation gasoline production for the first half of 1941, estimating it at about half of the annual production, then the share of supplies under Lend-Lease will rise to 57.8%. It turns out that the deliveries under Lend-Lease of aviation gasoline, which took place from August 1941 to September 1945, were 1.4 times higher than the actual Soviet production. From other sources of aviation gasoline supply, the USSR was able to capture in 1944-1945. 82.8 thousand tons of trophy gasoline in Romania, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to September 1945, which was a drop in the ocean. It is obvious that without Western supplies of fuel, Soviet aviation simply would not have been able to support its troops in the required volume. It should also be taken into account that due to the much higher octane numbers of western aviation gasoline, its role in providing Soviet aviation was actually even more significant than could be concluded from weight alone.
Further:
The Red Army's vehicle fleet was also largely secured by Western supplies. The production of cars in the USSR in 1940 amounted to 145 390, in 1941 - 124 476, in 1942 - 34 976, in 1943 - 49 266, in 1944 - 60 549, in 1945 - 74 757. {15} At the same time, in the first half of the year 1941 was produced 73.2 thousand cars, and in the second - only 46.1 thousand {16} , so that from the beginning of the war until the end of 1945, the total production of cars can be determined at 265.6 thousand units. During the war years, 409.5 thousand cars were delivered from the USA to the USSR, which is 1.5 times higher than Soviet production during the war years. By the end of the war (as of May 1, 1945), cars delivered under Lend-Lease accounted for 32.8% in the Red Army's car park (58.1% were domestically produced cars and 9.1% were captured cars).{17}Taking into account the greater carrying capacity and better quality, the role of American vehicles was even higher ("Studebakers", in particular, were used as artillery tractors). The pre-war fleet of Soviet cars (both in the Red Army and withdrawn from the national economy at the beginning of the war) was badly worn out. Before the war, the needs of the Red Army in motor transport were determined at 744 thousand cars and 92 thousand tractors, while there were 272.6 thousand cars and 42 thousand tractors in stock. It was planned to withdraw 240 thousand cars from the national economy, including 210 thousand trucks (GAZ-AA and ZIS-5), however, due to the severe wear of the vehicle fleet (for passenger cars, cars belonging to the 1st and 2nd categories , i.e., not requiring immediate repair, was 45%,{18} Obviously, without Western supplies, the Red Army would not have acquired the degree of mobility that it possessed at least from the middle of 1943, although until the end of the war, the use of motor vehicles was constrained by a lack of gasoline.
Also, the functioning of Soviet railroad transport would have been impossible without Lend-Lease. Production of railway rails (including the narrow gauge rail) in the USSR varied as follows (in kt.) 1940 - 1360 1941 - 874 1942 - 112 1943 - 115 1944 - 129 1945 - 308 {19} According Lend Liza was delivered to the USSR 685.7 thousand short tons of railway rails, {20}which is equal to 622.1 thousand metric tons. This is about 56.5% of the total production of railroad rails in the USSR from mid-1941 to the end of 1945. If we exclude from the calculation narrow-gauge rails that were not supplied under Lend-Lease, then American deliveries will amount to 83.3% the total volume of Soviet production. If we exclude from the calculations of production for the second half of 1945, taking it to be equal to at least half of the annual production (in fact, in the second half of 1945, significantly more than half of the annual production of rails was produced due to a reduction in the actual war production), then the Lend Lease on rails will make up 92.7% of the total volume of Soviet rail production. Thus, almost half of the railroad rails used on Soviet railways during the war received from the USA. The sharp reduction in the production of rails by the Soviet industry made it possible to direct additional capacities and resources of steel for the production of weapons (in 1945, the production of rails was 13% of the 1940 level, and in 1944 - only 5.4%).
Again, further still:
According to our estimates, based on a decrease in labor costs per unit of various types of weapons and equipment in 1941-1943, the production of tanks and combat aircraft during the war years was at least doubled. Taking this into account, the share of Western supplies of weapons and military equipment turns out to be approximately twice as high as is commonly believed. {56} 7,057 tanks and self-propelled guns were delivered from the USA, 5,480 from England and Canada. 15,481 American aircraft, 3,384 British ones. Of the total of 18,865 vehicles, about 17,000 combat vehicles were received {57}Taking into account the overestimation of data on Soviet production, the share of Western deliveries for combat aircraft will not be 15%, as was traditionally believed, but about 30%, for tanks and self-propelled guns, the share will increase from the traditional 12% to 24% of the total production level in the USSR in the military years. As for the artillery, only anti-aircraft artillery was supplied from the United States - 7944 guns. {58}Soviet historians usually correlate this number with the total production of guns and mortars in the USSR - 482.2 thousand guns and 351.8 thousand mortars, which makes the share of American deliveries less than 2% of the total volume of Soviet gun production, and less than 1% - from the total production of guns and mortars. Meanwhile, it is only necessary to compare here with the Soviet production of anti-aircraft guns - the most scarce type of artillery for the Red Army, and here the share of American supplies turns out to be much higher (unfortunately, an accurate calculation is still impossible due to the lack of data on the production of anti-aircraft guns in the USSR).