Could Germany use Finland as a Base of Attack?

Assume that Soviet doesn't attack Finland in 1939. Is it possible that Germany or anybody else use it as a launchingpad for attacks against Soviet?

- Can Germany make som sort of invasion and use it as a a launching pad?
- Can Germany make some kind of political deal and gain support?
- Any other possibility, involving the allies?
 
I might be mistaken, but isn't Karelia notorious for marshes, which would seriously hamper Panzer movements?
 
I might be mistaken, but isn't Karelia notorious for marshes, which would seriously hamper Panzer movements?
i agree the terrain wouldnt be any better for the germans going east than it was for the russians going west... the supply issues wouldnt be nice either
 

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Yes, to attack Leningrad. They had an army of Karelia OTL, but the question is if the Finns would allow the Germans to operate from their territory to attack the capitol of the communist revolution. It could mean much greater success for the Germans in closing the pocket around Leningrad and starving the population more effectively. However if this were to happen, it would mean greater retribution at the end of the war, but if Leningrad is starved out....who knows?
 
No, Finland wouldn't have gone to war with Germany had they not lost territory during the Winter War. The Finns' war aim was solely to recover their lost territory, and in fact they refused to fight outside of their pre-39 borders. Now, Germany may have conquered Finland and then used it as a launching pad to attack the USSR, but this would have broken the Molotov-Rippentrop Treaty, leading to unknowable consequences.
 
Germany will have a hard time with it. Switching out an ally for an enemy rarely improves the situation, and it would make Sweden very nervous about having dealings with the Germans.

No Winter War would really make things a lot more interesting. The UK wouldn't have offered Finland assistance (which also meant seizing parts of Norway and Sweden) so Germany might well not have launched the offensive to take Denmark or Norway.

Politically, this could change the whole war. The Neutral nations wouldn't have the example of the Allies promising support and failing to protect Neutral nations from Germany. If Germany invades Denmark and Norway without the UK declaring an intention to land troops there to protect them, it may scare Belgium or the Netherlands into allowing Allied troops into their territory to protect them.

If Germany doesn't invade Denmark and Norway, and decides to invade Finland to open another front against the Soviet Union, then the Scandinavian nations may decide that since Germany is invading neutral nations anyway, they might as well throw their lot in with the Allies. Norway and Sweden have an influx of British troops and weapons, and the Germans find themselves cut off from vital Swedish iron and with not merely an Atlantic wall to guard, but a Baltic one as well (From bombers, probably not amphibious attack).

It will not end well for the Germans.

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm assuming that any use of Finnish territory in an offensive against the USSR is an invasion of Finland. They really didn't care for the Nazis, they just wanted the territory from the Winter War back.
 
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Finland

only possibility I see is as an air attack base which could be used against industrial targets
 
No, Finland wouldn't have gone to war with Germany had they not lost territory during the Winter War. The Finns' war aim was solely to recover their lost territory, and in fact they refused to fight outside of their pre-39 borders.
Picture is much more nuanced. I'm still awaiting DrakonFin in this thread, but I remember him saying that significant part of Finnish society was supporting an alliance with Germany even before Winter War. BTW, your statement that Finns didn't fight outside of 1939 border is wrong. They did. It is open to discussion, though, did they fight outside of 1939 as far as they could or as far as they wanted.
 

yourworstnightmare

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No, Finland wouldn't have gone to war with Germany had they not lost territory during the Winter War. The Finns' war aim was solely to recover their lost territory, and in fact they refused to fight outside of their pre-39 borders. Now, Germany may have conquered Finland and then used it as a launching pad to attack the USSR, but this would have broken the Molotov-Rippentrop Treaty, leading to unknowable consequences.

Quite true, even though some nationalistic dreamers wanted a Greater Finland, the majority did not want unnecessary wars, had the USSR left Finland alone, Finland would never have approached Germany and thus not been involved in WW2.
 
Yes, to attack Leningrad. They had an army of Karelia OTL, but the question is if the Finns would allow the Germans to operate from their territory to attack the capitol of the communist revolution. It could mean much greater success for the Germans in closing the pocket around Leningrad and starving the population more effectively. However if this were to happen, it would mean greater retribution at the end of the war, but if Leningrad is starved out....who knows?

What are you talking about? This isn't OTL, the idea was that the Winter war never happen.

Now, Germany may have conquered Finland and then used it as a launching pad to attack the USSR, but this would have broken the Molotov-Rippentrop Treaty, leading to unknowable consequences.

Could the Germans pull a invasion of Finland? I might be biased by their sucesses in OTL but a strong army, a lot of space and the difficult logistics for the Germans to move a large military force to Finland. On the other hand, I suppose the Finnish army where prepared to fight Sovier rather then Germany.
 
winter war or no winter war it doesnt work... the fins and germans had a long standing relationship going back to ww1 and keitel was friends with mannerhiem. i dont see it as absurd for the fins collaborate more fully it just wont do anything
the germans for barbarossa where extremely overstretched and had extemely limited reserves assuming they put what a corps, into finland as they did in the north it would be very hard to supply them and the germans did not really have a lot of ships capable of carrying tanks hence why sealion was never a possibility

so your talking about a few infantry divisions on a tight supply line which would make the front even bigger than it allready was its waste of resources

given german advantages in training and tactical mobility the shorter the front the better they will perform finland serves no purpose for them
 
Assume that Soviet doesn't attack Finland in 1939. Is it possible that Germany or anybody else use it as a launchingpad for attacks against Soviet?

- Can Germany make som sort of invasion and use it as a a launching pad?
- Can Germany make some kind of political deal and gain support?
- Any other possibility, involving the allies?

IMHO the OTL alliance with Nazi Germany needed that extra little bit that was the Winter War. Finnish policy in the interwar years had consistently been to seek a defensive alliance with the Scandinavians, the Baltics and Poland: the realization of the Soviet threat was what pushed Finland over the edge and made the country agree to support an offensive war against the USSR.

Without the war, you would still have to fulfill the same conditions for the Finnish acquiescense, the Soviets putting Finland into a serious squeeze politically and making the Finnish people as well as the national leadership believe the country faces an existential threat if they do not ally with Germany/other foreign power. Having the country in a (quasi) state of war on the outset would be needed too: IOTL, it was the president and the army high command who decided on joining the Germans in Barbarossa. IIRC the parliament was not consulted on the decision, only notified of Soviet air attacks to confirm that the country is again at war.

The mobilization for war and the extra powers the army and the top political leaders gained through the national emergency created a different kind of beast. They were vital for this OTL situation to emerge; in peace time, without a perceived immediate threat of war (and national extinction), bypassing the parliament would have caused a political crisis and uproar. The parliament, being nearly half Social Democrat, would scoff at any alliance with a great foreign power, especially Germany.

The highest leadership, especially Mannerheim, favoured the British, so I'd say the most likely possibility would be a defensive deal with the Allies that by some quirk of fate turns into an offensive one. If the above terms are fulfilled, that is.

CanadianGoose said:
Picture is much more nuanced. I'm still awaiting DrakonFin in this thread, but I remember him saying that significant part of Finnish society was supporting an alliance with Germany even before Winter War.

It is nice being missed, CG.

In many ways, Finland in the 20s and 30s was a country of Germanophiles. Many army leaders, being Jägers, had received their training in Germany and many German officers helped in building up the Finnish military capacity in the 20s. Finland had extensive secret deals with the Germans to build the navy, helping both Finland to gain our modest fleet of subs as well as Germany to circumvent Versailles restrictions. German was the most popular foreign language at schools well into the 40s.

Finnish Germanophilia was mostly of the cultural and economic-industrial sort: the Germans were admired for their accomplishments well before the Nazi era. Finnish friends of Germany were mostly your run of the mill- conservatives, schoolteachers, industrialists and so forth. Germany, circa 1880-1930, indeed was the model for Finnish life across the political divide. Even the Social Democratic Party had been modelled after its German counterpart and based much of its basic tenets on the Erfurt program (this somewhat explains why they made such poor revolutionaries in 1918).

There were few Nazis here and the ultranationalist Facist movement, such as it was, took its cues from Italy. There were people in the Greater Finland crowd that would have liked to ally with Germany to conquer Karelia, certainly, but they were a minority even within the conservatives.

The political trend since the 20s had been to rehabilitate the moderate left to increase national cohesion, and same laws that were passed to curtail Communist activity were employed against the far right. In the mid-30s, Finland was already politically a consensus democracy run by the middle groups and as afraid of a general war as any other European country with a responsible leadership.

While one could say that many people, a slight majority even, could have supported a defensive alliance with a Weimar Germany, it is altogether different to say they would think the same about an offensive pact with the Nazis. The SDP knew quite well how their friends were being treated by the new lords of Germany, so there we have already a huge obstacle to such an alliance. Many conservatives also considered Hitler odious, even if a part of them did not know the excesses of the Nazi state fully and swayed by the German "economic miracle" to praise his leadership.

CanadianGoose said:
BTW, your statement that Finns didn't fight outside of 1939 border is wrong. They did. It is open to discussion, though, did they fight outside of 1939 as far as they could or as far as they wanted.

Lets say one could make a passable case for both options, depending on the viewpoint. Personally, I think this was one of those times when military goals and actual capabilities proved to be a pretty close match. While the line reached by the Finnish troops was the most advantageous militarily and, outside the very north, the one outlined in Finnish communiques to the Germans as the area that was planned to be incorporated into the Finnish state (being inhabited by Finnic tribes since time immemorial, blah, blah), both in terms of military reach, logistics and morale it was on the limits of feasibility. Then there were the political considerations about Leningrad and the Murmansk railway, of course.

That this was only a temporary defensive line rather than the new national border was very possible and overextending the available limited resources would have been idiotic. This was rough terrain, with poor roads and few railway lines, and it had to be managed with conscript troops with a questionable zeal for the undertaking. Already in 1941 many units were close to mutiny when the old 1920 border was crossed, a big part of the men declining at first to take any part in an invasion of foreign soil. While order was restored by strict discipline, the leadership knew quite well the limits set by the soldiers' sentiments about the war.

Without the "spirit of Winter War", that shared understanding of national danger and necessity of war, the Finnish army would have never managed an invasion of USSR on this scale; desertion rates would have been high and discipline would have had to be maintained at gunpoint, eventually leading to a collapse of some sort.

Of course, if the Finnish war effort was led by an irresponsible kook like Hitler, an all-out attack would have gained more ground - initially. Eventually the tide would have turned, and overextension would have likely made a coordinated defense on the isthmus that much harder than it was IOTL. In the end, Red Army would have paraded in Helsinki.
 
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