DBWI: Russia invades Finland!

It's offical, hostilies have broken out between Russia and Finland over the Finnish 'buffer' territory. The Finns had it coming ever since the Greater German Riech collapsed, because without the GGR to defend 'em, Finland can't possibly hope to defend against the Russians. And the Russians have a long memory, and still remember the Finnish aid to the Nazis in the countinuation war. Public support is majorly with the Russians, but IMO, Finland isn't all that bad. People forget that the Russians invaded Finland first, and then it became the enemy of my enemy is my friend sorta thing. I hope it can be resolved quickly, without much blood. Who do you guys think will win? I'd say Russia, but they invaded in the Winter again....



The Russian tanks are big, but really outdated. I wonder how well the more modern Finnish tanks will fair against them.

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A Russian Skimmer. Should allow raid against the Finnish coast.


Does anyone have any news of the war, pics of the weapons, or maps of the frontlines?
 
From all accounts so far, the Finns are getting their asses whipped, but may be looking for a comeback. The Russians are simply swaming them with tanks and aircraft, and have pulverised entire forests with artillery. They're going for the overkill option, and it seems it's working.

OOC:What year is this supposed to be?
 

Baskilisk

Banned
From all accounts so far, the Finns are getting their asses whipped, but may be looking for a comeback. The Russians are simply swaming them with tanks and aircraft, and have pulverised entire forests with artillery. They're going for the overkill option, and it seems it's working.

OOC:What year is this supposed to be?
I like how this statement works, regardless of year.
 
Well, in the Winter and Continuation wars Finland drove the Soviet advances to a grinding halt. Yet again, the Russian swarmed over the Urals pretty quickly after the Reich collapsed, previously having been confined to the East of the Ural Range. I've heard their supply lines are thin, and if Finland holds long enough, the Russian forces will melt away, any other force being much too far away.
 
Well, in the Winter and Continuation wars Finland drove the Soviet advances to a grinding halt. Yet again, the Russian swarmed over the Urals pretty quickly after the Reich collapsed, previously having been confined to the East of the Ural Range. I've heard their supply lines are thin, and if Finland holds long enough, the Russian forces will melt away, any other force being much too far away.

Considering just how badly the Finns are getting punched, they'd need quite the saving move. Still, they've persevered before, so let's see if they can withstand their worst incursion yet.
 
From all accounts so far, the Finns are getting their asses whipped, but may be looking for a comeback. The Russians are simply swaming them with tanks and aircraft, and have pulverised entire forests with artillery. They're going for the overkill option, and it seems it's working.

OOC:What year is this supposed to be?

OOC: I am no expert on when a victorious Reich would have collapsed...lets say the early '80s, 1981.


Well, in the Winter and Continuation wars Finland drove the Soviet advances to a grinding halt. Yet again, the Russian swarmed over the Urals pretty quickly after the Reich collapsed, previously having been confined to the East of the Ural Range. I've heard their supply lines are thin, and if Finland holds long enough, the Russian forces will melt away, any other force being much too far away.

Since the arms embargo hasn't applied to Finland since 1976, they have *some* more modern American and British equipment. The question is, can this make up for numbers? I don't think so. I heard that the Russians had little trouble taking over the Nazi proped-up states in Western Russia, and but I guess it could have hurt supplies. Still, the Russians can solve that problem in time. The Fins need either a decisive military victory(unlikely) or a diplomatic success to get western support(more likely, still won't happen). Or they could just give the land back, like they should have in the begining....
 
This morning the Finnish TV and the papers say that for the while, the Three Isthmus Line is holding. Happily, we have had some time to prepare as the Russian attack was not exactly a surprise. In the east, cities have been hit by air attacks, especially Helsinki and Viipuri. West of Jyväskylä, no successful attacks: this must mean the Air Force is doing something right.

This picture was published in the Aamulehti today, showing bomb damage in the capital:

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It is said that President Virolainen appealed yesterday to the Americans to stop this madness and finally confront the Russian menace. Judging from the inaction of the US and allies," the Western world" will just allow this nice fellow Safonov to take over half the world and in effect replace that past "evil empire" with the next one. Sure, the Russians have suffered so much and deserve a payback blah blah blah... But how long can this be tolerated?

Here, after the democracy reforms of the last decade, we have a decent small nation gradually able to come to terms with the horrors of the Hitlerist period. And "the free world" will hand us over to some neostalinist scum without so much as a slap on the wrist, as a sentence for crimes someone else committed? It is hardly fair.


Since the arms embargo hasn't applied to Finland since 1976, they have *some* more modern American and British equipment. The question is, can this make up for numbers? I don't think so. I heard that the Russians had little trouble taking over the Nazi proped-up states in Western Russia, and but I guess it could have hurt supplies. Still, the Russians can solve that problem in time. The Fins need either a decisive military victory(unlikely) or a diplomatic success to get western support(more likely, still won't happen). Or they could just give the land back, like they should have in the begining....

They say that our air defence has destroyed a lot of Russian planes, their ordinary stuff still does not seem to be an exact match even to our 70s German equipment. We have some AngAm stuff, but I have heard that most officers prefer their German gear, even if simply because they have used it (and the preceding models) for so long, know its strengths and limitations and our own industries have managed some improvements too. I know it is pretty much normal that in "the West" people bash German hardware as inferior, judging it on the general dysfunctionality of the GGR. Inferior it might be, but I don't believe the margin is as wide as you people believe, especially after the electronics updates by Väisälä and Ericsson.

...

Man I am happy to be out of the country right now. Our consul here said that Finnish nationals in friendly and neutral nations have been advised to stay put and await further orders, so I guess my stay just got extended indefinitely. Lets just wait and see if the Army gets around to calling me up for my national duty: then I can be sure we are in deep s******e.
 
You know, the Western powers may actually get involved. With all this Russian talk about an Eastern European 'buffer zone', and what bascially amounts to revenge against Germany in the form of executions and seizure of industry, many in the League of Nations are talking about sanctions against Russia. I mean, it's one thing to seize industry, but I agree with a nations right to self-determination. The Nazi's didn't fall just to be replaced by the Russians. It may already be too late though. I've heard from some internet sources that the Russians have already breached the first Finnish Defensive line.
 
Given how Finland collaborated with the hated Nazis for so long, is it any wonder that no one seems to be coming to their aid?

Of course, I'm no fan of the Soviets either and regard them as bad as the Nazis. In fact, I think that the Russians should only be allowed to have any territory that has a majority of ethnic Russians in it and that peoples such as the Ukrainians be allowed their own separate nations as they've had it even worse then the Russians as they've had to endure brutal occupations by one foreign power or another for centuries.

As for the Finns, the old pre-1939 boundaries that existed before the original Soviet invasion be restored and be left at that.
 
The Finnish make the Swiss look like a bunch of pacifist wimps. Practically their entire population of working age is trained and armed. At the least they're going to give the Russians (Soviets? Come on! Being ran by a quasi-fascist 'Soviet Restoration Party' does not at all make Russia the USSR...yet) a very hard time.
 
The Finnish make the Swiss look like a bunch of pacifist wimps. Practically their entire population of working age is trained and armed. At the least they're going to give the Russians (Soviets? Come on! Being ran by a quasi-fascist 'Soviet Restoration Party' does not at all make Russia the USSR...yet) a very hard time.

Uh, the Finns of 2009 are not the Finns of 1940, by comparison they are total wimps.

The Russians are kinda pissied off about their loss of superpowerdom Also Russia has a large number of troops who have fought in a counter insurgency campaigns against those crazy, bad-ass Chechens, and given that the Finns have little air-power and a small army that’s what we’re looking at here.
 
Uh, the Finns of 2009 are not the Finns of 1940, by comparison they are total wimps.

The Russians are kinda pissied off about their loss of superpowerdom Also Russia has a large number of troops who have fought in a counter insurgency campaigns against those crazy, bad-ass Chechens, and given that the Finns have little air-power and a small army that’s what we’re looking at here.

When was Russia ever a super power? And Chechens? WTF is a Chechen?
As for Finland being weaker than 1940...No way.
 
When was Russia ever a super power? And Chechens? WTF is a Chechen?
As for Finland being weaker than 1940...No way.

The Chechens ya know from Chechnya, a crazy-ass mountain tribe far tougher than the Finns at any day.:p

Russia was a superpower back when it was the bigger part of the USSR, even before that it was a great power, post-USSR it's still a major player.

As for Finland relatively speaking it really was stronger in 1940, there'll be no repeat of the winter war, this'll be more like what happened to Georgia.
 
Given how Finland collaborated with the hated Nazis for so long, is it any wonder that no one seems to be coming to their aid?

There are former collaborationist nations all over Europe, naturally. My gripe is with double standards. Take France: they were as collaborationists as all get out, but if the Russians were about to invade the French Federal Republic, "the West" would come to their aid, in one way or another, in a heartbeat. Its all realpolitik, I know, but sometimes I tend to think this Anglo-American attitude towards the Russians smacks a bit like appeasement, if you know what I mean.

In fact, I think that the Russians should only be allowed to have any territory that has a majority of ethnic Russians in it and that peoples such as the Ukrainians be allowed their own separate nations as they've had it even worse then the Russians as they've had to endure brutal occupations by one foreign power or another for centuries.

As for the Finns, the old pre-1939 boundaries that existed before the original Soviet invasion be restored and be left at that.

Herein lies the rub, because what the Russians call "the buffer zone" in Karelia is almost completely ethnically Finnish or (Finnic) Karelian. The small Russian minority in the area was transferred to their ethnic homeland (then the Reichskommissariat of Moscow) after the war. If this area is now ceded to the Russians, the people living there will have to relocate to Western Finland. We are talking nearly a million people here. The goals stated in your post, therefore, can not be fulfilled without the further suffering of innocent people. In effect, the Russians are attempting to rewrite history, by invading us to gain land areas that were never truly Russian in the first place!

The Finnish press shows refugees brought from Eastern Karelia on military trains, "to be safe for the duration". If these news of a Russian breakthrough circulated by news outlets like the Novaya Rossia are true, these people might never see their homeland again. Is this what should be happening in what Mr. Kennedy just a few years ago termed "New Europe at the End of History"? Appalling, I say.

(Not that I believe in the "imminent collapse of the Finnish Army", like the Russians say. The FNR said that the Russian breakthrough in Viena* is contained and that the Finnish Army is about to encircle a sizable Russian force. You can believe what you may, but what can be known of the situation in the area is right now sketchy at best.)


Urban fox said:
As for Finland relatively speaking it really was stronger in 1940.

You take your Russian propaganda really too seriously. Ever heard of the Model Cajander? The Finnish Army in 1940 was really poor and the people well knew it. That they managed to hold back the USSR that time was a combination of cold will in the face of overwhelming odds, amazing luck and Soviet ineptitude. After 1940, Finland decided "never again": that is why the country allied with Germany and that is why we still at the time the GGR collapsed had one of the (comparatively) largest peace time forces in Europe, never mind that the Russians for a long time were not a serious threat. Scaling back the defence spending was only started when Russia started gobbling up its western neighbours, and so even our current moderate government could again modernize and activate the large-scale defensive plans created during the 50s and 60s.

Germans defending Finland? While our army was equipped by German hardware, the saku left us to defend ourselves. The GGR was overstreched as hell: defending Finland was a low priority in Germania. Rather, one can say Finland defended Germany. Many of our elite units helped the Germans in the various hotspots in Europe and Asia during the GGRs heyday. While it is not something we should always be proud of, it does tell something about the skills and capabilities of the Finnish Army. What Leej said is true: we all receive military training, even people deemed second line reservists like me. Until just a few years ago, every boy received combat training in the Civil Guard (Suojeluskunta) since age 14, and the girls were educated for auxiliary military roles from the same age forward. If the Russians manage to take over the country, they will have one hell of a partisan movement to worry about.


*An area in Eastern Karelia, not the city in Central Europe.


((OOC: I am playing a Finnish partially brainwashed product of a authoritarian-nationalist regime, and that should be taken into account when reading my posts in this thread. My character, however, has seen some of the world outside Finland/the Nordic area, so consider the average Finn ITTL even more nationalistic and ignorant.

Anyway, in actual fact I don't really believe that a formerly authoritarian/Fascist Nazi-allied Finland 2009 would be militarily weaker than the Finland of 1940: that would mean it should be weaker than OTL 2009 Finland, which is quite unlikely for a through-and-through militarist nation.))
 
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The Chechens ya know from Chechnya, a crazy-ass mountain tribe far tougher than the Finns at any day.:p

Russia was a superpower back when it was the bigger part of the USSR, even before that it was a great power, post-USSR it's still a major player.

As for Finland relatively speaking it really was stronger in 1940, there'll be no repeat of the winter war, this'll be more like what happened to Georgia.

I've never heard of this 'Chechnya'. If there'd been the slightest bit of trouble there (I'm guessing its part of Russia?) we would hear of it.

The USSR a super power- no way. It was very, very weak. Hence it collapsing so fast.
Russia a great power...perhaps. But certainly one of the weaker ones and the bolshevicks destroyed that.

'More like what happened to Georgia'- Huh!?!? What happened to Georgia when? Georgia has had a pretty peaceful history since liberation in the 40s.
 
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