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.))