Is finland losing the war a given thing from the start or is there any hope for them?
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Is Finnish victory in winter war complete ASB?
- Thread starter Vishnustarlord
- Start date
Define "victory" in this context.
Considering Finland lost a relatively small amount of territory, and didn't end up as a Soviet puppet, that's not much of a loss, all told.
Considering Finland lost a relatively small amount of territory, and didn't end up as a Soviet puppet, that's not much of a loss, all told.
I guess that OP means with victory that Finland doesn't lost territories.
Hardly totally ASB but really hard. You probably would need some pre-war POD. Finland just would had need better military technology and bit better preparation. And even better if Stalin purges couple generals more.
No, they just have to do what Vietnam did to China in 1979: do well enough that it's easier for the USSR to walk away and say "we showed them who's boss!" than it is to keep fighting. Then they'll end the war without losing any territory. It requires slightly better performance than Finland achieved in OTL, though (I'm not sure how much better Vietnam did in 1979).
Total ASB. Finnish front line was in breaking point when peace was made. Getting the deal we did was already by far the best possible scenario imaginable. You'd need to make the USSR so weak that it would have broken apart before the attack.
Something like this would be very, very difficult to achieve. Stalin would have always wanted something to show for the Red Army's effort, to save at least some face even if the ultimate goal of taking all of Finland for some reason failed. After a certain point, Finnish performance itself does not even matter: if Stalin really wants, he can always have the Red Army beat Finland with sheer brute force. IMHO, to get Finland out of the war even somewhat intact, you'll need outside intervention on Finland's behalf, or at least the threat of such. IOTL Finland could get away with minimal concessions because of the seemingly realistic and even imminent threat of Allied intervention against the Soviets. Conceivably, getting a white peace for Finland might have then needed to involve something like the real threat of, say, the Germans also ganging up on the USSR at the same time, giving wrapping up the war against Finland early the only avenue for Stalin to avoid such a major alliance going into a shooting war against the USSR.
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The only truly winning move was not to play. Best case would have been vigorous rearmament and a neutrality pact with Sweden pre-war.
I agree with the combination of these two points.
One, it would have been best to avoid the war altogether, and that could have been done via deterring Stalin from attacking. Believable security guarantees from Sweden, based on a defensive pact of some sort, would have been a decent way to achieve this. Note that we wouldn't really need Sweden to fight for Finland, just for Stalin to truly believe that they would, should push come to shove.
Two, as long as things deteriorated to the point of the USSR actually invading Finland, it would be very unlikely that Finland could come out of it in a better shape than IOTL.
How ASB would a Nordic defensive pact/armed neutrality have been? I can't see the Soviets, Nazis or WAllies wanting to take on Finland, Sweden, and Norway simultaneously.
Hardly even implausible if just there would be some more political will to do that and if countries would feel Nazis and Soviets being really big threat.
Well, Norway activly refused to entertain any thoughts of defending even itself, so getting them to jump for someone else (and for that to matter) will ake some doing.
I think that achieving active defence cooperation between Finland and Sweden would be "just" a matter of placing the right people and parties/interests in the right places at the same time. Practically, get together the people on both sides that could hammer out a deal that can satisfy both Finland and Sweden (and their idiosyncratic national defence needs) in the 1930s. The OTL events, I believe, are a story of lost opportunities in this regard. As for involving Norway in all this, that would be an added set of complications I am not so familiar with.