Hidden origins of the Winter War

Discussions on the Winter War and Continuation War, the wars between Finland and the USSR.
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Topspeed
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#286

Post by Topspeed » 16 Aug 2004, 12:05

Hanski,

I agree Hanski that Churhill was great statesman, how else when winning a war for the UK ?

What I am astonished about is the fact that you mentioned; Winston has taken for granted what Josef has said !

The last conflict before WW II with USSR and Finland was the Olonets Trip and that was in 1928. I think there would be somekinda indication to direction of this frontierguards shooting incident in history had this happened !

JT

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#287

Post by Mikko H. » 16 Aug 2004, 12:45

I take it that no-one has actually verified what Churchill actually wrote in his memoirs? I think it's very unlikely that he would have written of the Winter War according to the Soviet line -- in fact, IIRC, when treating the Winter War (very briefly) in his memoirs he is quite symphatetic to Finns. Does anyone out there have the books who can check this?
The last conflict before WW II with USSR and Finland was the Olonets Trip and that was in 1928.
This Olonets incursion was earlier in the decade, in 1921-22 IIRC.


Aleksei22
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#288

Post by Aleksei22 » 16 Aug 2004, 12:47

Hello, all

This message was "excavated" from page 15 and "retransmitted" to this page ( 20 ) , only.

Thank you.


Aleksei22 wrote:
Hello, all



Let we actualize last message, only




Hello, all

I hope that forum members know that there were at least 3-5 attempts to negotiate ( with Finns ) & resolve problems of Leningrad security undertaken by USSR's government in 1938-1939.



1. - march-august 1938 ( so called "secret" talks )



2.- march-may 1939 ( so called Litvinov-Molotov round )



3. - september-november 1939 ( last, pre-war )





Does anybody has a MAP of territory (land ) SWAPPING proposed by Soviet government in "Litvinov-Molotov round" (2) ????


Thank you.



Aleksei22
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#289

Post by Aleksei22 » 16 Aug 2004, 13:27

Mikko H. wrote:I take it that no-one has actually verified what Churchill actually wrote in his memoirs? I think it's very unlikely that he would have written of the Winter War according to the Soviet line -- in fact, IIRC, when treating the Winter War (very briefly) in his memoirs he is quite symphatetic to Finns. Does anyone out there have the books who can check this?
The last conflict before WW II with USSR and Finland was the Olonets Trip and that was in 1928.
This Olonets incursion was earlier in the decade, in 1921-22 IIRC.
http://www.instfin.sp.ru/InstFin2004/12 ... orts%2Easp

pro-finns "revelations" with Olonetz conflict




http://www.instfin.sp.ru/InstFin2004/12 ... orts%2Easp


russian properties near Vuborg ( Kollontai's )

sorry, you need read russian

Thank you.

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#290

Post by Sami_K » 16 Aug 2004, 13:49

Can't but quote here what Carl O. Nordling has written on his site. The text is quite long, but I hope people read it through anyway. The part about the Hanko base especially. Note that Finland was willing to cede the southernmost tip of the Suursaari Island (and IIRC was ready to cede it all had Stalin dropped the idea of a base at the Finnish shoreline).

The Cape Porkkala, to which Nordling refers to, is the cape west of Helsinki, which in the map (http://www.winterwar.com/other/History/HankoDemands.gif) has the coastal fort "Mäkiluoto" at its tip.

The text comes from Nordlings site : http://home.swipnet.se/nordling/StalinFin.html

"On 5 October 1939 Molotov sent an invitation to Finland's foreign minister, Mr. Eljas Erkko, to come to Moscow for the discussion of "certain political questions". Molotov required an answer within 48 hours. Erkko was late answering and did not go to Moscow. Instead he sent the 69-year-old diplomat, Mr. Juho Kusti Paasikivi to carry out the discussions with Mr. Molotov. Soon it became clear that Stalin wanted Finland to give up part of her territory on the Karelian Isthmus and to cede the Hangö Peninsula as a naval base to the Soviet Union. He was cautious enough to offer Finland territorial compensation (in eastern Karelia) for these claims. With these precautions Stalin must have hoped to get at least much of the proposed concessions from Finland.

The ostensible reasons given by Stalin for the demands on Finland were:

(a) Securing the safety of Leningrad;

(b) Becoming satisfied that Finland will have firm, friendly relations with the USSR.

These reasons are legitimate enough. Every government should, of course, try to secure the safety of the biggest cities in the country. Also, the government of any state, big or small, should pursue friendly relations with all neighboring nations.

Therefore, let us consider what should a considerate leader have done in order to achieve the two ends stated by Stalin.

Leningrad's northern defense line (on the Karelian Isthmus) was short and strong--, as subsequent events were to prove--and Stalin certainly knew that. The safety of Leningrad was, however, to a certain degree dependent on the safety of the Red Banner Fleet (the Baltic section of the Navy). If an enemy should at some time dominate the main part of the Gulf of Finland, the Fleet would be more or less confined to its base at Kronshtadt off Leningrad. (This actually happened within two months of the German attack in 1941.) There the warships would become attractive targets for air attacks and, if it came to the worst, also for field artillery. Therefore, the military safety of the Fleet and of Leningrad would have been enhanced if the Soviet Union were able to shut out enemy warships from a large part of the Gulf of Finland. In order to accomplish this, it would be necessary to block the passage through the Gulf by means of mine fields and anti-submarine nets. To be effective, such nets and mine fields would have to be defended by land-based batteries that could sink any number of minesweepers. The batteries in turn would have to be able to defend themselves against attack from the sea, from the air and from the ground.

There exists just one spot in the Gulf of Finland where such mine fields and defending batteries could be located in order to block the main part of the Gulf from outside penetration. This is the area between the island of Naissaar off Estonia and the group of small islands off the Porkkala Promontory on the Finnish side. (Map 1.) The open space is just 37 kilometers (km) wide at that spot, and thus a minefield could have been defended by forts on each side armed with 6-inch guns (a very common type of the period), which had a firing range of 18 km. A single battery of 10-inch guns on Naissaar would have covered the middle part of the water space and another of 16-inch guns with a range of about 50 km placed on the same island could have defended both forts against battleships. Since the fort islands would have been separated by more than 1,000 meters (m) of water from the mainland and from other islands, the defense against overland attacks would not have been much of a problem. The conditions for building harbors and airfields for maintenance transports are favorable in both places.

A certain advantage of the Porkkala-Naissaar defense line is the possibility of using fire control towers not exceeding 28 m in height in order to cover the space of water between the forts. Even though a sleight haze is common in these waters, the visibility seldom falls below 18 km. Since the Soviet Union did not have access to any kind of radar at the time, these circumstances were important when selecting the place for a barrier across the Gulf.

As a matter of fact, the German and Finnish naval forces succeeded in locking up the Red Banner Fleet during a large part of World War II by means of a barrier in the Porkkala-Naissaar position. Incidentally, 22 years before, two czarist forts placed precisely in this position had guarded the Gulf of Finland (as parts of the so-called Peter the Great Sea Fortress). There had been a 10-inch battery on either side.11

Stalin, however, had acquired a base at Paldiski on the Estonian coast and followed suite by demanding that Finland lease the Hangö Peninsula (with adjacent islands) 76 km opposite Paldiski. Without radar there were no practical possibilities to keep this stretch of water under surveillance from the bases at each end, not even under optimum weather conditions. In order to keep mine fields safe from enemy sweepers, warships or airplanes would have been needed to patrol the waters day and night. Thus the barrier would have been almost as effective whether or not it contained batteries at Hangö. We may note in this connection that the British did not succeed in stopping or sinking the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the cruiser Prinz Eugen when they passed through the Channel on 12 February 1942. The width of the Channel is 34 km at its narrowest point, i.e., at Dover, where the British then controlled the passage with radar and long range artillery.

Any competent naval officer could have informed Stalin of the worthlessness of the Hangö-Paldiski barrier. Stalin probably realized this himself, since it is known that he amazed government officials and generals with his knowledge about things like tanks, airplanes and cannons.12 And at the end of July 1939, Zhdanov, the architect of the German Pact, had invited Admiral Kuznetsov for a brief cruise in the Baltic. During this cruise the two senior commanders, L.M. Galler and N.N. Nesvitsky (who had served in the Imperial Navy in World War I), pointed out to Zhdanov "the area in which mine fields had been laid down in 1914, from the island of Naissaar off Estonia to the Porkkala Peninsula in Finland".13 These mine fields had actually, as intended, barred German access to the Russian base at Kronshtadt during the entire World War I. In the summers of 1943 and 1944 the Germans were able to keep even Soviet submarines from passing the Porkkala-Naissaar barrier (by means of deep and double wire netting).14

If Stalin and Zhdanov had intended the claims on Estonia and Finland as a means of improving the defense of Leningrad and Kronshtadt, they could not have afforded to miss such an opportunity as the Porkkala-Naissaar line. They would rather have given up all other claims in order to convince the respective governments of the utmost importance of these bases for the Soviet Union.

It seems, however, that during the protracted and difficult negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland, Naissaar and Porkkala were mentioned just once, on 14 October 1939. Stalin then said that Czarist Russia had possessed 12-inch guns at these spots. He went on to say: "we don't ask for Porkkala, nor for Naissaar, since these places are too close to the capitals of Finland and Estonia, respectively. […] It is a law of naval strategy that passage into the Gulf of Finland can be blocked by the cross fire of batteries on both shores as far out as the mouth of the Gulf".15

The truth is that a flotilla of small minesweepers could easily operate in the middle of a minefield between Hangö and Paldiski--or anywhere else at the mouth of the Gulf. Battleships and heavy cruisers could then have made a successful dash into the Gulf, just as demonstrated by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 12 February 1942. As it happened, the Paldiski base, as situated on the mainland, had to be abandoned when German ground forces approached it less than a month after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. The fact that the Hangö base held on for another four months made no difference for the defense of Leningrad.

It is obvious that Stalin did not speak the truth when he explained the reasons for his claims to the Finnish delegation on 14 October 1939. Most certainly he knew that the Gulf of Finland could not be effectively blocked by means of the bases he claimed. He also deliberately forwent the existing possibility to create an effective barrier across the Gulf.

Instead Stalin insisted on Hangö, the port and the peninsula, and certainly he had some good reason for wanting these objects. Let us consider the military value of Hangö. Its harbor was excellent for ships of all drafts, free from ice in practically all winters, and equipped with 1,500 m of quays, with warehouses, cranes, railroads etc. The town had 7,000 inhabitants (all of whom were expected to move from their homes in case of cession) and could thus easily accommodate 25,000 troops or more. In April 1918 a German division landed at Hangö and advanced along the railroad and the highway taking Helsinki on the tenth day. If Stalin planned to invade Finland, Hangö would have proved an ideal bridgehead for a couple of armored divisions attacking the Finnish army in the rear. And when Stalin finally got the coveted peninsula after the Winter War, he equipped it with much more mobile than stationary artillery. The former included three 12-inch guns (with a range of 50 km), four 7-inch guns and three 4-inch guns, all mounted on flatcars.16 The latter (coast artillery proper) consisted of thirteen 5-inch guns. This means that one volley from the mobile batteries weighed about five times as much as one volley from the stationary batteries. Apparently about 80 percent of the total firepower was thus intended for use along some stretch of railroad! In comparison with Hangö, the Porkkala skerries were totally unusable as a takeoff for an invasion. Even the Porkkala Peninsula lacked a harbor and railroads, and could therefore not have served as a springboard for a swift advance toward Helsinki. Instead, the 12-inch mobile guns at Hangö could have begun bombarding Helsinki after having advanced just half way along the Hangö-Helsinki railroad.

Stalin's claims concerning the areas adjacent to the Soviet border on the Karelian Isthmus were of the same nature as those concerning Hangö. Besides removing the border 30 to 40 km from the Gulf of Kronshtadt along its entire length, they included Berezoviy Island with its fort and part of the peninsula of Primorsk, both areas about 100 km from Leningrad and 65 km from Kronshtadt. (Map 2.) Part of Finland's main defense line, the so-called Mannerheim Line, run through the claimed area, and would have been chopped off if the claims had been accepted. Even more important was the fact that the claimed areas included the artillery forts of Saarenpää (six 10-inch guns with a range of 23 km) and Humaljoki (six 6-inch guns, range 18 km). These forts could not interfere with the traffic on the Gulf of Kronshtadt fairway, but they could give badly needed artillery support to the troops defending the right flank of the Mannerheim Line. (Deficient artillery power proved to be the weakest point of the Finnish defense system in the 1939-40 war.) Giving up these forts and part of the Mannerheim line would have been tantamount to giving up most of the Karelian Isthmus right from the beginning of a defensive war. On the other hand it is obvious that both forts would have been completely useless for any enemy attempting to invade the Soviet Union by way of the Isthmus. From a military point of view it would have been reasonable to ask for a strip of land along the northern coast of the Gulf of Kronshtadt. By insisting on Berezoviy Island and on part of the Mannerheim line to the very end of the negotiations, Stalin revealed that he wanted to break up the Finnish defense and place the Government of Finland in a position of Soviet dependency.

The idea of dependency based on fear of reprisals seems to have been Stalin's notion of the state of "friendly relations" that he wanted to exist between Finland and the Soviet Union. And as much as Stalin was willing to bargain about territorial details, as much he was determined to get the idea of dependency through. Therefore, in addition to all the claims ostensibly motivated by some kind of "military necessity" (that might have been mistaken for something that he really thought was necessary), Stalin included just one little claim not motivated in this way. He asked that Finland cede her part of the "Fisherman's Peninsula" (Rybachiy) on the Arctic coast. This peninsula has four bays, two on either side, and the frontier was drawn in such a way that the Soviet Union had got two bays and Finland two--all very good fishing grounds. This part of the Finno-Soviet border had been agreed upon less than 20 years before, i.e., it derived its origin from the peace negotiations with Lenin's Government in 1920. Stalin had been People's Commissar for Nationalities in this Government and the Finnish delegates discussing Stalin's claims had also taken part in the 1920 negotiations. Therefore both Stalin and the Finns knew perfectly well the real reason of the exact position of this stump of the frontier--which was, of course, to grant fair fishing possibilities to both countries. Now Stalin wrote in the Soviet Memorandum of 14 October 1939: "A separate question arises with regard to the Fisherman's Peninsula in Petsamo, where the frontier is unskillfully [!] drawn and has to be adjusted in accordance with the annexed map".17 If Finland had accepted this obviously false motivation and ceded her part of the Peninsula, it would have been tantamount to saying: "We don't dare oppose you; if you do wrong, we will call it right and pretend that we believe it to be right." Such was the conduct Stalin wanted from a government he would call having "firm, friendly relations with the Soviet Union".

A sensible leader of a great power would certainly have been able, in the circumstances, to acquire friendly relations with Finland in the normal meaning of the word. First he would have refrained from territorial claims other than those required for establishing an island-based barrage across the Gulf of Finland and a protected fairway through the Gulf of Kronshtadt. Then he could have encouraged Finland to sign a defense treaty with Sweden and given his blessing to a joint Finno-Swedish fortification of Åland (which would have barred foreign warships from entering the Gulf of Bothnia). And the ruthless Stalin could have done even more to make the Finnish Government feel safe and friendly toward him. Just as he had dismissed Maksim Litvinov to placate Hitler and had liquidated thousands of officers for the same or other reasons, he could have liquidated the Finnish Communist leaders Otto Kuusinen and Tuure Lehén or turned them over to the Finnish authorities for prosecution.

By insisting on claims that were utterly harmful to the defense of Finland Stalin did not obtain firm and friendly relations with Finland. Instead the Finnish Government became even more wary and offered only very limited cessions in exchange for territorial compensation. Stalin then decided to create "friendly relations" in his own way and attacked Finland along the entire frontier with his Army, Navy and Air Force, on 30 November 1939.

The Finnish Government never analyzed Stalin's behavior to the extent that has been done above. They did not quite realize the absurdity of Hangö as a barrage base. But they happened to draw the right conclusions, anyhow. They thought it would be dangerous to give Stalin the little finger (e.g., Hangö or any adjacent island) lest he should take the hand. The Baltic States, Churchill and Roosevelt were later to learn this truth the hard way.

A couple of weeks before the attack, on 13 November 1939, the very day when the Finnish delegation went back home, Otto Kuusinen and Comintern Secretary-General Georgi Dimitrov sent a letter to Arvo Tuominen in Stockholm ordering him to return immediately to Moscow. A commission involving great responsibility was awaiting him there, so they said. In another letter Tuominen was told that the commission would be connected with a new arrangement of the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union. Tuominen did not go. He defected publicly from Stalin and from Bolshevism.18 This was another disappointment to Stalin. If Tuominen had been in Moscow in November 1939, he would not have been able to refuse the commission as Prime Minister in a Soviet Government of Finland, the government that Stalin would set up after having conquered the first square kilometer of Finnish territory.19 In the actual situation, it was obviously a disadvantage to have Tuominen in Stockholm instead of Moscow. Therefore, we can rest assured that Stalin had originally planned the whole advance on Finland otherwise than it turned out. President Paasikivi later testified that "judging from the discussion at the last conference it looks like Stalin was disposed to reach an amicable settlement".20

The Soviet treatment of Lithuania gives an idea of what kind of amicable settlement Stalin had in mind for Finland. Lithuania was given large areas in exchange for a treaty that granted the stationing of 20,000 Soviet troops at certain bases on Lithuanian territory. The local authorities had no means to check the number of troops actually entering the bases. On 7 June 1940 Molotov demanded the dismissal of Lithuania's Minister of the Interior and on 14 June he presented Lithuania with an ultimatum, demanding a new government, one that would "possess the confidence of the Soviet Union". Molotov rejected President Smetona's proposal to nominate the new Prime Minister and made sure that some Lithuanian Communist like Tuominen got the office.21 Had an "amicable settlement" of this type been arranged with Finland, Arvo Tuominen could have arrived from Stockholm and taken over the office of Prime Minister, looking as if he had nothing to do with Moscow at all."

Cheers,
Sami

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KalaVelka
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#291

Post by KalaVelka » 16 Aug 2004, 15:21

KalaVelka wrote:
Marcus Wendel wrote:An insulting post from KalaVelka was removed.

/Marcus
Ok, I apologize my choice of words, but I am still waiting an answer from Aleksei.

I have a question. What special legal right did the Soviet Union have to seek defense lines outside its legal borders? Every other country in the world must prepare to defend itself INSIDE its borders. Can defending a country outside its borders be seen as defence at all?

Whenever any attacker is asked for a reason for its aggression, they declare they were just "defending" something, be that freedom, political system, oil fields or anything.

But an attack outside ones borders is an ATTACK, not DEFENCE!

I am sure every russian sees the German blitzkrieg as an asssault, not a defensive action! Now, from finnish perspective, how was the Soviet assault any different from any other attack by any other country against any other ever in history? The Soviets seem to have had a million excuses to attack Finland, but Finland had just a single reason to defend! Let me ask, which side had the more convincing reason to fight?
Kasper
Aleksei, is it so hard to answer?? I have seen that you have logged in this forum and even made couple of posts in this very same topic, but you still havent answered my (actually Steady's) question.

Kasper

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Hanski
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#292

Post by Hanski » 16 Aug 2004, 15:43

Mikko H. wrote:I take it that no-one has actually verified what Churchill actually wrote in his memoirs? I think it's very unlikely that he would have written of the Winter War according to the Soviet line -- in fact, IIRC, when treating the Winter War (very briefly) in his memoirs he is quite symphatetic to Finns. Does anyone out there have the books who can check this?
I was so dumbfounded by this alleged statement of Sir Winston Churchill that as I found the opportunity today, I visited Helsinki University Library and checked the original source.

The solution to the mystery is actually quite obvious. It also contains a very illustrative lesson for all of us, but as it is off topic and deserves a new thread in its own right, I will tell the details separately under a new title.

And I think we owe a sincere apology to Sir Winston.

Steady
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#293

Post by Steady » 16 Aug 2004, 16:22

Even more important was the fact that the claimed areas included the artillery forts of Saarenpää (six 10-inch guns with a range of 23 km) and Humaljoki (six 6-inch guns, range 18 km). These forts could not interfere with the traffic on the Gulf of Kronshtadt fairway, but they could give badly needed artillery support to the troops defending the right flank of the Mannerheim Line.

The Finnish forts really were intended and used for defence of the Karelian Isthmus almost exclusively. For example the fort at Mantsi, with two 152 mm Canet guns and strengthened with two ordinary field guns, was able to keep one of the main supply roads in the Isthmus under fire for the entire Winter War and at times this route was abandoned by the Soviets. At one time there were fifty destroyed tanks and over 100 broken trucks scattered along that road.

The Koivisto fort, with five 10 inch Durlacher guns, stopped all attemps to move around the flank of the Finnish army. The battery only engaged sea targets a couple times, each time defending against Soviet warships that were trying to bombard the fort. It kept almost constant fire against Red Army positions within its range of fire.

Without these and other heavy gun forts the Finnish defence would have faced even harder pressure from the Red Army than it did.

Soviets understood the importance of these forts fully: the Koivisto's Saarenpää battery received 325 000 kg:s worth of naval artillery shells and over 2000 aircraft bombs, weighing 500 000 kg, plus over 1000 light bombs. This was only the amount for the fort itself, the surrounding area received double that amount. Naturally the forts were also under intermittent artillery fire.

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#294

Post by Marcus » 16 Aug 2004, 18:50

An off topic post from Aleksei22 was removed.

/Marcus

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#295

Post by Marcus » 16 Aug 2004, 20:59

A few posts were split off into a new thread entitled "Could the finnish cannons have pounded Leningrad?".

/Marcus

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#296

Post by KalaVelka » 16 Aug 2004, 21:01

KalaVelka wrote:
KalaVelka wrote:
Marcus Wendel wrote:An insulting post from KalaVelka was removed.

/Marcus
Ok, I apologize my choice of words, but I am still waiting an answer from Aleksei.

I have a question. What special legal right did the Soviet Union have to seek defense lines outside its legal borders? Every other country in the world must prepare to defend itself INSIDE its borders. Can defending a country outside its borders be seen as defence at all?

Whenever any attacker is asked for a reason for its aggression, they declare they were just "defending" something, be that freedom, political system, oil fields or anything.

But an attack outside ones borders is an ATTACK, not DEFENCE!

I am sure every russian sees the German blitzkrieg as an asssault, not a defensive action! Now, from finnish perspective, how was the Soviet assault any different from any other attack by any other country against any other ever in history? The Soviets seem to have had a million excuses to attack Finland, but Finland had just a single reason to defend! Let me ask, which side had the more convincing reason to fight?
Kasper
Aleksei, is it so hard to answer?? I have seen that you have logged in this forum and even made couple of posts in this very same topic, but you still havent answered my (actually Steady's) question.

Kasper
Aleksei, I am still waiting an answer from you. I see that you have scrolled this topic after my question but still I dont see answer from you.

Kasper

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#297

Post by John T » 16 Aug 2004, 22:55

Sami_K wrote:Can't but quote here what Carl O. Nordling has written on his site. The text is quite long, but I hope people read it through
<the biggest snip in my internet carrer :) >

Cheers,
Sami
Interesting quote Sami but I can't avoid making some comments on it.

I agree on the last part, the risk that Finland would have followed the other Baltic state's (using the phrase of the MR-pact)

I'd say that analysis is based on a coastal artillery view and it makes some sense but he does not mention any of the drawback with the Porkkala-Naissaar position.

In short the writer thinks the Soviets would consider it a good move to voluntarily put the Baltic Navy in the same position that Germans and Finns forced them into during the continuation war.
I think that is the clue to why I oppose the writers analysis.

To elaborate:

1.
A fixed minefield defended by fixed artillery can be always be defeated.
Either by air or superior firepower /range. It is just a matter of time.
He somehow assumes that the minesweepers have to go first and into harms way.

2,.
The same general observation of fixed positions regarding Soviet rail guns in Hanko, the best way to quickly produce coastal artillery is to use rail. Building fortifications and mounting major guns in any other way would be much more costly and time consuming. And on the tactical scale, mobility works both offensively and defensively- it is much simpler to disable a static gun mount than a mobile target.

3.
His analysis in the light of the naval theories Power projection and sea denial.
This defensive line would let the opponent to bottle up the Baltic fleet in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, as Germans and Finns did during the continuation war. The opponent would be able to invade Finland without soviet intervention.

So to be able to apply the naval theories of sea denial the Soviet navy had to base her self west of the gulf of Finland or at least at the mouth. Here Hanko makes perfectly sense, a base where mobile forces could use, not just a pesky little minefield. Note that Sea denial is about to deny power projection. Both in the form of an offensive (Capitalist) invasion fleet heading for Finland and in the form of supplies by normal sea borne trade.


As a side note that the Swedish navy intended to use "Finska utö" as their supply point attacking into the gulf.


BTW.
Was is a Maayhdysmiinaa ?

Cheers
/John T.

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Harri
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#298

Post by Harri » 16 Aug 2004, 23:06

Maayhdysmiinaa = land connection mine (perhaps not the correct term) i.e. sea mine which could be triggered electrically from land (wire connected)

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Finns, Turks Balk at Russian Demands

#299

Post by Globalization41 » 17 Aug 2004, 04:40

Bucharest, United Press, The Merced
(California) Sun-Star,
Monday, October 16,
1939:
Firm resistance by Turkey and Finland
to Russian demands has caused the
suspension of negotiations at Moscow while
the Turkish and Finnish governments review
their position, it was understood today.
Apparent refusal of Turkey and Finland, at the
opposite ends of Russia's new and vast
"sphere of influence," to concede demands
made on them unconditionally, constituted
Russia's first setback in its dramatic reentry
into European politics. ... Further, it was
reported Rumanian Foreign Minister Grigore
Gafencu
had told close friends if Russia made
demands on Rumania, he would resign rather
than respond to a summons to Moscow. ... It
had seemed Turkey and Russia were at the
point of signing a friendship treaty. Sukru
Saracoglu
, Turkish Foreign Minister, had been
expected to leave Moscow during the
weekend. Instead he spent his time sight
seeing, without contact with the commissariat,
and it was indicated he had referred the
Russian final demands to his government. ...
J.K. Passikivi, Finnish special envoy, arrived at
Helsingfors today to consult his government.
There was no doubt that something had gone
wrong in the Finnish-Russian negotiations. An
official spokesman at Helsingfors had said that
negotiations had not broken down altogether.
It was believed, however, before sending
Passikivi back to Moscow, the Finnish
government would consult Sweden, Norway,
and Denmark at the meeting of Nordic heads
of state to be held at Stockholm Wednesday
under the chairmanship of King Gustav V.

[It seems to me that Stalin's tactics aimed
toward outlets to the high seas. ... With the
Nazi-Soviet pact in hand, which defined
spheres of influence, and the German Army
tied down by the vast French Army, Stalin
began speeding up his incremental external
strategy. ... Internally, Stalin had spent the
past decade securing state control of
agricultural yields
to support large-scale, rapid
industrial and militarization. All potential rivals
for leadership
had been liquidated. ... With a
diversionary full-scale war looming in western
Europe, the time seemed ripe for Stalin to
begin grabbing his first stratigic slices of the
global pie.]

[Stay tuned for late breaking war bulletins.
... Globalization41.]

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Hanski
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Location: Helsinki

#300

Post by Hanski » 17 Aug 2004, 09:51

Globalization41, thank you once again for this new viepoint, this time on Turkey, that never occurred to me before.

Dear all, please allow me to address my countrymen in a few chosen words of our native language.

Nuapurin kutjake tiälä häeriköi, vua haetanneeko tuo mittee? Meijän on siittä turha pulttija ottoo, verkkomestarj sen pittee oekeesti suututtoo ennen ku siittä erroon piästään. Ollaan hilijoo, suahaan jänes. Jokkaesen sanankiänteet nyt vuan viimesen piälle höveleiks ja yläkanttiin, ku oltas suarivaltakunnan hovis; keskenkasvusen ojennukset pikemminki yli hilseen ku alle riman.

I sincerely wish these viewpoints would serve to raise the general standard of our discussion.

Cheers,
Hanski

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