carolwmahs wrote:Thanks Mikko, yes I was speaking hypothetically.
I'm sorry, I misunderstood you...
carolwmahs wrote:Harri, Your patriotism is admirable. But my goodness, let's be realistic.
I'm a realist. It took one month for Soviets to advance 80 km in Karelian Isthmus. Still after almost three months Finnish Army had not been defeated anywhere, far from that. There is no doubt that the rest of the way to Helsinki would have been at least as "painful" to Soviets. In September Finnish Army was in full strength, nearly fully replenished, its depots were full of weapons and ammunition (which were in peace-time use partly until 1990's).
carolwmahs wrote:Do you really think that the Red Army couldn't roll its JS-II's down Arkadiankatu if they had really wanted to pay the price?
No, but as we now know even Soviets wouldn't have been that stupid to try. Hence the peace agreement suited both for the Finns and Soviets.
carolwmahs wrote:Casualties would have been very high, but the Soviet army in 1945 was the best and the largest in the world, and had a ruthless political leadership that was willing to use it mercilessly.
Soviet Army was without doubt the largest one but like I said even the leaders of USSR were not so stupid to try. Anyway USSR needed lots of its troops in occupied East and Central Europe and it also had to demobilize its reservists because warfare in never cheap for any state (like we see in the case of USA today) and reservists were needed for huge rebuilding, agriculture etc. In this situation a new large military operation against Finland wouldn't have been quite piece of cake because of its risks. I think USSR had to also take the opinion of Western Allies into account, because it was partly supplied by them. One hint of that was is seen in the statement of Teheran Conference where the special status of Finland was admitted. After that USSR had not totally free hands against Finland.