Finnish winter war and beyond.....

[Lucky13]

Just a very hypothetical question here... What if the war with the Finns in '39-'40 would have continued to go wrong for Stalin and the Finns starting to push them back into Russia, could that have triggered Hitler and his Generals to go in sooner than in the summer of '41?
Was the Finnish winter war something that they kept an eye on, of interest?

[Juha]

Shortly
now there was 3½ million Finns against 180millions Soviet citizens, at the end of war SU had concentrate some 5000 tanks against the Finns, 2-3000 a/c etc. There were no chance that Finns could have pushed Red Army back to border in the main combat zone, SE Finland. Finns had some 15 tanks some 150 A/T guns and maybe 125 combat aircraft. The numbers are from top of my head, I didn't bother to check them, but Soviet numbers should be appr OK and Finnish equipment inside +-20 pieces.

Germans kept eye on the things, firstly, they were worried that British would cut the very important iron ore import from Northern Sweden to Germany using help to Finland as excuse. Also made conclusions on the combat capacity of the Red Army, and they didn't realize that Soviets also draw conclusions and began to improve their army.

Juha

[freebird]

If Britain was not already at war with Germany they might have sent some aid to the Finns. As it was, Churchill wanted to, but had no way to do it. {Remember at the time Germany & the Soviets were allied}

[parsifal]

The British originally had plans to invade Norway, so as to firstly block the iron ore trade to germany, but also to get aid to the Finns. How would the finns go with a wing or two Hurricanes, and some French tanks???? Sweden might have been encouraged to send more volunteers. there was even the prospect of British forces being deployed into Finland to fight the Russians. USSR at that time was seen as something of a Nazi client. Churchill was well known to view the neutrals as "the friend of my enmy as my enemy" For example, after turkey continued to vaccillate and maintain neutrality in 1943, after having been provided a mountain of aid, Churchill very nearly declared war on them.

If the the british had managed to do this, there would have been a very embarrassing and potentially dangerous situation develop