Eastern Front · Soviet Union vs Finland
Winter War
30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940
After Finland refused territorial demands, the Soviet Union attacked with overwhelming numbers. Finnish forces held the Mannerheim Line and destroyed several Soviet divisions in the forests to the north. A renewed Soviet offensive in February broke the line, and Finland ceded Karelia in the Moscow Peace Treaty.
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Day by day
— The attack
Twenty-one Soviet divisions cross the border along its whole length at 08:00 and Helsinki is bombed the same morning. Finland has nine divisions, no anti-tank guns to speak of and no armour. A puppet government under Kuusinen is proclaimed at Terijoki the next day, which removes any Soviet interest in negotiating.
— Summa
The 7th Army's main assault on the Mannerheim Line goes in at Summa and is stopped over four days with the loss of more than fifty tanks. The line is a thin belt of concrete and felled timber across the isthmus, and it holds because the attacks come frontally and without artillery preparation. In the north the Finns have already destroyed the 139th Division at Tolvajarvi on the 12th.
— The Raate road
Siilasvuo's 9th Division, made up of reservists from the district, cuts the 44th Division into pieces along nine kilometres of forest road east of Suomussalmi and destroys it over five days. The 163rd Division had gone the same way at Suomussalmi at the end of December. Some 700 Soviet prisoners, 43 tanks and 270 vehicles are taken, and the road to Oulu stays shut.
— Timoshenko
The reorganised offensive opens on the isthmus behind a bombardment of 300,000 shells a day, with divisions trained on mock-ups of the Finnish bunkers. Summa is broken through on the 11th and the Finns fall back to the intermediate line on the 15th and to the Viipuri line at the end of the month. There are no reserves left behind it.
— The Moscow Peace
The treaty comes into force at 11:00 with Soviet troops fighting their way into Viipuri as the guns stop. Finland gives up the whole Karelian Isthmus, Viipuri, the Ladoga shore and a lease on Hanko: a tenth of its territory and about 12 per cent of its people, 420,000 of whom move west. The Red Army has lost perhaps 130,000 dead to Finland's 26,000.
