All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [23]
In October 1939, Stalin determined to strengthen the security of Leningrad, only thirty miles inside Soviet territory, by pushing back the nearby Finnish frontier across the Karelian isthmus, and occupying Finnish-held islands in the Baltic; he also coveted nickel mines on Finland’s north coast. A Finnish delegation, summoned to receive Moscow’s demands, prompted international amazement by rejecting them. The notion that a nation of 3.6 million people might resist the Red Army seemed fantastic, but the Finns, though poorly armed, were nationalistic to the point of folly. Arvo Tuominen, a prominent Finnish communist, declined Stalin’s invitation to form a shadow puppet government, and went into hiding. Tuominen said: ‘It would be wrong, it would be criminal, it was not a picture of the free rule of the people.’
At 0920 on 30 November, Russian aircraft launched the first of many bomber attacks on Helsinki, causing little damage save to the Soviet Legation and the nerves of the British ambassador, who asked to be relieved of his post. Russian forces advanced across the frontier in several places, and Finns joked: ‘They are so many and our country is so small, where shall we find room to bury them all?’ The nation’s defence was entrusted to seventy-two-year-old Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim, hero of many conflicts, most recently Finland’s civil war. As a Tsarist officer posted to Lhasa, Mannerheim had once taught the Dalai Lama pistol-shooting; he spoke seven languages, Finnish least fluently. His hauteur was comparable to that of Charles de Gaulle; his ruthlessness had been manifested in the 1919–20 purges of the defeated Finnish communists.
During the 1930s Mannerheim had constructed a fortified line across the Karelian isthmus, to which his name was given. He suffered no delusions about his country’s strategic weakness, and had urged conciliation of Stalin. But when his countrymen opted to fight, he set about managing the defence with cool professionalism. Before the Russians attacked, the Finns adopted a scorched-earth policy, evacuating from the forward areas 100,000 civilians, some of whom adopted an impressively stoical attitude to their sacrifice: border guards who warned an old woman to quit her home were amazed, on returning to burn it, to find that she had swept and cleaned the interior before leaving. On the table lay matches, kindling wood, and a note: ‘When one gives a gift to Finland, one desires that it should be like new.’ But it was a distressing business to destroy housing and installations around the Petsamo nickel-mining centre, which had been constructed with infinite labour and difficulty inside the Arctic Circle. The frontier zone was heavily booby-trapped: mines triggered by pull-ropes were laid, to smash the ice in front of invaders attacking across frozen lakes.
Stalin committed twelve divisions to assaults in a dozen sectors. Most of his soldiers were told that Finland had attacked the Soviet Union, but some were disbelieving and bewildered. Captain Ismael Akhmedov heard a Ukrainian peasant say, ‘Comrade Commander. Tell me, why do we fight this war? Did not Comrade Voroshilov declare at the Party Congress that we don’t want an inch of other people’s land and we will not surrender an inch of ours? Now we are going to fight? For what?’ An officer sought to explain the perils of acquiescing in a frontier so close to Leningrad, but Moscow’s strategic ambitions roused scant enthusiasm among those ordered to fulfil them, most of whom were hastily mobilised local reservists.
Stalin was untroubled. Confident that his attacking force of 120,000 men, six hundred tanks and a thousand guns could overwhelm the Mannerheim Line, he ignored his generals’ warnings about the restricted approaches to Finland. Tanks and vehicles were obliged to advance on narrow