Inferno - Max Hastings [25]
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 with 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. Capt. 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, 600 tanks and 1,000 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 axes between lakes, forests and swamps. Though the Finns had little artillery and few antitank weapons, so inept were the Soviet assaults that the defenders wrecked havoc on their columns with rifle and machine-gun fire. The snowy wastelands of eastern Finland were soon deeply stained with blood; some defenders succumbed to nervous exhaustion after mowing down advancing Russians at close range hour after hour. Soviet armour suffered 60 percent losses, chiefly because tanks advanced without infantry support. Most fell victim to primitive weapons, notably bottles filled with petrol and capped with a flaming wick, which caused them to explode into liquid fire when smashed against a vehicle. Though these had been used earlier in the Spanish Civil War, it was in Finland that the soubriquet “Molotov breadbasket,” then “Molotov cocktail,” first entered the military lexicon.
Mannerheim observed dryly that the attackers came on “with a fatalism incomprehensible to a European.” A hysterical Soviet battalion commander told his officers: “Comrades, our attack was unsuccessful; the division commander has just given me the order personally—in seven minutes, we attack again.” The Soviet columns lumbered forward once more—and were slaughtered. Some Finnish units adopted large-scale guerrilla tactics, striking at Soviet units from the forests, then withdrawing. They sought to break up the attackers’ formations, then destroy them piecemeal, calling such encounters “motti”—“firewood” battles—chopping up the enemy. Among the heroes of the campaign was Lt. Col. Aaro Pajari, who collapsed with a heart condition in the midst of one action, but somehow kept going. Like most of his fighting countrymen, Pajari was an amateur soldier, but he achieved a notable little