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victims of the White Death, as the barometer dipped again to –30 Celsius. By constantly mortar-bombing their sixty field kitchens at mealtimes, the Finns kept the Russians short of hot food, and when the Russians lit fires the Finns machine-gunned them from the treetops, ‘easily picking out the dark silhouettes of the men against the snow’.26 The standard Red Army rifle, the single-shot bolt-action 7.62mm 1902 Moisin-Nagant, became inoperable when its gun-oil lubricant froze in conditions below –15 Celsius, and armoured vehicles either had to be kept running, at ruinous expense in fuel, or they would seize up and block the narrow passageways through the forest.

‘We don’t let them rest,’ said General Kurt Wallenius of the Finnish Northern Army; ‘we don’t let them sleep. This is a war of numbers against brains.’ Sleep for the 44th was next to impossible because of the vehicle engines, terrified horses, Finnish professional trackers and hunters who made excellent snipers, and even ‘the sharp reports of the trees as their very sap froze’. Those who resorted to vodka found that, despite the initial sense of warmth, body heat was ultimately lost. The slightest wounds exposed to the air froze and went gangrenous. Frozen corpses were piled up, one on top of the other, as the Finns methodically moved from sector to sector, wiping out Russian resistance. By 5 January, a thousand Russian prisoners had been taken, a further 700 soldiers had escaped back to the Russian lines, and over 27,000 had been killed, all for the loss of 900 Finns. As one of his officers remarked to Colonel Siilasvuo, ‘The wolves will eat well this winter.’ The Finns captured 42 tanks, 102 field guns and 300 vehicles at Suomussalmi, as well as thousands of the conical-shaped Red Army hats (budenovka) that they later used in deception operations. Indeed, they captured more military hardware than they received from outside sources, however much the League of Nations supported Finland’s struggle (expelling the USSR from its ranks on 14 December) and however much the Western Allies’ Supreme War Council debated sending aid (they agreed to it only on 5 February, by which time it was too late).

The loss of the two divisions at Suomussalmi, when compounded with the reversals at the Mannerheim Line and the victory of General Paavo Talvela, who destroyed the 139th and 75th Red Army Divisions at Tolvajärvi on Christmas Eve, sent a humiliating message around the globe for the USSR, even though the Finns could not follow up these successes for lack of troops (they were conscripting fifteen-year-olds as it was). Hitler in particular believed he learnt lessons about the performance of the Red Army that were to affect his decision to invade Russia the following year. Yet they were substantially the wrong ones.

Stalin’s purging of the officer corps in 1937 had seriously weakened the Red Army. The former Chief of Staff Marshal Tukhachevsky was shot, and with him died new thinking about the development of mass armoured formations operating deep inside enemy territory. General Konstantin Rokossovsky, one of those who were tortured during that time – though not shot despite his Polish origins – later said that purges were even worse for morale than when artillery fired on one’s own troops because it would have to have been very accurate artillery fire to achieve such damage. Three out of the five Soviet marshals were purged in 1937–8, thirteen of the fifteen army commanders, fifty-seven of the eighty-five corps commanders, 110 of the 195 divisional commanders and 220 of the 406 brigade commanders.27 In total, around 43,000 officers were killed or imprisoned, although 20,000 were later released. Yet no fewer than seventy-one out of the original eighty-five senior members of the USSR’s Military Council were dead by 1941.28 When Rokossovsky, who had been beaten so badly in prison that he lost eight teeth and had three ribs broken, reported to Stalin for duty after being reinstated, Stalin asked him where he had been. Rokossovsky told him, whereupon Stalin laughed and said, ‘A fine