Russian Invasion of Finland - The Winter War 1939-40

Never underestimate the people who want to defend their own country, culture and way of life. Greetings from Finland.

I've been to Raate road, where the two Soviet divisions were trapped and outmaneuvered by my countrymen. There's a lot of reminders of the war there, including foxholes, bullet-scarred trees and even marked mass graves. The atmosphere there was like in any other Finnish forest, but with an eerily sinister aspect to it.

As a swede, I've always felt that we should've assisted Finland more. Finland - friends, neighbours, brothers 💙🤍💙💛💙

Huge RESPECT for Finland from Greece. We admire a brave fight of David against Goliath.

Finland refusing territorial demands made complete sense since it was just a ruse to take over the whole country, as happened in the Baltic states. Also something that was important was that Finland already existed as a state before independence, subject to the tsar, and so when it declared independence it already had a government and years of democratic rule under its belt, which probably played a big role in Finland remaining a democratic country unlike other eastern European states, which probably contributed to its ability to resist. (1/3)

The Winter War was instrumental in improving rations in all armies. The Russians were living on the traditional tea and black bread, while the Finnish soldiers had field kitchens and hot meals. There is a story of a large group of Russian soldiers who, on smelling the Finnish dinner being cooked, surrendered in exchange for a hot meal. This was told to me by husband's grandfather who fought on the Finnish side.

Greetings from Finland. We are forever grateful for Swedish, Estonian, and other foreign voluntary fighters that helped us to defend our country.

My grandfather (my Fafa or Farfar) was in JR13, front line combat rifleman and machine gunner from the winter on. He was 19 years old at the start. He was later in JR61 under Alpo Marttinen at Tienhaara June 1944. He was badly wounded 3 or 4 times, left for dead once but was able to hand on a few days until he could be evacuated to a hospital. He never spoke about the war, but I know he was in some brutal combat. The one story he did tell was when he jumped into a trench, shot a Soviet soldier a few times. The guy fell back, pulled a picture of his wife and kid out, looked at it, then showed my grandfather, then died. That really bothered him til he died.

Can't describe how much I've waited for you to cover the Winter War and perhaps the Continuation War also! Thank you very much for your immaculate content! Of course there are things that I would've liked to be said differently but I bet your audience reads the comments also so they'll get some different points to think about.

Mark I have followed nearly all of your work. It’s fascinating to me as a local oral historian, that you collate all this information. Amazing and excellent work. Thoroughly enjoy your productions and your voiceover is very ‘listenable’. Congratulations

The finnish artillery units that the Russians claimed to have fired the Mainila shots were actually out of range of that area, so it was 100% a false flag attack.

Hey Dr Felton thank for this the winter war wasn’t covered very much when I was going through school so thank you for this small in depth explanation of this sometimes forgotten conflict

Stalin: "Finland is so scary, lets conquer them!" *Fails utterly Stalin: "They are not a threat."

My Heroic Fatherland

You streamlined a lot. -It was common knowledge even back in 30-40's that it was false flag -Finland did have anti-air weaponry, but they were concentrated on cities and important places -Finland had small but effective air force that won immense aerial victories

My dear grandfather, may he rest in peace, fought the soviet invaders. Among his 4 brothers and all actually survived(they fought on 5 different battlefields and not together). He lived to be 95 years old when he passed away. Never talked about the war when he was mentally still there. But he had spoken about the movie "Unknown soldier"(1955) which he stated that the movie was crap. Because you could never imagine the smell of decaying bodies which the soviet army left behing. And when in his last year started to become senile he stated that the german troops could not ve trusted, when the soviets launch an attack they fleed. He was the best grand father there could be and I miss him so much. Great vid as always!

One would appreciate if "Finland used to belong to the Russian empire" would also include the information, that prior to the brief 108year visit to the empire as an autonomous grand duchy, Finland was a part of Sweden for centuries. Sweden lost their eastern provinces, i.e. Finland to Russia in the peace of 1809. Finland has NEVER been Russian.

I hadn't been watching as much of your stuff until lately, but I'm really enjoying the new direction. The naval focus before was utterly fascinating, and I'm really excited for more stuff like this. Thanks for the great work!

My grandfather came from Denmark to finland to help fighting the Sobiets, there he found my grandmother, swedish born, she was a nurse during this conflict.. My grandfather was a part of a Scandinavian force , danish, norwegian and swedish troops helping the fins fight the soviets. Im pretty proud of that

The parallels between this and the invasion of Ukraine are incredible.