Mr Lamprecht wrote:
“The Fins, who had virtually no tanks, and tiny outdated airforce, shot down vast numbers of Russian planes and killed a million Russians!!”

All this war, Mr Lamprecht, took place in a very small area – so called Karelian Isthmus. I was there.
It s about 50 km of rocks, lakes and forests very convenient to defense. 100 000 brave and well-organized men can stop here millions of ennemies.

A million Russians killed-))))!!!!
You understand what you writes? For exemple Russia and Germany lost about 1 mn soldiers each in Stalingrad battle! And in was a greatest battle of WW2.

For 105 days of the Soviet-Finnish war Red Army lost:
72 408 person killed,
186 129 – wounded
17 520 – missing persons,
13 213 – freezed and 4240 contused.

The Finnish losses, on official data, have made: 19 576 person killed, 43 557 – wounded men, 4101 – missing persons.

Of course Red army losses in this war were about 1:10 to Finnish one. But Finland paid for it later.

You should read also something about a Russian-Finnish war in 1944. They shamefully capitulated when Russian army just approached the same Karelian Isthmus they defended 5 years ago. And next 50 years they were kissing ass of Soviet Union

VERENA Replied:
Hi, will send to Jan for comment.

[Hi,
I think you’ve been reading the Soviet version of that war, because what I’ve read and the maps I was browsing shows far more detail.

You are right about the Karelian Isthmus – but that is where the Mannerheim line was. But I completely disagree that the war was fought on such a small front. There were Russian armies attacking all along the Finnish border right up into the Arctic at Petsumo. I’ve seen other sources for that war, and the fighting was all along the length of Finland.

I would suspect that as per normal communist practise that they lied about the casualties afterwards.

In our wars in Africa, our enemies made much of how many of us they supposedly killed. But their estimates were always unrealistic thumbsucks. The facts speak otherwise. So I am skeptical of many Soviet claims.

For example, I was reading General Von Manstein’s memoirs and about Stalingrad, he mentions that these days people say 600,000 Germans were trapped there – but he says the actual strength returns were in the region of 200,000 or more. So it could be that Stalingrad is overrated and that these days we tend to believe the Soviet fudged figures more.

Von Manstein did not think much of massed Soviet attacks I might add. The Germans, like the Finns were very much outnumbered as were we in Africa. And I’m no longer a great believer that massed attacks achieves all that much. Its very expensive. Plenty of men get killed. 14 million Russian men were killed in WWII. The Germans lost far less, and they fought on every conceivable front.

What may have helped the Soviets is the war in Finland. They were hurt and it gave them time to learn and prepare themselves for the German invasion. It might have actually helped the Russians to survive the German invasion – since they had a chance to learn from their experiences.

You mentioned the 1944 Russo-Finnish war. I’m interested in that. I’ve not heard of that.

So far, I have a lot of admiration for the Finns. They had their faults. Many did not want to prepare for war. For example, if they had listened to Mannerheim and had spent much more money on their army, they would have done far better than they did.

Even so… pretty spunky stuff… they faced a massive army… I think the Soviets used 3,000 aircraft in the attack.

The Finns seem to have been excellent guerilla ski-fighters and were quite at home in temperatures of -50 – can you believe?

I’m still busy reading… Fascinating stuff. Jan]