Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "Finland's Continuation War in a Nutshell #WW2" video.

  1. Dare I say it was a war of the Reds, Reich and Blues?
    11
  2. Well, not quite true. Britain did send some obsolete aircraft (Gloster Gladiators equipped with skis) to Finland. However, given the Baltic in 1940 was effectively blockaded by Germany and the northern coast of Finland by the Soviet Navy (in both cases backed by air forces), attempting to supply Finland would have been extremely difficult. Britain was also busy sending everything it could into northern France, and had little it could send. Also, they had to worry (somewhat) about Norway and Sweden. Finland was in much the same situation as Poland in 1939 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Prague spring) - you really, really want to help, but the geography is against you and you also lack the means to do so. By the way, Churchill loathed Stalin.
    3
  3. I know this is a claim the Finns have made, but as we have seen in recent years, newly released documents may shed new light on this and alter this long held viewpoint. Given what is said in this video, I too am curious.
    2
  4. I think a large part of it was the lack of modern weapons (tanks, anti-tank guns, heavy artillery, mortars, etc) in sufficient quantities. In their Stalingrad trilogy, House and Glantz seem to indicate the Romanians initially did fairly well against the Soviet advance along most of their front, and a large section of their army held out for several days under the crushing assault. Had they been equipped like a Wehrmacht division, who knows what might have happened. In part it shows another deficiency of the Germans, treating your allies like crap and rendering little assistance (which is in stark contrast to the American's aid to their allies).
    2
  5. I don't find it surprising that the German advance in northern Finland went nowhere. If you have ever lived or worked in the Boreal forest, it is hard to traverse. Pushing an army through it would be a nightmare, not just from the supply issue. Any major push against units dedicated to defending their ground would make any such effort a march from one ambush to the next. Rather similar to what the Americans found in the Huertgen Forest, only on a much larger scale. For people living in North America, drive the Alaska Highway from from Fort St. John to Haines Junction and you'll see what I mean.
    1