"The Winter War
By Richard P. Hallion
"So many Russians! Where will we bury them all?"
At the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union's Krasnaya Armiya (Red Army) embodied Stalin's military strength. It had five million troops, more than 300 divisions, a formidable reserve, and included the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), the Air Force. It seemed invincible, and Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov even said so to delegates at the 1939 Party Congress.
In August 1939, Stalin and Hitler executed a nonaggression pact essentially giving Stalin a free hand in the Baltic States and Bessarabia, the region around modern-day Moldova encompassing parts of Ukraine and Romania. Stalin wrung concessions from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—a prelude to absorbing them later into the USSR—then set his gaze upon Finland.
Finland, a nation of 3.7 million confronting one more than 40 times larger, seemed doomed—particularly since years of political indifference, questionable acquisition priorities, and complacency had left its military undersized, underfunded, and poorly equipped."
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