IIRC, the losses for the Red Army during the WWII were something like 80% of all 20-35yo men. :doh:

This I know nothing about, but they did indeed take losses of quite an enormous scale.

Wikipedia described the losses (in dead) for the Russian army during Barbarossa (June 22-December 5) as over 800 000. And that's only in the first 6 months of the "Great Patriotic War". By the end of the war, 26 600 000 people from the U.S.S.R. had died with the war as a direct cause. :nope:

Indeed, when led properly, the early/pre-war Red Army could achieve great victories, such as Zhukov's Khalkhin Gol counteroffensive in August, 1939.

Also, superior numbers, tanks and equipment are useless without proper doctrines (This was evident as far back as the Battle of the Somme), and the Soviet ones were clearly lacking during the early months of the Winter War.

Oh, Dowly is referring to a certain year (Can't remember which) which a great precentage of the population that was born in died in the war.

I guess my problem is not so much with Finland emerging out of the Winter War unconquered, even victorious to an extent. My problem is with the myth of the Winter War used as a kind of military propaganda tool for various political aims.

I admit that I don't know much about the Winter War even if it is relatively close historically and I got to know my mother's father who was there. Never met my father's father who was there too, he died too early. However I don't necessarily believe what others tell me about the war either. It seems we learn new things about the war and the political motives behind the various decisions every year. We learn these things through neutral historical research. With time our opinions about the war change.

Russia today is different from the Soviet Union, it still has some of the same problems. It's a big country with lots of really should I say problematic neighbours. Where US has to deal with Canada and Mexico, Russia has a much more flammable situation on it's borders 24/7/365.

Oh I'm sorry, I must have missed this. Allow me to retort. :)

Yes but the Soviets did win the war and the USSR came to an end only after they themselves decided to put an end to their system of government. It was socialism that whooped nazi's butt, that and the eastern 'untermench'.

Finland of course, with Nazi-Germany.

No it wasn't a clever strategy, it was just the Soviet military on the road to becoming the winner of WW2 and defeating the instigator of the war the west helped to build and was unable to defeat by itself.

Why did Finland give it's own citizens and also pow's to extermination camps in Germany? Why did Finland have it's own concentration camps? Why did so many pow's die in Finland's pow camps?

OTH the concentration camps that the Finns used where used to hold Finnish Citizens who had anything to do with communism. As for Prisoners of War where held in proper pow camps in accordance with the Genva Covention. As how the Finnish Military treated theses pows is a different story.
@ Torvlad Von Mansee I'm a Finnish-American on my Mothers side and both of my Grandparents lived through both the Winter War and the Continuation War as civilans after fleeing their homes in Karelia before the Soviets attacked.

No, I'm talking about the camps that were used to hold Soviet citizens. Wikipedia.

I used to live close by to a place where there used to be a pow camp for Soviet pow's during WW2. Today there is just a big cemetary there that holds the thousand + prisoners who perished in that camp. There used to be mistreatment of the prisoners there, 'beating allies' where camp guards used to beat the prisoners who ran down a gauntlet of the guards who were beating them. Prisoners died from various causes.

It's true that during Winter and Continuation wars Finnish people with leftist or alledled leftist connections and/or sympathies were put in prison, in special containment etc.

weqe
 

They won with the help of deliveries raw materials and products from USA, without it they would have lost.


USSR set out openly to defeat the western democratic market economies, in a battle of the systems and ideologies.
It developed into Cold War, they lost.





The Communist Party and USSR 1917-1991 takes that title.





Finland didnt give any of its citizens to German extermination camps.
The POWS were traded for Finns, Karelians and Ingrians from German occupied areas.
Concentration camps were common in all countries during ww2.
Malnitrution, not forced labour or executions.