The USSR-Finland ‘Winter War’ ended on this day in 1940. The Finns, though outnumbered, fought the Red Army valiantly for months before finally accepting the USSR’s harsh terms for peace
Communism’s new clothes
The World War II had started in Sep. 1939. So why did the Nazis not oppose Soviet Union’s imperialism? The Germans and USSR had signed a Non-Aggression Pact in Aug. 1939. And in it was a “secret additional protocol” whose contents became known only after the WWII with the capture of the secret German archives
Hitler-Stalin secret pact
Once again Germany and Russia, as in the days of the German kings and Russian emperors, had agreed to partition Poland, writes journalist William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And in return, Hitler had given Stalin a free hand in Finland and the Baltic
But Finland had won independence from the USSR thanks to the intervention of German troops in 1918. So, when, the Soviets attacked Finland on Nov. 30, 1939, Hitler was placed in a “most humiliating position” for he had to condone Russia’s unprovoked attack on a little country with close ties to Germany
Stalin’s cynical and secret deal with Hitler to divide up Poland and to obtain a free hand to gobble up Latvia, Estonia and Finland was not known outside Berlin and Moscow, but it would soon become evident from Soviet acts, and would shock most of the world even at this late date ... the USSR had built up a certain moral force as the champion of peace and the leading opponent of fascist aggression. Now that moral capital had been utterly dissipated
William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich