It takes heroes to avoid genocide

It was exactly 80 years ago, when a state with over 180 million inhabitants and expansive socialist ideology, attacked its democratic northwestern neighbor of 3.7 million people without declaring war and by bombing civilians. Colonel Antero Svensson reported on this aggression to military headquarters by requesting Military Marshal Mannerheim or Lieutenant Colonel Valo Nihtilä on the phone.

However, these high military leaders were not available, so Svensson gave information to the reserve lieutenant, Torsti Juhavaara, who was on duty. This was the beginning of a chain of events that made the entire world admire the Finns, and which perhaps more than any other single thing still unites us as a nation.

The opening tones of the attack were given in an agreement between the Soviet Union Vyacheslav Molotov and the German Joachim von Ribbentrop, in which the communist power was given free rein over Finland by the Hitler´s regime. And a few days earlier in Mainila, where the Russians staged an attack on themselves.

During the war, Finland succeeded in maintaining its independence and society. In order to achieve this goal over the aggression by the overwhelming enemy, the small nation needed actions, whose executors became national heroes.

These heroes include, for example, Hjalmar Siilasvuo, Lieutenant General, whose small fighting forces destroyed two Soviet divisions in Suomussalmi,  Simo Häyhä, who shot hundreds of Russian soldiers and became the world's most successful sniper ever, fighter pilot Jorma Sarvanto who destroyed six Russian bombers in five minutes, an achievement considered to be the "five-minute world record of fighter pilots" or - as the greatest of them all - Marshal Mannerheim, who successfully led the war despite the desperate difference between the military power of the two armies.

The stake of this war was - no more or no less - a genocide of Finns or its avoidance, as historian Teemu Keskisarja has noted. Thanks to the heroes who were ordered to the front 80 years ago - more than 300 000 Finnish soldiers in addition to those mentioned above - and also the women and children at home who made it possible for the army to fight for freedom, and the foreign volunteers who participated in the war with our own troops, we maintained an independent Finnish nation and its way of life

Without that heroism, we would not have a red professor today who ordered his students to remove Mannerheim's picture from the wall. Nor would we have a standard of living that enables the present state of welfare and at the same time attracts people from developing countries to seek a higher standard of living in our country.

But maybe after the fall of communism in the neighboring country 28 years ago, we would have a new independence and with it a healthy sense of nationality and faith in the future, like our southern neighbors in the Baltic countries who, 80 years ago, surrendered without resistance to the supremacy of the communist superpower.Or at least a government that would not include the ideological descendants of the aggressive socialism of threatening our existence in late 1930´s.

With these words, I wish my dear readers a happy 80th anniversary of the start of the Winter War between Finland and Soviet Union in 1939-1940.

The original blog text in Finnish

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
An ignorant mediahouse failed again in historical facts
Why a journalist was unaware on the number of Stalin´s victims?