Battle of Suomussalmi – Another Finnish Victory

By December 31, 1939 the Finns completed a nine day battle during which they cut off, cut up and destroyed the Soviet 163rd infantry division. Using their superior winter (ski) mobility, close combat skills and knowledge of the terrain, the Finns were able to attack the Soviets in isolated groups. The Soviets had adequate winter clothing but lacked winter camouflage as well as training and equipment for ski units. As a result they were road bound, easy targets and had vulnerable supply lines requiring constant protection. Even good winter clothing could not prevent serious frostbite casualties in the particularly harsh winter conditions of 1939-1940. As against perhaps 8,000 Soviet casualties, Finnish losses were around 400 men.

Suomussalmi was the most dramatic example of Finnish success at this time. The Soviets had failed to break through the Mannerheim line where conditions were most favorable for them. Northward from Lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean the various separate Soviet thrusts were reduced to ineffectiveness at best or defeat with heavy losses in many other cases.

At the high command and political levels the Soviets were reduced to bluster and excuse making. The first month of the war had been a disaster for them and their string of defeats had not ended. Nonetheless, Stalin would not be denied and preparations were already being made with a view toward salvaging the Soviet military reputation and retrieving the situation. In the meantime the Finns could have a happy new year’s eve marked by some hope for the future if world sympathy and admiration could be turned into tangible military assistance.

As for the Soviet future, Adolph Hitler, among others, was already drawing upon the Soviet humiliation in Finland as evidence for the proposition that the Soviet armed forces, their leadership weakened by the 1937-1938 purges, were much more vulnerable than their size would suggest.

Graf Spee Scuttled off Montevideo

On December 17, 1939, the German pocket battleship Graf Spee scuttled itself outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. The sinking of the Graf Spee was the culmination of the Battle of the River Plate in which the British heavy cruiser Exeter and two light cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, engaged the Graf Spee which was on a commerce raiding mission. Despite having heavily damaged the Exeter and having suffered apparently little damage itself, the Graf Spee passed up what has been generally agreed to be an excellent chance to finish off the Exeter (and possibly Ajax and Achilles as well) and retired toward the River Plate, the estuary between Uruguay and Argentina. It entered the neutral harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay.

Under international law, the Graf Spee was required to depart after 24 hours subject to certain exceptions most notably that it could not leave until 24 hours had passed since the last enemy merchant ship had left the harbor. The British made a great show to a neutral but sympathetic Uruguayan government of demanding the prompt departure of the Graf Spee. They leaked false intelligence of their substantial naval strength in the area. In fact, they had only the two light cruisers although there were substantial reinforcements on the way given time. They made plans to coordinate the departure of their merchant ships with those of the French to keep Graf Spee in Montevideo until reinforcements could arrive.

All of this proved unnecessary as Graf Spee left of its own accord and scuttled itself much to the pleasant astonishment of the British. the Surviving crew of the Graf Spee were taken to Buenos Aires Argentina where the Captain of the Graf Spee, H.W. Langsdorf committed suicide on December 19th.

At the time and subsequently, Captain Langsdorf’s decisions have been heavily second guessed. From his failure to finish off the Exeter to his failure to make a fight of it upon leaving Montevideo Langsdorf has been criticized for mishandling the situation. The following things are known which may have influenced him. He had been wounded during the battle which can affect the quality of your decisions even if you appear completely lucid and in command. Graf Spee had fired over half of its ammunition. If Langsdorf believed that he would have to fight additional British forces he may have felt his efforts would be doomed by his ammunition supply. There is some speculation that he also had fuel supply and/or damaged fuel system issues although I haven’t been able to confirm this. In addition, Graf Spee’s damage though minor (unless the fuel system damage theory is true) was not inconsequential.

Langsdorf appears not to have been an especially blood thirsty man. He had taken care to rescue survivors from the merchant ships he had sunk and released 61 survivors at Montevideo. As noted earlier, having damaged the Exeter he was content to turn away. None of the problems he faced prevented him from having one last fight if he wanted to. Instead, it appears that he was persuaded that he could not get back to Germany. He had been prohibited by Hitler from allowing his ship to be interned by Uruguay in part because of fears that Uruguay might subsequently join the allies and turn over the ship.

It appears to me that Langsdorf scuttled the ship to avoid pointless loss of life and then took the ultimate responsibility for his decision. If so he deserves a measure of respect for his humanity, his restraint and his courage regardless of his cause.

Finland – Initial Battles

By December 15, 1939 the battle lines had been drawn. The Soviets had come up against the Finnish Mannerheim line defenses and begun a series of ineffectual division size attacks. These defenses barred the way to southern Finland including the Finnish capital of Helsinki. They extended for 90 miles across the Karellian Isthmus from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga.

A second section of the front extended 600 miles from the northern end of lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean. While the battles on the Mannerheim line were fought on a continuous front, transportation and terrain limitations meant that in the north the Russians launched six separate attacks organized around the available roads and tracks.

The Russians achieved a bit of surprise with their attack just north of Lake Ladoga which was significantly larger than the Finns anticipated. The Finns had failed to appreciate the logistical impact of transportation improvements the Russians had made on their side of the border in the late 1930’s.

However, once in Finnish territory this Russian advantage was lost. The Finns, taking a calculated risk, switched troops from the Mannerheim line defenses and counterattacked the Russian advance. Between December 12th and December 15th they badly mauled two Russian divisions halting the Soviet advance. This was the Russians’ first clue that they would not have everything their own way in Finland.

In this as in future battles the Finns displayed tactical initiative, skill in close combat, mobility in difficult terrain and local geographic knowledge that the Russians could not hope to match. (The Finnish commander in the battles just north of Lake Ladoga had written his staff college paper on how to deal with an attack in precisely the area where the Russians chose to advance.)

The Finns also brought considerable creativity to the task of dealing with the Russian advantage in heavy equipment. For example, while gasoline filled glass bottles had been used as anti-tank weapons before, it was in Finland where they acquired the name “Molotov cocktail”. Thrown onto the back of a tank behind the turret where vents allowed engine heat and exhaust to escape, the burning gasoline -ignited by a burning rag tied to the bottle and set alight just before throwing- would flow into the engine area starting new fires, immobilizing the tank and forcing the crew to exit the vehicle or be burned to death. The escaping crew would then be killed or captured by Finnish infantry who had already killed, pinned down or driven off the infantry assigned to support the tanks.

The Finns manufactured over 70,000 Molotov cocktails (40,000 with bottles supplied by the Finnish Alcohol Board) and even upgraded the fuse from the traditional burning rag to a sulphuric acid ampule attached at the mouth of the bottle to provide the ignition. The Russians had clearly underestimated their enemy and would now pay a high price in blood and reputation to resolve the problems created by their own overconfidence – an overconfidence aggravated by Josef Stalin’s “management style” which viewed any recognition of Red Army shortcomings as treachery and thus made identifying problems and correcting them impossible.

Russo-Finnish War Begins

On November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The ensuing conflict is also known as the Winter War. Finland had once been an autonomous part of the Russian empire and a period of conflict began at the end of the 19th century when Russia began a policy of Russification to reduce Finland’s autonomy. This produced a great deal of discord and when the Russian empire collapsed in 1917 the Finns seized the opportunity and declared their independence. The Russians let them go having their own civil war to worry about at the time. However, the Russians never really accepted the idea of Finnish independence and there were periodic border incidents and episodes of political conflict including some armed conflict.

By 1938 Stalin was ready to rectify the situation and the Soviets made a number of demands for territorial swaps and concessions the net effect of which would be that the Finns would have to give up the territory containing their extensive border fortifications which later became known as the Mannerheim Line. This the Finns refused to do. The Nazi-Soviet Pact put Finland within the Soviet sphere of influence and after his successful invasion/occupation of Eastern Poland, Stalin felt free to launch what he thought would be an easy campaign against Finland.

The Soviets employed 21 divisions plus supporting tank and aircraft units. Soviet manpower committed initially was about 425,000 to the Finns initial total of 130,000. The Finns quickly mobilized many more eventually reaching a strength of more than 300,000. Still, the Finns could not match the Russians in heavy equipment such as tanks, airplanes, and artillery. The Finns also suffered from a shortage of ammunition most notably for their artillery. On paper, the Russians have what they need to win and are attacking all along their border with Finland though mostly concentrated in the south on the Karelian Isthmus where supply and transportation resources can support a larger invasion force. We’ll see what happens.

I should note that this commences a very surreal period in World War II diplomacy. The Russians are generally remembered as allies of the West against Germany but we are entering a period where western sympathy for Finland combined with anticommunist sentiment to present a real danger of fighting between the British and French on the one hand and the Soviets on the other. More on this also as time goes by.

Assassination Attempt on Hitler – Munich 1939

On November 8th 1939, a bomb planted by Georg Elser, a German Communist who worked as a carpenter, exploded at the Burgerbraukeller in Munich killing eight people and wounding 63. Eva Braun’s father was among the dead. The bomb was intended for Hitler who was scheduled to make a speech there on the occasion of the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Elser had managed to hide in the Burgerbraukeller after closing every night for over a month. During that time he hollowed out a column near where Hitler would be speaking and filled it with explosives.

Hitler did make his speech but cut it short. Somewhere between eight to thirteen minutes after Hitler left the building (depending on which source you use) the bomb exploded. Elser was arrested, tortured and confessed to the attempt but claimed to have acted alone. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp and murdered there on April 9, 1945 to ensure he would not be rescued by the Allies. He lived as long as he did because Himmler wanted to use him in a show trial to establish British complicity in the assassination attempt after Germany won the war.

Historians generally agree that Elser planted the bomb but it remains uncertain whether he acted alone. Depending on how you count there were as many as seventeen attempts on Hitler’s life between September of 1939 and May of 1945. The July 20, 1944 attempt is only the most famous one.

United States Amends Neutrality Act – “Cash and Carry”

On November 4th, 1939 amendments to the Neutrality Act became effective which allowed the United States to sell weapons and military supplies to belligerents in Europe which would (1) pay cash and (2) carry the material away in their own ships. As a practical matter British control of the seas meant that only Britain and France could benefit from this policy. Earlier on October 18th in the same spirit President Roosevelt had banned foreign submarines from U.S. territorial waters, a ban which though neutrally stated could concern only the Germans.

The invasion of Poland affected opinion in the United States in a way which allowed Roosevelt to overcome isolationist opinion on this occasion and to this degree. Thus did Roosevelt’s slow and patient movement toward the end of American neutrality continue.

Sinking of the British Battleship Royal Oak

On October 14th 1939, the German submarine U-47 penetrated the harbor defenses of the British main base for their home fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney islands. After searching in vain for some time for a suitable target, U-47 came upon the British battleship Royal Oak. U-47, commanded by Captain Gunther Prien, fired four torpedoes. This produced one hit, two misses and a malfunction. On board the Royal Oak, the crew was not clear what had happened and the first thoughts were that there had been an internal explosion. Many crew members simply went on with what they were doing at the time. U-47 fired another torpedo from her stern tubes which also missed. In the meantime the forward tubes were reloaded. This time a spread of three torpedoes produced three hits and Royal Oak capsized and sank. 833 of her crew of over 1,200 were killed.

The daring and spectacular nature of the attack was a substantial propaganda coup for the Germans. The substantial loss of life and the fact that many of the bodies could not be recovered from the ship have made the site of the sinking a memorial for the British people and the Royal Navy perhaps comparable to the USS Arizona memorial for Americans.

However, the military impact of the sinking beyond the immediate loss of life was very small. Royal Oak was one of the Revenge class of battleships built in 1913-1914. Despite refits and upgrades during the interwar years, in 1939 Royal Oak could manage a top speed of only 20 knots which was not enough to keep up with the rest of the fleet. This had been demonstrated earlier in the month when Royal Oak had participated in a search for the German battle cruiser Gneisenau which had entered the North Sea as a diversion and cover for the successful breakout of the commerce raiding German pocket battleships Deutschland and Graf Spee.

Royal Oak had returned to Scapa Flow with its shortcomings exposed and some minor but not inconsequential damage from its efforts to operate at top speed in rough seas. The reason U-47 had to search for targets was that the main units of the British fleet had been dispersed to other ports for fear of a German air attack. A decision had been made that Royal Oak could be risked so that its antiaircraft armament could be added to the Scapa Flow defenses. Royal Oak might have served usefully later in the war supporting amphibious landings with its heavy guns. However, for the immediate aftermath of its sinking, an objective and admittedly cold-hearted assessment is that the sinking had little impact on the military balance. Winston Churchill then First Lord of the Admiralty said as much when he announced the sinking on October 17th.

On the other hand, the loss of life which would have been tragic in any event had that tragedy compounded by the Royal Navy’s employment of boy seamen between the ages of 15 and 17. Over 100 of these boys under 18 were among those killed on board the Royal Oak. Although the navy publicly defended the practice, boys under 18 never again served aboard active warships except in exceptional circumstances. There are many informative internet sites on the sinking so I won’t link to one of them. I’ll just say that typing “royal oak sunk” into a good search engine will bring up a number of good choices for digging deeper into these events.

The Polish Campaign: Results and German Lessons Learned

Germany conquered its half of Poland in 36 days. It took almost 700,000 prisoners and inflicted over 100,000 casualties in killed, wounded and missing on the Poles. The vast quantity of captured military equipment and ammunition(e.g. over 3000 artillery pieces and 16,500 machine guns), while not suitable for use by the Wehrmacht, could be used to help equip Germany’s minor allies later in the war. By contrast German personnel losses were relatively light – a total of 40,000 including 8,000 dead. Among the 22.5 million Poles in the German occupied territory were 750,000 ethnic Germans and some ethnic minorities prepared to work against the Soviet Union e.g. Ukrainians. However, the overwhelming bulk of the population was hostile and would require an occupation force.

German equipment losses were serious and illustrated the enormous strain of building and maintaining the equipment necessary for mechanized warfare. The Germans lost over 200 tanks and over 400 aircraft. More extensive still were the deferred maintenance issues and outright mechanical breakdowns associated with the demands of combat, poor roads and maintenance and repair resources that lagged far behind the rapid advance of the mechanized ground forces and aircraft operating off of improvised airfields near the front. Many German units were virtually immobile by the end of the campaign.These issues would increase with longer campaigns and tougher opposition.

As was their custom, the Germans reviewed their operations for possible improvements with an intelligent and critical eye worthy of a better cause. They certainly had reason to be satisfied. Their armored forces had overcome earlier operational issues under combat conditions and restored the war of movement the Germans had always preferred to fight, removing the threat of world war I style trench deadlock. German artillery was highly effective. The Luftwaffe had gained air superiority and successfully attacked Polish strong points, troop movements and supply columns on a large scale.

On a more detailed level however the Germans found room for improvement. Tank and motorized units were employed conservatively and cautiously by later standards. Advocates of more aggressive armored tactics were able to build on lessons learned in Poland for later campaigns including France and Russia. The lighter German tanks were found to be useful only for reconnaissance if at all. In the future production of the heavier types would be emphasized even at the expense of the total number of tanks in a division. The mg 34 machine gun was found to be vulnerable to jamming under eastern European conditions. Research was accelerated resulting in the faster development of the more reliable and faster firing mg 42.

The Germans found that their light divisions were, well, too light for sustained combat operations. They were upgraded to Panzer divisions. On the other end of the spectrum, the motorized divisions were too hard to maneuver and control with three motorized infantry regiments. They were each reduced by one such regiment.

There were additional small improvements in battlefield communications and infantry equipment. The Germans also took note of the effective use by the Poles of night attacks and guerrilla activity in rear areas. They stressed night attacks and the combat capabilities of supply column personnel in improved training methods. One area where they learned little was camouflage discipline against air attack. That would come later as the Germans faced increasingly effective air opposition.

Much of the information from this essay is drawn from “The German Campaign in Poland (1939)” the book length Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-255 by Robert M. Kennedy which despite being published in 1956 remains a valuable source on the campaign and is packed with the kind of detail on numbers, organization, equipment and order of battle that gladdens a war game designer’s heart.

You can read it online here .

The Polish Army of 1939

With organized Polish resistance drawing to a close, let’s take a moment to reflect on an army that had just suffered a crushing defeat. Someone, I forget who, observed that defeated armies do not get the respect they deserve. The Union army at Chancellorsville or the Austrian army at Austerlitz are undeserving of the gratuitous contempt that is directed at them by partisans of a cause or those who vicariously identify with “winners”. So it is with the Polish army of 1939.

Poland was considered a serious regional power before the war. The active army was 280,000 men organized into 30 infantry divisions (two of them mountain infantry) 11 cavalry brigades and a mechanized cavalry brigade plus corps and army level troops mostly artillery, tank, engineer, antiaircraft and signals units. There were 1,500,000 trained reservists between the ages of 24-42 plus older reservists and national guardsmen for support duties.

A look behind that organization revealed many weaknesses. There were too many men in the reserves given the Polish geography which meant there would be little time and space in which to mobilize. Much of the heavy weaponry from machine guns to artillery pieces was in short supply and obsolescent. Most notably a Polish artillery regiment contained only three artillery battalions typically two of 75 mm guns and one of 100mm howitzers. Many divisions lacked one of those battalions or the battalions themselves had two batteries instead of three. Fire control equipment was obsolescent and all artillery was foreign made. A program to upgrade to 105mm and 155mm howitzers of Polish manufacture was just beginning. By comparison the German artillery regiment in a first line infantry division was composed of three battalions of 105mm howitzers and one of 150mm howitzers with modern fire control equipment which allowed for state of the art massing and switching of fires to support planned actions while being responsive to surprise developments, and improvisations to exploit opportunities.

Polish tanks were too few, too lightly armored and deployed in separate battalions for infantry support in the manner of World War I or with the mechanized cavalry for reconnaissance. There were just too few antitank and antiaircraft guns and the quantity and quality of mortars, machine guns and light artillery for direct support of the infantry fell well short of German levels. While images of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks with lances may have been the product of German propaganda films, the fact remained that cavalry had no business on a battlefield dominated by the tank, the airplane, rapid fire artillery and the machine gun and the Polish army had 11 brigades of it. As was also the case with many other countries, Polish military doctrine had not kept up with conceptual, material and technological developments since World War I.

The things the Polish army did not lack were bravery, patriotism and a stubborn spirit of resistance. The Polish army held out as long as it could, counterattacked where it could and when possible escaped to fight another day. As this blog continues to track developments it will become clear that Polish resistance in 1939 ranks among the best of the efforts to resist German attacks under desperate circumstances in the early years of the war. Another thing to watch will be how Polish forces, many composed in substantial part of troops who escaped in 1939 and after will appear in most of the campaigns against Germany. For example, less than a year after the defeat of 1939 a Polish brigade (and a Polish submarine) will be found defending Norway against German invasion.

This spirit of resistance helps explain how a country that had already survived three partitions by major European powers went on to survive a fourth at the hands of the Germans and Russians in 1939.

Warsaw Surrenders

On September 27, 1939 the defenders of Warsaw surrendered to the Germans. The resistance of the defenders had been long and determined but by this time all reasonable means of defense were exhausted. Any realistic hope of relief from their western allies or their own Polish forces had disappeared well before this date. For the Germans there remained only mopping up operations which were completed by October 6th. Polish soldiers persisted in their efforts to escape across neutral borders to the very end. Expect a mini-essay on the results of the campaign and another on the Polish army of 1939 soon.