Battle of Suomussalmi

Background

The Red Army invaded Finland on 30 November 1939 without a declaration of war. Stalin expected Finnish workers to welcome it as a liberator and rushed the invasion without proper preparation, although a Soviet Defence Commissariat pamphlet of 1937 had warned that every Finnish soldier was a trained skier, and Meretskov, commanding the Leningrad Military District, cautioned that serious resistance was likely.

Of the four Soviet armies that crossed the border, the 9th Army was to cut Finland in two at its narrowest point, driving west to Oulu at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia. Taking Oulu would have severed Finland's railway to Sweden and left the country fighting on two fronts. The 9th Army sent three divisions over the border, separated by 60 to 100 miles of roadless forest, so that none could support another. The central thrust fell on Suomussalmi, a parish of lakes, marsh and pine forest about 25 miles inside Finland, where two roads from the frontier, from Juntusranta in the north and Raate in the east, met before running on west towards Hyrynsalmi and Oulu.

The border districts here were held by border guards and by battalions improvised from local training centres. Winter was already setting in, and it would prove one of the coldest on record, with deep snow and only a few hours of daylight. The Soviet plan depended on columns of men, lorries, guns and tanks moving fast along narrow dirt roads through forest that their infantry could not leave.

The armies

The Soviet 163rd Rifle Division under Kombrig Andrei Zelentsov advanced from Ukhta with three regiments: the 662nd, the 759th and the 81st Mountain Rifle Regiment. The 44th Rifle Division under Kombrig Alexei Vinogradov, a regular formation from the Kiev Military District that had taken part in the invasion of Poland, followed along the Raate road in December. Chew describes most of its men as Ukrainians unfamiliar with northern forest. It had about fifty tanks and plenty of motor transport, all confined to one narrow road; it carried several hundred pairs of skis but no one trained to use them. Most of its men wore summer leather boots.

The Finns began with two separate battalions, ErP 15 and ErP 16, formed at training centres, and border guards. Siilasvuo arrived with JR 27, and by Christmas his command had become the 9th Division, with JR 64, JR 65 and light, guerrilla (sissi) and bicycle battalions. Most were reservists who had never served together, but Siilasvuo and his regimental commanders were veterans of the 27th Jäger Battalion. Every man could ski. They had heated tents, akhio sledges and the Suomi submachine gun, but very little artillery: Siilasvuo had eight field guns in January and a single obsolete aircraft. Finnish radio intelligence read Soviet communications.

The battle

The Soviet advance, 30 November – 8 December. The 163rd crossed the border near Juntusranta while its 759th Regiment and reconnaissance battalion took the Raate road. At the road junction north of Suomussalmi the 662nd Regiment turned north towards Peranka, where ErP 16 stopped it at the Piispajärvi narrows on 6 December, while the 81st turned south to join the 759th. The Finns burned the village as they fell back, and the Soviets took it on 7 December (the Finnish Military Museum's account says 8 December).

Siilasvuo's counterattack and the roadblock, 9–26 December. JR 27 arrived on 9 December and stopped the advance at a ferry south of the village. On 11 December, the first day CDB90 counts, Siilasvuo's attempt to retake Suomussalmi failed, but he cut the Raate road on the isthmus between Lakes Kuivasjärvi and Kuomasjärvi, about six miles south-east of the village. There Captain Simo Mäkinen's two companies, with mortars and guns, held the advance guard of the 44th. The 163rd's northern supply route was cut on 13 December, the same day the Finns' lone aircraft spotted the 44th's leading elements. Zelentsov asked permission to withdraw on 20 December. From 17 December Group Susi attacked the 662nd Regiment's rear at Palovaara. The 44th's attacks on the roadblock on 24 and 25 December were small and failed; so did the 163rd's attempts to break out south and west. Meanwhile Siilasvuo's men ploughed winter roads across the frozen lakes south of the Raate road.

The destruction of the 163rd, 27–30 December. On 27 December Siilasvuo attacked: Kari's group from the north-west against Hulkonniemi, the bicycle battalion from the north. Group Susi took Palovaara the same day, cutting off the 662nd. Early on 28 December Finnish raids led Vinogradov to cancel his planned 10.30 attack and dig in. That morning the 163rd's resistance collapsed, and its survivors fled north-east over the ice of Lake Kiantajärvi to Juntusranta, which stayed in Soviet hands. By then the snow was at least three feet deep, the temperature between −30° and −40° and daylight about five hours.

The Raate road, 1–8 January. On the night of 1 January Captain Eino Lassila's battalion, about 1,000 men, skied from the end of the winter road to a ridge about 400 yards from the road. At 00.30 on 2 January it came out about 500 yards east of the Haukila farm, overran an artillery battalion whose guns faced west, and blocked the road; two anti-tank guns arriving at 07.00 knocked out seven tanks within fifteen minutes. Paavola's light battalion and Kari's group struck south-east, taking Sanginlampi and, on 4 January, Eskola. Siilasvuo's general attack on 5 January mostly failed: Lassila lost 96 men holding his block, Kari was thrown back with heavy losses at Kokkojärvi, but that night Fagernäs's engineers blew the Purasjoki bridge near the border. On 6 January the Finns cut the road again east of Kokkojärvi and east of Tyynelä, breaking the column into isolated pockets (mottis). Radio contact with 9th Army was lost, and late that evening Vinogradov authorised the retreat already under way, telling those who could escape to do so. Men fled on foot through the snow towards the frontier or north across Kiantajärvi. On 7 January the Finns took Likoharju; the last bunkers at Kuomasjärvi yielded 70 prisoners at 04.00 on 8 January. Mopping-up went on for days.

Aftermath

The losses are still argued over. Chew's 'conservative' Finnish estimate was 22,500 Soviet casualties in the two divisions and the NKVD regiment, against about 2,700 Finnish; Kiselev's work in Soviet archives gives about 12,000. Kulju puts the 44th's dead at 7,000–9,000, well below the 17,000 that earlier Finnish estimates, built on prisoner interrogations, had given. In January 1940 Soviet officials admitted no more than 900 losses, mostly frostbite. The booty was enormous by the standards of the war: Chew lists 43 tanks, 70 field guns, 278 lorries, cars and tractors, about 300 machine guns and 1,170 horses.

The 9th Army's war council blamed a regimental commander. Stavka instead held Vinogradov, his chief of staff Volkov and the head of his political department responsible. A military tribunal sentenced them to death, and they were shot in front of the division's survivors at Vazhenvaara on 11 January 1940. Edwards says the order came from Stalin's emissary Lev Mekhlis after a sham trial. Vinogradov was rehabilitated in 1990.

Suomussalmi is often reckoned the clearest Finnish victory of the war in the north. Chew used it to teach that troops prepared for subarctic war can beat a stronger enemy who is not. The battlefield has an Alvar Aalto memorial (1958), a Winter War Monument with a field of stones for the Soviet dead, and Russian (1994) and Ukrainian monuments.

Wargaming it

Suomussalmi is a game about mobility and cold more than firepower. On any map the Soviet player has the men, guns and tanks; the Finn has skis, tents and knowledge of the ground. Rules must make the road a trap: Soviet units off it should crawl, Finnish ski units move freely, and both sides need a fatigue or exposure track, with heated tents, campfires and field kitchens as things worth fighting for. The Finns sought out kitchens deliberately and in the end destroyed or captured all 55.

At battalion or regiment scale, with a turn of half a day, the whole campaign works: the Finnish player must hold the Kuivasjärvi–Kuomasjärvi roadblock with very little, build winter roads, and choose when to turn on the 163rd and when on the 44th. The Soviet player's what-ifs are the real decisions: let Zelentsov withdraw when he asked on 20 December, or have Vinogradov make a determined push to relieve him before 28 December instead of digging in.

At company or platoon scale Lassila's night raid on the Haukila artillery park, the anti-tank guns' dawn fight, the Purasjoki bridge and the last motti battles make tense scenarios with hidden movement and limited visibility. Give the Finns only eight field guns and let the Soviets keep their tanks; the balance lies elsewhere.

Maps and pictures