(Nick) wrote in message om...
(snipped)
Of course, Finland's most important achievement of the Continuation War--at
the cost of many lives and some territory (vis-a-vis the 1939 border)--was
simply in preserving its national independence.

"As a result of the development of technology, warfare becomes more and more
a battle of information rather than a battle of firepower. As weapons become
more accurate, the advantage goes to the side which knows exactly where the
enemy forces are. Accurate weapons without good information are useless.
And, as the importance of information increases, we see a gradual shift in
the balance of advantage from attack to defence. In a battle of information,
the defence fighting from hidden positions within its own territory has an
inherent advantage over the attack fighting from exposed and vulnerable
vehicles.

A remarkable example of the decline of the advantage of the attack toward the
end of World War II is provided by the defence of Finland against the last
great Soviet offensive of June and July 1944. I learned the details of this
campaign from Stefan Forss, a physicist at the University of Helsinki. The
Soviet Marshal Govorov was given thirty divisions of infantry with heavy tanks
and artillery, and about one thousand tactical aircraft, to knock Finland out
of the war. He was told by Stalin that he had to be in Helsinki in six weeks.
After that his divisions would be moved south to join the Soviet armies
fighting their way into Germany. There was a desperate battle in Finland,
with massive Soviet attacks breaking through three Finnish lines of defence in
succession. The Finns wre heavily outnumbered, but had superior information.
They had broken the codes used by the Soviet forces for communication by radio.
As a result, the Finns usually knew in advance where the Soviet forces were to
be concentrated before an attack. The Finnish defence, using carefully placed
artillery strikes, could take advantage of this knowledge to delay the attacks
and to limit the breakthroughs.

The decisive moment came after six weeks of terrible fighting, when the Finns
were barely holding their fourth defence line and the Soviet troops were still
100 miles away from Helsinki. The Finnish code-breakers picked up a personal
order from Stalin to Govorov, announcing that the time had run out and that
five Soviet divisions were to move south immediately. Govorov replied that
he could be in Helsinki in two more weeks. After an hour an angry message
from Stalin told Govorov tha the war would be decided in Berlin, not in
Helsinki. So the five divisions moved south and Finland was saved from
sharing the fate of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Two months later an
armistice agreement was signed, surrendering to the Soviet Union the parts of
Finland overrun by Soviet forces, and a little bit more, but otherwise leaving
Finland intact."

--Freeman Dyson (Infinite in All Directions, pp. 223-4)

"In September 1955, shortly after the signing of the Austrian Treaty, the
Soviet Union concluded a similarly reasonable treaty with Finland. Until
1955, the Soviet Union had maintained an occupation force in two areas of
Finnish territory, one at Hango at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, the
other at Porkkala a few miles from Helsinki. The 1955 treaty withdrew the
occupation forces and gave these areas back to Finland. In return, Finland
had only to renew the already existing non-aggression pact and commercial
agreement with the Soviet Union."
--Freeman Dyson (Infinite in All Directions, pp. 240-1)

--Nick