The Year of the Masters of War
Part 2: The German Campaign in Finland I, January 1 – March 19, 1944
The initiation of the new Italian endeavor against the Soviet Union was, to some degree, hostage to the actions of other belligerent powers, both allied and enemy. The German campaign in Finland was one barometer that Mussolini used to judge the precise moment to launch his great gamble, especially once it attracted significant Soviet forces into the theater to counter the German advance. For once, Italy’s German allies were actually actively engaging the Soviet bear, albeit in a subsidiary theater, as well as a lesser member of the Western Allies, Finland.
Germany’s lesser allies, too, got in on the action in and around Finland. Indeed, while the German forces fought on the main Finnish front, a handful of brigades hailing from Luxembourg and Slovakia, operated on the Kola Peninsula against an isolated handful of Soviet and Finnish formations. While the two Luxembourgish brigades were proper infantry, the four Slovakian brigades were just militia, and on top of that had probably gotten lost trying to march from Presov to Bratislava and ended up above the Arctic Circle. Against these forces, the Finns fielded one infantry division and the Soviets two infantry and one marine formation. However, and fortunately for the Slovakian and Luxembourgish soldiers, the Red Navy was not up to supplying their isolated comrades on land by water across the White Sea, which they commanded, and so the Soviets and Finns were fighting under a severe handicap. This handicap led to an abortive Soviet march on Murmansk that, due to the dispersed character of their enemies, led only to the encirclement of the two Soviet infantry divisions a couple hundred kilometers short of their objective by January 20th. Only the Finnish division was close enough to attempt a rescue, but failed to do so.
Operations in Kola, itself a subsidiary part of a subsidiary theater. The Soviet marine division is not shown, but was deployed directly to the east of the easternmost Slovak militia brigade.
Strangely, particularly for puppet troops, the Luxembourgish and Slovaks were not content with what they had achieved in the Kola Peninsula. Instead, they scented blood and were quick to press their advantage—an attitude the Germans could have learned themselves. On the 23rd of January, one Slovak militia brigade assaulted the Soviet marine division head on, and put it to flight. Apparently the élan of the elite and the necessity to defend the motherland did not make up for a crippling and by then at least a month long complete lack in supplies, particularly ammunition. Furthermore, on the 29th two of the other Slovak militia brigades assaulted the encircled Soviets, at Murmanskaja, and roundly destroyed both divisions! To top off this stunning display of puppet martial prowess, the fourth of the Slovak militia brigades attacked and put to flight the Finnish infantry division, even as the Luxembourgish infantry observed the battle idly. It seemed that apparently lost Slovak militiamen were quite vicious when aroused to anger and thus fairly effective even against more numerous enemies, albeit ones who were crippled by a lack of supplies.
Victory in the Kola Peninsula!
The Germans, meanwhile, had been conducting a fairly staid, albeit arguably competent, campaign southward through Finland. They took no chances however, an unsurprising development given their Teutonic rigidity. Nevertheless, by mid-March they had occupied Turku on the Finnish coast and were threatening Hanko. In the center of the line they were but a short hop from actually taking the Finnish capital at Helsinki. Further east, they had encircled two Finnish divisions, which they claimed were an armored and a mechanized division, and seemed on the verge of encircling two Soviet divisions. By this time, the Finnish defense had fallen apart to such an extent that the Soviets were bolstering them everywhere along the frontline, a remarkable change in attitudes between the two countries given their not-too-distant war in 1939-1940. While the notion that the enemy of one’s enemy was one’s friend no doubt played a certain role in the decision-making on both sides, a greater role must have certainly been played by Finland’s incredible desperation to remain independent of Germany. Indeed, by March 19, Italian intelligence estimated that upwards of twenty Soviet divisions were committed to stabilizing the Finnish defenses. While not particularly significant in and of itself, twenty divisions representing perhaps sixty brigades out of a conservatively estimated total of over eleven hundred, it was still a distraction for the Soviets—and, more especially, an
active distraction, as opposed to the passive one presented by the main German-Soviet front.
The Germans, approaching victory in Finland.
The sideshow in Finland was one of two outside influences on the timing of the new Italian endeavor against the Soviets. Mussolini spent his months watching the progress in Finland and hoping that the Germans would remain active enough to force a greater Soviet commitment to that place, so otherwise unimportant to Italy. And yet, even if no greater commitment would be made, it remained nothing less than a boon to Italian strategy.
