Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 4 - Land Doctrines

@Jazumir:
The problem is that German officers, all the way up to generals, saw themselves as artist and war as art.
The officers were splendidly educated and taught to think up to two levels above their paygrade and use whatever means likely to achieve the desired result.
'Lightning war' was one of them, but they also could do trenchwarfare, attritional containment, superior firepower, etc.
Arguably the only German doctrine is 'Auftragstaktik' which goes all the way up to the Army-level.

mursolini said:

USSR did not "choose" human wave. It had it`s own, based on the expirience of civil war war plan, "deep operation".
However due to initial succes of Germany in Barbarossa, SU had to resort to desperate defence for 2 years, with Stalingrad offencive being the first properly executed "Deep battle", after which, again, USSR did had a rather respectable cassualty ratio, and running mostly motorised and mechanised offencives, backed by huge chunkes of artillery and aviation. USSR`s approach can be seen as a kind of superior firepower or Blizkrieg approach by the start of 1944, definitely not a human wave thing.

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I don't agree. The concept of the deep battle doctrine existed before the war but USSR has never the necessary means (they have brillant theorician, but there was a big gap between theory and pratice)
And yes the idea of using mass soldier was part of the USSR doctrine. Soviet generals and soldier where blinded by the idea that their numerical superiority will always prevail, and that the reason why they don't have the begining of a defensive doctrine when Germany attack (the stupid counter offensive of 1941 where not the fact of a mad and desesperate Stalin, it was conform to the pre-war soviet military plans)

mursolini said:

What do you want to see as a "proof in practice"?
SU had all the nececery equipment to make that happen(over 26k tanks, 7k fully functional), planes, mechanised corpses, infantry and military exercises.
But SU was cought before it`s army was mobilised and most of border troops were destroyes. First succesfull Soviet deep operation would be battle of Stalingrad.

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Wrong. Battle of Stalingrad happened as it happened only due to Hitler being an incompetent micromanaging supreme commander. 6th army wouldn't have been caught with their pants down with anyone competent in command. Moreover, it would have broken out with anyone competent in command. Even with Hitler complicating things, germans got pretty close to getting a connection to the surrounded army.

Without Hitler, things would have been completely different. The relief operation could have been started earlier with more adequate forces, and even from within the pocket. Then again, without Hitler there would have been no pocket, and perhaps not even the whole war. As we know it at least.

This has nothing to do with "deep operations". It was a matter of simple pincer movement through weak front sectors (romanians, italians). Nothing fancy, just exploiting weaknesses and applying enough force on the right spot.

mursolini said:

It is a succesfull display of capability of Soviet army to fight in complicated terrain. The cassualty rate is quite normal for conditions.
Mind you in WW1, UK+France had to loose 3:1 for each German, and they were fighting good terrain, with good logistics and good weather. Soviets fought on a narrower front, Fins had a decent defencive line, and better readiness to fight under weather conditions.

Yes, Soviets didn`t expect Fins to have the spirit to fight. But in the long run that was irrelevant, as Soviet army achieved what it wanted, territories to better protect Leningrad and Finish uncapability/unwilingness to advance far into Russia WW2. But which of world leaders ever envisioned military campaign right? Allies, Soviets and Germans all "envisioned" their troops overperform.

As for books&stuff, Please, provide better arguments that dull acusations.

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Finns had a decent defensive line? WW1 front between France and Germany had good terrain? Soviet troops had never experienced winter? Soviet leaders wanted only to protect Leningrad? Oh wow, where to start... At least you so far haven't blamed the Winter War on the finns...

The main line (only one which actually could be called fortified) was 140km long. Per kilometer it had 4 field fortified machine gun nests, 2,5 km of barbed wire and 1 km of anti-tank obstacles. The line had 101 concrete bunkers. Natural obstacles were of course utilized, but as you stated yourself, the winter negated whatever hindrance swamps and lakes and rivers would offer. Adding the snow of course.

The fact that the soviet offensive was planned so badly and the leadership under estimated the defenders does not negate the fact that the Red Army pretty much fell on it's face on the Karelian Isthmus. Of course as a result soviets had to come up with excuses as to why this has happened. The Mannerheim line was made to look like the Maginot line of the north in the eyes of the public. Of course, the fault of that assumption is that it's completely ludicrous. Maginot line had more than 50 times the amount of concrete bunkers on the same length of terrain in comparison.

The weather argument is just silly. Soviet Union was after all just across the border from Finland to the east. They have exactly same sort of winter and weather conditions there. Just because one crosses the border does not magically change the climate. The Red Army had had troops stationed all the way to the Kola peninsula for years, so they pretty much knew the conditions to be expected for a winter campaign.

It's also a bit odd to call WW1 west front conditions good terrain. There were frontline fortifications all along the front. Trenches in depth, great forts like Verdun even. The no mans land was shot to pieces by both sides god knows how many times over.

If the soviets only had wanted to protect Leningrad, why had they prepared to have a victory parade in Helsinki? Why had they taken whole Finland as a part of their sphere of influence in Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? They gobbled up all the Baltic states and half of Poland but only really wanted to secure Leningrad and only wanted the Karelian Isthmus from Finland? Does not really seem likely.

Soviet Union and their Red Army just had met no real opposition so far. They had unrealistic expectations and got a bloody nose in their effort. And as a result of this humiliating display of "power" and "capability" they did start reforming their purge riddled forces.

I do admit that finnish army was in a pretty bad state by the end of Winter War. But Stalin lost his nerve. The western Allies might have intervened eventually, especially with all the activity going regarding Norway.

In the end, I still do think you have fallen victim of soviet/russian history books. Seeing what is going on around there even today, I would not trust their interpretations of any events without having it confirmed from an independent source.

Yeah, you can't compare the Finnish front to WWI. In the Great War you've got three major armies (4 if you count Americans in 1918) fighting along about 466 miles of front. Extremely large numbers in congested areas and the weather was not great (unless your marker for great is not -45C,) but I agree with the above post--Soviets should have been better prepared for Winter...seeing as a fair portion of their country is in the same climate zone and they always have had a historical myth of "General Winter"

Jazumir said:

I´ll ramble on a bit: Not only did the Wehrmacht (for example) not follow a coherent doctrine path throughout the war, applying it to every single of its commands, but also a single commander could turn from a proponent of one doctrine to one of another, depending on circumstances: Rommel was very much pro-flexible defence in africa, but a staunch hold-the-(coast)line guy in normandy (and, remarkably, in this context: both times he was frustrated with his superiors concerning this). I mean: If the german military was in total agreement about doctrinal affairs, how come the constant quibbles between Hitler and his generals? What was the german doctrine when faced with an overwhelming enemy offensive? To hold the positions at any cost (like Hitler usually demanded) or going over to an elastic defence (like v. Manstein, for example, advocated)?

EDIT: This could also be a way to give the germans an edge over reality. As in: The real german Wehrmacht would be, for me, a prime candidate for application of various doctrines. As they´d already start with some techs in them, some of the cost (the opportunity cost) is already covered, so it is a good thing to have, and, occassionally apply, when proper. That´s what they did in the early years. But then, in reality, they continued to invest in all of these trees and also fudged up in doctine-assignment here and there. It might have been more effecient to stick with one tree and convert all the forces to it, little by little, than to expand on each one. In the game, the germans (AI or human) can do that, thus enhancing their late-war performance and making the war ´more interesting´ at its later stages, when compared to the real thing, lifting the axis winning chances from maybe 5% to maybe 20% (pulling the numbers out of absolute vacuum, of course).

EDIT2: In fact, one could argue, that Hitler tried to do exactly that, at one point or another, by appointing certain generals (Model, for example). It kind of follows, for me, that generals should have a ´prefered doctrine´ assigned to them. They can be assigned other doctines than their prefered one, but they wont be as good in it (wont get the full bonus). Certain things might alter a generals prefered doctrine, but i am not sure which those would be.

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You're confusing doctrine and strategy.

From wiki, quoting the Canadian army:

"Military doctrine is a formal expression of military knowledge and thought, that the army accepts as being relevant at a given time, which covers the nature of conflict, the preparation of the army for conflict, and the method of engaging in conflict to achieve success ... it is descriptive rather than prescriptive, requiring judgement in application. It does not establish dogma or provide a checklist of procedures, but is rather an authoritative guide, describing how the army thinks about fighting, not how to fight. As such it attempts to be definitive enough to guide military activity, yet versatile enough to accommodate a wide variety of situations."

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In fact, the main doctrine that the German army followed were Mission-type tactics. Mission-type tactics states absolutely nothing about how to defend an area or how to attack it. Instead, it does exactly what a doctrine does, it creates a common framework in which the military leadership operates. How an army goes about to tackle a problem is only indirectly dictated by doctrine and the resulting German "blitzkrieg" is only the logical conclusion of their strategic situation, available forces, terrain and enemy forces within the framework of the doctrine.

What HoI IV (and 2 plus some mods) portray as a doctrine is a sort of compromise for gameplay reasons that also served to make difference between various military formations between countries more marked. They basically combined abstractions of the general make-up of battalions/divisions with an abstracted simplification of overall strategy and doctrine.

Hinkel said:

[...]What HoI IV (and 2 plus some mods) portray as a doctrine is a sort of compromise for gameplay reasons that also served to make difference between various military formations between countries more marked.[...]

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[emphasis added]

That´s what i am saying. It´d be perfect, if doctrine and leader traits somehow linked up to a combined concept.

EDIT: I was thinking: Maybe get rid of LS and all that and research equipment directly in the factories (with, say, additional money thrown at them) and doctines at the leaders? Like burn a gained leader skill to add to doctrinal research? (sort of like how you can choose not to speed-train your crew after the tank´s gone golden in WoT - uhh, this will get their attention ;D)

You seem to have misread what I wrote. Again, you seem to be unable to grasp the gigantic difference between what a doctrine is, what HoI calls a doctrine and what you seem to think a doctrine is.

HoI's system of doctrines simply is a combination of doctrine + differences in TO&E's + abstraction of specific strategic concepts mainly employed by the major powers. Adding something to that abstraction that's already far better represented by already existing mechanics (deployment of troops, make-up of your corps/army/army group, assigned general and traits, technologies, terrain and employment of said troops, supporting arms, enemy composition) serves no purpose but to make the game less realistic and to add unnecessary complexity.

"Linking" leader traits and doctrine is entirely nonsensical as they never have any bearing on the overarching doctrine or the situation.

Jazumir said:

[emphasis added]

That´s what i am saying. It´d be perfect, if doctrine and leader traits somehow linked up to a combined concept.

EDIT: I was thinking: Maybe get rid of LS and all that and research equipment directly in the factories (with, say, additional money thrown at them) and doctines at the leaders? Like burn a gained leader skill to add to doctrinal research? (sort of like how you can choose not to speed-train your crew after the tank´s gone golden in WoT - uhh, this will get their attention ;D)

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Mainstreamer!
Burn him!

Also i totally did not get that World of tanks reference.

vonhavoc said:

Finns had a decent defensive line?...

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Well, Finns did start 2 wars with the Bolsheviks before...
Lets not forget, that SU was NOT a rich country, had started the Winter war when it wasn't all that cold. They did fall on their face, true. Still, their losses during the war were ~2 that of the Finns, not too bad, considering the war ended right after the breakthrough by the Red Army through Finnish fixed defenses. In WW2 the breakthrough itself yielded greater casualties to the attacker, but the exploitation of that breakthrough often resulted in defender loosing much more. During the Winter war SU was denied that exploitation phase. If Winter War did not happen, Leningrad would have been threatened much sooner, than in reality. And if you think Finland would not have joined Germany in the war against SU, then you obviously don't know what Finnish leaders wished for back in the day.

Opanashc said:

Well, Finns did start 2 wars with the Bolsheviks before...
Lets not forget, that SU was NOT a rich country, had started the Winter war when it wasn't all that cold. They did fall on their face, true. Still, their losses during the war were ~2 that of the Finns, not too bad, considering the war ended right after the breakthrough by the Red Army through Finnish fixed defenses. In WW2 the breakthrough itself yielded greater casualties to the attacker, but the exploitation of that breakthrough often resulted in defender loosing much more. During the Winter war SU was denied that exploitation phase. If Winter War did not happen, Leningrad would have been threatened much sooner, than in reality. And if you think Finland would not have joined Germany in the war against SU, then you obviously don't know what Finnish leaders wished for back in the day.

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What wars did the finns start against bolsheviks? There was the civil was after independence, but being a civil war it was not against Soviet Union.

Soviet losses in Winter War were 6 times the finnish losses.

The breakthrough happened on 15th of February, the same day Mannerheim ordered general retreat. War ended on March 12th. So the soviets had about a month to do their exploitation of the phase. On such a small area as the Karelian Isthmus is, they didn't make that much ground during that month. Sounds more like the Red Army just could not get it done.

Opanashc said:

Well, Finns did start 2 wars with the Bolsheviks before...
Lets not forget, that SU was NOT a rich country, had started the Winter war when it wasn't all that cold. They did fall on their face, true. Still, their losses during the war were ~2 that of the Finns, not too bad, considering the war ended right after the breakthrough by the Red Army through Finnish fixed defenses. In WW2 the breakthrough itself yielded greater casualties to the attacker, but the exploitation of that breakthrough often resulted in defender loosing much more. During the Winter war SU was denied that exploitation phase. If Winter War did not happen, Leningrad would have been threatened much sooner, than in reality. And if you think Finland would not have joined Germany in the war against SU, then you obviously don't know what Finnish leaders wished for back in the day.

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It is rather bold claim to say that Finland would have joined war against USSR without Winter War, IMO.

Baneslave said:

It is rather bold claim to say that Finland would have joined war against USSR without Winter War, IMO.

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I'm rather interested to know what he meant with the two wars finns had started and knowing what finnish leaders wished for.

If Winter War did or didn't happen Leningrad would be equally threatened, as the finns never pushed for the city. Just an additional remark, not to you but his writing o

Klausewitz said:

@Jazumir:
The problem is that German officers, all the way up to generals, saw themselves as artist and war as art.
The officers were splendidly educated and taught to think up to two levels above their paygrade and use whatever means likely to achieve the desired result.
'Lightning war' was one of them, but they also could do trenchwarfare, attritional containment, superior firepower, etc.
Arguably the only German doctrine is 'Auftragstaktik' which goes all the way up to the Army-level.

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There are 2 main reasons for that-
1. Surrounded by enemies you cannot afford to lose a single battle, the UK could and did lose 100's of battles but won every War it fought either the 1st time or the 2nd simply because it had its safe haven- ISLAND to retreat, which has a legendary monster protecting it, called - ROYAL NAVY.
Russia, could and did give up land (space) for time,
Prussia/Germany neither had time nor space to give up, this produced a unique psychology in the army, similar to what UK produced in the Navy.

2. Fredrick the Great and GFM Von Moltke, set up - General Staff, acting as a nucleus of the army, most modern writers are amazed at the size of the staff, numbering in the few hundreds and controlling armies of millions. But they forget to get people to think alike there has to be meritocracy and limitations.

Alike in the sense- take 'Tannenberg' , Gen. Hoffman, a lowly Lt. Col. at that time, put a plan in place, even though his superiors did not like it, when Ludendorff arrived he had a ready-made plan which had to implemented with 1 phone call. Since Ludendorff and Hoffman both were products of the 'STAFF' they understood each other automatically.

Klausewitz said:

Mainstreamer!
Burn him!

Also i totally did not get that World of tanks reference.

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Well, in WoT, when you have researched all the parts of a tank, you can either spend the xp you win for it on speeding up crew skills, or convert it to free xp (for gold, not that this matters in this context). The parallel being, that it gives you the option of keeping the bonus focused (simply gain a skill-level for some commander) or spreading it out (burn a skill point to invest in doctrine tech).

@Hinkel: The way you put it, there should be no doctrine-tech tree at all, it seems to me. If you look at the leader traits of HoI3, btw, you´ll find things like ´offensive doctine´ and ´defensive doctrine´. To me, from a gameplay perspective, and not cluttering my mind with semantics, it appears logical to link those with whatever it is you research in that tab. Those doctrines are not ordained by god, btw. They are thought up and written down by someone. I would tend to think, that the commanders in charge do have a say in that as well in how they interprete whatever loose guidelines they could agree on, when it came to translating those to action. As for me, if i had written a book about how tanks should be handled, and ended up being in charge of a tank unit later, i´d be delighted, if i were allowed (and enabled, as it is of course a matter of context with the other troops) to do so in the way i had described in my book, rather than in any other way.

Jazumir said:

Well, in WoT, when you have researched all the parts of a tank, you can either spend the xp you win for it on speeding up crew skills, or convert it to free xp (for gold, not that this matters in this context). The parallel being, that it gives you the option of keeping the bonus focused (simply gain a skill-level for some commander) or spreading it out (burn a skill point to invest in doctrine tech).

@Hinkel: The way you put it, there should be no doctrine-tech tree at all, it seems to me. If you look at the leader traits of HoI3, btw, you´ll find things like ´offensive doctine´ and ´defensive doctrine´. To me, from a gameplay perspective, and not cluttering my mind with semantics, it appears logical to link those with whatever it is you research in that tab. Those doctrines are not ordained by god, btw. They are thought up and written down by someone. I would tend to think, that the commanders in charge do have a say in that as well in how they interprete whatever loose guidelines they could agree on, when it came to translating those to action. As for me, if i had written a book about how tanks should be handled, and ended up being in charge of a tank unit later, i´d be delighted, if i were allowed (and enabled, as it is of course a matter of context with the other troops) to do so in the way i had described in my book, rather than in any other way.

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I give up. I might as well argue with a brick.

vonhavoc said:

What wars did the finns start against bolsheviks? There was the civil was after independence, but being a civil war it was not against Soviet Union.

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Finnish invasions in 1918 and 1920. AFTER Finns defeated their own Reds, and decided to take some territory from the weakened state to their East. Like Poland. And Romania. Finnish ruling circles were dreaming of Greater Finland - to include Karelia and such.
Sorry, that I started off topic.

Last time i got that, was when i was suggesting divisional leaders should go - like 2 years back.

Look: Since we are talking about a game and not about what military docrines do really entail in the real world - the difference between the two having already been stated by you - there is no need to get all cluttered up in details about how realistic a highly abstracted concept is, as long as it is fun.

I´d still maintain, whatever ´doctrines´ in HoI are supposed to represent, that the commanding staff should be part of their development and be influenced by them.
I also still stick to my suggestion, that the specialisation in doctrines should not so much be on a per-country but on a per-command base, to allow for specilaised troops (stilwell, commandos, wss, whathaveyou) at additional cost and the expense of effectiveness of all doctrines.

Taken together it could look something like this: You have your army all set up for doctrine-tree A by assigning commanders who prefer this and the HQs set to apply A. Simply by having them in command, you generated some research on A, over the years (depending on how many troops -officer count- were attached to each, each day). War starts and after a while you want to have some of doctrine-tree B. So you assign commanders who prefer B to some of your HQs and set their applied doctrine to B. Since those wont be lead by those of A-preference, you´ll start to fall behind in that tree, while you slowly get started on B. You could also attach A-leaders to B-set-HQs and hope they convert (small chance), for an inferior implemtation of B (boni halved) on said HQ and a slower doctrine-accumulation (aka research). Gaining experience under a certain doctrine gives (research) points towards it.

Edit - Rambling on:

They said -and well may- make the leader-play more interesting, as they will be way less of them, now (thanks, pi!). They could all have a skillevel for each doctine-tree, plus various perks (like the traits, now) and experience, and whenever that reaches a threshold the HQ glows (think Civ4-promotion and, from here, great people: ) and you can pick a perk, or a skillevel in one of the doctrines for the commander (modifying the bonus the application of which conveys on the subordinated units, and the ´research´ rate of the HQ) or invest a ´lump sum´ into a doctrine-´tech´ (additionally to the accumulation that occurs otherwise through this HQ).

We could also have a ´general staff´ with limited seats into which you could call commanders, who would then add ´double´ (or so) to doctrine research, but would not be able to take command of an HQ in the meantime. This would help minors, who will have few HQs and troops to attach commanders to, to somewhat keep up in doctrines (and to reminscince HoI2 to some extent - think tech-teams). The general staff, then, should also be assigned a prefered tree and thus steer most countries on a one-tree-prefered track by default.

Anyway, under these premises, the screen we see at the beginning of this thread would be of pure informal function in the game. Or supplemented with a ´general staff´ panel. As is, there´d be nothing to do, on this screen, except for checking how things are going along (edit: and choosing the branches, i suppose, within each tree), as the research would happen in the HQs. I could imagine a similar system for all research, them being linked to factories and battle-experience. Ultimately, i hope we can get away without ´old school´ research points, or leadership, diplomatic points and victory points for that matter.

looks awesome

mursolini said:

SU had all the nececery equipment to make that happen(over 26k tanks, 7k fully functional), planes, mechanised corpses, infantry and military exercises.

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The Soviets had mechanized corpses? This isn't the "Wunderwaffen"-thread, mind you!

Aleesboto said:

Yeah, you can't compare the Finnish front to WWI. In the Great War you've got three major armies (4 if you count Americans in 1918) fighting along about 466 miles of front. Extremely large numbers in congested areas and the weather was not great (unless your marker for great is not -45C,) but I agree with the above post--Soviets should have been better prepared for Winter...seeing as a fair portion of their country is in the same climate zone and they always have had a historical myth of "General Winter"

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I can compare it, because in WW1 there was no technological possibility of manuver as motorisation was not present and defending troops were
always at advantage. In winter war, terrain and infrastructure did the same, forcing advance along obvious lines of roads, of which, there were like 3 or 5.

vonhavoc said:

Wrong. Battle of Stalingrad happened as it happened only due to Hitler being an incompetent micromanaging supreme commander. 6th army wouldn't have been caught with their pants down with anyone competent in command. Moreover, it would have broken out with anyone competent in command. Even with Hitler complicating things, germans got pretty close to getting a connection to the surrounded army.

Without Hitler, things would have been completely different. The relief operation could have been started earlier with more adequate forces, and even from within the pocket. Then again, without Hitler there would have been no pocket, and perhaps not even the whole war. As we know it at least.

This has nothing to do with "deep operations". It was a matter of simple pincer movement through weak front sectors (romanians, italians). Nothing fancy, just exploiting weaknesses and applying enough force on the right spot.

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By your standard, Battle lof Poland, Battle of France were also just a metter of commanders being incompetent idiots, and a simple non-fancy pincer.

vonhavoc said:

Finns had a decent defensive line? WW1 front between France and Germany had good terrain? Soviet troops had never experienced winter? Soviet leaders wanted only to protect Leningrad? Oh wow, where to start... At least you so far haven't blamed the Winter War on the finns...

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Cut down on idiotic strawmens.

vonhavoc said:

The main line (only one which actually could be called fortified) was 140km long. Per kilometer it had 4 field fortified machine gun nests, 2,5 km of barbed wire and 1 km of anti-tank obstacles. The line had 101 concrete bunkers. Natural obstacles were of course utilized, but as you stated yourself, the winter negated whatever hindrance swamps and lakes and rivers would offer. Adding the snow of course.

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That, is a decent fortified line. Not a majonot by any mean, however far better than having no line at all.

vonhavoc said:

The fact that the soviet offensive was planned so badly and the leadership under estimated the defenders does not negate the fact that the Red Army pretty much fell on it's face on the Karelian Isthmus. Of course as a result soviets had to come up with excuses as to why this has happened. The Mannerheim line was made to look like the Maginot line of the north in the eyes of the public. Of course, the fault of that assumption is that it's completely ludicrous. Maginot line had more than 50 times the amount of concrete bunkers on the same length of terrain in comparison.

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That is not argument. They "badly planned offencive" need a great deal of details. It is quite obvious that it was not good, but compared to French, Italians, and Poles, you can`t say their planing was any inferior.

vonhavoc said:

The weather argument is just silly. Soviet Union was after all just across the border from Finland to the east. They have exactly same sort of winter and weather conditions there. Just because one crosses the border does not magically change the climate. The Red Army had had troops stationed all the way to the Kola peninsula for years, so they pretty much knew the conditions to be expected for a winter campaign.

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Weather does metter. Attacker takes more cassualties in bad weather. It is quite obvious and proven.

vonhavoc said:

It's also a bit odd to call WW1 west front conditions good terrain. There were frontline fortifications all along the front. Trenches in depth, great forts like Verdun even. The no mans land was shot to pieces by both sides god knows how many times over.

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WW1 west was good terrain. Human-made fortifications are different subject.

vonhavoc said:

If the soviets only had wanted to protect Leningrad, why had they prepared to have a victory parade in Helsinki? Why had they taken whole Finland as a part of their sphere of influence in Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? They gobbled up all the Baltic states and half of Poland but only really wanted to secure Leningrad and only wanted the Karelian Isthmus from Finland? Does not really seem likely.

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Because they didn`t want Germany to have bases and troops in Finland. Obviously Winter war was also intended to bleed the fins pre-emptivly and possibly destroy their military capability, much of which, arguably, was achieved. Baltic states were territory of Russia for hundreds of years. Russians still view them as such.

Soviets had won the war, Finland was bled and uncapable of futher long resistance. It they actually wanted to grab Finland, that was the time to o it.

vonhavoc said:

Soviet Union and their Red Army just had met no real opposition so far. They had unrealistic expectations and got a bloody nose in their effort. And as a result of this humiliating display of "power" and "capability" they did start reforming their purge riddled forces.

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Sure. And Germans won the battle of Poland, but still reformed their armor as it was under-performing.

vonhavoc said:

I do admit that finnish army was in a pretty bad state by the end of Winter War. But Stalin lost his nerve. The western Allies might have intervened eventually, especially with all the activity going regarding Norway.

In the end, I still do think you have fallen victim of soviet/russian history books. Seeing what is going on around there even today, I would not trust their interpretations of any events without having it confirmed from an independent source.

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I don`t read soviet "books" as much as facts and figures. Soviets did take unececery cassualties thrugh both wars, that are facts well-proven. Hoverver, it is a logical fallacy to expect a Blizkrieg-like warfare in Finland, which is somthing I`m trying to bring to you, while you seem to be more interested in throwing strawmens around.

Akka, Soviet army was underperforming, but the margin of underperformance is a lot smaller than interesed in only seing bad stuff in looking at a broad picture person would expect, and Soviet army was still decent.

seattle said:

The Soviets had mechanized corpses? This isn't the "Wunderwaffen"-thread, mind you!

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:rofl: