Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 88 - Winter War Part 4: The White Death

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

One of the deadliest men who has ever walked the earth probably was too short to ride a rollercoaster. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the lines led by donkeys podcast. I'm Joe as always returning burping into the microphone as always. Isn't it? Catch me at the wrong time. We set this up beforehand. Like, hey, you ready? I'm Joe, as always, returning and burping into the microphone as always. Isn't it? You catch me at the wrong time. We set this up beforehand. Like, hey, you ready? Yeah.

We're going to work up this fucking microphone fart. It's because we're drinking- Mouth farts. Yeah, we're drinking soda water or whatever, and it just makes me burp constantly. TV static. Yeah. Spicy Sprite. and it just makes me burp constantly. TV static. Yeah. Spicy Sprite.

Anyway, we're on part four of the Winter War series. Previously on. Previously on the Winter War, a whole bunch of Soviets getting massacred with a machine gun for weeks. When we left you last week, the Soviet military monster

was busy destroying itself as quickly as it could, throwing itself against the manorheim line time and time again against and failing like really the only thing they discovered was in an incredibly effective way to lower the population of the soviet union they got something out of it yeah population control finnish machine gun based population control now i also left you with the idea that the fins were about to sally forth from the manorheim line and ravage the red army with a triumphant counter-attack while he would try to do that uh it was actually the fins turn to become the donkeys of this war oh now uh it kind of should go without explaining that's way easier to fight a defense for than

actually like launch an offensive it it's kind of easy to just sit in a trench and machine gun people uh and it is significantly easier than um coming up with uh an offensive that is taking like every division of your army and attempting to maneuver it all at once i don't think the fins knew that um also it was really the only time they would try to do something like this because they were always like oh that sucks because then then it was the soviets turn to be like we're just gonna sit here and shoot at them yeah this is way easier than what we've been doing now um the constant stream of of of stories of finn Finnish victories were sent back to the country's generals from the front line. And it kind of sent them into a state of euphoria and invincibility.

Like, look how many people we're killing. We've got to be winning. They can't break the manhunt. Like, yeah, you've killed tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers. And that is laudable. But you've done virtually nothing to defeat their army. They're just replacing them constantly. They're like the fat kids

that try to beat the athletic kids at camp. I mean... All right, I'm going to expand on that one. We all know that the fat kids will lose. I mean, not if you... They're a solid defensive line. Yeah, exactly. First of all.

If they're playing defense, oh, yeah, they're good. But if they're going on the offense... Hey, every single one of those scampering athletic quarterbacks needs a giant dude wearing two knee braces at the age of 13 to keep him safe all right now this they were sent into you know they they thought that they could win this which is insane they were never gonna win this war even like their best case scenario was we're're going to lose a little bit. So it's kind of dumb that they started to do their own supply, effectively smell their own farts.

That's awesome. Just touch us. Just Manorheim frantically huffing his own shit gas out of his fucking pantaloons. Now, it should be remembered that... I'm imagining a brown bag. Get the aid. That was a spicy one uh it should remember that finnish frontline soldiers had largely accomplished all of these victories without the intervention of general officers very few senior officers really had much to do with the defensive victories yes there was

counterattacks to push the uh the soviets which they took. Sometimes the Soviets just left them. But very rarely is there a general going, we should do this and that contributing to the victory. And that includes Mannerheim. Mannerheim was doing other things that did contribute to the victory. But they were largely not there. It was small unit leaders and to a lesser extent division commanders who kind of ran everything. And even that is kind of iffy. And remember, Mannerheim started off the war saying,

the army will lose. So he didn't think that highly of the people. He was like, yes yes we're doing so good they're like man fuck you i imagine all the victories he's like holy fuck we're doing something it's a dog when they catch the truck that they're chasing he doesn't really know what to do um now the accolades for these finished victories should instead fall to the soldiers and low-level unit leaders um and and the common Finnish soldiers' refusal to budge when they're outnumbered by a factor of 100.

That's a lot. Yeah, I mean, they did run, especially when they first saw tanks, but they quickly got over that, and they're like, no, we're not going to go anywhere now. We're good. It's cold. Yeah, it's warmer in the trench, it turns out.

But if generals exist for any reason, it is to steal the glory of men who actually achieve things uh which brings us to the finnish counter-attack now i i should say when i say counter-attack i mean a large operation to take back the parts of karelia which they have lost not like a counter-attack to retake part of the manorheim line oh this is like we're gonna drive the soviets out of finland like no they didn't go for baby steps no and it's it's dumb to think that a manorheim thought this is going to be okay um simply because like the key crux of his manorheim line bit rested on the fact they were going to lose a large portion of the finnish countryside now

he's going to take it back. But the line is here. We're holding it here. Let's just stay here. There's nothing out there. Literally nothing except swamps and landmines, which we planted. We burned all the fucking villages, and we killed all the crops. There's a lot of dead Soviets out there, too.

Yeah, we're trying to harvest the crops that we've sown. Now, this all goes down to a guy named General Osterman. And by that, I mean he's largely blamed for this, and he shouldn't be. He is one of a large amount of fuckwits whose brain went into this thing. Is he a fallback guy? Kind of, because he already fucked up once. And it's because he was in charge of defending the border of Finland at the beginning of the war, which did not go well.

Right. Because remember, why? There's nothing there. I don't think it would go well. There's no defensive lines. And he botched it. Now, he was saved by the saving grace of his own soldiers. But he came up with this plan,

the beginning stages of it. It was then expanded upon. And it was a counter attack against the Red Army dug in around Summa, which if you remember is the same place that had repelled

all the Soviet attacks from the last episode. Now for this plan to work, the Finnish army would need to strike the Red Army before they could catch their breath from being repelled so many times and resupply from the losses that they had suffered.

So he planned the attack to begin as soon as possible, December 22nd. Now, the problem is Osterman was so disconnected from his own soldiers and army that many of the units that he tagged to be the spearhead of this offensive were

actively still fighting the soviets really yeah uh and like they had not broken contact with them like you want us to do what uh however details never slowed a general down and he forwarded this plan to manorheim who said fuck it sure why not it's? No communication? None. Okay. Well, I guess. A lot of this bad communication can be chalked up to the fact that Finnish radios were just terrible throughout the war. But you could drive a fucking letter to them. Yeah, maybe a runner. Yeah.

I mean, these are things that have existed as long as war. You would think you would want the best communications for launching an offensive. Especially as big as what they were doing. Hold on to that one. All right. This is where I get to say, wait, it gets worse. The problem was Mannerheim signed off on the plan only 18 hours before it was due to begin. Now, it should go without saying that that gives frontline soldiers no time to prepare.

It is now the year 2020. I'm not sure when you'll be listening to this. But that is not a lot of time to start anything now. And that is with satellite communications, the fucking internet, cell phones. You can't really do anything in 18 hours for a large military mission. Mannerheim was also incredibly indecisive, which is something that kind of pops up whenever he has offensives to do. He's good at defensive stuff

because he just kind of sits there and waits for stuff to happen. He shifts reserves around to plug holes, stuff like that. What a camper. He would randomly decide which units and which not to were to go. Now, this is during the 18-hour window. So people are receiving orders like,

you're going to go, you're not going to go. Then they'd immediately receive orders like, never mind, you're not going, and they're not sure. And he didn't timestamp anything. So nobody was- Which one's real? Right. He's like, fuck.

And remember, the Russians have been spitting disinformation since day one. It's like, is one of these fucking Russian? And this led to units, in one case being uh told two hours before the operation was to begin that they were supposed to go um now that as you can imagine this made units like you know there's um stepping off points they're not just going to start at the line so like oh we're all going to muster here and then we're going to start the offensive so they got to leave the the line go to these muster points, which are already far away from some of these units because he didn't look at a fucking map or something.

And so like, oh, shit, we're going to miss the time to be at the starting point. So they would just run to the starting point and leave all their heavy weapons behind because they couldn't fucking bring it. Oh, my God. I mean, the good point is they didn't have a lot of heavy weapons to begin with. So they're kind of used to it. The good point is, they didn't have a lot of heavy weapons to begin with, so they're kind of used to it. And Mannerheim is very much still latched back onto World War I-style combat of strict timetables when everybody's supposed to be everywhere. So it made his plans super convoluted and really hard to follow.

Which leads me right to my next point. It was so complex and convoluted that nobody had any idea how to do it except manorheim who was not there um it was not considered realistic like even now when you look at the plans in 2020 and you're like the world war ii army couldn't have pulled this off but and that's with like semi-modern communications um in true world war one fashion these detailed timetables overlapped with one another and also went back to artillery fire. So, like, you know, by this time you're supposed to be here so the artillery doesn't fucking kill you.

Stuff like that. He just seems like a hard guy to work for. That would suck. Yeah, and if you're saying, like, wait, were they all of a sudden going to get all this artillery? They didn't have it. He just planned for it anyway

because this is how he would plan an operation. yeah i knew we would definitely do this yeah this plan required um experience and flexible commanders flexible artillery uh and plentiful artillery support and tanks and then we'll bring in our air sets and assets here and finland didn't have any of those things more importantly they still hadn't fielded tanks. And the Finns had done almost no scouting or reconning of Soviet positions. So they're just kind of like, well, they're probably over there. Just walk in that direction. Yeah, they're definitely. And then if that wasn't enough, Finland itself decided to join in and fuck with them by having a blinding snowstorm at that exact moment.

Really? Yes. So units stepped off. So that didn't benefit them. It turns out Finns can't see in the snow because they just stepped off and got lost. And it's kind of hard to explain if you've never been in a

blinding snowstorm before, but you can totally get lost in them. Even if you're walking in a straight line and can't see a foot in front of your face, you're not going to be walking in a straight line for very long. I got lost in Japan going to the USO that was down the street from the barracks out of that. Was it snowing? Yeah, really bad.

So there you go. To the point where it hurt my face. Now imagine, you know there's someone out there you're supposed to shoot somewhere, but I can't fucking see him. And that is where I can say the Finns communication network completely broke down where it still functioned. And now that is for a lot of reasons. It just couldn't handle the workload of a massive operation going on where you have, you know, a thousand different units all talking to each other at once. And this, it meant that within like 30 minutes, people just couldn't talk to each other.

And then within two hours of the beginning of the entire operation, before've even seen combat they're still marching there the generals had lost contact with their own commanders on the ground yeah uh when soldiers just decided to say fuck it and they're like well you know the the forward commanders were just like fuck it we're gonna go on our own we'll just launch you like this is how we've done it so far yeah well all the commanders will just get together and see how we can make this work. It didn't. They found out their artillery had actually been issued the wrong size of ammunition,

which is impressive because they have so little of it. Yeah. You think it'd be easy to track down. So now they have no artillery support either. They're like, oh, fuck this.

By 3 p.m., finished commanding the operation was totally lost and ordered a retreat which they should have done uh maybe sooner but they did order a shoot they didn't like throw a bunch of people into the meat grinder and like lost the division time to call it um but the good news is none of that mattered local commanders had actually retreated hours before that's awesome on the fly i've had no idea uh they're yeah, it's time for us to be hitting the old dusty trail back to the Van Ryn line.

And thus ended the glorious Finnish counterattack. That's honestly the best counterattack ever. They counterattacked a blizzard and somehow, like, they barely even fought anybody. But that did not mean, this fucking hilarious failure did not mean the fans were done winning. Up until now, they had not really won anything. They had simply not been beaten, which is like getting a draw in the fucking NFL. That's what it sounds like. Yeah.

It's like getting a draw in the NFL, which I'm still not entirely like that. It happens like once a season. Like, well, we didn't lose. We're still here. well we didn't lose we're still here um uh the main finished supply route the one that had been planned and it continued to use like this is this is the spine of the entire resistance like if this collapses defense is not going to stay long um it supplied the entire isthmus theater it was the tola yarvi road and it the soviets knew what this road was used for. Even their half-blind dumbasses could figure out like,

hmm, they're getting all their ammo from this one fucking road. So they're planning to cut it off, which would have definitely strangled that entire section of the Manorheim Line. Now, like most defenders of Finland at the time, the unit opposing the Soviets had largely been slapped together

of various different soldiers with various different jobs and unmatching equipment. Things have been so rushed that a bicycle battalion, dudes literally on pedal bikes together various different soldiers with various different jobs and unmatching equipment um things have been so rushed that a bicycle battalion dudes literally on pedal bikes yes uh now those were now i i do need to say those were not uncommon at the time that's still awesome like uh uh like the germans used a ton of bicycles uh in the war the british had a paratrooper version that folded yeah and bikes are pretty common but it's important important to remember, it's winter in Finland.

They can't fucking ride anywhere. They're supposed to get skis. They never got them, so they're the first to ride their pedal bikes through snow so deep that it was just eating their bike all the way to their position because they weren't allowed to leave their bikes behind. Like, where the fuck are we going to use them? Which is like how...

Poor dismounts. Just imagine someone with a bike tattoo. Like, it's a shitty 1930s bike with a wreath around it. Combat bicycle badge. That's fucking awesome. That just shows you that armies, no matter what country or what time they're from, will always be armies. Like, can we use these bikes? No.

But we have them. But we have them. We're signed for them. We can't just ditch them. Like, you're going to make us carry these bikes all the way to the East. And it's like, no, we're going to ride them. There is four feet of snow on the ground.

Which, fuck it, fine. Get my steed. It's a Huffy. combat huffies yeah um and they were forced to ride to their position uh because they had not been switched out for skis uh which is impressive because it's like the one thing finland was really good at i hope the commander was super motto like into the whole bicycle battalion you know he had uh like he was the lance armstrong of finland or something in his day his calves were the size of his thighs motto like into the whole bicycle battalion you know he had like he was the Lance Armstrong of Finland or something in his day his

calves were the size of his thighs and then there's like going at like a snail's pace it's like how people attempt to carry over cavalry traditions to armor and helicopters and shit now except he Finland didn't have tanks yet so he's like I guess I'm

bike cav now the defense is further hampered by a guy named a lieutenant or razness raznesson um who was the commander of that entire sector of the defense he had no grasp of the situation instead remained safely in a bunker six miles away from the fighting and no working radio what the fuck was he doing? Sitting there. He's just sitting there like... He's fucking scrolling through Grindr or something. He just had no... Like most

sectors of Finnish command, their officers were generally kind of shit. So the soldiers were just like, eh, we'll figure it out. What were you doing in the bunker? I was looking towards where my men were fighting. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't even have a set of binoculars. Hmm. But alas. Yes. Now, the main thing working in the Finns' favor was actually the Soviets themselves. They had moved incredibly slowly and stopped wherever they met resistance. Kind of like they had thus far. Like, oh, we got shot at.

Time to stop. had thus far like oh we got shot at time to stop uh like in one instance uh a single machine gun which was a world war one maxim machine gun uh held up an entire soviet division for an hour and even then they still couldn't figure out to take it out the machine gunner simply ran out of ammo so he picked up his he displays his machine gun walked back to the rest of his unit he's like well that's done with well that'd be gonna beat my friends like imagine being the soviet that takes the position we did it sir we took it oh where's the machine gunner oh he left hours ago but we took it look at all the trails he left uh but through sheer force of numbers the fins were eventually pushed back from one to lane position to another because what do you what the fuck you can do with that with one division with no commander um in one case the soviets nearly

encircled their the fins but uh but their flanking maneuver was not only checked but completely routed by a unit made up of supply clerks radio men and cooks yes now this gets even more interesting these these uh this unit made up of non-combat soldiers dubbed where it was dubbed and cooks. Now, this gets even more interesting. This unit made up of non-combat soldiers was dubbed the Special Battalion 112. And it became the linchpin of the entire defense. Really?

Going so far as to hold a near-suicidal rearguard action to allow their entire army to escape on several occasions. What? They said, hey, get them in here! Call them in! It's like that scene from

300 where like, what's your job? I'm a typist. What's your job? I'm a cook, except then they just team up and beat their shit out of the Spartans. Fuck you, bitch! And that battalion was like, like later on in the defense and one of the biggest battles

called the Battle of Cola through the war. Like whenever they needed a unit to like lean on, like get 112. And it's like they're putting on their ladles and pens and everything.

I imagine 112 is probably sick of it. This is fucking horse shit. Why can't the infantry do this shit? Yeah, instead you got a whole bunch of... Where's the bike battalion? Well, like, the supply cooks were pushed into it because... Or the supply clerks were pushed

into the battalion because one of their commanders was like, well, we don't have any supplies. So, yeah, that's true. Yeah, what the fuck are you doing? I'm just saying, your job doesn't exist. If we had supplies, they would be in this room. This is our supply room. It's empty.

As you can see, I've taken full inventory. We have nothing. You have to sign for this also, sir. We're having sleep for dinner. You have to sign for the space. But none of this mattered in the end. The defenders were tired, terrified, and falling apart. They had been fighting a non-stop withdrawal action

for 40 miles without rest in the middle of the Finnish winter. And the champion of their army is a whole bunch of typists and cooks. And I like to imagine, and this did not happen, the bicycle battalion did not come to the rescue. No, because the Bicycle Battalion is still like 10 miles just off of HQ.

They're just like, Mom, a chain's off the chain. I did very small tire chains for my shitty 1930s bike. I like to imagine it's like from the second, the two towers, Lord of the Rings two towers, where Gandalf and all the... Not the twin. The Cav guys come over the edge, except you hear,

instead of hearing Gandalf and a whole bunch of knights, you hear bling, bling, bling, bling, and a whole bunch of Finns just peddling towards you. Now, Mannerheim not only decided to commit Finland's reserves into that battle to hold that part he decided to command them personally which normally is like

oh man Mannerheim's commanding but it's like oh man Mannerheim's commanding he's not actually that good at this usually when you have an officer on the battlefield your men's morale go up per the video games like Company of Heroes. It's like Total War. If someone

would have shot Mannerheim, they actually just start running around in circles on giant white flags, which is bouncing up and down over their heads. Now, when I say Finland's reserves, I mean it. The entire army only had two divisions in reserve, and even those were kind of sketchy. Most of them were barely trained

or not at all and in one case it was a a bunch of quartermasters pressed into combat because finland's again had no supplies left for them to quartermaster anymore um and these guys um now the book uh frozen hell kind of puts out that it's kind of different like you know nowadays everybody qualifies with a rifle every single soldier's rifleman or whatever. Not so much there. They really didn't shoot. So they...

They didn't want to waste the ammo. Yeah, they just didn't have it. The quartermaster's like, I would shoot, but as you can see, I have no ammo. Yeah. But, like, they hadn't trained at all. They didn't have any, like, small unit tactics.

They weren't familiar, really, with the rifle unless they hunted. They're like, here's a rifle, walk that fuck what's your weapon soldier i made a bolo uh what weapon did you bring to the front line uh i have a large desk full of paperwork i brought with me uh but i can ruin your life with it. But also, no paper. It's some finance guy. He's like, I'd pay you guys, but we have no money either. Manorheim knew for

this work you need commanders who are ballsy. But not just ballsy. Kind of insane. And to the point that he's going to give them orders to to lead these reserves and kind of save finland because if this line fails um it gives them a complete back door to the bannerheim line they'd have to abandon everything and they'd have to fight in the

interior of finland which is that means they're fucked uh so he knew for this to work to kind of stabilize this line he was gonna have to have people who just were not right in the head and it should say they listen to insane in the membrane all the time it's it should say how what or what he thought of them because they meet their names immediately jumped to mind like i need some fucking nuts people i know two of them. Because he's going to order them to launch an all-out attack despite being outnumbered 10 to 1 with no tanks or air support and only a single battalion of artillery support between them.

And only enough ammo for that artillery for about three hours. How would you pitch that to this guy? Would you like to die? Done. Please, I've been waiting for this moment. How would you like to lead thousands of people to their death? And also, you're probably going to die too. Perfect.

Yes. He found one of those generals, a guy named Voldemar Hogland, and another one named Colonel Pavlo Tavella. We're going to talk about Tavella a little bit more because Tavella's probably one of the coolest officers in this entire war. Not named Simeon Hayek. little bit more because Tavella's probably one of the coolest officers in this entire war not named Simi Ohaya uh so they looked at the plan shrugged and said fuck it let's roll because there's really not much else to do they know they couldn't plan some in-depth operation because they can't talk to

one another um they can't plan some kind of slow creeping advance because they have no artillery or air cover so like I guess we just gotta run at them now as manorheim's relief sped towards the last positions around tola yarvey road they were shocked to find that the unit um that was still there and refusing to budge was a group of working classmen from the factory and villages that had been known as a hotbed of left-wing politics or towards the civil war uh and actually one of those guys from the Red Village, is what they're generally known as, said that he was fucking pissed when he saw Mannerheim

because a lot of people had really hoped he would get killed. Wow. Because remember, he led the white terror, probably killed their family members. Yeah. And one of them jokes, like, well, I guess it's a good thing

that he survived the Civil War now, but fuck him anyway. Yeah. Like, and one of them jokes like, well, I guess it's a good thing that he survived the civil war now, but fuck him anyway. Yeah. Like just cause I respect him doesn't mean I have to like him. Um, in the middle of the night, uh, Tavella sent his men across a frozen lake on skis.

Uh, and they decided, cause remember the Soviets don't like to attack at night. They don't like to do anything at night to include doing defensive stuff or taking out the trash. So so or like getting up to pee just pee in a bottle eat it out the window done yeah uh so tovela knew that if they were going to fight the soviets we got to kind of fight them at night which sucks for us too but whatever so he led these men's on skis across a frozen lake um now uh there's also various parts

where some men fell into the lake because remember it's night they can't see very well and they assumed it was frozen over completely and it wasn't so like whoopsie doodle guy froze to death on the bright side it's so cold you die within seconds so a sweet release happens rather quickly

now Tavella actually meant to lead this attack himself but he finally listened to his officers who told him that it was a bad idea because he had done that before and been gruesomely wounded and was not actually all the way healed yet. But that never slowed him down before. Now, Red Army soldiers were held up on the other side of the frozen lake, and they kind of had a thing. And Tavella knew theets really liked bonfires and not just like what we think of when we think of bonfires they would topple full trees that were like dozens of feet tall and build these giant bonfires fucking huge bonfires for fires you could

see for a mile away and entire battalions lay down and sleep next to them so like you could uh tovella and his unit knew, if you looked at the Soviet camp, if you saw a bonfire, you knew there'd be hundreds of people around it. And they didn't post pickets. Like at all. Must be warm.

Yeah, I'm sure it was. So as the Red Army created all these bonfires with their men surrounding it, they, I mean, because remember, they had just been driving the Finns back for

40 fucking miles. Why would they be attacking us? And it tuckers you out. Yeah. They didn't even think to put guards in place because they thought the Finns were completely defeated. So using the high ground around these bonfires, the single company of Finns spread out.

And that was when at 2 a.m., a single Finnish company ambushed an entire Red Army regiment. After three or four minutes of shooting, the Finns withdrew. Not because that they were done or out of ammo, they simply couldn't see any more targets still moving. Oh, God. They're like, oh, guess we're out of shit to shoot.

Let's go home, boys. Ski away. Now, responding Red Army, because remember, this is multiple different divisions, heard shooting, and they rushed to see what was happening. So did divisions from other directions to see what's happening. When they ran into each other, they were so confused, they started shooting each other. Oh, my God, yes.

I don't know why I pictured that. I was like, I feel like something's going to happen. They became locked in a firefight with one another, killing an entire other battalion. And this continued on for about four hours. So the Finns escaped over the lake. They're just watching. Is there another unit over there?

Like, nah. It was just us. Now, the raiders retreated over the lake, and their only casualty during the entire operation was their commander, who, after running nonstop through two days of fighting, had finally collapsed from exhaustion and had to go to the medic. Wow.

Just as Tavella was about to order an all-out attack against the Soviets, who just did a really good job of killing themselves, the Soviets had a surprise of their own. A battalion seemingly out of nowhere appeared out of the woods right behind them and attacked Tavella's rear.

Now, this is where the Finns kept their field kitchens and supplies and really didn't have any pickets set up because they're like, how the fuck would they get through here? The Soviets never snuck up on us before. Well, they did. So they're like,

oh, it's just a whole bunch of really confused cooks and they panic and run because it's not those one one two cooks who's yeah like just start stabbing people death labels and shit yeah uh the soviets quickly routed those troops who ran for their lives and then something so dumb it happened has so dumb happened it could only happen to the red army they started turning on each other not quite the soldiers advanced they got to the field kitchens that had been abandoned finding the cooks had left a hot sausage soup on the fire the soviets the entire unit of soviets stopped and began to eat the soup

they all got in a single file the. The Finns were so confused, they thought it was some kind of trap until they're like, nope, they're really dumb and got their guns and launched a counterattack and drove off the hungry soldiers. That's right. The Red Army was so fucking stupid, it was defeated by soup.

Now, this incident was dumb. It must have smelled good. It had to have smelled good for them to go hold on hold on what's that smell like they're still with an eye shot of finnish soldiers and like that soup though have you ever smelled something that good though i haven't i there's no way i have to like risk bodily harm to go get a bowl of soup uh Now, this incident was dubbed the Sausage War and killed at least 100 people. Holy shit.

Now, after the heroics of the Finnish soup, Tavella did launch his counterattack. We hoard the soup. Plum drops the metal in here. Hero of the Finnish Republic. Bloop. Somebody get that soup out of here.

It's smelling kind of bad. Yeah, well, it's been around for like four months now. It's that sergeant sausage soup to you. Yeah, he's real crusty these days. Over the next several days, Finnish losses were so bad that Mannerheim was appalled

and wanted to call off the offensive, but Tavella would not let him. Saying correctly that if they did not check the Soviets' advance, their main supplier out and the entire war would be lost. Mannerheim allowed him to continue, and continue he did. Tavella didn't break the Soviet line or send them running back across the border, but he did force them back to where the offensive began 40 miles ago, using a single understrength and battered Finnish division and put 10 Red Army divisions in their place.

Not only did Tavella save the supplier out, the entire front would only see limited fighting for the rest of the war. Wow. And, yeah. Thanks a lot, soup. Yeah. Now, we're gonna go to a different battle, and it's one of the more legendary of the entire war.

Every war has a decisive moment, or a moment that becomes enshrined in legend to the point you're not entirely sure what is fact and what is fiction at that point. In World War I, it was arguably Robert Nivelle's They Shall Not Pass at Verdun. In World War II, it was Stalin's Not One Step Back at Stalingrad. For Finns, during the Winter War. It was the Battle of Kola. Or the Kola Front. The battle had actually begun slowly unfolding. Since the war had begun. But not in the way that you would assume.

As such a heroic battle would have played out. The Finns had been getting their heads kicked. And clear across a large swath of Finland. It wasn't from a lack of trying. However. The officers put in charge of this mess, Tietanen, was forced into battle so quickly

that most of his men did not have weapons or skis, making even the concept of movement difficult for them, let alone to fight when they got there. Tietanen knew that his cause was a lost one, but sometimes literally shoved his

soldiers into battle and physically stopped them from running away as he stalked up and down the front line. His soldiers were raw and they were introduced to Soviet armor by watching a sister unit break at the mere mention of them. Like a scout came back and was like tanks! And like fuck this I'm out.

Now this actually had the surprising effect of stealing them against further Soviet attacks because they're like, well, we don't want to be like them, which is like, sure, okay. That's one way to get motivated to stand in the face of a fucking tank assault.

Very true. And moreover, it made the entire line swear they wouldn't go down without a fight because they didn't want to look that bad again. So like, yeah, it kind of worked out. How do you do stuff without half your men with weapons? Some without skis. I mean,

uh, a lot of them were the tank killer squads where they would run out and fire bomb them. Yeah. Just jam logs in their, in their tracks, stuff like that. And tubing battalion. And there's a lot of cases where a reserve would be held back

until somebody got wounded or killed. They just pass off the rifle to them. Now, just imagine waiting in a reserve trench, and they're like, what are you waiting for? Oh, waiting for somebody to die so they can have their gun. Oh, cool. Yeah. I'm a cook, so.

But no matter what he did, the sheer amount of Soviet soldiers slowly forced them back until finally his back literally against the wall they came to abandon the cola river this is the last defensible position between them and the entire rear of the finnish main army if they broke the soviet army could stream into finland proper and encircle the rest of the finnish forces at the manorheim line the war literally depended on these men holding unlike other parts of the Finnish forces at the Mannerheim line. The war literally depended on these men holding. Unlike other parts of the border battles and the fighting on the line, there was

no shocking raids or daring maneuvers to break this battle open. There was no nighttime skee-borne assault across frozen lakes. Both sides settled in for a grinding war of attrition that looked like something you'd see in World War I. And because this was not a prepared position, because remember

they didn't plan on falling back that far, the Finnish soldiers had to dig into the granite-hard frozen soil in between fighting off Soviet human wave attacks or hours-long artillery bombardments. Oh, this sucks. The Red Army poured over 40,000

shells into the Finns a day for months, while the Finns could only match that with about 1,000 on a good day. And remember, they don't have anywhere to hide. I can't imagine doing any of that, you know, cold. You probably can't feel much of anything at this point. You're just so numb, yeah. After fighting this for two weeks,

Mannerheim finally sent in the sent in reserves and more artillery support in the form of two cannons from 1871 i imagine seeing that they're like look at all those cannons two of them holy like imagine seeing like the the artillery crewman come like hey we brought artillery it was like oh thank god and they see like these fucking muzzle loading cannons like oh you gotta be God. And they see these fucking muzzle-loading cannons. Like, oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me. They actually had to make the ammo themselves. Like how Mel Gibson made his ammo? Yeah, kind of.

And none of these guys are scientists, so I'm willing to bet there was a whole lot of failure before success finally came. Like, what happened? Oh, there was a third cannon, but Smith killed himself. Tried throwing a whole tree into it, see if we could launch it like a harpoon uh there was a myth busters where they made a tree into a cannon they should have tried that yeah they had a lot of trees in finland so yeah when the finnish positions earned the name killer hill which i assume sounds way more badass

than finish uh because one day the russians charged up it with a force of 4,000 men. Opposing them was 32 Finns. Oh, God. At the end of the battle, the Finns held the hill with four men left standing. Oh, God. And in front of them

was 400 dead or dying Soviets. Afterward, the Finns made sure to go through, take all their ammo, and execute the wounded. They were pretty mad after that one. Yeah, there's four left. Yeah, there's not a lot of incidences that I've seen where

the Finns are like, fuck it, let's just kill the wounded, but that's one of them. Most of the time, they'd actually patch them up and send them back to the Soviets. Just like a little kid, like, alright, pat them on the butt. Well, they didn't want to keep POWs because they had a hard enough time supplying their army. The last thing we need is fucking tens of thousands of

Soviet POWs. Just send them back. Also, they kind of knew that the POWs they sent back were going to be executed. They're going to die anyway. Now, one weapon that the Finns had that the Soviets could never dream of

was not a gun or a cannon or a tank or a plane. It was pride. Finnish pride. It was a man. Oh, okay. A man who stood five feet tall and weighed only slightly above 100 pounds.

He is a man who has probably killed more people with his own hands than anyone else in human history. And that is the white death, Simio Haiha. Is he really only five foot? Yes, he was about as tall as his gun wow when you see a picture of him his he's about the same size of his rifle that's awesome which i

guess really works for him it's really easy to hide yeah now ha ha was born in a small village near the russian border and spent his early life hunting, farming, and doing other villager stuff. Yeah, small village, small guy. Yeah. When he was 21, he enlisted in the White Guard and won just about every shooting award that they could throw at him. But he was always really shy and socially awkward. In his early life, whenever you saw a picture of him,

he'd always be in the very back kind of hiding behind somebody else, which I identify with strongly. And this is even when he was the champion. He would be behind a large group of people and you'd just see the trophy being held up. You'd see the number one podium, but he's not on it. He's just sitting behind it.

When the war began, he quickly transferred to the Finnish regular army and was sent off to the Kola front. And it was there he spent the entire war. Now, when you think of snipers, you generally think of a shooter and a spotter, right? Or a group of snipers working together. Hi-Ha wasn't down for that shit

and said he went out alone. Lone wolf. Now, this is practical. He was used to hunting. He never worked with anybody else. Also, it made him a lot easier to evade Soviet eyes because he's really small and he's really good. It's much easier to hide one person than two. Especially with his height.

Also, he was fighting in the unfathomably cold Finnish wilderness in the dead of winter. It was a climate so cold that glass would fog up and ice almost immediately if it got wet, which meant he didn't use a scope ever. That makes sense. Also, he never had used one before like when he went hunting and Hi-Hat preferred it this way because if you use a scope it requires you to lift your head up and show a bigger target.

So everything he did was practical if it is batshit insane it makes sense. Hi-Hat had other tricks as well. He would bury the barrel of his weapon in the snow. So when it fired it, there'd be no muzzle flash. Also, because it would be so cool, only steam would rise up and not smoke from firing it. And it's harder to see at a distance.

Also, he'd put snow in his mouth so he couldn't see his breath in the middle of the day. This fucking guy. Yeah. He terrified the Soviets so much, they give him the nickname White Death. And the mere mention of his name, like someone's like, I hear the White Death's operating in this area,

was an entire company's running. Really? Yeah, they're like, fuck this, I'm not fighting him. I wouldn't want to either. At his peak, he killed 25 men in a single day. But he averaged him easily 5 oh yeah he did this every single day

for 98 days straight today I'm on a slump only got 5 the Soviets went out of their way to try to kill this guy if somebody said hey there's a sniper over there and I think it might be him because we don't see his scope they would bombard the entire area with artillery if somebody said like, Hey, there's a sniper over there. And I think it might be him because,

you know, we don't see a scope. We don't say anything. They would bombard the entire area with artillery. Like just try to try to fucking smoke them out. That's insane. And this doesn't even account for the time he wasn't sniping because occasionally he picked up a submachine gun and led raids against the Soviets

with other men. According to official Finnish army documentation, he sniped 259 men and killed probably about as many with his submachine gun. Though other sources claim that he killed well over 800. They just weren't all documented because he didn't take time to

stop. This guy's a badass. Haya himself never talked about his kill count or really about the war publicly. But after his death, historians found in his diary, which he did talk about the people he killed a lot more openly. And he thinks he probably killed around 500 people with his rifle alone. Jesus. And I'm willing to believe him. I would too.

I mean, from a guy this humble, I see no reason to believe that he's inflating those numbers. Yeah. You know those old stories where like, oh yeah, every every kill a nick on the rifle like little scratch you think all his whole rifle would be scratched like it was just fucking like bare wood i accidentally cut off the buttstock uh yeah um i don't think he did much of anything like that like i don't know i guarantee you he didn't but if he did if simu i started coffee and an apparel shirt or a shirt line. Yeah. All this for a man who's roughly the same size as the rifle he was using.

But he was also not a psychopath. He didn't even particularly hate the Soviets. And one occasion, a soldier surrendered himself to Hiha after he shot the man next to him. He's like, whoa, fuck this. Instead of just finishing him off, which would largely be normal for a sniper, Hi-Ha brought the prisoner to a Finnish army tent

where he and several other soldiers got drunk and partied through the night. Hi-Ha was apparently so friendly that the Soviet was pretty bummed

when he got sent back to his own line the next morning. Oh, what the fuck? That's badass. Dude, I thought we were brothers. You can't send me back.

I'll fight with you guys. Come on. What's funny is like that was in his diary. He never really told anybody about it. That's fucking awesome. Now, what's even weirder is the man that they partied with was also a legend in the Finnish army, known as the Terror of Morocco.

Not because of anything horrible that he did. He had simply previously been a French foreign legionnaire in service in Morocco. Oh, okay. He was none other than Lieutenant Arne Juleitinen. He had simply previously been a French foreign legionnaire in service in Morocco. Okay. He was none other than Lieutenant Arnie Juleitnen, a man who had coined the rallying cry of the Finnish side at the Battle of Kola. When derisively asked by a general if Kola would be able to hold, Arnie remarked with a smile that Kola will hold unless you give us orders to run. Thus birthing the rallying cry cola holds which is legendary to this day pepsi cola vibe here yeah it's pepsi's on the front the pepsi navy always holds um though unfortunately for hi hi

he was not bulletproof and one day one of the dozens of snipers that the Soviet sent out hunting for him found his mark. He was shout. He was shot in the face with an explosive bullet, which pretty much blew away half of his head, but he survived. Do you think he's like, you got me?

You got me. It's like, when you play paintball, he's put his hands out and like, just picked up his blown off jaw and walked away. He awoke from his coma the same day the war ended

on 13 March, 1940. Yeah. And he like went out hunting with the prime minister and shit after he recovered. But like half his face is fucking gone. He died like in the last 20 years. Really? Yeah. That dude's awesome. He died like in the last 20 years. Really?

Yeah. That dude's awesome. He died in 2002 at the age of 96. Wow. Hi-Hi himself would go on to be something of a military legend in Finland, as you would imagine. But he never spoke about the war in detail. That dude's cool. When he was asked how he killed so many people, he said simply simply quote, I only did as I was told to do.

And I did it as well as I could. He ended up living longer than the Soviet union. Uh, so maybe like as he was on his deathbed, he's like one last shot and he fired and the entire USSR fell apart. Uh, and that's where we'll leave you for this week. Next week,

we will talk about General Haglund and his legendary Mahdi and the end of the war. Finally. Yep. The end of the war, part five. I told myself I would do five. I made it five, not fucking 26 or whatever the fuck else. And to be fair, this is a really short war.

Only lasted a couple months. So there's more episodes than months to this war. My bad, y'all. But thank you for joining us this week. Stay tuned to next week to the conclusion of this because why would you stop at number four? You fucking mad person. Thank you for supporting the show and we will see you next week.