Finnish–Soviet War (1939–1940) from Sweden But nor did Hitler aid or arm the Finns against the Soviets The only foreign assistance to Helsinki came from about 10,000 Swedes who volunteered to fight for Finland and who were able to walk across the border in time to participate in arms The Swedish government also kept superb armaments flowing into Finland But Stockholm refused to come directly to its neighbor’s aid or formally abandon neutrality Whatever happened on the Karelian front and in eastern Finland once the fighting began, the Finns were on their own against the largest military in the world From the first day of what turned into a bitter winter campaign, the Red Army revealed that real damage had been done by the blood purge of its top officers during the Yezhovshchina Led by Stalin’s old cavalry crony from the Russian Civil War (1918–1921), Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, Soviet forces displayed a singular lack of tactical imagination in attacking prepared Finnish defenses They took very heavy casualties as a result Advancing predictably, with heavily motorized and mechanized columns strung out along the few forest roads that existed in southern Karelia, Soviet troops were harassed, bloodied, and blocked by the Finns Especially effective were Finnish ski troops They fl itted among the trees, employing hit-and-run tactics and carrying out forest ambushes in a fight-and-maneuver scheme the lumbering Soviet columns proved incapable of matching Then, in late December, the Finns mounted a large conventional counterattack, scoring multiple stunning victories over now isolated and broken Soviet columns Entire Red Army divisions were annihilated Over nearly four months of hard winter fighting the Finns held out unexpectedly well and exacted a heavy price in Soviet lives and war matériel Then they fell back behind fixed fortifications of the Mannerheim Line Soviet generals attacked that line of bunkers and machine gun nests with brutal, unimaginative frontal infantry and armor assaults The Finns sat in fixed positions and proceeded to cut down young Russians by tens of thousands But Stalin had plenty more young men to hurl at Finnish trenches and muzzles The Red Army had failed miserably in its advance intelligence and conduct of operations, as well as in its troop morale, equipment, and resupply operations It had lost 1,500 tanks and 700 combat aircraft in the first four months of fighting Worse, its divisions, corps, and armies proved less mobile and flexible than Finnish Army divisions Soviet commanders showed themselves to be tactically rigid, notably when ordering by-the-book infantry attacks into nimbly defended forests and thickly defended fixed fortifications Soviet tanks and other armored vehicles were utterly inadequate to the winter conditions, and tank and vehicle repair and recovery was woefully inept Frostbite cases revealed inadequacies in the Red Army medical corps Desertion rates were high among conscripts, sometimes of whole units That was true in spite of the remarkably difficult physical conditions, the fact the woods were swarming with angry Finns, and severe punishments meted out to any krasnoarmeets caught while trying to get back to their homes In the end, however, sheer manpower was an overwhelming and decisive advantage: Moscow brought to bear a weight of 1.2 million men and thousands more tanks and combat aircraft The Soviets also changed theater commanders and adjusted their tactics in January 1940 With weight of men and metal, they broke through 386