Evening Stellan:
Well, you have already passed into 2005 while Pat and I have just started our second drink with only a few more to come for the quiet evening we have planned.
Your question about what could the Finns do is interesting but rather sadly at the end a question of arithmetic..
If I have the gross numbers right, Russia had a population equal to 42 Russians for every Finn and a potential armed forces strength that was about 36 to one.
According to what I have read, the Finns in both the attack and the mobile defense mode, were able to literally slaughter thousands of Russians assuming they did not run out of ammunition and room to move around.
The last two maps you showed indicate that there was a river line that could have been defended rather well but it was not directly in front of what was the assumed Russian objective, Viipure. From map 1 to map 2 it seemed obvious that the Russians were going to avoid ctrying to cross the river and go directly for the town. This meant the Finns would have to attack, attack, attack over somewhat open ground. While they would be successful in terms of total Russian body count, they would lose too many men in the end as the Russians so badly outnumbered them.
So, as you say, in the end the Finns won the war from a tactical point of view but realized that even at the ratio of Finnish dead to Russian they were going to run out of fighters and even total population before the Russians even began to feel any consequence of the war on their armed forces or their population.
Something the Germans learned a few years later if I may say so.
Keep it up, my friend and I hope you and yours have a very happy 2005.
Bill
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