Battle for Tolvarjarvi

Soviet Union Communist Party General Secretary Josef Stalin—known simply as the “Vozhd” or “Boss” to his inner circle—had ordered his massive armies to invade Finland, a blatant act of aggression, in 1939, a year of aggression. His massive armies, lavishly equipped with tanks, guns, and aircraft, easily outnumbered the Finns, and Stalin expected that he would carve out a land barrier between Leningrad, Russia’s “Window on the West,” and his supposed ally, Nazi Germany.

At first the bloodthirsty dictator sought to gain millions of acres of Finnish soil through diplomacy, but despite their country’s small size and weaker economy the Finns were tougher than the nations that had given in to Hitler in 1938 over Czechoslovakia. They would not yield an inch of their forested soil. Their three million people would stand against the Soviet Union’s 105 million.