Motti Tactics: How the Finns destroyed Soviet Divisions in the Winter War

Finnish Motti Tactics during the Winter War enabled them to destroy several Soviet formations in piecemeal. This video gives a basic outline of these tactics and how they were used by the Finns in Soviet-Finnish War (1939-1940).

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Mountain Operations FM 3 97.6

Chew, Allen F.: Fighting the Russians In Winter – Three Case Studies

Nenye, Vesa; Menter, Peter; Wirtanen, Toni: Finland at War. The Winter War 1939-40

Trotter, William R.: The Winter War. The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40

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Song: Ethan Meixsell - Demilitarized Zone

#WinterWar,#MottiTatics,#Tactics

[MilitaryHistoryVisualized]

YouTube's ad policies are getting out of hand, thus sadly, I have to adapt my financial strategy if I want to continue this channel.

[FinnishDragon]

Finns did have another advantage in the Winter War as well and that was the Finnish radio intelligence. The Soviet commanders during the Winter War especially in the northern part of the front were forced to use radios to communicate with their superiors when they were surrounded by the Finnish forces. They generally asked permissions to try to breakthrough at certain points and the Finnish radio intelligence routinely decoded those radio messages and informed the Finnish commanders in time.

[sponge]

Fun fact: Finns attacked the kitchens in one of the top priority to literally destroy their morale, which did decrease their morale severely.

[Perkelenaattori]

One of the practical ways used to deny shelter was shooting the soup kitchens full of holes with rifle fire.

[Links]

The Finnish soldiers had a joke that went something like this:
They are so many, and our country so small. Where will we find space to bury them all?

[Aksuuuk]

one thing about the finnish troops were that they were alot of childhood friends fighting in the area that they grew up in and they knew the area and the men around them but the russians sent a ukranian division to try and invade Finland

[jaaksootak]

Thank you very much for this video! Estonians and Finns are very good friends. Many Estonians fought on the Finnish side "For the freedom of Finland and the honour of Estonia" as was their moto. During the Continuation War, the hole Finnish 200. Infantry Regiment consisted of Estonians. They were called "Finnish boys" ("Soomepoisid" in Estonian) and in 1944 they also fought in Estonia under the Estonian flag.

[LahtariFIN]

Nice video, but you could have mentioned how the tactics were practically used in action. For example that the finns would often destroy or disable the first and the last vehicle of a large column on the road, thus trapping the entire column. Also, while it is true that many russians fought hard, the finns still took many prisoners. And a lot of the soviet troops were not russian and these troops had poor morale, and often surrendered in droves.

[Columbia]

Finns are awesome! - Much love from your northern brothers in Canada.

[Anthrax]

I'm from Russia and I want show my respect to finnland people that bravely fought for their freedom against bolshevik agression but I feel realy bad for poor russian soldiers that died cause stalin's greed....

[Rubashow]

"Disturbance in the force" I see what you did there :)

[Leaffordes]

The Swedish military staff estimated the Finns to be able to hold out for approx 100 days when a Soviet invasion became likely.. they managed to hold out for 105. I think looking at this, Swedes were one of few who didn't underestimate the Finns like many others did.

[jimzawacki]

I've always wanted you to do a video on the Winter War and here we are!

[Aksuuuk]

yes finally thank you have been waiting for this

[JacobChardBRA]

I like the video before it starts because I already know I'm gonna learn something good :D

[znoochy]

Hello from Finland :)
I like that somebody finally talks about a war that my country has been in, not many people even know about the Finnish Winter War (Talvisota/Vinterkriget). All videos I've found thus far have only been Documentaries, and they were good and all, but they never talked about tactics or such. So Thank you for this video, keep it up! :D

[anssihakkarainen]

Nice video as usual. I came up with few points and/or clarifications:


2. Motti tactics were mostly used in area north from the Lake Ladoga. This was very remote area with bad road infrastructure (as mentioned in the video) and finnish military planners didn't expect soviets to attack there as it seemed obvious that soviets couldn't use their numerical superiority and technical advantage in those circumstances. This resulted in serious lack of manpower in the area at the start of hostilities and hastily deployment of troops from Karelian Isthmus sector to slow down the soviets.

3. As famous as motti battles are, they were still a sideshow to battles at Karelian Isthmus where better road network allowed russian to use their advantages in artillery and armor more efficiently. War was decided there regardless how bad the soviet losses in the north were.

4. Mannerheim's knowledge and understanding of soviet capabilities should be taken with a grain of salt. Old man was and is idolized a lot but he was old guard from WWI era cavalry and maybe not the most modern military thinker at the time. He had quite capable staff to run the show and finnish army was mostly reacting to soviet moves. But motti tactics were truly tactical level stuff that emerged on the battlefield so this is more on the sidenotes...

[sampomyllymaki]

"When the enemy is driven back, we have failed, and when he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded."

- Prince Aleksandr V. Suvorov, Count of Rymnik, Russian general

[jonatanjaakkola]

Makes me proud to be finnish! Hakkaa päälle pohjan poika!!

[paulcateiii]

much respect to the Finns for making the bolsheviks pay for trying to take thier freedom