[Fennica]

Originally Posted by A Potts

I pose the question that had it not been for the disastrous Soviet attack on Finland, they may well have lost the Eastern Front.

Most likely would have. The Soviets were quick to reform their armies after that war.

I say this after reading a chapter on the Soviet Army. I would suggest that:

1. It showed how impractical their early armour was.
2. It made the soviets really consider winter clothing (a surprise to me)
3. It showed up serious flaws in their command after the Stalin purges (I read that they needed to scape the prisons to find competent officers).
4. It taught them valuable lessons in logistics.

Early armor was not so ineffective, than the way Soviets used them.
They had poor to nonexistant combined arms tactics to go with poor use of massive superority of armor.

Soviets used `other´ soviet nationalities. They sent Ukranians to slaughter here, and naturally those troops were ill-equipped to fight in these conditions, additionally their skiing skills... did not exist.
Nor could they fight in the forests.

Soviets also lacked knowledge of proper maintenance.
Tanks froze up, food was horrible for our conditions and they had not realized that day lasted 4 hours, but night lasted 20.

After reading the chapter, I felt that a Soviet army would not have held Moscow if not for the lessons learnt from the Finnish war.

Soviet armies would have fared horribly, but they would have not had new designs and more flexible systems of operation in place.

Good to remember that Soviets learned the SMG lesson from us aswell.
-Sure, they had PPSh SMGs, but their usage and distribution was in bare minimum. By the time Germans invaded, they had copied the M31 drum mag and had placed more value on large amounts of SMGs.