75 years ago today, on 30th November 1939, the USSR invaded Finland with forces crossing the borders to the south and east of the country, and an aerial bombing of its capital Helsinki. In doing so, the Soviet Union started the Winter War, a brutal conflict which continued until the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13th March 1940.
In the below photographs from the conflict, a Finnish machine gun crew (immediately below) and ski patrol lying in the snow on the outskirts of a wood in Northern Finland (beneath) can be seen in the sub-arctic conditions of the Finnish winter.
To read more about the conflict, the Continuation War that followed in 1941-44 and the Lapland War of 1944-45, why not pick up a copy of Philip Jowett and Brent Snodgrass' Finland at War 1939–45, which delves into the organization, uniforms, equipment and tactics of Finland's wartime forces.
The original images can be found here and here.
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