Mikko Härmeinen
General Headquarters 14.3.1940
Commander-in-Chief's Daily Order no. 34
SOLDIERS OF THE HONOURABLE FINNISH ARMY!
Peace has been made between our country and Soviet Russia, a harsh peace that has given to Soviet Russia almost every battlefield, where You have bled for everything we hold sacred and dear.
You did not want war, You loved peace, labor and progress, but You were forced to a battle where You have done great deeds, deeds that will shine for centuries to come in the annals of history.
More than 15 000 of You [1] who left for the battlefield won't see their homes again, and how many has lost their ability to work for ever! But You have also delivered hard blows, and when two hundred thousand [2] of your enemies lie in snow or stare our sky with broken eyes, the fault is not Yours. You didn't hate them, and didn't want to harm them, but followed the harsh law of war, to kill or to be killed.
Soldiers!
I have fought on many battlefields, but haven't seen soldiers like You. I'm proud of You, like You were my own children, as proud of [3] the man of North's fells as of man of plains of Bothnia, forests of Karelia, hills of Savolax, fruitful fields of Tavast and Satakunta, gentle groves of Uusimaa and Varsinais-Suomi. I'm as proud of the sacrifice given by a factory worker and poor cottage's son as by a rich one's.
I thank You all, officers, NCOs and men, but I want especially to stress the self-sacrifying gallantry of the reserve officers, their sense of duty and the skill they had fulfilled the duty that was not originally theirs. Thus has their sacrifice been prosentually the highest, but it has been given with gladness and unwavering sense of duty.
I thank the staff officers for their skill and untiring labor, and finally I thank my closest assistants, the Chief of General Staff [4] and Chief Quartermaster General [5], the Army commanders [6], and the army corps and division commanders who often had made impossible things possible.
I thank the Finnish Army, all its braches, who in noble competition had done heroic deeds from the first day of war. I thank for the bravery it has gone against the enemy that was many times superior and sometimes armed with weapons previously unknown, and for the hardiness it has defended every inch of the Fatherland. The destruction of more than 1500 Russian tanks and 700 planes tells of heroic deeds that had often been done by individual men.
With gladness and pride I think of the Finnish Lottas [7] and their lot in the war - their self-sacrificing spirit and untiring labor on different fields which has freed thousands of men for the front. Their noble spirit has encouraged and supported the army, which thankfulness and esteem they have fully achieved.
In a place of honour had also stood those thousands of workers, who, often as volunteers, even during aerial attacks, have worked beside their machinery to manufacture supplies for the army, and those who persistently under enemy fire had worked to prepare defensive positions. I thank You for the Fatherland.
Despite all this bravery and self-sacrificing spirit the government has been forced to make a peace with harsh terms. This is, however, explicable.
Our Army is small and its reserves and cadres insufficient. One hadn't prepared for a war against a great power [8]. While our brave soldiers defended our borders, one had with insuperable efforts try to get what was missing, build defensive lines that didn't exist, to get help that didn't come. One had to get weapons and equipment at a time, when all the countries were preparing against the storm that is now rolling over the world. Your heroic deeds has aroused admiration all over the world, but after three and half months of war we are still almost alone. We haven't get more foreign help than two reinforced battalions with artillery and aircraft to our fronts, where our men had for day and night without the possibility of relief to receive the attacks of new enemy forces, exterting both physical and mental powers to the utmost limit.
When the history of this war is once written, the world shall know Your deeds.
Without the generous help in weapons and equipment that Sweden and Western Powers had given us, our fight so far would have been impossible against the enemy's countless guns, tanks and planes.
Unfortunately the valuable promise of help given by the Western Powers could not be realised, when our neighbours, looking after themselves, refused the right of access from the troops.
After sixteen weeks of bloody battles without a day's or night's rest our Army today still stands unbeaten before the enemy, which, despite its horrendous losses, has only grown stronger in numbers, and neither has wavered the home front, where countless aerial attacks have spread death and horror among the women and children. Our burnt cities and ruined villages far behind the front, even near our western borders, are visible testimony of the sufferings of this people in the bygone months.
Our fate is hard indeed, when we are forced to leave to an alien race, which has a different world-view and different values, the land we have with sweat and blood tilled for centuries.
But we have to take harsh measures to prepare new homes in the land we have left for those left homeless, and better standards of living for everybody. And we must, as before, be ready to defend our diminished Fatherland with the same determination and strength, as we have defended our undivided Fatherland.
We are proudly aware that we have a historic mission, which has been our heritage for centuries, and which we are still fulfilling, protecting the western civilisation; but we also know that we have paid to the last penny the debt we have owed to the west.
Notes:
[1] The latest study has put the Finnish lossed in military deaths during and immediately after the Winter War at 26 662, plus 956 civilian deaths.
[2] The latest research in the Russian archives I'm aware of puts the Soviet losses in the Winter War at somewhat more than 130 000 killed.
[3] There follows the historic provinces of Finland. North (Fin. Pohjola), a common name for the nortern arctic region of Finland also known as Lapland; Bothnia (Pohjanmaa), the low plains on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia in western Finland; Karelia (Karjala) the area south, west and north of Lake Ladoga, most of it was now lost to Soviet Union; Savolax (Savo), eastern Finland west of Karelia; Tavast (Häme) south-central Finland; Satakunta, western Finland south of Bothnia; Uusimaa, southern Finland on the northern shore of Gulf of Finland; Varsinais-Suomi, south-western coast south of Satakunta. This part was one of the hardest to translate, hopefully the result is at least somewhat readable.
[4] Lt. Gen. Karl Lennart Oesch
[5] Col. Aksel F. Airo (from 26 Feb 1940 Major General), arguably one of the most important Finnish soldiers of the WWII.
[6] There was only one army-size formation, Karelian Army. Until 19 Feb 1940 the commander was Lt. Gen. Hugo Österman, afterwards Lt. Gen. Erik Heinrichs.
[7] Lotta Svärd, the female volunteer defence organisation.
[8] Note how Mannerheim uses the passive form here. The efforts he describes here were made necessary by the neglect of pre-war years which Mannerheim had been pointing out during his tenure as the Chairman of the Defence Council during the 1930s.