William R. Trotter’s excellent military history, A Frozen Hell, documents the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-1940. It is perhaps one of the few books in English that describes the conflict in any detail, and to Trotter’s credit the book is eminently readable, well-researched and supplemented with maps as any good military history should be. There are some spelling errors that betray a lack of knowledge of Russian on his part, and the history was written prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, so access to Russian sources was scarce generally. These faults were very minor ones, however, in what was otherwise an engaging read.

To his credit, Trotter doesn’t fall into the trap of either glorifying the Finnish fighters, the way that many contemporary Western journalists did while the war was going on, nor of demonizing the Russians. In particular, although he concedes that Stalin was generally paranoid, he outlines why and how the Soviet Union would rationally seek the concessions that it demanded of Finland prior to the war. The harshest criticism is reserved for Zhdanov and Voroshilov, who both boasted to Stalin that the war could be completed in roughly two weeks’ time. Had they listened to the pessimistic but prophetic assessment of General Shaposhnikov, the Russians might have fared better.

On the Finnish side, Mannerheim is shown as a military genius but also a highly idiosyncratic and flawed person. He was indispensible to Finland at the time but he too made mistakes. Several of his commanders were uneven in their performance, from Österman in the south, who performed admirably but was relieved when the Mannerheim Line was breached, to the nationalist Wallenius in the north, who waged a brilliant guerrilla war in Lapland but drank himself into a stupor when transferred to Viipuri.

The overall tone that results from Trotter’s careful reading of the events is a balanced, evenhanded one. While the Russian commanders are often shown as being incompetent, their men fought bravely and fiercely. The Finns, who fought brilliantly given the odds against them and their total lack of heavy weaponry, also made errors in judgment that would cost them extra lives.

The truly amazing thing about the Winter War is that it was fought at all. It is beyond my ability to comprehend how Stalin’s top military commanders thought they could employ Blitzkrieg-style tactics (or really, Soviet-style massed artillery tactics) in dense forest peppered with swamps and lakes with hardly any roads, railroads or other lines of communication. To fight such a war during the Winter in the extreme North is even more incomprehensible. To supply troops with manuals on ski warfare without actually sending them skis is reprehensible on its own, but given that the manual gave bad instructions, the commander who issued them should have been shot. For example, it gave instructions on shooting while on skis, whereas the Finns knew a fighter had to jump off the skis to properly shoot. The same went for bayonet fighting. The manual called for bayonet fighting on skis, but skis remove the friction necessary to create enough lethal force to make the bayonet deadly. The manual also instructed soldiers to throw grenades in the overhand manner while standing, while every Finnish ski fighter knew that one needed to crouch down and throw sideways to end up anywhere near one’s intended target.

The narrative that follows is one of needless slaughter. Russian soldiers were sent into Finland to die in the hundreds of thousands. Forced to follow narrow roads through the forest, their columns were immobilized by Finnish irregulars and chopped into pieces in what became known as motti tactics using the Finnish word for wood stacked for chopping. The Finns attacked their field kitchens and their vehicles, depriving the Russians of any means of staying warm, and thousands froze to death. Snipers picked off officers and then slipped off into the woods while the surviving troops fired guns and artillery wildly into the empty forest.

Trotter also shows the deep cynicism of the Western powers as they offered empty promises of fighters that could not materialize without breaching Norwegian and Swedish neutrality. As the Finns slowly realized that no real help would be coming to save them from the overwhelming odds, and as the Mannerheim Line was breached, and breached again, they finally had to settle for a humiliating peace that saw them give up much of the land they had fought and bled for.

The Winter War was a horrible conflict for all involved. The human cost was high on both sides, and although conditions were better for the Finns, fighting a war in temperatures of -20 C took a toll on all the soldiers involved. At all times, the Finns were stretched to their limit, getting almost no rest. The Soviet soldiers inevitably fared worse, often starving or freezing to death if not shot by the enemy or even their own commanders. The 5,000 prisoners taken by Finland were summarily executed by the NKVD upon their repatriation. It was a miserable affair from start to finish.

Trotter’s book is filled with details and vivid accounts, including translations from memoirs of the commanders and soldiers on both sides. I looked without success for a Russian-language history of the Winter War. I suspect that even after the archives were opened, few historians were eager to delve into the history of a war that was so disastrously conducted. As a result, A Frozen Hell is one of the only books on the subject accessible to me, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in military history generally or the Winter War in particular.