…On May 24th the Soviets finally launched an assault on the Kymi River line. Following a WWI style preparatory bombardment of over 1 million artillery shells and 10,000 rockets the Soviets moved to cross the swift flowing river. With their defenses smashed by the extraordinarily heavy bombardment the Finns were unable to stop the Soviet assault troops from crossing in small boats supported by amphibious light tanks. The Soviets quickly established beachheads and by the evening had thrown up pontoon bridges. Lacking artillery or airpower the Finns could not stop this and aggressive counterattacks were stopped by heavy Soviet artillery bombardments.
The Finns attempted to contain the breakthrough, but by the 26th the Soviets had brought up breakthrough tanks, ones that could stop any anti-tank weapons the Finns had save for mines and the Soviets broke out on the 27th. The Finns made a forced march retreat to a fallback fortification line based on the Porvoonjoki river manned by the newly raised V and VI Corps. This line was much sparser than the Kymi line, based on a smaller river with far fewer bunkers and heavy weapons defending it. Furthermore the Soviet pursuit inflicted severe losses on the four Corps on the Kymi line, resulting in 70,000 Finnish dead and prisoners and the effective loss of all heavy equipment, in exchange for less than 20,000 total Soviet casualties.
It was plain to the Finnish military and government that the Porvoo line would not hold for any longer than it took for the Soviets to bring up heavy artillery to cover a crossing. Once that happened there would be nothing between the Soviets and Helsinki and the remnants of the Finnish army would be in no shape to face the Soviets in the open field. The Soviets would overrun the capital and the rest of the country in short order.
To buy more time to evacuate as many citizens as possible it was decided that I Corps would withdraw to Helsinki and defend the city to the last man, fighting house to house to buy time. Similarly the 11th division from IV Corps would do the same at Tampere. The remainder of the Finnish Army would attempt to conduct a slow fighting retreat to Rauma and Turku to buy as much time for evacuation to Aland and Sweden as possible. On June 1st the Finnish government evacuated Helsinki for Turku while starting plans for a government in exile abroad…
…Soviet forces reached the Porvoo line on the 28th and by the 29th took control of the whole east bank of the river. The actual Soviet attack did not occur until June 4th in order to bring up sufficient artillery ammunition. The preparatory bombardment was lighter this time than against the Kymi line, with only 120,000 shells and 5,000 rockets, but the defenses were weaker, with a smaller river, significantly fewer buried tanks and large bunkers, a tenth the heavy weapons and a third the machine guns as at Kymi, with only the number of rifles being equivalent. Crossings were once more forced early in the morning, beachheads established and bridges thrown up by nightfall.
On the 5th the Finns managed to contain the bridgeheads, but only just, while on the 6th the Soviets broke out. Immediately the Finnish forces began a retreat to the west, with the Soviets in hot pursuit, their mechanization allowing them to keep up and once more inflict significant casualties…
…In late May as the ground dried in the north the Soviets were able to resume their offensives against Oulu and Tornio. Unlike in the winter they were able to match the Finnish off road mobility, if not knowledge of the terrain and the Finns were unable to use Motti tactics against them. On June 8th the soviets reached Oulu and began a vicious battle to dig out the Finnish brigade there, while on the 9th they reached Tornio and the Finnish brigade there escaped over the Swedish border. Soviet operations in the north then shifted to securing the Swedish border to prevent further escapes…
…With the fall of the Kymi River line the Swedes determined that the Finns would not be able to resist for much longer, and that the Soviets were intending on overrunning all of the country. There was a considerable debate on what to do, with full intervention considered at one point. However the strength of the Soviet Army and the then Soviet aligned German forces in Norway made full intervention very unattractive in being likely to lead to a total defeat and possible partition of Sweden.
Something needed to be done and by June 5th there was an agreement on a limited intervention. The Swedish Navy would occupy the Aland islands in order to protect the interests of the Swedish speaking population there, something that would incidentally deny the Soviets a launching point for amphibious operations against Sweden. Contact was made with the Finnish government on the 6th, as they prepared to evacuate from Turku and the Finns agreed with the plan.
When Swedish ships entered Mariehamm on the 8th the Soviets protested the violation of the territorial integrity of the Finnish Democratic Republic by the Swedes and demanded they evacuate. The Swedes refused and offered to conduct a plebiscite supervised by a neutral nation regarding their presence, which the Soviets were predictably silent on. Several brief naval standoffs occurred before the Soviets acquiesced to the Swedish presence but no violence ensued even as the Soviets did not stop testing the Swedes until the latter half of 1942…
…The Finnish government left the country on June 8th and traveled first to Sweden. The Swedes while sympathetic to the Finns were not willing to host a government in exile for fear that it would result in Soviet actions against them. This left the Finns without a clear place to go, as they did not want to set up in the territory of one of the belligerent powers and risk their neutrality. Rome was their first choice, but Sanna subtly hinted that it might be better for their neutrality if they chose Lisbon, as Portugal was a neutral state far enough away to be immune to Soviet pressure. This was agreed to and the Finnish government departed to Lisbon on June 12th . There it became perhaps the only government in exile of WWII to retain effective legitimacy and not be seen as a puppet of the state they resided in…
…By the time the Soviets overran Turku on June 25th and Rauma on June 27th 650,000 Finns managed to evacuate by sea for either Aland or Sweden. Aland could only absorb a fraction of these and Sweden was itself affected by the blockade of Europe and had difficulty feeding its own population, let alone the refugees from the other Scandinavian countries including Finland. Swedish and Finnish authorities worked vigorously and managed to find destinations for approximately 250,000, primarily to the US and Canada amongst Finnish populations living there already, but a surprising number went to Spain and Latin America. Argentina and Chile were peculiar in that despite lacking Finnish populations before they war they ended up with a large amount of Finnish immigrants as part of the countries bids to settle Patagonia to improve their positions in the disputed territories…
…The majority of the Finnish navy successfully escaped to Sweden after providing final gunfire support for Turku and Rauma. There is joined the surviving elements of the Finnish Air Force and the few Finnish military units that managed to escape over land or were evacuated as the core of a Finnish military in exile…
…By the time active fighting ended on July 3rd with the surrender of the last Finnish troops holding the shattered ruins of Helsinki the Soviets had suffered over 250,000 dead and missing, with another 400,000 injured. They had lost over 4,000 tanks and 700 aircraft, along with 10 small naval vessels, against a far smaller and less populous state.
The Finns saw about 150,000 dead, including civilians during the Soviet conquest, as well as 200,000 military POWs. For the Finns however the killing had only just started…
-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005
