A Frozen Hell – Review

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 by William R. Trotter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written before he had access to the Soviet archives, Trotter’s book is lively and full of interesting anecdotes. The most interesting part is the early chapter on the reasons for the war. Trotter doesn’t – as one might expect – lay the blame solely on Stalin and his hench-creatures, but emphasises their concerns about the coming German assault. Trotter is also excellent on the cynical machinations of international diplomacy. Trotter’s ultimate support for the “democratic” Finns, fighting for freedom smacks a little too much of ideology, but thankfully this comes late in the book and only lasts a page or two.

As a military history, it is excellent, though mostly told from the side of the Finns. Still the mobile battles to the north of lake Ladoga are fascinating, and the latter-day world-war-one trench warfare on the Karelian Isthmus between St Petersberg and Finland horrifying – if that’s your kind of thing. One can’t help ruminate on the horrendous loss of life, especially on the Russian side, whose tactical crudity wasted soldiers the same way their system of production wasted just about everything. Equally interesting – though not discussed by Trotter – is the question of why, having faced such horrors, the Red Army didn’t revolt against its Stalinist masters, either during the war, or after it. This remains one of the enduring historical questions: just why was Stalinism so stable as a system?

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