History Literature / TheWinterWar

* AuthorityGrantsAsskicking: Justified by that many high officers of the Finnish army are Jägers trained in Germany before Finland's independence, and conscript leaders have generally been [[AsskickingLeadsToLeadership picked by their abilities]].

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Justified by that many high officers of the Finnish army are Jägers trained in Germany before Finland's independence, and conscript leaders have generally been [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority picked by their abilities]].

* RuleOfThree: In his first combat Martti misses his first two shots.

* ThousandYardStare: The ending.

* DeathSeeker: Probably out of sheer exhaustion, in one of the last battles the narrator's squad leader stands upright against a tree to fire his submachine gun at the oncoming enemy.

* SiblingTeam: The narrator and his little brother are squadmates in the war, and they are often on watch duty together.

* StandYourGround: During the pre-war negotiations the Finnish men, already suspicious of Russians and finding their territorial demands unjustified, are determined to do this if the war comes, without any specific ultimatum. Also invoked by the regiment commander in the film as the JR23 moves to the front.

* ItsPersonal: [[spoiler: The narrator says he begins to feel this way about the war against the Russians after his brother is blown to pieces by an artillery shell]].
* AMillionIsAStatistic: The horrific loss of life on the Russian side is treated rather indifferently by the narrator, while killed Finns evoke a bit more reaction. [[spoiler: The death of the narrator's own brother is clearly a heavy blow]].

->''In the afternoon they came again, supported by tanks and artillery, at about one o'clock, and we battled them until eight in the evening. They started to believe that it's difficult to come to Finland through there, and at eight in the evening they stopped fighting for the day. We started looking at what the Russian had managed to do to our positions and fixing them. We waited for warm food. Six tanks were burning and smoking in front of the lines, and many neighbor's men were lying there. No food came, and there would not have been many eaters either.''
%% an unofficial translation from Finnish edition

The Winter War (Finnish: ''Talvisota'') is a Finnish novel by Antti Tuuri, published in 1984. [[TheFilmofthebook It was directed into]] [[Film/{{Talvisota}} a movie]] in 1989. The novel has been translated into English by Richard Impola.

In the novel, Martti Hakala, as an old man, [[CharacterNarrator tells his story]] about participating in the [[Usefulnotes/FinnsWithFearsomeForests Winter War]] between {{Usefulnotes/Finland}} and the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] 1939-1940, as a Finnish rank-and-file reservist. The infantry regiment JR 23 that he is assigned to first sees action in Taipale, and later in Äyräpää. The story is fictional, but it is based on diaries and interviews of real veterans and other first-hand sources, and real persons like the regiment commander Matti Laurila appear in the story.

The plot is simply a story of the war, so there is little character building and dramatic arc, but the narrator's own experiences and the anecdotes he shares form a picture of what the Winter War was like for an infantryman on the Karelian Isthmus.

!!This work provides examples of the following tropes:

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Justified by that many high officers of the Finnish army are Jägers trained in Germany before Finland's independence, and conscript leaders have generally been [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority picked by their abilities]].
* BeigeProse: A plain man tells what he heard and saw during the war, and there's little romanticism in it.
* BittersweetEnding: For the Finnish soldiers. The war finally ends, and the men have the impression that they have won, simply because they have not let the Russians come through. But the peace terms dictate that a lot of territory, including the battlefields they have defended to the end, is given up to Russians.
* {{Conscription}}: The narrator is one of many called-up reservists, and he notes that there's a variety of people already among the four hundred men of their municipality. Units are formed on geographical basis, so the narrator fights together with his neighbors and his brother, and other units in the story are generally referred to by the soldiers' home town or region.

* DeathSeeker: Probably out of sheer exhaustion, in one of the last battles the narrator's squad leader stands upright against a tree to fire his submachine gun at the oncoming enemy. He is said to live surprisingly long.
* DelayingAction: Happens offscreen but gets described a bit, for example in the first days of war, when the front is not yet fully manned. Also, when the narrator's unit is moving to occupy the front in Äyräpää after a Russian breakthrough, they meet soldiers from delaying units, who are heading the other way in panic.
** The whole war on the Finnish part is frankly just a big delaying action, with the hope of some kind of help arriving.
* DramaticSitDown: The narrator's unit is ordered to attack and recapture the church hill at Äyräpää, which they have [[SenselessSacrifice already seen others try]], and now the enemy has had the time to properly dig in. When the quiet men are [[SuicideMission prepared for their fate]], the order is cancelled. The narrator can only sit down and try not to weep.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first sentence. The narrator suggests walking to the gathering place, but his little brother says that their house is not going to war by foot, and so they take a horse and cart.

** The first company commander is said to be this, in exact words.
* ForegoneConclusion: Since the story is told long afterwards, the narrator reveals things before they happen in-story. The whole story, of course, is also about a well-known (at least for Finnish audience) historical event.
* FriendOrFoe: Many cases of confusion occur.
** A group of Russians walk right through the Finnish lines in the dark, thought to be tired and grumpy Finnish combat engineers when they don't answer the password challenge. The narrator thinks the Russians themselves were unaware of what happened and believed the Finns had already withdrawn further.
** A story is heard about a Finnish pilot who makes a forced landing between the lines and is fired at from both directions, and being wounded and confused, he himself can't tell where the friends are since there's a Swedish-speaking unit on the Finnish side.

** The church hill at Äyräpää becomes important because it allows the Russian artillery to use direct fire on the Finnish positions.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: The narrator's platoon leader saves the day by disabling a single, trouble-causing tank with a rifle. He aims at its observation hatch, killing the tank commander and causing the crew to abandon the vehicle in panic.
* ItsPersonal: The narrator says he begins to feel this way about the war against the Russians after [[spoiler: his brother is blown to pieces by an artillery shell]].
* LanguageBarrier: The Finns fail to deliver a surrender demand to the Russians in the casemate because they simply cannot find a Russian-speaking man from their local units.

** Owing to defence budget cuts at the time, upon entering service many Finnish infantrymen must use their own civilian clothes. To identify them as soldiers, they receive a rifle, a national insignia pinned on the hat and a belt.
* AMillionIsAStatistic: The horrific loss of life on the Russian side is treated rather indifferently by the narrator, while killed Finns evoke a bit more reaction. [[spoiler: The death of the narrator's own brother]], while also laconically told, is clearly a heavy blow.
* MolotovCocktail: Used against Russian tanks. Historically the cocktails [[TropeNamer got their name in the Winter War]], but the term is not discussed further, and mostly they are called just incendiary bottles.
* NewMeat: A new boy arriving to the front says he'd like to try firing a rifle because he's never fired an army rifle before. All we learn about him after that is that he did not last long.
* NoNameGiven: A lot of people appear in the story, but we learn the names of only a couple of squadmates and officers.
* NoOneGetsLeftBehind: The Finnish soldiers' attitude. For example, a horse gets lifted up from a hole in river ice, under artillery and machine gun fire, to make sure a wounded soldier gets into treatment in time. Also extends to the fallen ones.
* OhCrap: The men are happy to get a truck transport instead of marching on foot, but one of them notes that rank-and-file men don't get free rides just like that. They are needed in their destination in a ''hurry''.
* RedShirtArmy: Justified. While the Russians resume their offensive with even bigger numbers, a fresh but unexperienced regiment takes over the Taipale front, as the narrator's unit moves to rest. The front line doesn't hold for a day.
* RiversOfBlood: In a costly but successful Finnish counter-attack, the blood of the Russian casualties pools at the bottom of the reclaimed trench so that it's halfway up a man's boot shaft. The narrator points out that [[SecondHandStorytelling this is what he was told]], since his own unit did not participate.
* SecondHandStorytelling: In addition to his own experiences, the narrator tells about what he hears from others.
* SenselessSacrifice: Another unit's attack to recapture the church hill at Äyräpää. They attack across open ground, with pitiful artillery support, against a numerically superior enemy. Few come back on their own legs.
* ShaggyDogStory: The opposing sides fight bloodily for the control of a concrete casemate, and in the end it is totally razed by Russian artillery fire, [[FriendOrFoe possibly with Red Army soldiers inside]].
* ShroudedInMyth: The propaganda-exaggerated Mannerheim Line is a minor geographical example. The men hope to find a well fortified position when they are transferred to Äyräpää. They find nothing and dig in into the snow.

* StandYourGround: The Finnish men, already suspicious of Russians and finding their territorial demands unjustified, are determined to do this if the war comes, without any specific ultimatum.
* TankGoodness: Zig zagged. Because the Finns are short of proper anti-tank weapons, Russian tanks often act at leisure, as far as they don't get so close that they fall victim to [[MolotovCocktail improvised measures]]. However, the tanks' impact is rather limited until the Russians improve their tactics. It is mentioned that in another sector the Russians break the Finnish lines with proper use of tanks.
* WarIsHell: Even though the story is told a long time after the war, in a chatty way and with the immediate terror absent, and the BeigeProse style does not go into details or philosophical pondering, the elements of the story speak for themselves. The usual hardships of war - constant fear of death, uncertainty of the future, hunger, little sleep - get the added bonus of WinterWarfare, and the enemy shows no sign of wearing down despite their horrendous casualties, which alone are enough to show that this trope applies to the Russian side too.

** The narrator has to have his hair cut with a knife because it has frozen onto the trench wall while sleeping.
** Also mentioned is the Finnish propaganda narrative which states that the winter is an ally to the Finns, with an implication that the men on the front might not completely agree.

* RedShirtArmy: Justified. While the Russians resume their offensive [[UpToEleven with even bigger numbers]], a fresh but unexperienced regiment takes over the Taipale front, as the narrator's unit moves to rest. The front line doesn't hold for a day.

* UpToEleven: The narrator says that at one point toward the end of the war, he thought he already knew what the Russian artillery bombardment could be like at its worst, but was mistaken.

In the novel, Martti Hakala, as an old man, [[TheNarrator tells his story]] about participating in the [[Usefulnotes/FinnsWithFearsomeForests Winter War]] between {{Usefulnotes/Finland}} and the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] 1939-1940, as a Finnish rank-and-file reservist. The infantry regiment JR 23 that he is assigned to first sees action in Taipale, and later in Äyräpää. The story is fictional, but it is based on diaries and interviews of real veterans and other first-hand sources, and real persons like the regiment commander Matti Laurila appear in the story.

* LoadedWords: A subtle version: most of the time, the narrator refers to the enemy soldiers as "men", while Finnish soldiers are called "boys".

* BittersweetEnding: The war finally ends, and the men have the impression that they have won, since the Russians have not been let through. But the peace terms dictate that a lot of territory, including the battlefields they have defended to the end, is given up to Russians.

** The company commander is said to be this, in exact words.