States such as Hungary and Romania ended up siding with Germany, while those states such as Yugoslavia and Greece that opposed the Germans were decisively defeated. Caught between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, they were defeated in detail.
In the case of Poland, the country fought, but with an obsolete military doctrine and flawed strategy.
In Czechoslovakia’s case, despite a sizable and well-equipped military, the population was divided and the government lacked the political will to fight when the country was isolated and abandoned by France and Britain. In the end, this did neither country any good. Over the 1920’s and 1930’s, newly independent countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia had built up respectable armed forces. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 took away even this choice for Poland and a little later for the small Baltic States. In effect this left the smaller East European states with little alternative but to become clients of either Nazi Germany or Russia. The Munich crisis and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia showed how little reliance could be placed on the Western democracies, whose power to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe was negligible in any case. Instead of combining for self defence as they might have, the eastern european states were bitterly divided. Since the end of the First World War they had enjoyed an independence which most of them had not known for centuries, but from the early 1930’s this independence was increasingly threatened by the growing power of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. The decade of the 1930’s was a time of growing tension for the smaller states of Eastern Europe, Finland among them. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected.” Sun Tzu. It is matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. The art of war is of vital importance to the state.
“In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. This is the first instalment in a rather long and involved “What If.” What could an adequately equipped and trained Finnish Army, Air Force and Navy have achieved? Finnish soldiers fought hard with the equipment that they did have, they inflicted enormous casualties on the attacking Soviet forces, out of all proportion to their own losses. What if the Finnish armed forces had been equipped and prepared to fight a war with the USSR. What If – Historically, Finland lost the Winter War in large part due to an ill-equipped military (who did amazingly well with what they had) and politicians who failed to see the writing on the wall and act.
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