I've been a bit busy with work lately, but here we go again.
During the first battles of the Winter War, the biggest concern for the Finns was the Soviet use of tanks. As I mentioned earlier, Finland had only 32 tanks to begin with and most conscripts had never seen one live before they encountered them on the battlefield. Also, Finns were lacking anti-tank weaponry as well as anti-armour tactics, which caused some concern among the troops, but with the Soviets implementing their tanks in a frontal charge, Finns soon improvised and begun to produce Molotov Cocktails, made out of glass bottle filled with gasoline, alcohol (and often wood tar). This proved to be very efficient against the Soviet tanks.
Not only Soviet tankers used the frontal charge as tactic in assault. Finns deflected wave after wave, when Soviet infantry charged over open ground. The Soviet troops were inexperienced mostly and when led by officers who were either ardent communists and relentlessly whipped their men in to the fire or ones that were not so ardent communists, but were whipped themselves by the political officers, the Soviet charges hardly ever mounted to nothing but slaughter on their side.
Finns also had the advantage of weather. Accustomed to cold and snow and having the advantage of the terrain being mostly forest wilderness and lacking roads, they made easy work of Soviet armour even without heavy anti-tank weapons. The winter of 1939-1940 was exceptionally cold, the temperature reaching -43 centigrades (-45 Fahrenheit), the ill-equiped Soviets died of frostbite and hypotermia in numbers. Finns also had winter gear for camouflaging themselves, which made them relatively unseen.
Even if the Soviets had superiority in both number and material, Finns succeeded against them by using guerilla tactics and wearing the enemy down. The Finns cut Soviet units in to smaller sectors that were, in turn, cut in to even smaller ones and soon the Finns could attack the enemy from any and all directions. These pockets of enemy were called "motti" by the Finns.
It has been said, the Soviet soldier had no choice in the war. If he refused to fight or tried to flee, he was shot. If he tried to sneak through cover, he would freeze to death. They would not surrender either, because the Soviet propaganda machine told them, the Finns would torture them to death.
During the 1920ies, Finns had constructed the Mannerheim-line on the Karelian isthmus. It was not unlike the Maginot Line, except that it was less dense and the flanks of the fortifications were mostly protected by large bodies of water.
One of the most famous Finnish soldiers was alikersantti (junior NCO equal to corporal) Simo Häyhä, who is even today considered one of the most, if not the most successful snipers ever. He was credited with 505 confirmed kills with a rifle, using only iron sights. On top of it, he was also credited for over 200 kills with the Finnish KP/31 submachinegun. To clarify his capability, Simo Häyhä gathered the kills prior to March 6th, 1940, when he was hit by a bullet that practically destroyed his jaw. He survived the hit, regaining consciousness on March 13th, the day the peace was declared. He was promoted to vänrikki (2nd lieutanant) by Field Marshal Mannerheim. He passed away on April 1st, 2002, at the very ripe age of 96.
One of the most famous battles of the Winter War was the Battle of Raate road. On December 7th, 1939, the Soviet 163rd division captured the town of Suomussalmi, but was cut off from friendly troops and the Soviets sent the 44th Rifle Division, a unit of mostly Ukrainian troops very much unaccustomed to winter, to rescue. The Finns lost 402 men K.I.A., while the Soviet losses were between 7,000 to 9,000 killed and 1,300 captured. The battle provided much needed materiel in huge amounts for the Finnish troops including over 40 tanks and 71 artillery pieces, which came to a real need as majority of the Finnish artillery was very old pieces, mostly 1902 model 76mm gun howizers.
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